An important facet of the new, surrogate religion of nature that was developed as part of the attempt to dehumanize atheism (as discussed in the previous chapter), and which was embraced and further processed by fascism, was the mystical approach to nature, to plants and to wildlife. These attitudes also reflected a neo-romantic sensitivity and an aversion to the modern, massified, metropolis. A characteristic manifestation of this mystique was the National-Socialist cult of the forest, that facilitated an evocation of glorious episodes in the German past such as the victory of the legendary military leader Arminius (Hermann in modern German) over the Romans in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (Varusschlacht), which took place in 9 CE, in the northwestern part of modern Germany. This battle became a symbol of German nationalism especially during the romantic period, as stylized by writers such as Heinrich von Kleist. (On the forest as a symbol of German nationalism from the early 19th century to the end of the Second World War, see Zechner 2011.) The forest represented the vigorous and primeval ethos with which Nazism sought to replace the meek Christianity imposed on the German tribes, as well as a mysterious image of an organic, cohesive and combative collective, which is well rooted in the soil but manages nevertheless to expand and annex further territories: the image’s role was emotional, not logical. As in the forest, what seemed to count was not the individual warrior, the lonely tree, but the survival of the entire forest.
The Nazis pseudo-historically bestowed on the Germans the title of “forest people,” a people striking deep cultural roots into the forest soil from which it allegedly sprang forth. This mythical self-representation was grafted onto the regime’s racist ideology. The ability to care for the forest was perceived as a unique attribute of the Aryans, while Jews and Slavs were represented as desert and steppe peoples, respectively, hostile to the forest. So argued Hermann Göring, the prominent figure in the Nazi movement for the preservation of nature: “When we walk around in the forest, we see God’s magnificent creation […]. That distinguishes us from yonder people which deems itself chosen, yet will only calculate the market prize for a cubic meter of timber” (In Zechner 2011: 25).
These motifs were propagandistically employed in a full feature motion picture, Eternal Forest (1936), produced at the behest of Alfred Rosenberg (directed by Hanns Springer and Rolf von Sonjevski-Jamrowski). Its dramatic opening sentence already contains the racist, imperialist, social Darwinist and mystical messages of the movie: “Eternal forest—eternal people. The tree, it lives like you and me, it strives for space like you and me. […] People and forest persist for eternity.” And one of its final sentences focuses on the message of a national regeneration, to be achieved by eliminating the sick and the foreign: “Let’s weed out the racially alien and the sick. […] Join in to sing the new song of the time: ‘People and forest persist for eternity’” (In Zechner 2011: 23). The movie is also a prime example of the Nazi attempt to displace the humanistic legacy of Judaeo-Christianity in favor of a pantheism imbibed by the spirit of Nietzsche and Haeckel. As stated by Lee and Wilke (2005: 42) in their analysis of the film and its ideological context:
To a certain extent, National Socialist ideology stemmed from the pantheistic rationalism of Ernst Haeckel, zoologist, father of ecology, and founder of the Monist League. Haeckel’s monism, for Darré and other Nazis, provided an influential “over-arching belief system” because it legitimated the rejection of Christianity in favor of a monistic religion in which the nation was seen as the ultimate whole, worthy of worship and obligation.
This worship of nature can help to explain an aspect of National Socialism that may seem somewhat surprising in retrospect, and this is the way the Nazi regime was in many senses a “green” one, exhibiting special sensitivity to issues of protection and preservation of nature, restriction of animal suffering, an emphasis on natural and organic nutrition and so on and so forth. Under Nazism several pioneering laws were passed for the preservation of nature and preventing experimentation with animals, and the regime actively encouraged consumption of organic food, notably the promotion of whole wheat bread. In order to have bakeries produce especially such bread, the “Reich’s committee for whole wheat bread” (Reichsvollkornbrotausschuss) was established in 1939, and Dr. Leonhard Conti, head of the physicians’ union, declared: “The fight over whole wheat bread is the fight for the people’s health” (In Melzer 2003: 189). In January 1940, it is interesting to note, the same Conti, according to various testimonies, was involved in the euthanasia killings, through the use of lethal injections and gas chambers, undertaken in a “medical center” in Brandenburg, where their respective effects were compared. He himself, apparently, administered lethal injections to invalids. This experiment was of great importance for the continuation of the Nazi euthanasia project.22
Nazism also conducted a successful national campaign against smoking and encouraged researches that established for the first time the connection between smoking and lung cancer (Proctor 2000). Pioneering legislation protected the environment and was praised by activists for the preservation of nature, such as the June 1935 Reichsnaturschutzgesetz (Uekoetter 2006: 61).23 In August 1933, Nazi Germany also had the honor of passing the first law against vivisection, under Göring’s initiative. In a radio broadcast he explained the motives behind the law:
An absolute and permanent ban on vivisection is not only a necessary law to protect animals and show sympathy with their pain, but it is also a law for humanity itself. […] I have therefore announced the immediate prohibition of vivisection and made the practice a punishable offence in Prussia. Until such time as punishment is pronounced the culprit shall be lodged in a concentration camp.
(In Marquardt 1993: 124)24
Göring forbade the setting of traps for commercial purposes, limited hunting and set up regulations for horse shoeing and the boiling of lobsters. A fisherman cutting up a frog for use as bait was sent to a concentration camp (Marquardt 1993: 124–125). Göring’s anti-vivisection law survived in its original form for only three weeks, since it collided with the requirements of scientific and technological development that was vital, among other things, for speeding up rearmament (Uekoetter 2006: 55–56).