8 - Lessons

Summary

When environmental historians recount a chapter from the history of nature protection, they often do so in a sympathetic mode. However, the situation is different if that chapter happens to be the history of conservation in Nazi Germany: few will read this book with much sympathy for the conservation community of the Nazi era. The reasons do not call for explanation: the cruelty of the Nazis' rule, and the immense human toll that it claimed, make Hitler's regime a disturbing topic even more than 60 years after his death. Seeing a cause dear to one's heart aligned with such a regime is painful, and many readers will have read this book with a sentiment of “never again.” But understandable as this sentiment may be, it is also clear that it calls for specification: what precisely has to be done to prevent a repetition of this story? What are the lessons that the current environmental movement, or other social movements, for that matter, should learn from the Nazi experience?

Of course, this question is anything but new, and a number of authors have put forward answers to it. Anna Bramwell was the first to connect historical and political discussions when she argued that there was a “green party” in Nazi Germany, with Richard Walther Darré, the Nazis' minister of agriculture and Reich Peasant Leader (Reichsbauernführer), at its center. However, her argument quickly drew massive criticism from other researchers.