Uwe Hossfeld and Lennart Olsson have just added a story from a dark time in German science to the History of Nature website. This article extends an earlier report from September 2006 that uncovered the story of how Nature was banned in Germany in November 1937.

The arguments used by the German science minister Bernhard Rust at the time are not worth repeating – they are ideological rather than scientific arguments. But the story is interesting for today’s scientists because it serves as a reminder that free access to scientific knowledge means much more than the open access vs. closed access debate.