How Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (Ecology & History) [Hardcover]

Franz-Josef Bruggemeier (Editor), Mark Cioc (Editor), Thomas Zeller (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Ecology & History | Publication Date: December 30, 2005

The Nazis created nature preserves, contemplated sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn highway network as a way of bringing Germans closer to nature. How Green Were the Nazis? is the first book to examine the ideology and practice of environmental protection in Nazi Germany. Environmentalists and conservationists in Germany welcomed the rise of the Nazi regime with open arms, for the most part, and hoped that it would bring about legal and institutional changes. However, environmentalists soon realized that the rhetorical attention that they received from the regime did not always translate into action. By the late 1930s, nature and the environment became less pressing concerns as Nazi Germany prepared and executed its extensive war. Based on prodigious archival research, and written by some of the most important scholars in the field of twentieth-century German history, How Green Were the Nazis? illuminates the ideological overlap between Nazi ideas and conservationist agendas. Moreover, this landmark book underscores that the “green” policies of the Nazis were more than a mere episode or aberration in environmental history. ((BLURB))---"The environmental ideas, policies, and consequences of the Nazi regime pose controversial questions that have long begged for authoritative answers. At last, a team of highly qualified scholars has tackled these questions, with dispassionate judgment and deep research. Their assessment will stand for years to come as the fundamental work on the subject—and provides a new angle of vision on 20th-century Europe's most disruptive force." —John McNeill, author of Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World ---EDITORS--- Franz-Josef Brueggemeier is a professor of history at the university of Freiburg, Germany. He has published extensively in the field of environmental history in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe. Mark Cioc is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and editor of the journal Environmental History. He is the author of The Rhine: An Eco-Biography, 1815-2000. Thomas Zeller is an assistant professor in the department of history at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Straße, Bahn, Panorama, translated as Driving Germany.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Franz-Josef Brueggemeier is a professor of history at the university of Freiburg, Germany. He has published extensively in the field of environmental history in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe. Mark Cioc is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and editor of the journal Environmental History. He is the author of The Rhine: An Eco-Biography, 1815-2000. Thomas Zeller is an assistant professor in the department of history at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Straße, Bahn, Panorama, translated as Driving Germany.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Ohio University Press (December 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821416464
• ISBN-13: 978-0821416464
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,767,075 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Suprisingly interesting and informative for an academic social history book, September 29, 2008

By 

Edith Swanek (Anaheim, Ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (Ecology & History) (Paperback)

This book was suprisingly interesting and informative for an academic social history work. The approach is to look at various professions related to environmentalism and examine the extent to which academics in each "tailored" their messages to fit with Nazism, and to take advantage of the authoritarian nature of the regime to see at least some of their long-cherished dreams come to "fruition" (no pun intended!). In each chapter, they also note how much Nazi environmental law was NOT automatically rescinded, but continued in force for, in places, decades!

Chapter 1 covers environmental law.
Chapter 2 is forestry (including the discovery that the Nazis did the world's first traditional environmental impact statement, i.e., a plan distributed widely for agency and public comment, the comments themselves, and the "response to comments"!).
Chapter 3 covers Nazi efforts to have a "total nature protection act", kind of like a clean water act combined with a regional natural monuments act, as a first cut at "comprehensive habitat conservation".
Chapter 4 covers air pollution.
Chapter 5 agriculture.
Chpater 6 landscape architecture.
Chapter 7 Heidegger and environmental philosophizing. Although never actually saying it, the author of that chapter seems to imply Heidegger might have favored the Gaia "living earth" and sociobiology metaphors as the authentic "new gods" needed to transcend the shallow decadence of techno-life. [For myself, I hardly find "techno-life" to be shallow and decadent when it allows me to hear more of Handel's operas than anyone on earth who died more than 15 years ago, for example!]
Chapter 8 Geopolitics and "environmental determinism".
Chapter 9 Regional planning and extermination of "people who cannot plan their own environment properly". Can you imagine that Auschwitz was going to be a "model city" after the war?
A very good companion work to "the Nazi War on Cancer".

5 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars Because It's Hard to Tell That's a Swastika on the Cover, September 23, 2011

By 

Marka Twaina (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (Ecology & History) (Paperback)

This book does a wonderful job of dispelling the myths currently surrounding the Nazi Party; accusations of racism and antisemitism that were spread post-WWII as part of the largest-ever smear campaign, in an effort to justify a senseless war against a master people.

In truth, representatives of the Third Reich, clad in fashionable, assless lederhosen, separated out those who littered to establish a new order of trash-free wienerhavens.

As the book explains, conservation areas were separated from concentration parks, for the sole benefit of the inferiors who could finally be shown the difference between the accumulation of filth in their ghettos and the immaculate landscapes maintained by those of the Master Race. By setting an example, the Nazis' ultimate plan was to permanently exterminate litter and human waste.

Despite the very many horrendous accusations made toward Nazis, the virtuous ideal behind The Movement was for a superior civilization achieved through the protection of natural purity and a hope to take over the world with their handsome Volkswagens, which produce virtually no toxic gas emissions.