The Politics of Nature in Nazi Germany

A critical history of early environmental movements, exploring the interactions between ecological ideals and racial myths in Nazi Germany.

This study re-examines the conflicted history of early environmental movements, from organic farming to landscape protection advocates, during the Nazi era. Using new archival evidence, Peter Staudenmaier explores a wide range of projects in Nazi Germany that were shaped by ecological ideals coupled with potent racial myths.For some Germans, Nazism represented an ecological outlook and a return to a simpler, healthier, more natural way of life founded on environmental harmony. That image fundamentally conflicts with the astonishing destructiveness of the Nazi military machine and its legacy of concentration camps, dictatorship, and mass murder. This study argues that these two facets of Nazism, the ecological and the imperial, were integrally intertwined. Peter Staudenmaier uses new archival evidence to examine this contested history, ranging from early organic farming movements to landscape protection advocates. In doing so, Staudenmaier reveals a remarkable range of practical endeavors in Nazi Germany that were shaped by ecological ideals coupled with potent racial myths. The Politics of Nature in Nazi Germany challenges previous scholarly frameworks, bringing together environmental history and the history of Nazism in new and revealing ways.