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| Photo: Ileana Johnson 2014 |
Musser explores in his book the philosophical and
practical roots of environmentalism and its potential connection to the modern
version of the Green movement.
Environmental bureaucratic regulations and taxation will
force humanity to make such personal sacrifices that there will be no personal
behavior left that will not be regulated in some way, including taking videos
and pictures in our federal parks. The permit is $1,500 and the fine for
non-compliance is $1,000. Would we eventually have to obtain permits from
animals to photograph them? Would PETA represent them in a court of law?
According to Musser, the Protestant Reformation and the
Enlightenment are responsible for the “utilitarian view of nature” which
facilitated the Industrial Revolution and free market capitalism, the main
culprits of ecological destruction as viewed by environmentalists. (Ibid, p.
13)
The predecessor of the infamous Rachel Carson, Aldo
Leopold (1887-1948), is considered the father of “deep ecology.” Western man
cannot rise above the circle of life; he must be “humble” with nature. Leopold
promoted this view strongly after returning from Nazi Germany in 1935, the most
nature-obsessed regime at the time, not unlike the current fixation with
environmental pristine conditions, devoid of humans. His influence left a mark on environmental
existentialism. Man should “think like a mountain,” just exist. The
Judeo-Christian God could not rule over nature and the universe. (Ibid, p. 14)
Musser wonders if the “greens” could eventually turn into
a “much darker shade of green” like the ancient nature worshippers who sacrificed
thousands of human beings to appease the nature gods in exchange for good
weather. (Ibid, p. 16)
Nazi leaders were concerned about the capitalist
mechanization of farms because they saw it as a way to destroy the soil and the
landscape of the Vaterland. The SS,
the “greenest faction of National Socialism,” was the “green praetorian guard.”
(Ibid, pp. 18-19)
The disturbingly anti-Semitic Nazis like Martin Heidegger
(1889-1976) and Rudolf Hoess, who committed unspeakable atrocities, found
solace in nature. Hoess rode his horse
or walked through stables to chase away the demons and the pictures of horror. “This is precisely how the authentic natural
men of Nazi Germany walked down the barbaric road to Auschwitz,” said Musser. (Ibid, p. 22)
Hitler was personally obsessed with wolves for their
predatory lifestyle. A lot of elements in his life revolved around the wolf.
National Socialism fixation with nature and the
environment bears a striking resemblance to modern environmentalism. The
similarities between Nazi yesteryear and today’s environmental movement are “troubling,”
said Musser. (p. 26)
The Nazis created corporate welfare between the state and
big business, state sponsored corporatism, squeezing out the middle class as
bourgeois, and forcing consumers into rationing in order to build the war
machine. Hitler himself believed that Germans would run out of food and thus
needed more Lebensraum, space to
live. The Greens have adopted the Malthusian overpopulation theory (which was
proven incorrect) when evaluating scarce natural resources such as land,
forests, and water. Malthus “believed in long term population control measures,
including birth control and economic protectionism.” (Ibid, p. 33)
The communist side of Hitler found it unjust that one
group of people could have so much land compared to another, an affront to the “eternal
justice of Nature.” (Ibid, p. 35)
The Nazi version of sustainable development (SD) was a
mixture of environmentalism and racism. Musser said that “the ‘dialectical’
relationship between racism, Malthusian math, environmentalism, existentialism,
naturalistic science, and biology would help give birth to the modern ecological
cult of sustainable development.” (Ibid, p. 37)
In 1935 an environmental planning office was formed
called “The Work of the Reich Office for Spatial Planning,” the first official
social engineering of private property, the trademark of the modern
conservationists today. Even Hitler’s four year economic plan was to be
achieved by environmental friendly sustainable development measures. “The Nazi war machine was developed under the
green hue of sustainable development,” said Musser. (Ibid, pp. 38-39)
Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl (1823-1897) co-mingled socialism,
nationalism, protecting nature, and anti-Semitism in his view of life which influenced
early German environmentalism.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), a favorite philosopher
of Hitler, discussed animal rights, blaming Judaism for the barbaric treatment
of animals in Europe and in the West. “It might truly be said that men are the
devils of this earth and animals the tortured souls.” (Ibid, p. 93)
It is no surprise that leading Nazis were vegetarians. (Ibid, p. 101)
Schopenhauer even accused Christians of treating animals
with cruelty. “The morality of Christians has not consideration for animals.”
(Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, p. 178)
Then there were the “Volk”
(villagers and farmers) adherents who believed in the simple life on the land,
a return to nature. What stood in their way? It was their perennial foe, the
Jewish people, because they owned businesses, banks, and ran the cities, all
things threatening the ”volkisch” return
to nature. (Musser, R. Mark, Nazi Oaks, p. 103)
German zoologist Ernst Haeckel wrote about the adulation
of nature and introduced the “ecological cult worship.” Haeckel and his
followers pushed racial eugenics in Germany. The German Monist League proposed
several eugenic programs before World War I. It is no surprise that
eugenic-environmentalism became the stepping stone to a natural world
dictatorship. Haeckel even advocated the replacement of Christian humanities in
school with a nature based curriculum. (Ibid, pp. 108-109)
“In the school of the future nature will be the chief
object of study; man shall learn a correct view of the world he lives in, he
will not be made to stand outside of and opposed to nature.” (Haeckel und
Allmers, p. 363, quoted by Musser, Nazi Oaks, pp. 109-110)
Maryland passed a law, No Child Left Inside, advocating
that every high school graduate must be a diligent and knowledgeable steward of
the environment as a condition of graduation, even though math, science, and
reading scores were lacking.
Modern German Greens have dropped racism from their
environmental creed but Ernst Haeckel is still their mentor. Monists believed
that all organisms, from the simplest to the most complex, including human
beings, are similar and equal to each other because they are “blood brothers.”
This explains the fixation of some of the modern environmentalists with legal
representation of animals in a court of law.
In 1933 Hitler signed the Tierschutzrecht, the right (law) of animal protection. Schopenhauer
had criticized animal cruelty and experimentation. He said, …”the animal is absolutely identical
with us and that the difference lies merely in the accident, the intellect, not
in the substance which is the will.” (p. 184)
The law was updated to include animal transportation, how
much space they could have and how much food and water they should have.
Considering how inhumane the transportation of the Jews to the concentration
camps was in overcrowded cattle trains, the regulation for the transportation
of animals seems obscene.
Hitler hated hunting, the killing of innocent animals,
but had no compunction in torturing and killing six million Jews. Even though
there were no wolves left in Germany, Hitler placed them under protection.
There were wolves in Poland and the neighboring countries. (p. 196)
But the love and appreciation of animals did not extend
to humans. “Nature was king over man.” Himmler went a bit further and
proclaimed in a 1942 speech that “Man is nothing special.” This dehumanization
of man made possible the atrocities committed against the Jewish people. (p. 141)
Hitler believed that capitalism and communism were
disobedient to nature and Jews were guilty of financing it and Christianity of spreading
it. The “blood and soil” propaganda was used to promote moving back to the
countryside, to preserve nature, and for environmental sustainability.
Musser said, because the original Bolsheviks, including
Karl Marx, were Jewish, Hitler concluded, “The world of Judeo-Bolshevism must
collapse.” (Hitler’s Table Talk, February 27, 1942, p. 260, quoted by
Musser, R. Mark, Nazi Oaks, p. 122)
Musser describes the giant oak trees at the entrance to
Auschwitz, the doors of the crematorium made of massive oak, Adolf Eichmann’s
(Man of the Oak) placement in charge of the Holocaust, and the possible
symbolism of pagan rites of sacrifice under the oak tree. (p. 144)
The oak became such a symbol of nationalism that Hitler
directed that oak trees be planted all around the Reich. (p. 150)
Goering, an avid hunter, declared in front of his hunting
buddies in 1936, “For us, the forest is God’s cathedral.” (p. 202)
Such was the respect for plants and animals that Himmler “established
experimental organic farms,” including one located at the Dachau concentration
camp where herbs were grown for SS medicines.
Dr. Todt, who built the German interstate system (Autobahnen), was careful to protect
forests, rivers, and wetlands. The Autobahn was declared a “magnificent
example of landscape design.” (p. 164 and p. 239)
Hitler was in love with his alpine retreat in
Obersalzberg but somewhat embarrassed by the lavish and expensive Eagle’s Nest
above the mountain landscape.
The Reich Conservation Agency legalized environmental and
totalitarian social engineering. This is a model that socialist bureaucrats have
used to set aside federal lands for preservation and conservation, lands that
were not inhabited. However, regulating private property and turning it into
state parks is another matter. (p. 209)
Nazis developed spatial planning, a precursor to today’s
sustainable development and green building. (p. 216)
In common core education style, “knowledge” was replaced
by “will” with a focus on life, vitality, and nature. (p. 233)
Hitler had grandiose plans to depopulate 30 million Slavs
in order to make room for the Germans. The East was going to become Germany’s
sustainable development mass project – transforming the Russian steppe into a
German garden park through environmental planning. Human settlements would be surrounded by
pristine areas. This sounds eerily familiar to Dr. Coffman’s Biodiversity Map. (pp.
259-260)
As Musser explains, “Environmental imperialism was one of the primary reasons why Nazi Germany decided to conquer the eastern territories,” an extension of the German “blood and soil” beyond Germany’s borders. (p. 263)
The planners were given carte blanche to “re-sculpt the eastern territories in their totality, even if it meant the suppression, exploitation, and extermination of the people who lived there.” (Wolschke-Buhlman, How Green Were the Nazis?, p. 247, quoted by Musser, R. Mark, Nazi Oaks, p. 268)
Hitler wanted to build wind mills all over Ukraine to supply its needs of electricity and to export only the wheat demanded. Colonizing the East would solve their overpopulation problem and his fear of running out of natural resources . He was sure that the “future belongs, surely, to water - to the wind and the tides.” What gave him the right to destroy so many millions of people, Jews, Russians, and Poles? They were not properly in synch with nature.
Walter Christaller, a former SS spatial planner, developed his Central Place Theory on regional and urban planning. His plan is considered by some the model for sustainable development and the Green movement today. Some environmentalists deny any connection between Nazism and going green. (p. 289 and p. 293)
How green were the Nazis? Probably as green and as controversial
as our renewables are today.
© ILEANA JOHNSON 2014
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