{"id":159,"date":"2016-02-27T10:32:10","date_gmt":"2016-02-27T15:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/?p=159"},"modified":"2017-03-22T17:32:30","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T21:32:30","slug":"part-3b-nazi-social-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/2016\/02\/27\/part-3b-nazi-social-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the Real Nazis Please Stand Up?!! (Part 3b)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 3b: \u00a0Nazi Social Policy \u2013 Animal Rights, Environmentalism, Vegetarianism<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"AnimalRightsNaziGermany\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hitler was an anti-Christian, pro-evolution, pro-euthanasia and pro-abortion (except for Aryans), pro-gun control, socialist vegetarian; he waged aggressive no-smoking campaigns and animal rights campaigns.\u00a0 This, in itself, does not prove that any of these things are wrong (the \u201creductio ad Hitlerum\u201d fallacy).\u00a0 But it could be that Hitler arrived at the same conclusions on social policy as post-WWII liberals because he was being consistent with basic philosophical beliefs that he and post-WWII liberals have in common, namely statism and biological evolution.\u00a0 And the fact that Hitler’s ideology overlapped to a large degree with modern liberalism serves to refute the common liberal charge that Nazi ideology can be equated with “right-wing conservative Christianity” in the modern American sense.<\/p>\n

I covered Hitler’s theology in the part 1 of this essay.\u00a0 I showed that, while Hitler used Christian rhetoric at times, he rejected several major tenets of Christianity and that his true belief was in nature worship.\u00a0 I covered the Nazi gun control agenda in part 3a.\u00a0 Here I continue presenting the liberal policy agenda of the Nazis in some other areas.\u00a0 I present the issues of socialism and evolution in later posts, although there is overlap with the issues presented here that require them to be mentioned.<\/p>\n

Environmentalism\/Animal Rights\/Vegetarianism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hitler was a vegetarian, as many of his close associates affirmed, particularly once WWII began, although some claim that he ate some meat occasionally.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 He would tell dinner guests the graphic details of a slaughterhouse that he visited in order to shame his guests into not eating a \u201ccorpse.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Hitler’s vegetarianism was not just a personal health-kick.\u00a0 It was what he thought was necessary to make the master race healthier, but it was also integral to his nature-worshipping, Christianity rejecting worldview. Goebbels says,<\/p>\n

We come back to religious questions again. The Fuhrer is deeply religious, though completely anti-Christian. He views Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race. This can be seen in the similarity of religious rites. Both (Judaism and Christianity) have no point of contact to the animal element, and thus, in the end, they will be destroyed.\u00a0 The Fuhrer is a convinced vegetarian, on principle. His arguments cannot be refuted on any serious basis. \u00a0They are totally unanswerable. \u00a0He has little regard for homo sapiens. Man should not feel so superior to animals.\u00a0 He has no reason to. \u00a0Man believes that he alone has intelligence, a soul, and the power of speech. \u00a0Has not the animal these things? Just because we, with our dull senses, cannot recognise them, it does not prove that they are not there.[3]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hitler\u2019s attachment to \u201cthe animal element\u201d led him to be an opponent of vivisection, even though, according to Nazi press chief Otto Dietrich, he regarded humanitarianism as \u201ca mixture of cowardice, stupidity and intellectual conceit.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Arnold Arluke and Boria Sax created controversy when they published \u201cUnderstanding Nazi Animal Protection and the Holocaust\u201d in 1992.[5]<\/a>\u00a0 In Sax\u2019s later book, Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust<\/em>, he relates:\u00a0 \u201cThat the Nazis might be capable of humane legislation was such a disconcerting idea that even the detached, academic style of our paper could not make it acceptable to many people. The topic of animals, like the Holocaust itself, evokes passions of great intensity and confusion.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Within months of gaining power, the Nazis passed laws regulating the slaughter of animals and banning vivisection, with some exceptions, in regions of Germany.[7]<\/a>\u00a0 On the radio in August 1933 Hermann G\u00f6ring announced an end to the \u201cunbearable torture and suffering in animal experiments\u201d and promised \u201cto concentration camps those who still think that they can continue to treat animals as inanimate property.\u201d[8]<\/a>\u00a0 Animal protection efforts continued to be a prominent part of the Nazi agenda:<\/p>\n

In 1934, the new government hosted an international conference on animal protection in Berlin. Over the speaker’s podium, surrounded by enormous swastikas, were the words “Entire epochs of love will be needed to repay animals for their value and service” (Meyer 1975). In1936 the German Society for Animal Psychology was founded, and in 1938 animal protection was accepted as a subject to be studied in German public schools and universities.”[9]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Nazis enthusiastically promoted all the causes of late twentieth-century American environmentalists:\u00a0 Vegetarianism, organic farming, homeopathic medicine, animal rights laws, special protection of certain species of animals and plants, creating nature preserves to block development.\u00a0 Peter Staudenmaier, in “Fascist Ecology: The ‘Green Wing’ of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents,\u201d documents the extent of environmentalist legislation during the Nazi era:<\/p>\n

The prominence of nature in the party’s philosophical background helped ensure that more radical initiatives often received a sympathetic hearing in the highest offices of the Nazi state. In the mid-thirties Todt and Seifert vigorously pushed for an all-encompassing Reich Law for the Protection of Mother Earth \u201cin order to stem the steady loss of this irreplaceable basis of all life.\u201d Seifert reports that all of the ministries were prepared to co-operate save one; only the minister of the economy opposed the bill because of its impact on mining. . . .<\/p>\n

With Hess’s enthusiastic backing, the \u201cgreen wing\u201d was able to achieve its most notable successes. As early as March 1933, a wide array of environmentalist legislation was approved and implemented at national, regional and local levels. These measures, which included reforestation programs, bills protecting animal and plant species, and preservationist decrees blocking industrial development, undoubtedly \u201cranked among the most progressive in the world at that time.\u201d Planning ordinances were designed for the protection of wildlife habitat and at the same time demanded respect for the sacred German forest. The Nazi state also created the first nature preserves in Europe. . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Along with Darr\u00e9’s efforts toward re-agrarianization and support for organic agriculture, as well as Todt and Seifert’s attempts to institutionalize an environmentally sensitive land use planning and industrial policy, the major accomplishment of the Nazi ecologists was the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz<\/em> of 1935. This completely unprecedented “nature protection law” not only established guidelines for safeguarding flora, fauna, and \u201cnatural monuments\u201d across the Reich; it also restricted commercial access to remaining tracts of wilderness. In addition, the comprehensive ordinance “required all national, state and local officials to consult with Naturschutz authorities in a timely manner before undertaking any measures that would produce fundamental alterations in the countryside.\u201d [10]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Autobahn was designed to display technology in harmony with nature, even though building it required the razing of thousands of acres of land.\u00a0 It was built with curves that blended with the natural landscape, and the goal at least was to use shrubbery that was only native in order to reinforce German racism.[11]<\/a>\u00a0 Like the other health legislation of the Nazis, this was to contribute to the health and vigor of the native Germans.\u00a0 The Nazi landscape architect Alwin Seifert who helped develop the Autobahn believed that \u201cno healthy Volk<\/em> will grow in a sick landscape.\u201d[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Wikipedia:<\/a>

Wikipedia<\/a>: Layout of the Drackensteiner Hang project: to negotiate the steep terrain with minimum disturbance, the two directions were routed on different sides of the mountain.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Wikipedia:<\/a>

Wikipedia<\/a>: The Reichsautobahn as part of the beauty of Germany: 1942 photograph of the viaducts at the Drackensteiner Hang.<\/p><\/div>\n

Staudenmaier documents the ideological origins of Nazi environmentalism.\u00a0 The first of the modern German environmentalists was Ernst Moritz Arndt, who wrote On the Care and Conservation of Forests<\/em> in 1815.\u00a0 His view of the environment was based on a monism in which humans and rocks are of equal value:\u00a0 \u201cWhen one sees nature in a necessary connectedness and interrelationship, then all things are equally important — shrub, worm, plant, human, stone, nothing first or last, but all one single unity.\u201d[13]<\/a>\u00a0 But despite this vision of unity, he was a virulent racist and nationalist, emphasizing the value of German soil and German blood.\u00a0 (In German, \u201cblood and soil\u201d are the alliterative \u201cBlut und Boden.\u201d)<\/p>\n

After Darwin\u2019s publication of On the Origin of Species<\/em>, evolution became integrated into German environmentalism.\u00a0 Staudenmaier writes:<\/p>\n

In 1867 the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel coined the term ‘ecology’ and began to establish it as a scientific discipline dedicated to studying the interactions between organism and environment.\u00a0 Haeckel was also the chief popularizer of Darwin and evolutionary theory for the German-speaking world, and developed a peculiar sort of social darwinist philosophy he called ‘monism.’ The German Monist League he founded combined scientifically based ecological holism with v\u00f6lkisch<\/em> social views.\u00a0 Haeckel believed in nordic racial superiority, strenuously opposed race mixing and enthusiastically supported racial eugenics. [14]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He held a naturalistic, yet Romantic, view of the oneness of nature, which included the oneness between society and nature.\u00a0 This allowed the Nazi horror of science being used to treat human beings as lab rats.\u00a0 Haeckel held that \u201ccivilization and the life of nations are governed by the same laws as prevail throughout nature and organic life.\u201d[15]<\/a>\u00a0 Haeckel thus helped lay the foundations on which National Socialism would be built.<\/p>\n

A hippie-type youth movement began in the early 1900s in Germany.\u00a0\u00a0 Known as Wanderv\u00f6gel<\/em>\u00a0(\u2018wandering free spirits\u2019), Staudenmaier recounts that this youth movement included such beliefs as neo-Romanticism, Eastern mysticism, and a \u201cback-to-the-land emphasis [that] spurred a passionate sensitivity to the natural world and the damage it suffered.\u201d[16]<\/a>\u00a0Thousands of these youth later came to be aligned with the Nazi movement.<\/p>\n

Anti-Semitism became mixed into Romantic agrarianism, environmentalism and opposition to urbanization in large part because of the view of the morality of charging interest for money loans during the Middle Ages. Based on their interpretation of the Law of Moses, Christians regarded all interest-charging as immoral.\u00a0 Jews interpreted Moses to teach that charging interest to other Jews was immoral, but it was acceptable to charge interest to Gentiles.\u00a0 So the Jews became the bankers to Christians during the Middle Ages.\u00a0 If you owed a debt to someone, if someone came to repo your possessions that were pledged as security for a loan, that someone was a Jew.\u00a0 Jews became characterized as greedy and heartless, on top of being seen as the \u201cChrist-killers.\u201d\u00a0 This led to Jews being the ones in the 1800s who owned the banks that financed the industrialization, urbanization, and deforestation during the industrial revolution. Jews were seen as modern liberals currently see the \u201cone-percenters,\u201d the \u201cbig corporations,\u201d and the \u201cWall Street fat cats.\u201d\u00a0 They are \u201craping the earth\u201d and oppressing the poor for the purpose of their immoral, greedy lust for high profits.\u00a0 On top of this, because Jews were displaced from their native land of Israel, pre-WWII German environmentalists saw Jews as disconnected from the native soil of Germany and destroying the land and people of Germany.\u00a0 For the good of the purity of German blood and soil, they needed to be eliminated.<\/p>\n

Like modern environmentalists, the Nazis rejected the teaching of Genesis that man was created to have dominion over creation.\u00a0 Nazi biologist Paul Brohmer wrote, “It is anthropocentric if it is assumed that nature has been created only for man.\u00a0 We decisively reject this attitude.\u00a0 According to our conception of nature, man is a link in the chain of living nature just as any other organism.”[17]<\/a> \u00a0Arluke and Sax explain that \u201cNazis abolished moral distinctions between animals and people by viewing\u00a0people as animals. The result was that animals could be considered \u2018higher\u2019\u00a0than some people.\u201d[18]<\/a> \u00a0How the Nazis could be both compassionate toward animals but cruel toward humans can be traced to the contradiction inherit in using Darwinism view that all life is related but life improves by survival of the fittest.\u00a0 The common origin and nature of all life would seem give value to all life, but life lower on the scale of being may have to die for higher life forms to progress and flourish further.\u00a0 G.K. Chesterton explained it as follows:<\/p>\n

Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals \u2026 That you and a tiger are one may be a reason for being tender to a tiger. Or it may be a reason for being cruel as the tiger. It is one way to train the tiger to imitate you, it is a shorter way to imitate the tiger. But in neither case does evolution tell you how to treat a tiger reasonably, that is, to admire his stripes while avoiding his claws.<\/p>\n

If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden of Eden. For the obstinate reminder continues to recur: only the supernaturalist has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a stepmother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate.[19]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u201cAdolf Hitler and vegetarianism,\u201d https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Adolf_Hitler_and_vegetarianism<\/a>. \u00a0\u201cHitler’s food taster speaks of F\u00fchrer’s vegetarian diet,\u201d The Telegraph<\/em> (2\/9\/13) \u00a0http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/history\/world-war-two\/9859294\/Hitlers-food-taster-speaks-of-Fuhrers-vegetarian-diet.html<\/a>.\u00a0 \u201cBitter memories linger of life as Hitler’s food taster,\u201d The New Zealand Herald<\/em> (9\/21\/14), http:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/world\/news\/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11328527&ref=rss<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Bee Wilson, “Mein Diat \u2013 Adolf Hitler’s diet,” New Statesman (10\/9\/98), https:\/\/www.questia.com\/article\/1G1-21238666\/mein-diat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a>\u00a0 \u201dThe Goebbels Diaries\u201d Translated and Edited by Fred Taylor (December 29, 1939), p. 77<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Otto Dietrich, The Hitler I Knew: The Memoirs of the Third Reich’s Press Chief (New York, NY:\u00a0 Skyhorse Publishing Inc., 2010), p. 172.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a>\u00a0 Arnold Arluke and Boria Sax, \u201cUnderstanding Nazi Animal Protection and the Holocaust\u201dAnthrozoos 5(1):6-31; 1992. http:\/\/www.naiaonline.org\/pdfs\/Understanding_Nazi_Animal_Protection.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a>\u00a0 Boria Sax, Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust<\/em> (New York:\u00a0 Continuum, 2000), p. 164<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a>\u00a0 Arluke and Sax, op cit., p. 7.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., quoting Hermann G\u00f6ring, The Political Testament of Hermann G\u00f6ring: A Selection of Important Speeches and Articles<\/em> (AMS Press, 1939), p. 70.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a>\u00a0 Arluke and Sax, op cit., p. 9.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> \u00a0Peter Staudenmaier, “Fascist Ecology: The ‘Green Wing’ of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents,\u201d http:\/\/www.spunk.org\/texts\/places\/germany\/sp001630\/peter.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a>\u00a0 William H. Rollins, \u201cWhose Landscape? Technology, Fascism, and Environmentalism on the National<\/p>\n

Socialist Autobahn,\u201d Annals of the Association of American Geographers<\/em>, Vol. 85, No. 3 (Sep., 1995).<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a>\u00a0 Quoted in ibid., p. 510.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a>\u00a0 Staudenmaier, “Fascist Ecology,\u201d op cit.<\/em><\/p>\n

[14]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., quoting from Daniel Gasman,\u00a0The Scientific Origins of National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League <\/em>(New York, 1971),<\/em> p. 34.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a>\u00a0 Paul Brohmer, “The New Biology: \u00a0Training in Racial Citizenship” (1933), in George Lachmann Mosse, ed.,\u00a0Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich<\/em>, (Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2003), p. 87.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a>\u00a0 Arluke and Sax, op. cit.<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a>\u00a0 G.K. Chesterton,\u00a0Orthodoxy<\/em> (London: John Lane, 1927), pp. 204\u201305.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 3b: \u00a0Nazi Social Policy \u2013 Animal Rights, Environmentalism, Vegetarianism Hitler was an anti-Christian, pro-evolution, pro-euthanasia and pro-abortion (except for Aryans), pro-gun control, socialist vegetarian; he waged aggressive no-smoking campaigns and animal rights campaigns.\u00a0 This, in itself, does not prove … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237,"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions\/237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}