Understanding Nazi Animal Protection and the Holocaust

It is well known that the Nazis treated human beings with extreme cruelty but it less widely recognized that the Nazis also took some pains to develop and pass extensive animal protection laws. How could the Nazis have professed stich concern for animals while treating humans so badly? It would be easy to dismiss Nazi proclamations on animals as mere hypocrisy but there may be other explanations for the contradiction. For example, anecdotal reports arld psychological evaluations of many prominent Nazis suggest they felt affection for animals but dislike of humans. Second, animal protection measures, whether sincere or not, may have been a legal veil to attack Jews and others considered undesirable. Third, the Nazis blurred moral distinctions between animals and people and tended to treat members of even the Master Race as animals at times. 7 his article argues that at the core of the Nazi treatment of humans and animals was a reconstitution of society's boundaries and margins. All human cultures seek to protect what is perceived to be pure from that which is seen to be dangerous and polluting and most societies establish fairly clear boundaries between people and animals. In Nazi Germany, however, human identity was not contaminated by including certain animal traits but certaih peoples were considered to be a very real danger to Aryan purity. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115. 2„ uepartment of Modem Languages, Pace University, White Plains, NY 10603. INTRODUCTION It is well known that the Nazis treated human beings with extreme cruelty. Grisly "medical" experiments on humans have been carefully documented and analyzed (e.g., Lifton 1986) as has the cold, calculated extermination of millions of people in the Holocaust (e.g., Hilberg 1961). Less well known are the extensive measures taken by Nazis to ensure the humane care and protection of animals. How could the Nazis have been so concerned about cruelty to animals while they treated people so inhumanely? It would be easy to dismiss the apparently benevolent Nazi attitude toward animals as "hypocrisy," but this would be a facile way of evading an examination of the psychological and social dynamics of Nazi thinking and behavior. Rather than questioning the authenticity of the motivations behind Nazi animal protection — a question that is unanswerable — it may be more useful to ask how such thinking was possible and what significance it had. We offer three explanations for this contradiction. First, at a personal or psychological level, this behavior may not seem so contradictory because anecdotal reports and psychological assessments of many prominent Nazi political and military leaders suggest they felt affection and regard for animals but enmity and distance toward humans. While love of animals is itself considered an admirable quality, under the Nazis it may have obscured brutality toward human beings, both on the personal and the political level, whatever its roots were. Second, animal protection measures, whether sincere or not, may have been a legal veil to level an attack on the Jews. In making this attack, since both were portrayed as victims of "oppressors" such as Jews. Third, the Nazis abolished moral distinctions between animals and people by viewing people as animals. The result was that animals could be considered "higher" than some people. All three of these explanations argue for a culture where it was possible to increase the moral status of animals and decrease the moral status of some humans by blurring the boundaries between humans and animals, making it possible for National Socialists to rationalize their behavior and to disenfranchise large groups of humans. Although our analysis assumes a position of analytic detachment, this stance should not be read as an excusing of Nazi behavior. Our analysis of the Nazi movement has far-reaching ethical implications, but these are largely beyond the scope of this paper. We believe, in this instance, that moral concern is best channeled into understanding; indeed, a highly moralistic discussion might obscure the dynamics of the National Socialist movement. Nazi Animal Protection Around the end of the nineteenth century, kosher butchering and vivisection were the for6most concerns of the animal protection movement in Germany (Hoelscher 1949; Neff 1989; Trohler and Maehle 1987). These concerns continued during the Third Reich and became formalized as laws. On April 21, 1933, almost immediately after the Nazis came to power, they passed a set of laws regulating the slaughter of animals. At th-e start of 1933, the Nazi representatives to the Prussian parliament met in order to ban vivisection (Proctor 1988). In August, 1933, over German radio Hermann Goring announced an end to the "unbearable torand threatened to commit to Loi tion camps those who still think they can continue to treat animals as inanimate property" (Goring 1939, 70, 72). Goring decried the "cruel" experiments of unfeeling scientists whose animals were operated on, burned, or frozen without anesthetics. A ban on vivisection was enacted in Bavaria as well as Prussia (AMA 1933), although the Nazis then partially retreated from a full ban. The Nazi animal protection laws of November, 1933, permitted experiments on animals in some circumstances, but subject to a set of eight conditions and only with the explicit permission of the Minister of the Interior, supported by the recommendation of local authorities. The conditions were designed to eliminate pain and prevent unnecessary experiments. Horses, dogs, cats, and apes were singled out for special protection. Permission to experiment on animals was given not to individuals but only to institutions (Giese and Kahler 1944). Inconspicuously buried in the animal protection laws of November, 1933 (point four, section two), was a provision for the "mercy killing" of animals. The law nyt only allowed but actually required that domesticated animals that were old, sick, and worn out, or for which "life has become a torment," be "painlessly" put to death. The wording of the provision was ambiguous; it was not entirely clear whether a family would be required to kill, say, an old dog that did nothing but sit by the fire. One binding commentary, passed immediately after the laws themselves, mandated that an expert should decide whether further life for an animal was a "torment" in unclear cases (Giese and Kahler 1944). In addition to the laws against vivisection and kosher slaughter, scores of additional legal measures regulating the treatment of animals were enacted from 1933 through 1943, probably several times the number in the preceding half century (Giese and Kaliler 1944).These covered in excruciating detail a vast array of concerns from the shoeing of horses to the use of anesthesia. One law passed in 1936 showed "particular solicitude" (Waite 1947, 41) about the suffering of lobsters and crabs, stipulating that restaurants were to kill crabs, lobsters, and other crustaceans by throwing them one at a time into rapidly boiling water (Giese and Kahler 1944). Several "high officials" had debated the question of the most humane death for lobsters before this regulation was passed, and two officials in the Interior Ministry had prepared a scholarly treatise on the subject (Waite 1977). The Nazis also sought to protect wildlife. In 1934 and 1935, the focus of Nazi legislation on animals shifted from farm animals and pets to creatures of the wild. The preface to the hunting laws of March 27, 1935, announced a eugenic purpose behind the legislation, stating, "The duty of a true hunter is not only to hunt but also to nurture and protect wild animals, in order that a more varied, stronger and healthier breed shall emerge and be preserved" (Giese and Kahler 1944). Nazi veterinary journals often featured reports on endangered species (Proctor 1988). Goring, in particular, was concerned about the near extinction in Germany of bear, bison, and wild horse, and sought to establish conservation and breeding programs for dwindling species and to pass new and more uniform hunting laws and taxes (Irving 1989, 181). Goring's Game Laws are still operative today. A uniform national hunting association was created to regulate the sport, restock lakes, tend forests, and protect dying species. Taxes levied on hunters would be used for the upkeep of forests and game parks. Goring also established three nature reserves, introduced elk, and began a bison sanctuary with two pure bulls and seven hybrid cows on one of the reserves (Irving 1989, 182). He eventually succeeded in rearing 47 local bison. He also created a Game Research Laboratory, where he reintroduced night owl, wood grouse, heathcock, gray goose, raven, beaver, and otter, which Albert Speer (1970, 555) referred to as "Goring's animal paradise." Goring viewed forests almost in religious terms, calling them "God's cathedrals," and culling of game populations to prevent starvation or epidemics was conducted as a "pseudoreligious duty" (Irving 1989, 182). The Nazi animal protection laws, formulated with considerable medical and legal sophistication, were characterized by an almost compulsive attention to detail. While bureaucratic thoroughness may have been the major driving force behind theSe documents, they also extended the scope of legal control far beyond the boundaries of human society by attempting a centralized regulation of all relationships, not only among people but 4 throughout the natural world. The purpose of the Law for the Protection of Animals, as noted in its introduction, was "to awaken and strengthen compassion as one of the highest moral values of the German people" (Giese and Kahler 1944; Waite 1977, 41). The philosophical basis for the laws was the attempt to minimize pain, according to one doctoral dissertation written primarily during the Nazi period (Hoelscher 1949). The fact that animals were to be protected for their own sakes, rather than for their relationship to humanity, was described as a new legal concept (Giese and Kahler 1944; Hoelscher 1949; Meyer 1975). Like virtually all legal documents, these laws contained ambiguities and possible loopholes. In many respects, the laws of November, 1933, did not go far beyond the laws protecting animals in Britain, then considered the most comprehensive in the world. The severity of the punishments mandated by the German laws was, however, virtually unprecedented in modern times. "Rough mistreatment" of an animal could result in a punishment of two years in prison plus a fine (Giese and Kahler 1944). It is not clear, however, how vigorously or conscientiously the animal protection laws were enforced, particularly outside of Prussia. Barnard (1990) maintains that several experiments on animals were conducted secretly by Nazi doctors. Hilberg (1961, 00-604) also describes several Nazi medical experiments on animals that preceded those on human beings. At any rate, Nazi Germany gradually became a state where petty theft could result in death, while violent crimes might go unpunished. Punishment did not fit the crime in any traditional sense. The new government retained the entire legal apparatus of the Weimar Republic but used it in the service of a different concept. In accordance with declarations by Hitler, for example, the laws of July 2, 1934, on "Measures for Protection of the State" provided that punishment was to be determined not by the crime itself but by The "fundamental idea" behind the crime (Staff 1964). Mistreatment of animals, then, might be taken by courts as evidence of a fundamentally antisocial mentality or even of Jewish blood. The preoccupation with animal protection in Nazi Germany was evident in other social institutions and continued almost until the end of World War II. In 1934, the new government hosted an international conferenCe on animal protection in Berlin. Uver tile speakers pou ► ui by enormous swastikas, were the words "Entire epochs of love will be needed to repay animals for their value and service" (Meyer 1975). In 1936, the German Society for Animal Psychology was founded, and in 1938 animal protection was accepted as a subject to be studied in German public schools and universities. In 1943 an academic program in animal psychology was inaugurated at the Hannover School of Veterinary Medicine (Giese and Kahler 1944). The Ideological and Historical Context Though it appeared politically monolithic, the Nazi movement contained a surprisingly wide range of intellectual opinions. The leaders, in general, showed little interest in abstract theory, and only Alfred Rosenberg even attempted to synthesize Nazism into a cohesive set ofdoctrines. One cannot, therefore, understand the movement as though it were centered around an abstract philosophy, searching for more formal kinds of logic and coherence. Nazism was far more a cluster of loosely associated concerns. Even leading National Socialists avoided committing themselves on the subject of ideology, emphasizing that in its totality, National Socialism was indefinable (Fest 1970). Nevertheless, the National Socialists attempted to actualize a racial ideology and, in so doing, to create a new Germanic identity (Mosse 1966). The search for German national character certainly did not start during the Third Reich. The enormous anxiety and preoccupation of the Nazis over national identity and differentiation from other human groups was only a heightened version of Germany's long obsession with its identity and its boundaries from other human groups and its relationship with animals. Essential to this con. ..;truttion of national identity were certain themes regarding man's connections to nature and animal life that were articulated in German romantic poetry, music, and social thought. These ideas shaped Nazi thinking and served as intellectual resources that were drawn upon and distorted as expedient. Man as Beast. One influential theme, particularly evid6nt in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, was the rejection of intellectual culture and reason and the praising of animal instinct in man. This view attached enormous importance to the animal origin and character of man. It sought to celebrate the earth and beasts in mythical ways and to glorify Nietzsche's "blond beast" or "raubtier," 1 playing up the beast in man as a type of "secret idol," possessing qualities of vitality, unscrupulousness, and blind will and obedience (Glaser 1978, 138). Nietzsche was one of several heroes under Nazism whose work was distorted to become more brutal and aggressive, particularly his conception of the "blond beast." Glaser calls this element of National Socialism "man as predator." "The domestic animal who had been domesticated on the surface only was in the end superior to and more honest than man; in the predator one could 'rediscover his instincts and with that his honesty'" (Glaser . 1978, 138). Animal instinct came to represent rebellion against culture and intellectualism. Returning to the animal nature within man, communing with nature, and el6ating animal life to the level ofcult worship were seen as alternatives to modernity, technolOgy, and urbanization, according to Glaser. Acceptance of this view, it was thought, would lead to the spiritual and ideological changes necessary and desirable in German cultural life for a new national sell-identity to emerge (Gasman 1971). As part of the rejection of culture, the new German, according to National Socialist ideology, was to disavow humanitarian behavior toward fellow humans as insincere. One element of this totalitarian system was the principle of contempt for certain human beings. flimmler, for example, called for renouncing "softness" (Fest 1970, 120). "False" comradeship and compassion were derogated. Instead of encouraging cornpassion, Hitler emphasized that the new German should emulate certain animal behaviors such as the obedience and faithfulness of pets and the strength, fearlessness, aggressiveness, and even cruelty found in beasts of prey, qualities that were among the movement's most stringent principles (Fest .1970, 120, 293). The training of SS personnel illustrated the importance of these animal qualities, even if it ironically meant killing animals. It is alleged that after 12 weeks of working closely with a German shepherd, each SS soldier had to break his dog's neck in front of an officer in order to earn his stripes. Doing so, it was thought, would instill teamwork, discipline, and obedience to the Fuhrer — qualities that were deemed more important than feelings for anything, including animals (Radde 1991). Hitler himself pleaded for these qualities in German youth: "I want violent, imperious, fearless, cruel young people ... The free, magnificent beast of prey must once again flash from their eyes ... I want youth strong and beautiful ..., and athletic youth ... In this way I shall blot out thousands of years of human domestication. I shall have the pure, noble stuff of nature" (Maltitz 1973, 62). In another instance, Hitler called for German youth to be as "swift as whippets" (Grunberger 1971, 136a). These new Germans were to •the decay of other civilizations; and vegetarianism became a symbol of the new, pure civilization that was to be Germany's future. Hunting was seen as appropriate to an earlier stage of man when killing animals involved some "risk" to the hunter. Now, only "sick" animals and those needed for food should be killed. When animals were to be killed for food, they were given a "sacred" status and their death was seen as a form of "sacrifice." This spiritual attitude toward animals, even those destined to be killed, could be seen in Nazi farm propaganda: The Nordic peoples accord the pig the highest possible honor ... in the cult-of the Germans the pig occupies the first place and is the first among the domestic animals ...The predominance of the pig, the sacred animal destined to sacrifices among the Nordic peoples, has drawn its originality from the great trees of the German forest. The Semites do not understand the pig, they do not accept the pig, they reject the pig, whereas this animal occupies the first place in the cult of the Nordic peoples (Brady 1969, 53). Holistic Attitudes. A third theme, particularly expressed by philosophers such as Richard Wagner, exalted synthesis against analysis, unity and wholeness against disintegration and atomism, and Volk legend against scientific truth (Viereck 1965). Life, according to this view, had an oFganic unity and connectedness that should not be destroyed by mental analysis or physical dissection. "Mechanistic" science and the Jews perceived to be behind it were portrayed as part of a destructive analytic intellectualism that treated nature and animals mechanically by dissolving the whole into parts, thereby losing the invisible force that makes the whole more than the sum of its parts. It is important to understand that the Nazis were not opposed to science per se but only to a particular approach. 1 They wanted a science that was influenced more by Goethe than by Newton. These attitudes helped to shape the Third Reich's criticisms of "mechanistic" scientific thinking and practices such as vivisection. The path of Western civilization had taken an incorrect turn, according to National Socialism. Mechanistic, exploitative technology, attributed to the Jews, was seen as cutting man off from his connections with nature and ultimately to his own spirit. Particularly influential was Wagner's thinking. Wagner had urged the smashing of laboratories and the removal of scientists and "vivisectors." The vivisector, to Wagner, came to represent both the scientists' "torture" of animals as well as the capitalists' torture of the proletariat. Wagner also portrayed the vivisector as both evil and Jewish, but he was not alone in this. In cernma, oder Tugend and Laster (Melena 1 877), a sentimental novel of the 1870s that had done much to arouse public sentiment against animal experimentation, the author portrayed the vivisectionists as cultists who, under the pretense of practicing science, ritualistically cut up living animals in orgiastic rites. The author may not have intended to identify the vivisectionists in the novel with the Jews (it is very clear that membership in the cult of vivisectionists is a matter of volition rather than heredity) but the representation of vivisectionists in the book was so close to the popular stereotypes of Jews engaged in kosher butchering, it was inevitable that many people would make the connection. Biological Purity. A fourth theme, also expressed by Wagner, involved Nordic racism and the biological purity of Aryans. The human race, it was argued, had become contaminated and impure through be part animal, renouncing a certain side of their humanity. The compassion normally reserved for humans was to be redirected toward animals, and the cold aggressiveness of animal instinct became the model German. Animals were to be identified with and compassion toward animals rather than humans was to be encouraged, if not required. This was, in fact, part of the intent of the animal protection laws. of an ideal society; duty, he claimed, was a biological impulse shared with all animals in that they were bound to care for family and the larger collectivity, both necessary for survival. This preoccupation with animals as moral beings influenced Nazi thinking. The Nazis called for redressing early wrongs to animals; man was to have a regard for nature as a moral duty. Goebbels commented in his diaries: Reverence for Animals. A second theme was that animals were to be regarded as moral if not sacred beings. For example, the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, writing at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, attacked religion, primarily Christianity, for putting man above animals and nature, and for isolating man from nature and creating contempt for animals. hie believed that man and animals had the same natural as well as moral status and that much of human morality stemmed from animals, claiming that Christian moral principles such as "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" were "derived from our animal ancestors" (Bramwell 1989,. 49). In Haeckel's view, animals were to be learned from, using the laws of nature as a way to -reform human society. The function of human societies, like animal societies, was to survive, and biological fitness was essential to both. Not surpriSingly, he supported "racial hygiene" through euthanasia (Bramwell 1989, 49). He deduced the ideal state from his observations of animals and nature, maintaining that the most efficient organization to ensure survival among animals (and therefore human society should adopt it too) was to be highly centralized and hierarchical, like the brain and nervous system (Bramwell 1989, 50). In his analyses, he stressed "duty" as essential to the success Man should not feel so superior to animals. He has no reason to. Man believes that he alone has intelligence, a soul, and the power of speech. I las not the animal these things? Just because we, with our dull senses, cannot recognize them, it does not prove that they are not there (Taylor 1983, 77). The moral status of animals was to be changed in the coming German empire; they, were to be sentient objects accorded love and respect as a sacred and essential element in man's relationship with nature. For example, toward the end of the war, the editors of a book on legal protection of animals proclaimed, "Animals are not, as before [the Nazi period] objects of personal property or unprotected creatures, with which a man may do as he pleases, but pieces of living nature which demand respect and compassion." Looking to the future, they quoted the words of GOring that "For the protection of animals, the education of humanity is more important than laws" (Giese and Kahler 1944). As sacred things, society was not to violate animals by killing them, either for sport or for food. Their vision of the future included a world where animals would not be unnecessarily harmed, holding out as role models various groups that were seen as respectful toward animal life. Hunting became a symbol of the civilization left behind; meat eating became a symbol of a mixing of we races ariu animal flesh. "Regeneration of the human race" was linked to animal protection and vegetarianism (Viereck 1965, 119). Wagner's principal concern was with the notion of biological purification of Germany and its political future. He wrote that "present day socialism must combine in true and hearty fellowship with the vegetarians, the protectors of animals, and the friends of temperence" (Viereck 1965, 119) to save mankind from Jewish aggression. Viereck (1965, 119) refers to this "fellowship" as Wagner's "united front of purifiers" who could oppose the antivegetarian stance of Jews. According to Viereck, Wagner stated "the Jewish God found Abel's fatted lamb more savoury than Cain's offer" of a vegetable. • In an essay first published in 1881 entitled "Heldentum and Christenheit" (Heroism and Christianity), Wagner articulated an anti-Semitic theory of history that linked vegetarianism to Germany's future. This drew on the racial theories of Arthur Gobineau, the philosophy of Schopenhauer, and his own idiosyncratic brand of Catholicism. In abandoning their original vegetarian diet, Wagner believed, people had become corrupted by the blood of slaughtered animals. This degeneration was then spread through the mixing of races. Interbreeding eventually spread through the entire Roman Empire, until only the "noble" Germanic race remained pure. After their conquest of Rome, the Germans, however, finally succumbed by mating with the subject peoples. "Regeneration" could be achieved, even by highly corrupted races such as the Jews, through a return to natural foods, provided this was accompanied by partaking of the Eucharist (Wagner 1888a). Wagner also believed that one could not live without "animal food" in the northern climates, so he suggested that in the future there would UC Cl •a • • • • • • climates where it would not be necessary to eat animals, thereby permitting Europe to return to pristine jungle and wild beasts (Viereck 1965, 119). Racial contamination, it was argued, had mixed biologically inferior human stock with Aryan blood, thereby threatening the purity of the highest species. The physician Ludwig Woltmann (1936), for example, described the Germans as the highest species because of their perfect physical proportions and their heightened spirituality. He argued that life was a constant struggle against the biological decay of this highest species. This biological struggle was waged against the subhuman, a notion that can be linked to an intellectual undercurrent in the German movement known as the neo -Manichaean gnosis, a third-century cosmology given a secular form by a Viennese monk at the beginning of the twentieth century. The• monk, Adolf Lanz, published a book called Theozoology that claimed that in the beginning there were two races, the Aryans and the Apes, that Lanz called the "animal people." The Aryans were pure and good whereas the animal people represented darkness and sought to sexually defile Aryans. Because of such interbreed ) ing, the original Aryans and animal people no longer existed, but Lanz claimed that one could still distinguish and rank races according to the proportion of Aryan or ape blood they possessed. Thus Nordic people were close to pure Aryan and were ranked the highest race and Jews were ranked the lowest because they were close to pure ape (Rhodes 1980, 107). There are echoes of this idea in the writings of Wagner, who maintained in "Heldentum" that the Semitic races had always viewed themselves as descended from the apes, while the Aryan races traced their descent "from the Gods" (Wagner 1888a). According to Rhodes (1980, 108), there is some evidence that Hitler read the work of Lanz and accepted his view. The Nazis, in many ways, departed from the anthropocentric understanding of the cosmos that has dominated Occidental civilization since at least the late Middle . Ages. Their world was not so much centered around man, at least as presently constituted, as about the process of evolution, conceived as a process of perpetual improvement through "survival of the fittest." This process, however, was not viewed so much as a spontaneous process but as something that, in the contemporary world, sometimes required assistance (Proctor 1988). In other words, it became a project to biologically perfect what it meant to be German.— a task not unlike that taken with German shepherd dogs who were deliberately bred to represent and embody the spirit of National Socialism. Van Stephanitz, the creator of this breed, sought national status for a local population of coyote-like dogs in the 1920s that were to be regarded as racially better dogs, analogous to better-bred humans, and whose only reason for existence was to go to war on the day hostilities began (Radde 1991). Central to National Socialist ideology was the que-st for racial purity by creating a "superrace" and eliminating "inferior races." Indeed, laws passed under the Third Reich to improve the eugenic stock of animals anticipated the way in which Germans and non-Aryans were treated eugenically. Germans were to be treated as -farm animals, bred for the most desirable Aryan traits while ridding themselves of weaker and less desirable animal specimens. Such remodeling of civilization was not to flout the "natural order," meaning that distinctions between humans, animals, and the larger "natural" world were not to make up the basic -structure of life. Rather, the fundamental distinction made during the Third Reich was between that which was regarded as "racially" pure and that which was polluting and dangerous. The former was embodied in the Aryan people and nature, the latter in other humans who were synonymous with "lower" animals. According to Hitler's own fanciful anthropology, non -Aryans were subhuman and should be considered lower than domestic animals. He stated in Mein .Kampf that slavery came before the domestication of animals. The Aryans supposedly subjugated the "lower races": "First the vanquished drew the plough, only later the horse" (Hitler 1938). This, in Hitler's imagination, was the "paradise" that the Aryans eventually lost through the "original sin" of mating with the conquered people. Such a view clearly placed certain people below animals. The Nazi notion of race in many ways assumed the symbolic significance usually associated with species; the new phylogenetic hierarchy could locate certain "races" below animals. The danger and pollution normally thought to be posed by animals to humans was replaced with other "races." The Germans were the highest "species," above all other life; some "higher" animals, however, could be placed above other "races" or "subhumans" in the "natural" hierarchy.