3 - Institutions: Working Toward the Führer

Summary

If anything can be said in summary about the relationship between conservation ideas and Nazi ideology, it is that taken by itself, that relationship cannot explain the general dynamism in the cooperation between the green and the brown. It was, after all, a much too complicated mix of ideas: at some points, ideas overlapped, whereas others were more or less at odds, and the fundamental pillars of Nazi ideology were so distant from the ethos of nature protection that a distinct Nazi brand of conservation never came into being. Accordingly, one would expect an equally diverse set of contacts between the conservation community and the Nazi regime: a wide spectrum from sympathy to opposition, with indifference probably being the most frequent attitude.

However, the actual picture differs markedly from such a scenario. The distance between the conservation community and the Nazis was much smaller in practice than one would expect from the background of the divergent philosophies: cooperation was far too intensive, and far too cordial, to be explained by a partial coincidence of goals. Thus, an analysis of the ideological relationship needs to be supplemented by a discussion of institutional ties. For the conservation movement, the Nazi regime offered a number of unprecedented opportunities, which conservationists tried to seize to the greatest extent possible. It was institutional links that created the atmosphere of sustained sympathy, if not unbridled enthusiasm, that permeated the conservation literature of the Nazi era.