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  • How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich
  • Jonathan Olsen (bio)
How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich. Edited by Franz-Josef Brüggemeier, Marc Cioc, and Thomas Zeller . Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005. Pp. 288. $49.95.

Once upon a time, the contention that "Nazis" and "environmentalism" had anything to with each other provoked, at best, thoughtful head-scratching. But in the last decade or so a number of books and articles have appeared that seek to establish just this connection. Unsurprisingly, this has prompted a reaction, attempts to systematically debunk the Nazi–Green link. As is often the case with these kinds of debates, however, more nuanced and balanced approaches have now emerged, among them this volume edited by Franz-Josef Brüggemeier, Marc Cioc, and Thomas Zeller. While it may not be the final statement on the Green dimension of National Socialism, it certainly counts among the most serious and thoughtful, an impression conveyed almost immediately in the introduction, where the editors argue that their volume should "dispel the notion that there is a clear-cut, black-and-white approach to Nazi-era conservationism" (p. 14).

The many fine contributions here display just this nuance. In "Legalizing a Volksgemeinschaft: Nazi Germany's Reich Nature Protecting Law of 1935," Charles Closmann shows how the Reich Nature Protection Act (RNG) of 1935 illustrates the conflictual aims at work in National Socialism's approach to the environment. Elements of the RNG predated 1933; as such, the RNG cannot be said to be a purely Nazi piece of legislation. What's more, after its enactment, various ministries worked to weaken and/ or undermine it. Closmann shows, however, that the RNG reflected key elements of the Nazi worldview; indeed, had it not, it would be difficult to understand why it was championed and put into effect only after the Nazi seizure of power.

The polycentric nature of National Socialism and its ramifications for environmental policy are likewise illustrated in chapters from Michael Imort on forestry and Frank Uekötter on air-pollution policy. Imort's chapter demonstrates that policy under the Nazis was guided by the notion of the Dauerwald (perpetual forest), an approach to forest protection and management that, in today's terms, can be seen to embody notions of sustainability, biodiversity, and habitat protection. This holistic approach notwithstanding, forest policy under the Nazis was consistently undermined by ideological contradictions and bureaucratic infighting. Uekötter, meanwhile, characterizes responses to air pollution under the Nazis as being hopelessly caught between a general concern for the environment, the tactical maneuvering of various ministries, and the practical demands of the German war machine. Closmann, Imort, and Uekötter thus all make [End Page 207] clear that while there was most definitely a Green impulse under the Nazis, concrete action was often sacrificed to other Nazi goals.

Other parts of the book focus on leading figures during the Nazi period who are often looked upon as "early greens." Chapters on Richard Walther Darré, Alwin Seifert, and Martin Heidegger all suggest that either their influence on environmental policy in the Third Reich was more limited than is often argued, or that their ideas fit uncomfortably into a modern Green box. Still, the chapters demonstrate that it is impossible to simply dismiss these thinkers' environmental credentials—or convictions.

Many committed National Socialists—although certainly not all, and among those that did, in an often inconsistent way—articulated what could be called an extreme right version of ecological politics. All of the chapters in this volume bring this out, in particular the last two, by Mark Bassin on the concept of "blood and soil" and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn on landscape architecture in Nazi-conquered territories. A nationalistic, particularistic environmentalism was easily harnessed to racist ideology. The result was a worldview that equated the exclusion (and later, extermination) of the foreign and racially distinct with the protection of native ecosystems from invasive species. Perhaps one of the greatest values of this book, then, is to underscore once again the fact that environmentalism as a political-belief system has never been value-free and thus has been...

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