Part 1 of 2
EPILOGUE-RIGHT-WING ECOLOGY IN GERMANY: ASSESSING THE HISTORICAL LEGACY PETER STAUDENMAIER, 2011
1. Examples include Mark Neocleous, Fascism (University of Minnesota Press, 1997); Steve Chase, "Green Stormtroopers in the Streets of Berlin?" Z Papers October 1999; Kev Smith, "Ecofascism: Deep Ecology and Right- Wing Co-optation" Synthesis/Regeneration 32 (Fall 2003). For subsequent debates generated by the original edition of the book see the exchange on Rudolf Bahro in Democracy and Nature 11/12 (1998) and the exchange on ecofascism and neo-paganism in The Pomegranate: Journal of Pagan Studies 17/18 (2002).
2. Claudia Card, review of Ecofascism in Ethics and the Environment 1 (1996), 201-04; Ronald Creagh, review of Ecofascism in Social Anarchism 26 (1998).
3. The text originally appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, November 13, 2003.
4 See e.g. David Orton's 2000 essay "Ecofascism: What is It? A Left Biocentric Analysis": http://home.ca.inter.net/-greenweb/Ecofascism.html' All internet sites cited here were accessed in December 2010.
5. A representative example is Gus di Zerega's 2010 essay "Environmentalism, NeoPaganism and EcoFascism: Here We Go Again": http://blog.beliefnet.com/apagansblog/2 ... again.html
6. See David Watson, "Swamp Fever, Primitivism & the 'Ideological Vortex': Farewell to All That" Fifth Estate Fall 1997, as well as 'Nick Griffin', "National Anarchism: Trojan Horse for White Nationalism" Green Anarchy Spring 2005. Watson's essay is available online: http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/swampfever.htm
7. Michael Zimmerman, "The Threat of Ecofascism" Social Theory and Practice 21 (1995),207-38; Zimmerman, "Ecofascism: A Threat to American Environmentalism?" in Roger Gottlieb, ed., The Ecological Community (Routledge, 1997), 229-54; Zimmerman, "Possible Political Problems of Earth-Based Religiosity" in Eric Katz, Andrew Light, and David Rothenberg, eds., Beneath the Surface: Critical Essays on Deep Ecology (MIT Press, 2000), 169-94; Zimmerman, "Ecofascism: An Enduring Temptation" in Zimmerman, ed., Environmental Philosophy (Prentice Hall, 2004), 390-408; Zimmerman, "Ecofascism" in Bron Taylor, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (Continuum, 2005), 531-32.
8. One prominent example is the second chapter of Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Vintage, 1996). A more detailed but less perspicacious account can be found in the chapter on "Nazi Ecology" in Luc Ferry, The New Ecological Order (University of Chicago Press, 1995). Both works are committed to liberal assumptions and averse to radical political perspectives.
9. See e.g. Alston Chase, In a Dark Wood: The Fight over Forests and the Rising Tyranny of Ecology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995).
10. Cf. the entries in Taylor, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, above all Roger Griffin, "Fascism." 639-44, as well as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Hitlers Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism (New York University Press, 1998), and Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity (New York University Press, 2002). The final chapter of Hitler's Priestess, on "Nazis, Greens, and the New Age," is especially apposite for enthusiasts of biocentrism, paganism, and esotericism.
11. Peter Zegers, "The Dark Side of Political Ecology" Communalism 3 (December 2002). On ecofascism in the UK see Derek Wall, "Darker Shades of Green": http://another-green-world.blogspot.com ... green.html. On the US see Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America (New York: Guilford, 2000), as well as the website of Political Research Associates, http://www.publiceye.org. Additional sources include Emanuel Sferios, "Population, Immigration, and the Environment: Ecofascism and the environmental movement" Z Magazine June 1998; Helene Loow, "The Idea of Purity: The Swedish Racist Counterculture, Animal Rights, and Environmental Protection" in Jeffrey Kaplan and Helene Loow, eds., The Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 193-210; Jeff Shantz, "Scarcity and the Emergence of Fundamentalist Ecology" Critique of Anthropology 23 (2003), 144-54; Rajani Bhatia, "Green or Brown? White Nativist Environmental Movements" in Abby Ferber, ed., Home-Grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism (Routledge, 2004), 194-213; "Browns and Greens" in Martin Lee, The Beast Reawakens (Routledge, 2000), 214-21; Roger Griffin, "Fascism's New Faces (and New Facelessness) in the 'post-fascist' Epoch" in Griffin, A Fascist Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 181-202.
12. For background on Tanton see Christopher Hayes, "Keeping America Empty: How one small-town conservationist launched today's anti-immigration movement" On These Times April 24, 2006, and Heidi Beirich, "The Tanton Files: Nativist Leader's Racist Past Exposed" Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report Winter 2008, as well as the website of the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism: http://www.ferris.edu/isar/. Further context is available in Peter Hay, "Green Political Thought: The Authoritarian and Conservative Traditions" in Hay, Main Currents ill Western Environmental Thought (Indiana University Press, 2002), 173- 93, and Eric Neumayer, "The environment: One more reason to keep immigrants out?" Ecological Economics 59 (2006), 204-07. On European far-right groups opposing immigration on environmental grounds see Stephan Faris, Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change (New York: Holt, 2009), 62-94.
13. Cf. Gray Brechin, "Conserving The Race: Natural Aristocracies, Eugenics, and the U.S. Conservation Movement" Antipode 28 (1996), 229-45; Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (Island Press, 2005), 328-35; John Jackson and Nadine Weidman, Race, Racism, and Science (Rutgers University Press, 2006), 110-12; Alden Whitman, "Lindbergh and Conservation" New York Times June 23,1969; Jonathan Spiro, Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant (University of Vermont Press, 2008).
14. Jonathan Olsen, Nature and Nationalism: Right-Wing Ecology and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Germany (New York: St. Martin's, 1999) and Oliver Geden, Rechte Okologie: Umweltschutz zwischen Emanzipation und Faschismus (Berlin: Elefanten, 1996).
15. Principal examples include Richard Stoss, Vom Nationalismus zum Umweltschutz (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, )980); Thomas Jahn and Peter Wehling, Okologie von rechts: Nationalismus und Umweltschutz bei der Neuen Rechten und den "Republikanern" (Frankfurt: Campus, 1990); Volkmar Wolk, Natur und Mythos: Okologiekonzeptionen der 'Neuen' Rechten im Spannungsfeld zwischen Blut und Boden und New Age (Duisburg: Duisburger Institut fur Sprach- und Sozialforschung, 1992); Jurgen Wust, Konservatismus und Okologiebewegung (Frankfurt: Verlag fur interkulturelle Kommunikation, 1993); Justus H. Ulbricht, "Die Heimat als Umwelt des Volkes: Okologische Denkfiguren in Ideologie und Programmatik 'neurechter' Organisationen" in Richard Faber, Hajo Funke, and Gerhard Schoenberner, eds., Rechtsextremismus: Ideologie und Gewalt (Berlin: Hentrich, 1995), 221-40; Ulrich Linse, '''Fundamentalistischer' Heimatschutz: Die 'Naturphilosophie' Reinhard Falters" in Uwe Puschner and Ulrich Grossmann, eds., Volkisch und national: Zur Aktualitat alter Denkmuster im 21. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009), 156-78.
16. Cf. Dan Stone, "The Far Right and the Back-to-the-Land Movement" in Julie Gottlieb and Thomas Linehan, eds., The Culture of Fascism: Visions of the Far Right in Britain (London: Tauris, 2004), 182-98; Richard Moore- Colyer, "Towards 'Mother Earth': Jorian Jenks, Organicism, the Right and the British Union of Fascists" Journal of Contemporary History 39 (2004), 353-71; Graham Macklin, Very Deeply Dyed in Black: Sir Oswald Mosley and the Resurrection of British Fascism after 1945 (London: Tauris, 2007), 63-66; Matthew Jefferies and Mike Tyldesley, eds., Rolf Gardiner: Folk, Nature and Culture in Interwar Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); see also Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Gemany, t133-39 (London: Constable, 1980), 142-46, 237-39, 317-28; Dan Stone, "The Extremes of Englishness: The 'Exceptional' Ideology of Anthony Mario Ludovici" Journal of Political Ideologies 4 (1999), 191-219; Matthew Reed, "Fight the Future! How the Contemporary Campaigns of the UK Organic Movement Have Arisen from their Composting of the Past" Sociologia Ruralis 41 (200 I), 131-45; Philip Conford, "Finance versus Farming: Rural Reconstruction and Economic Reform, 1894-1955" Rural History 13 (2002), 225-41; Dan Stone, "The English Mistery, the BUF, and the Dilemmas of British Fascism" Journal of Modern History 75 (2003), 336-58; Philip Conford, "Organic Society: Agriculture and Radical Politics in the Career of Gerard Wallop, Ninth Earl of Portsmouth (1898-1984)" Agricultural History Review 53 (2005), 78-96.
17. On neo-paganism see Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Duke University Press, 2003); Karla Poewe, "Scientific neo-paganism and the extreme right then and today" Journal of Contemporary Religion 14 (1999), 387-400; Betty Dobratz, "The Role of Religion in the Collective Identity of the White Racialist Movement" Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40 (200 1), 287-301; Jeffrey Kaplan, Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to the Children of Noah (Syracuse University Press, 1997); Horst Junginger, ed., The Study of Religion under the Impact of Fascism (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Andreas Speit, "Esoterik und Neuheidentum: Historische Allianzen und aktuelle Tendenzen" in Jens Mecklenburg, ed., Handbuch deutscher Rechtsextremismus (Berlin: Elefanten, 1996), 709-32; Eduard Gugenberger and Roman Schweidlenka, Mutter Erde - Magie und Politik: Zwischen Faschismus und neuer Gesellschaft (Vienna: Verlag fur Gesellschaftskritik, 1987); Stefanie von Schnurbein, Gottertrost in Wendezeiten: Neugermanisches Heidentum zwischen New Age und Rechtsradikalismus (Munich: Claudius, 1993); Franziska Hundseder, Wotans Junger: Neuheidnische Gruppen zwischen Esoterik und Rechtsradikalismus (Munich: Heyne, 1998); Hubert Cancik and Uwe Puschner, eds., Antisemitismus, Paganismus, Volkische Religion (Munich: Saur, 2004); Miro Jennerjahn, Neue Rechte und Heidentum (Frankfurt: Lang, 2006); Felix Wiedemann, Rassenmutter und Rebellin: Hexenbilder in Romantik, volkischer Bewegung, Neuheidentum und Feminismus (Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 2007); Sandra Franz, Die Religion des Grals: Entwarfe arteigener Religiositat im Spektrum von volkischer Bewegung, Lebensform, Okkultismus, Neuheidentum und Jugendbewegung (Schwalbach: Wochenschau, 2009). The connections between anthroposophy and ecofascism have been a primary subject of my own subsequent research, and I have detailed these connections elsewhere. See above all my article ''Anthroposophy and Ecofascism" and its sequel, "The Art of Avoiding History" as well as two further articles co-authored with my colleague Peter Zegers, ''Anthroposophy and its Defenders" and "The Janus Face of Anthroposophy," all available at www. social-ecology.org. For a more recent summary of the current state of research see Peter Staudenmaier, "Der deutsche Geist am Scheideweg: Anthroposophen in Auseinandersetzung mit volkischer Bewegung und Nationalsozialismus" in Uwe Puschner, ed., Die Volkischreligiose Bewegung im Nationalsozialismus (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming 2012). See also Jutta Ditfurth, Entspannt in die Barbarei: Esoterik, (Oko- )Faschismus und Biozentrismus (Hamburg: Konkret, 1996); Peter Bieri, Wurzelrassen, Erzengel und Volksgeister: Die Anthroposophie Rudolf Steiners und die Waldorfpadagogik (Hamburg: Konkret, 2005); Ingolf Christiansen, Rainer Fromm and Hartmut Zinser, Brennpunkt Esoterik (Hamburg 2006); Helmut Zander, Anthroposophie in Deutschland: Theosophische Weltanschauung und gesellschaftliche Praxis 1884-1945 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007).
18. Pagan Liberation League, "Political Positions Outlined," January 7, 2000, copy in my possession. For context see Gardell, Gods of the Blood, 312-13, on explicit neo-pagan support for "ecofascism" and blood and soil politics. From the point of view of liberal and left neo-pagans, these pro- Nazi variants of paganism undoubtedly seem marginal, but they are not therefore neglible.
19. A particularly relevant example is the pamphlet by Kerry Bolton, Rudolf Steiner & The Mystique of Blood & Soil: The Volkisch Views of the Founder of Anthroposophy (Paraparaumu: Renaissance Press, 1999). Bolton lauds Steiner's contributions to the ecological strands of Nazism and notes that "racial evolution is the very basis of Anthroposophical teachings on human spiritual development." (14) He also writes: "the Jewish preoccupation with 'measure, number and weight' naturally finds their emphasis on pursuits of a commercial nature, rather than those requiring spiritual impetus, such as the arts. Judaism is therefore seen by Steiner as materialistic, rooted in the physical, and its by-products are both capitalism and its mirror image, Marxism/Communism. His connection of Marxism and materialism with Judaism is another major belief he shared with the volkisch movement of the time." (12) Bolton's pamphlet on Steiner received a very favorable review by prominent neo-fascist Troy Southgate in his journal Synthesis in 2001.
20. See the instructive study by Graham Macklin, "Co-opting the counter culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction" Patterns of Prejudice 39 (2005), 301-26. For North American viewpoints see My Enemy's Enemy: Essays on globalization, fascism and the struggle against capitalism (Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2001) and Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement (Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2002). For illuminating context from an Italian perspective see Piero Ignazi, Il polo escluso: Profilo storico del Movimento Sociale Italiano (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998), 190-91, and Dino Cofrancesco, "Faschismus: rechts oder links?" in Karl Dietrich Bracher and Leo Valiani, eds., Faschismus und Natiollalsozialismus (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991), 41-106.
21. As in Germany, although the environmental strands in Italian Fascism were often overshadowed by countervailing tendencies toward industrialization and increasing mechanization in agriculture, the proto-ecological aspects of Fascist thought and policy should not be overlooked. For a range of perspectives compare Gustavo Corni, "Die Agrarpolitik des Faschismus: Ein Vergleich zwischen Deutschland und Italien" Tel Aviver Jahrbuch fur deutsche Geschichte 17 (1988),391-423; Alexander Nutzenadel, Landwirtschaft, Staat und Autarkie: Agrarpolitik im faschistischen Italien (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1997); Mauro Stampacchia, 'Ruralizzare L'ltalia!' Agricoltura e bonifiche tra Mussolini e Serpieri (Milan: Angeli, 2000); James Sievert, The Origins of Nature Conservation in Italy (New York Lang, 2000), 193-214; Fabrizio Marasti, Il fascismo rurale: Arrigo Serpieri e la bonifica integrale (Rome: Settimo Sigillo, 2001); Steen Bo Frandsen, '"The war that we prefer': The Reclamation of the Pontine Marshes and Fascist Expansion" in Gert Sorensen and Robert Mallett, eds., International Fascism 1919- 1945 (Cass, 2002), 69-82; Peter Staudenmaier, "Fascism" in Shepard Krech 1I1, John McNeill, and Carolyn Merchant, eds., Encyclopedia of World Environmental History (Routledge, 2004), 517-21; Mauro Stampacchia, "Dalla bonifica alla guerra: la politica agraria del fascismo" in Angelo Moioli, ed., Can la vanga e col moschetto: Ruralita, ruralismo e vita quotidiana nella RSI (Venice: Marsilio, 2006), 103-11; Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, "A Brief History of Access Rights and Environmental Conflicts in Fascist Italy" in Marco Armiero and Marcus Hall, eds., Nature and History in Modern Italy (Ohio University Press, 2010), 141-58. For an indication of the continuing interest in the topic on the contemporary Italian far right see the preface by Enzo Erra to Marasti, Il fascismo rurale, 5-11.
22. Giuseppe Tassinari, Ten Years of Integral Land-Reclamation under the Mussolini Act (Faenza: Fratelli Lega, 1939), 14. This connection between the "return to the soil" and the "health of the race" was reiterated in Fascist publications; see e.g. "La mostra delle bonifiche" Giornale d'Italia, July 17, 1938, 8, and "La bonifica pontina e la politica razzista" Giornale d'Italia, August 10, 1938, 2.
23. Cesare Longobardi, Land-Reclamation in Italy: Rural Revival in the Building of a Nation (London: King, 1936),3. The concurrent "battle of grain," however, involved increased use of fertilizers and machinery.
24. Luciano Chimelli, "Prefazione all'edizione italiana" to Giovanni Schomerus, Il metodo di coltivazione biologico-dinamico (Pergine: Torgler, 1934), xx. Cf. Luciano Chimelli, Della lavorazione del tareno (Pergine: Torgler, 1941), and Chimelli, Del governo dei concimi organici (Trent: Edizioni Mutilati e Invalidi, 1942). Chimelli was an anthroposophist and the primary representative of biodynamic agriculture in Fascist Italy.
25. Aldo Pavari, "Die Wiederbewaldung des Appenins" Demeter, February 1940, 13-17; for a similar celebration of Fascist environmental policy see Gerhard Reinboth, "Die italienischen Urbarmachungen" Demeter, July 1940, 66-67.
26. For background on the Thule Society cf. Hermann Gilbhard, Die Thule- Gesellschaft: Vom okkulten Mummenschanz zum Hakenkreuz (Munich: Kiessling, 1994) and Detlev Rose, Die Thule-Gesellschaft: Legende, Mythos, Wirklichkeit (Tubingen: Grabert, 1994).
27. My characterization of Hess as a Steinerite was based in part on the extent to which he structured his personal dietary and health choices around anthroposophical beliefs and biodynamic practices. My current view is that Hess's occult interests were too diffuse to be specifically identified as anthroposophical, and that he is better seen as a sympathizer of anthroposophy and the major sponsor of anthroposophical activities during the Nazi era, but not as an anthroposophist himself.
28. Gangolf Hubinger, "Die monistische Bewegung" in Hubinger, Kultur und Kulturwissenschaften um 1900 vol. II (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 1997), 246-59. See also Frank Simon-Ritz, "Die freigeistige Bewegung im Kaiserreich" in Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, and Justus Ulbricht, eds., Handbuch zur 'Volkischen Bewegung' 1871-1918 (Munich: Saur, 1996), 208-23; Andreas Daum, Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert: Burgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Offentlichkeit, 1848-1914 (Munich: Oldenbourg. 1998); Matthias Pilger-Strohl, "Eine deutsche Religion' Die freireligiose Bewegung - Aspekte ihrer Beziehung zum volkischen Milieu" in Stefanie von Schnurbein and Justus Ulbricht, eds., Volkische Religion und Krisen der Moderne: Entwurfe "arteigener" Glaubenssysteme seit der Jahrhundertwende (Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 2001), 342-66.
29. Major studies include Burkhardt Riechers, "Nature Protection during National Socialism" Historical Social Research 21 (1996), 34-56; Karl Ditt, "The Perception and Conservation of Nature in the Third Reich" Planning Perspectives 15 (2001),161-87; Joachim Radkau and Frank Uekotter, eds., Naturschutz und Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt: Campus, 2003); Thomas Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity 1885-1945 (Harvard University Press, 2004); Franz- Josef Bruggemeier, Mark Cioc, and Thomas Zeller, eds., How Green were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (Ohio University Press, 2005); Frank Uekoetter, The Green and the Brown: A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2006); Willi Oberkrome, "Erhaltung und Gestaltung: Bemerkungen zu Theorie und Praxis des Naturschutzes im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland" in Hans-Werner Frohn and Friedemann Schmoll, eds., Natur und Staat: Staatlicher Naturschutz in Deutschland 1906-2006 (Bonn: Bundesamt fur Naturschutz, 2006), 315-41; Frank Uekotter, "Green Nazis? Reassessing the Environmental History of Nazi Germany" German Studies Review 30 (2007), 267-87. Balanced overviews of environmental endeavors in Nazi Germany can be found in David Blackbourn, "Race and Reclamation: National Socialism in Germany and Europe" in Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany (New York: Norton, 2006), 251-309; Joachim Radkau, Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 260-65, and William Markham, Environmental Organizations in Modern Germany (Oxford: Berghahn, 2008), 70-80.
30. See e.g. the editors' introduction to Bruggemeier, Cioc, and Zeller, eds., How Green were the Nazis, 15. For overviews of the recent historiography see David Motadel, "The German Nature Conservation Movement in the Twentieth Century" Journal of Contemporary History 43 (2008), 137-53; Deborah Coen, "The Greening of German History" Isis 99 (2008),142- 48; Marc Landry, "How Brown were the Conservationists? Naturism, Conservation, and National Socialism, 1900-1945" Contemporary European History 19 (20 I0),83-93; and the forum on "The Nature of German Environmental History" in German History 27 (2009), 113-30.
31. For thorough historical background see Andreas Knaut, Zuruck zur Natur! Die Wurzeln der Okologiebewegung (Bonn: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Naturschutz, 1993) and Jost Hermand, Old Dreams of a New Reich: Volkish Utopias and National Socialism (Indiana University Press, 1993). For recent research on the various cultural precursors I briefly examined see Thomas Vordermayer, "Die Rezeption Ernst Moritz Arndts in Deutschland" Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 58 (2010), 483-508; Andrea Zinnecker, Romantik, Rock und Kamisol: Volkskunde auf dem Weg ins Dritte Reich - Die Riehl-Rezeption (Munster: Waxmann, 1996); Sabine Weissler, Fokus Wandervogel: Der Wandervogel in seinen Beziehungen zu den Reformbewegungen vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Marburg: Jonas, 2001); Ulrich Herrmann, ed., "Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit": Der Wandervogel in der deutschen Jugendbewegung (Weinheim: Juventa, 2006).
32. An empirically detailed example is John Alexander Williams, Turning to Nature in Germany: Hiking, Nudism, and Conservation, 1900-1940 (Stanford University Press, 2007). Williams' approach is more complex than its reception would suggest; much of the book's argument is nuanced and perceptive. See also John Alexander Williams, "'The Chords of the German Soul are Tuned to Nature': The Movement to Preserve the Natural Heimat from the Kaiserreich to the Third Reich" Central European History 29 (1996), 339-84. Williams' book additionally contains important material on socialist variants of naturism in early twentieth century Germany, which along with anarchist and other radical approaches to environmental questions constitute a significant counterweight to the right-wing versions of 'turning to nature' examined here.
33. Dieter Buse, review of Williams, Turning to Nature in Germany, H-Net, March 16, 2009.
34. Edward Ross Dickinson, "Not So Scary After All? Reform in Imperial and Weimar Germany" Central European History 43 (2010), 162.
35. Cf. William Rollins, A Greener Vision of Home: Cultural Politics and Environmental Reform in the German Heimatschutz Movement, 1904-1918 (University of Michigan Press, 1997); Thomas Rohkramer, Eine andere Moderne? Zivilisationskritik, Natur und Technik in Deutschland 1880-1933 (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1999); Kevin Repp, Reformers, Critics, and the Paths of German Modernity: Anti-politics and the Search for Alternatives, 1890-1914 (Harvard University Press, 2000); Matthew Jefferies, "Lebensreform: A Middle-Class Antidote to Wilhelminism?" in Geoff Eley and James Retallack, eds., Wilhelminism and its Legacies: German Modernities, Imperialism, and the Meanings of Reform, 1890-1930 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2003), 91-106.
36. See Wolfgang Krabbe, "'Die Weltanschauung der Deutschen Lebensreformbewegung ist der Nationalsozialismus': Zur Gleichschaltung einer Alternativstromung im Dritten Reich" Archiv fur Kulturgeschichte 71 (1989), 431-61; Uwe Puschner, "Lebensreform und volkische Weltanschauung" in Kai Buchholz, ed., Die Lebensreform: Entwurfe zur Neugestaltung von Leben und Kunst um 1900 (Darmstadt: Hausser, 2001), 175-78; Ulrich Linse, "Volkisch-rassische Siedlungen der Lebensreform" in Puschner, Schmitz, and Ulbricht, eds., Handbuch zur 'Volkischen Bewegung', 397-410; Gangolf Hubinger, "Der Verlag Eugen Diederichs in Jena: Wissenschaftskritik, Lebensreform und volkische Bewegung" Geschichte und Gesellschaft 22 (1996), 31-45; Oliver Piecha, "Anmerkungen zum Verhaltnis zwischen Lebensreform und volkischem Fundamentalismus" in Sabine Kruse and Jurgen-Wolfgang Goette, eds., Von Ascona bis Eden: Alternative Lebensformen (Lubeck: Erich-Muhsam-Gesellschaft, 2006),118-58; Willi Oberkrome, "Stamm und Landschaft: Heimatlicher Tribalismus und die Projektionen einer 'volkischen Neuordnung' Deutschlands 1920-1950" in Wolfgang Hardtwig, ed., Ordnungen in der Krise: Zur politischen Kulturgeschichte Deutschlands 1900-1933 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007), 69-94; Wolfgang Krabbe, Gesellschaftsveranderung durch Lebensreform: Strukturmerkmale einer sozialreformerischen Bewegung im Deutschland der Industrialisierungsperiode (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974); Janos Frecot, "Die Lebensreformbewegung" in Klaus Vondung, ed., Das wilhelminische Bildungsburgertum: Zur Sozialgeschichte seiner Ideen (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976), 138-52; Eva Barlosius, Naturgemasse Lebensfuhrung: Zur Geschichte der Lebensreform um die Jahrhundertwende (Frankfurt: Campus, 1997); Janos Frecot, Johann Friedrich Geist, and Diethart Kerbs, Fidus, 1868 - 1948: Zur asthetischen Praxis burgerlicher Fluchtbewegungen (Hamburg: Rogner & Bernhard, 1997); Diethart Kerbs and Jurgen Reulecke, eds., Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen 1880-1933 (Wuppertal: Hammer, 1998); Bernd Wedemeyer, '''Zum Licht': Die Freikorperkultur in der Wilhelminischen Ara und der Weimarer Republik zwischen volkischer Bewegung, Okkultismus und Neuheidentum" Archiv fur Kulturgeschichte 81 (1999), 173-97; Uwe Puschner, Die volkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich: Sprache, Rasse, Religion (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001); Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe, "Der neue Mensch": Korperkultur im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik (Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 2004); Florentine Fritzen, Gesunder Leben: Die Lebensreformbewegung im 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006); Stefan Breuer, Die Volkischen in Deutschland: Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008).
37. For a variety of viewpoints see Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Marlin Heidegger (Columbia University Press, 1990), Tom Rockmore, On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy (University of California Press, 1992), Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life (Harper Collins, 1993), Hans Sluga, Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany (Harvard University Press, 1993), Bernd Martin, ed., Martin Heidegger und das 'Dritte Reich' (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989), Dieter Thoma, ed., Heidegger-Handbuch: Leben, Werk, Wirkung (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003), Bernhard Taureck, ed., Politische Unschuld? In Sachen Martin Heidegger (Munich: Fink, 2008). Curiously, the best that Heidegger's defenders seem to be able to say about the political value of his philosophy is that it is hypothetically commensurable with "a commitment to orthodox liberal democracy." (Julian Young, Heidegger, philosophy, Nazism, Cambridge University Press, 1997, 5) Perhaps this should be cause for reflection among Heidegger's admirers on the left. Some critics of Heidegger fall into the obverse error by viewing his rejection of liberalism as Heidegger's cardinal sin, philosophically and politically, and concluding that the indelible taint of Heideggerianism ruins the work of thinkers as diverse as Marcuse, Arendt, Sartre, Jonas, Lowith, and Levinas. What might help move the debate forward is a philosophically informed and politically radical critique of Heidegger's ideas as a specific instance of German right-wing thought, a critique that is satisfied neither with conformist liberalism nor with vacuous theoretical eclecticism.
38. Cf. Theodor Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity (Northwestern University Press, 1973), Pierre Bourdieu, The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger (Stanford University Press, 1991), Charles Bambach, Heidegger's Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks (Cornell University Press, 2003), Daniel Morat, Von der Tat zur Gelassenheit: Konservatives Denkell bei Martin Heidegger, Ernst Junger und Friedrich Georg Junger 1920-1960 (Gottingen: Wallstein, 2007).
39. Consider, for example, the contrasts between Robert Richards' work and Richard Weikart's work. Weikart, an intelligent design proponent, has produced historical scholarship which for all its flaws rightly points to the racist strands in Haeckel's thought, while Richards' otherwise impeccable scholarship badly misjudges this point, despite the fact that Richards' work is of much less dubious provenance than Weikart's; Richards' argument amounts to an apologia for and indeed denial of Haeckel's antisemitism and racism. Cf. Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (New York: Palgrave, 2004), Robert Richards, The Tragic Sense Of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2008), and Robert Richards, "Ernst Haeckel's Alleged Anti-Semitism and Contributions to Nazi Biology" Biological Theory 2 (2007), 97-103. For an earlier version of the apologetic approach to Haeckel see Alfred Kelly, The Descent of Darwin: The Popularization of Darwinism in Germany, 1860-1914 (University of North Carolina Press, 1981). More informative treatments of Haeckel's racial views can be found in Jurgen Sandmann, Der Bruch mit der humanitaren Tradition: die Biologisierung der Ethik bei Ernst Haeckel und anderen Darwinisten seiner Zeit (Stuttgart: Fischer, 1990), Uwe Hossfeld, Geschichte der biologischen Anthropologie in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005), 144-59, and John Haller, "The Species Problem: Nineteenth-Century Concepts of Racial Inferiority in the Origin of Man Controversy" American Anthropologist 72 (1970), 1319-29.
40. The second edition of Gasman's The Scientific Origins Of National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2004) reprints the original text unrevised but includes a substantial new introduction responding to criticisms. Gasman's other book, Haeckel's Monism and the Birth of Fascist Ideology (New York: Lang, 1998), contains a wealth of important information though its arguments are often highly overstated and oversimplified. As Roger Griffin notes, Haeckel's Monism "was just one of many totalizing cosmologies of decadence and rebirth which helped shape the cultural climate of the fin-de-siecle in which fascism's palingenetic fantasies first crystallized as a rudimentary political vision." (Griffin, "fascism" in Taylor, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, 643) For further context cf. Jackson and Weidman, Race, Racism, and Science, 85-88 and 120-25; Gunter Altner, "Der Sozialdarwinismus" in Altner, ed., Der Darwinismus: Die Geschichte einer Theorie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1981), 95-99; Paul Weindling, Health, Race, and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1989); Paul Crook, "Social Darwinism: The Concept" History of European Ideas 22 (1996), 261-74; Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American thought, 1860-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1997); Richard Evans, "In Search of German Social Darwinism: The History and Historiography of a Concept" in Manfred Berg and Geoffrey Cocks, eds., Medicine and Modernity: Public Health and Medical Care in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany (Cambridge University Press, 1997),55-79; Paul Weindling, "Dissecting German Social Darwinism: Historicizing the Biology of the Organic State" Science in Context II (1998), 619-37; Kurt Bayertz, "Darwinismus als Politik: Zur Genese des Sozialdarwinismus in Deutschland 1860-1900" in Erna Aescht, ed., Weltratsel und Lebenswunder: Ernst Haeckel - Werk, Wirkung und Folgen (Linz: Oberosterreichisches Landesmuseum, 1998), 229-88; Uwe Hossfeld, "Haeckelrezeption im Spannungsfeld von Monismus, Sozialdarwinismus und Nationalsozialismus" History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 21 (1999), 195-213; Peter Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea (University of California Press, 2003); Andre Pichot, The Pure Society: From Darwin to Hitler (Verso, 2009); Peter Bowler, "The Eclipse of Pseudo-Darwinism? Reflections on Some Recent Developments in Darwin Studies" History of Science 47 (2009), 431-43.
41 Some of the most insightful historians of the German right have raised significant reservations about a "culturalist approach" to understanding the heterogeneous assortment of right-wing groups and worldviews in the decades before 1933. I see the topic as a prime opportunity for integrating intellectual and institutional history. For a trenchant critique of several common frameworks see Geoff Eley, "Origins, Post-Conservatism, and the History of the Right" Central European History 43 (2010), 327- 39. A superb overview can be found in Stefan Breuer, Ordnungen der Ungleichheit - die deutsche Rechte im Widerstreit ihrer Ideen 1871-1945 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001). In addition to the studies cited above and in the original edition of Ecofascism, English-speaking readers interested in the broad cultural background may consult the following works: Detlev Peukert, "Nazi Germany and the pathologies and dislocations of modernity" in Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany (Yale University Press, 1987),243-49; Hermann Glaser, The Cultural Roots of National Socialism (University of Texas Press, 1978); Roderick Stackelberg, Idealism Debased: From volkisch Ideology to National Socialism (Kent State University Press, 1981); Gary Stark, Entrepreneurs of Ideology: Neoconservative Publishers in Germany, 1890-1933 (University of North Carolina Press, 1981); Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and tile Third Reich (Cambridge University Press, 1984); Martin Green, Mountain of Truth: The Counterculture Begins, Ascona, 1900-1920 (University Press of New England, 1986); Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism; The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935 (New York University Press, 1992); Anne Harrington, Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler (Princeton University Press, 1996); Colin Riordan, ed., Green Thought in German Culture: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (University of Wales Press, 1997); Michael Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890-1930 (University of Chicago Press, 2003); George Williamson, The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche (University of Chicago Press, 2004); Christof Mauch, ed., Nature in German History (Oxford: Berghahn, 2004); Thomas Lekan and Thomas Zeller, eds., Germany." Nature: New Approaches to Environmental History (Rutgers University Press, 2005).
42. See e.g. Thomas Rohkramer, "Bewahrung, Neugestaltung, Restauration? Konservative Raum- und Heimatvorstellungen in Deutschland 1900- 1933" in Hardtwig, ed., Ordnungen in der Krise, 66.
43. Hermand, Grune Utopien in Deutschland, 112-18. The term 'ecofascism', on the other hand, can be found in Murray Bookchin's work from the 1970s and was already current in the literature when the original edition of this book appeared, and had in fact been used a decade earlier by left environmentalists critical of the authoritarian and Malthusian strands in contemporary ecological politics; see the section titled "Ecofascism" in David Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism (Routledge, 1986), 204-13.
44. Robert Proctor, The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton University Press, 1999), 5.
45. On the status of animals in Nazi ideology and practice see the sophisticated study by Boria Sax, Animals in the Third Reich (Continuum, 2000). A judicious appraisal of Hitler's vegetarianism is available in Fritzen, Gesunder Leben, 227-29 and 219; see also 64-106 on the history of Lebensreform efforts between 1933 and 1945, particularly vegetarianism and natural healing methods. Nazi officials followed a similar course with vegetarian organizations as they did with other Lebensreform groups, co-opting some while suppressing others. Several vegetarian societies received official sanction in 1933 and 1934 and were incorporated into the Nazi Lebensreform apparatus; other vegetarian groups were either folded into the officially sanctioned ones or shut down. Nazi Lebensreform organs continued to promote vegetarianism into the late 1930s. On Nazi support for natural healing cf. Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Harvard University Press, 1988), 223-50; Walter Wuttke- Groneberg, "Nationalsozialistische Medizin: Volks- und Naturheilkunde auf 'neuen Wegen'" in Heinz Abholz, ed., Alternative Medizin (Berlin 1983), 27-50; Detlef Bothe, Neue Deutsche Heilkunde 1933-1945 (Husum 1991); Doris Kratz, Die Heilkunde in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik - Die 'angepasste' Medizin in der Zeit der NS-Diktatur (Berlin 2004); Daniela Angetter, "Alternativmedizin kontra Schulmedizin im Nationalsozialismus" in Judith Hahn, ed., Medizin im Nationalsozialismus und das System der Konzentrationslager (Frankfurt 2005); Uwe Heyll, Wasser, Fastell, Luft und Licht: Die Geschichte der Naturheilkunde in Deutschland (Frankfurt 2006), 229-69.
46. Thomas Zeller, "Molding the Landscape of Nazi Environmentalism: Alwin Seifert and the Third Reich" in Bruggemeier, Cioc, and Zeller, eds., How Green were the Nazis, 148. See also Zeller, "'Ganz Deutschland sein Garten': Alwin Seifert und die Landschaft des Nationalsozialismus" in Radkau and Uekotter, eds., Naturschutz und Nationalsozialismus, 273-307; Charlotte Reitsam, Das Konzept der 'bodenstandigen Gartenkunst' Alwin Seiferts (Frankfurt: Lang, 2001); Gert Groning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, Grune Biographien: Biographisches Handbuch, zur Landschaftsarchitektur des 20. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland (Berlin: Patzer, 1997), 361-63; Franz Seidler, Fritz Todt: Baumeister des Dritten Reiches (Berlin: Herbig, 1986), 116-20, 279-85; Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, "Biodynamischer Gartenbau, Landschaftsarchitcktur und Nationalsozialismus" Das Gartenamt, September 1993, 590-95, and October 1993, 638-42; Willi Oberkrome, Deutsche Heimat: Nationale Konzeption und regionale Praxis von Naturschutz, Landschaftsgestaltung und Kulturpolitik in Westfalen-Lippe und Thuringen (1900-1960) (Paderborn: Schoningh, 2004).
47. Compare Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, "Political Landscapes and Technology: Nazi Germany and the Landscape Design of the Reichsautobahnen" CELA Annual Conference Papers 1995; William Rollins, "Whose Landscape? Technology, Fascism, and Environmentalism on the National Socialist Autobahn" Annals of the Association of American Geographers 85 (1995), 494-520; Dietmar Klenke, ''Autobahnbau und Naturschutz in Deutschland: Eine Liaison von Nationalpolitik, Landschaftspflege und Motorisierungsvision bis zur okologischen Wende der siebziger Jahre" in Matthias Frese and Michael Prinz, eds., Politische Zasuren und gesellschaftlicher Wandel im 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1996),465-98; Jochen Zimmer, "Politische Landschaften: Reichsautobahnbau und Autobahnmalerei" in Christof Stracke, ed., Soziologie als Krisenwissenschaft (Munster: Lit, 1998), 206-19; Erhard Schutz, Mythos Reichsautobahn: Bau und Inszenierung der Strassen des Fuhrers 1933-1941 (Berlin: Links, 2000); Thomas Zeller, Driving Germany: The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930-1970 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007); Charlotte Reitsam, Reichsautobahn-Landschaften im Spannungsfeld von Natur und Technik (Saarbrucken: Muller, 2009).
48. In a July 11, 1949 letter to the appeals court, Seifert claimed that he had been "unwillingly" made a member of the NSDAP, and his lawyer wrote on June 28, 1950 that Hess had enlisted Seifert in the party "without his knowledge." Both letters are in Seifert's file at the Staatsarchiv Munchen, Spruchkammerakte Ka. 1511. Documents from the Nazi era disprove these claims. On his December 18, 1940 application to the Reichsschrifttumskammer, for example, Seifert stated plainly that he was an NSDAP member; see Bundesarchiv Berlin (hereafter BA), RK/BI85: 2300. Hess's letters to Seifert address him as "Lieber Parteigenosse Seifert," e.g. Rudolf Hess to Alwin Seifert, November 14, 1938, BA R58/6223/1: 318; see also Seifert to Hess, May 10, 1937, Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, Munich, ED 32/422/1952: 101. For context on Seifert's party membership see Reitsam, Das Konzept der 'bodenstandigen Gartenkunst' Alwin Seiferts, 21, 25- 26.
49. See the April 4, 1944 letter from the Organisation Todt to Seifert designating him an Einsatzleiter ("erster Generalsrang"), Staatsarchiv Munchen, Spruchkammerakte Ka. 1511. At his de-Nazification trial Seifert claimed that the promotion, granted to facilitate his work in German-occupied Italy, was reversed by higher authorities.
50. In addition to the texts cited in my chapter on the 'green wing: examples include Alwin Seifert,"Natur als harmonisches Ganzes" Leib und Leben, May 1937, 115-17; Seifert, "Von der Muttererde" Der Schulungsbrief: Das zentrale Monatsblatt der NSDAP, November 1938, 373-77; Seifert, "Die Zukunft der ostdeutschen Landschaft" Die Strasse, December 1939, 633- 36; Seifert, "Die lebensgesetzliche Landbauweise" Die Strasse, August 1940, 350; Seifert, "Die Wiedergeburt landschaftsgebundenen Bauens" Die Strasse, September 1941, 286-89; Seifert, "Uber naturnahen Gartenbau" Leib und Leben, August 1942, 67-69. For a detailed sense of Seifert's dual commitment to National Socialism and to organic agriculture see his May 1941 manifesto "Die bauerlich-unabhangige Landbauweise," Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter BAK), N1094/II/1.