THE BOOKS HE DIDN’T BURN takes a critical look at the history of Western thought by examining the remains of Adolf Hitler’s private library. The dictator and mass murderer owned 16,000 books at the end of his life, 1,200 of which are kept in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C today. The documentary follows American historian Timothy Ryback, who studied these books for almost a decade. While many still confine racism and antisemitism to the ideological extremes in the history of the West, Hitler’s library shows that the opposite was the case: many of the books in his library were bestsellers long before the Nazis took power in 1933 – the ideas in them paved the way for Hitler and have a strong impact until this day. 

Directed by Claus Bredenbrock and Jascha Hannover.