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“EnviroNazism”- Nazi Environmental Theory and Origins

Nick Rosica

 

            When looking at the ideals and practices of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, also known as the Nazi party, one will notice a trend of environmental conservation and protection. This feeling of respect for nature had existed in Germany much earlier than the Nazi party, and has origins that date back centuries. When traced back to its roots, this trend of environmentalism can be found seeded much before the days of Nazism, and largely driven by a strong sense of German nationalism and the carryover of romantic era ideas into the political spectrum.

            Though not all environmentalists in the Nazi Party supported the actions of the Nazis, they retained their strong ties with the party as they felt that it was the most effective way to enact and enforce effective environmental policies. These pro-environmental ideas that existed in the Nazi party were strongly influence by people like Richard Walther Darré, the Nazi Party’s Minister of Food and Agriculture; and Alwin Seifert, a landscape architect for the Nazi Party (Wilson, 564). However there existed a much larger and more broad environmental movement that preceded them, one dating back hundreds of years.

            In the past, Germany has had a strong sense of romanticism in its literature, arts, and ideals, and a major part of this romanticism, especially in literature, was a reverence for nature. This love of the German land is best exemplified by Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl’s 1854 book Naturgeschichte des Volkes, or “Natural History of the German People”, which helped set forth the conservation movement in Germany (Uekötter, 17). These feelings of romanticism in Germany gave ideas of a perfected, rustic Germany to the German people. This influenced Germany’s handling of natural resources, like mountains, forests, and rivers, as people fought for their idealized view the German landscape. However books and other works like these did not specifically start the political conservation movement, as the works had no political intent. Eventually this idealized type of conservation gave way to a more structured, goal-oriented method that would be more successful in achieving its goals.

            Another root from which Nazi preservation and conservation emerged was a strong sense of German Nationalism during the late 18- and early 1900’s. Nationalism came about from the French Revolution, and traveled across the world. As Eric Storm said in an article about the impact of nationalism across Europe, “a new more activist nationalism coincided and overlapped with the rise of a more folkloristic and regionalist interpretation of the respective national identities” (Storm, 557), which was especially true in Germany, where activists were fighting for their idealized view of a superior Germany.

             Nationalism impacted Germany especially strongly, and was a leading cause for environmental preservation up until, during, and after the Nazi regime. “The love of nature is the root for the love of the fatherland”, wrote Konrad Guenther, a scientist at Freiburg University (Uekötter, 22). Throughout the early 1900’s nationalism, and especially environmental nationalism, remained popular in Germany’s political spectrum. In 1913, Wilhem II suggested a conservation drive for his 25th anniversary of rule and the centennial of the defeat of Napoleon (Uekötter, 22). Even during the Nazi regime one of Germany’s plans was to convert Poland to a Germanic forest after taking it over, though that never came to fruition (McNeill, 329). Still, a strong feeling of love and pride for the German landscape led to German preservation and conservation efforts, sometimes even at the cost of economic development. While economic development eventually would trump landscape preservation during the Nazi’s reign, a sense of German nationalism still maintained strong throughout this time, and with it remained the protection of, and great respect for, the German countryside.

            So while there are a multitude of reasons for the injection of environmental protection and conservation into the Nazi party agenda, two enduring ideologies had the largest impact. Romanticism carrying over from the romantic era led Germans to picture an idyllic, bucolic Germany, and led the fight to maintain such a landscape. Nationalism led the German people to feel a sense of pride in their land, and pushed them towards creating a superior fatherland for their superior people. These environmental conservation and protection-based ideals lasted in Germany through the Nazi regime, and still remain in the mind-set held by the German people today.

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-Works Cited-

 

McNeill, John Robert. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000. Print.

 

Storm, Eric. Painting Regional Identities: Nationalism… 1890-1914. European History Quarterly. London: Oct 2009. Vol. 39, Issue 4.

 

Uekötter, Frank. The Green and the Brown: a History of Conservation in Nazi Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print.

 

Wilson, Jeffery K. How Green Were the Nazis?... Environmental History. Durham: July 2008. Vol. 13, Issue 3.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
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"Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon" German Romantic-era painting by German painter Caspar David Friedrich, 1824.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.