Synopses & Reviews
This study provides the first comprehensive discussion of conservation in Nazi Germany. Looking at Germany in an international context, it analyses the roots of conservation in the late 19th century, the gradual adaptation of racist and nationalist thinking among conservationists in the 1920s and their indifference to the Weimar Republic. It describes how the German conservation movement came to cooperate with the Nazi regime and discusses the ideological and institutional lines between the conservation movement and the Nazis. Uekoetter further examines how the conservation movement struggled to do away with a troublesome past after World War II, making the environmentalists one of the last groups in German society to face up to its Nazi burden. It is a story of ideological convergence, of tactical alliances, of careerism, of implication in crimes against humanity, and of deceit and denial after 1945. It is also a story that offers valuable lessons for today's environmental movement.
Review
"This is a book we very much need. Frank Uekoetter brings together a wealth of material and original argument in accessible form. His examples are vivid, and he effectively challenges many misconceptions about nature conservation in the Third Reich. Wide-ranging in scope and clear-eyed in its judgments, this thoughtful and elegantly constructed book deserves a wide readership."
-David Blackbourn, Harvard University"Frank Uekötter's engaging and nuanced study of conservation under the Nazi regime demolishes recent claims that contemporary environmentalism in Germany can be traced back to the Third Reich. Although conservationists willingly cooperated with the Nazi state and appealed to leading Nazis, such as Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, to pursue their goals, neither conservationist ideology nor environmental legislation held much influence in a regime hell-bent on rearmament and Lebensraum. By highlighting conservationists' tactical accommodations to Nazism and their unwillingness to confront the enormity of Nazi racism and imperialism, however, Uekötter underscores the real lesson for contemporary environmentalists: the moral and political success of their goals depends on the care and clear-sightedness with which they build political alliances."
-Shelley Baranowski, University of Akron
About the Author
Frank Uekoetter is a researcher in the History Department at Bielefeld University. He is the author of two monographs and editor, alone or in part, of four other collections. He is also author of articles published in Business History Review, Environment and History, and Historical Social Research.
Table of Contents
1. The Nazis and the environment: a relevant topic?; 2. Ideas: diverse roots and a common cause; 3. Institutions: working towards the Führer; 4. Conservation at work: four case studies; 5. On the paper trail: the everyday business of conservation; 6. Changes in the land; 7. Continuity and silence: conservation after 1945; 8. Lessons.