How Green Were the Nazis

Citation preview

Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History

How Green Were the Nazis?

James L. A. Webb, Jr., Series Editor

Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich

Conrad Totman The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Preindustrial Japan

Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saiku, eds. Encountering the Past in Nature: Essays in Environmental History

James 1. A. Webb, Jr. Tropical Pioneers: Human Agency and Ecological Change in the Highlands of Sri Lanka, 1800-1900

Edited by Franz-Josef Bruggemeier, Mark Cioc, and Thomas Zeller

Stephen Dovers, Ruth Edgecombe, and Bill Guest, eds. South Africa's Environmental History: Cases and Comparisons David M. Anderson Eroding the Commons: The Politics of Ecology in Baringo, Kenya, 1890S-1963

William Beinart and JoAnn McGregor, eds. Social History and African Environments

Michael 1. Lewis Inventing Global Ecology: Tracking the Biodiversity Ideal in India, '947-'997 Christopher A. Conte Highland Sanctuary: Environmental History in Tanzania's Usambara Mountains

Kate B. Showers Imperial Gullies: Soil Erosion and Conservation in Lesotho

Franz-Josef Briiggemeier, Mark Cioc, and Thomas Zeller, eds. How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation

in the Third Reich

OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS ATHENS

l Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701 © 2005 by Ohio University Press www.ohiou.edu/oupress/

FRANZ- JOSEF BRUGGEMEIER, MARK Cloe,

THOMAS ZELLER

Chapter 1.

Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved

5432

Cover image: The cover photo depicts a swastika-shaped patch aflarch trees in a pine forest in Brandenburg. Presumably a zealous forester planted the sylvan swastika, with a diameter of nearly two hundred feet, in the 1930S as a sign of his allegiance to the Nazi regime. The swastika survived not only World War II but also four decades of East German communist rule. Visible only from the air during the fall and winter months, the larch trees were detected in 1992 and felled in 2000. Courtesy Reuter Pictures Archive

"Eternal Forest-Eternal Volk" The Rhetoric and Reality ofNational Socialist Forest Policy MICHAEL IMORT

Chapter 3.

How green were t.he Nazis? : nature, environment, and nation in the Third Reich I edited by Franz-Josef BrOggemeier, Mark Cioc, and Thomas Zeller.-lst ed. p. em. - (Ohio University Press series in ecology and history) Includes bibliographical referenceS and index. ISBN 0-8214-1646-4 (cloth: alk. paper) - ISBN 0-8214-1647-2 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Environmental policy-Germany-HistorY-20th century. 2. Germany-Politics and government-1933-194S.3. Green movement-HistorY-20th century. I. Briiggemeier, FranzJosef. II. Cioc, Mark. III. Zeller, Thomas. IV. Series. HC290·S.ESH68200S 333·7'0943'09043-dc22 20050 22300

Chapter 4.

101

Breeding Pigs and People for the Third Reich Richard Walther Dam!'s Agrarian Ideology GESINE GERHARD

Chapter 6.

73

Polycentrism in Full Swing Air Pollution Control in Nazi Germany FRANK UEKOTTER

Chapter 5.

43

"It Shall Be the Whole Landscape!" The Reich Nature Protection Law and Regional Planning in the Third Reich THOMAS LEKAN

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

l

18

'I'M

Chapter 2. 13121110090807

1

Legalizing a Volksgemeinschaft Nazi Germany's Reich Nature Protection Law of1935 CHARLES CLOSMANN

Ohio University Press books are printed on add-free paper @l

vii

129

Molding the Landscape of Nazi Environmentalism Alwin Seifert and the Third Reich THOMAS ZELLER 147

,

vi I Contents

I