SOURCE: Rothfeder, Herbert P. “Amt Schrifttumspflege: A Study in Literary Control.” German Studies Review 4, no. 1 (February 1981): 63-78.

In the following essay, Rothfeder discusses how the totalitarian government of Nazi Germany deployed bureaucracy on national and local levels to effectively censor literature it considered problematic.

Modern totalitarian dictatorships have developed the practice of censorship into a highly refined art. Through an interlocking network of party and state agencies, the opponents of the regime are denied a forum for expressing their views, while at the same time, ideology consistent with the government in power is fostered. The effectiveness of censorship depends on the interaction of the central organization with its local representatives. The largest, but certainly not the most powerful literary control agency in Nazi Germany was Amt Schrifttumspflege (Office for the Propagation of Literature).¹ Because its operations encompassed such a wide range of activities, a study of this comparatively...