The Nazi regime fully recognized the power of culture. During the lead-up to and throughout the World War II years the Nazis strategically employed elements of culture, including books and libraries, as instruments of propaganda and targets of calculated violence. To understand the degree to which culture played a critical role in fascism’s rise and spread, one need look no further than the familiar images of Hitler’s followers ransacking libraries and throwing confiscated books onto raging bonfires in Berlin’s Opernplatz in 1933. The Nazi book burnings and the devastation they portended, both concretely and symbolically, constitute the starting point for this story of reconstruction.
The Nazis’ “centrally directed program of cultural conquest,” which paved the way for what historian Benjamin Martin recently described as “the Nazi-Fascist cultural New Order,” constituted only one element of the unprecedented carnage of World War II.1 The details and extent of that carnage have been expertly covered by many; of interest here is the aftermath. Reversing Nazism’s pervasive abuse and misuse of books and libraries became a specific and urgent goal for those dedicated to postwar cultural reconstruction. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) served as a centralizing force in those efforts. This book outlines the ways in which UNESCO, via its dedicated Libraries Section, sought to repair and transcend the myriad wartime wrongdoings perpetrated upon and using books, libraries, and information, within the early postwar-Cold War context.2
Tragically, World War II presents neither the first nor the last time that culture has been targeted in times of war or other conflict. Far from it.3 As recently as 2017, previous UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova argued that, “with culture at the frontline of conflict, it should move to the frontline of all efforts to build peace.”4 UNESCO has attempted to do just that since the signing of its Constitution in November 1945. Indeed, that objective is expressed in the most famous line of the Preamble to UNESCO’s Constitution: “That since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.”5 The author of the Preamble was American poet and former Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish, whose name and contributions, along with those of numerous other librarians and library officials, will appear again throughout this book.
One of the most important library figures in this work is Edward J. Carter, the first head of the UNESCO Libraries Section. Carter described “the euphoric mood of planners and government immediately after the war,” a mood that energized his efforts and those of others involved in reconstruction.6 Carter’s description was very apt at UNESCO, where, rather than seen as contradictory, the juxtaposition of destruction and possibility, devastation and hope, war and peace, past and future served as a driving force organizationally, intellectually, and emotionally. Armed with the idealistic framework of its Constitution, UNESCO emerged into the charged atmosphere of the immediate postwar moment, one defined by trauma, transition, hope, and recovery. Nevertheless, this is by no means a utopian history, but one characterized by high hopes, great successes, deep frustrations, and outright failures. Early postwar euphoria and idealism were also tempered by lingering wartime hostilities, widespread physical devastation, and an international crisis of refugees and stateless and displaced persons. All existed in tension with escalating mistrust and aggression on both sides of the developing Iron Curtain.
Within that context, formulating a reconstruction program, even one restricted to UNESCO’s realms of activity in education, science, and culture, constituted a massive undertaking. Speaking to the enormity of the task in a speech opening UNESCO’s 1947 second General Conference, French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain pointed out that as “different as [UNESCO] members are in their views, they all seem to believe in doing the same things.”7 These “things” were distilled down into the Purpose of UNESCO, as expressed in its Constitution:
Thus, from its founding, UNESCO has pursued a soft power approach, seeking to effect change through attraction and persuasion via cooperation and information rather than through political, economic, or military force, long before Joseph Nye coined the phrase in 1990.8to contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among the nations through education, science and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion, by the Charter of the United Nations.
Soft Power
UNESCO’s soft power approach is exemplified in the overarching question asked of the Libraries Section at the time: “what kind of a library program will make the maximum contribution towards building a lasting peace?”9 The question magnifies the postwar challenge facing all of UNESCO through the lens of those most concerned about books, libraries, and information. According to political economist J.P. Singh, “all delegates accepted early on that cultural issues would play a role in the organization’s future. This was as much due to the denunciation of ideas of racial and cultural purity that existed in Nazi Germany as in the need felt for creating a new culture of peace.”10 Libraries, as primary means for storing, circulating, and preserving books and information, were essential tools in both negative and positive, wartime and postwar, efforts to influence knowledge, understanding, and people. The overarching and interrelated goals—to overcome the damaging influences of fascism and to forge a healthy and enduring peace—defined the reconstruction and rehabilitation activities of the UNESCO Libraries Section.
During its first years the UNESCO General Conference categorized the organization’s program into eight General Projects and Activities, with Reconstruction and Rehabilitation listed first, and then into eight Other Projects and Activities, with Libraries listed second. Reconstruction and Rehabilitation contained six subsections, including Reconstruction in the Field of Libraries, Exchange and Distribution of Publications.11 Through an in-depth examination of the interconnections between UNESCO’s Libraries Section and Reconstruction Program, this book offers an alternate perspective from other postwar histories, often told from national perspectives. It also takes a different approach from traditional big-picture and top-down histories of UNESCO to tell a more nuanced, on-the-ground story by delving deeply into one piece of the enormous organization. With some looks back to critical developments during the interwar and wartime years, the relatively short time span covered begins its focus in 1945, when the war ended and UNESCO came into being. It ends in 1951, when the organization’s goals, priorities, and attention shifted rather dramatically away from postwar reconstruction to decolonization and development.
Reconstruction constituted the main justification and source of momentum for UNESCO at its founding. In fact, UNESCO was briefly to be called the United Nations Organization for Educational and Cultural Reconstruction, a name that was subsequently rejected as it risked creating confusion with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and, moreover, did not reflect the long-term, global mission of the organization as it ultimately was formed.12 A report submitted to the November 1946 Conference for the Establishment of UNESCO asserted that “the human and material losses and the war-born complexities of reconstruction are like great weights shackling the feet of the young UNESCO, crippling its progress towards the goals of a better world. Until the weights are in some major way reduced, UNESCO cannot run its best race.”13 In other words, if UNESCO did not succeed in its immediate goal to measurably contribute to reconstruction and rehabilitation, then the organization would not be able to realize its long-term mission to globally foster knowledge and understanding in the pursuit of a more tolerant and peaceful world.
UNESCO could only act, however, in its assigned areas of education, science, and culture. UNRRA was the primary international organization tasked with providing nourishment, medical care, and safe shelter, and for meeting other urgent physical and material needs. UNESCO, barred under its mandate from also acting in those areas, could only contribute to postwar reconstruction and rehabilitation by nourishing people’s minds. That was still no small task in 1945. Strictly withi...