There once was a man who was ahead of his time in his concern for the environment, animal-rights, and human health. He was a pioneer in the Gun-Control movement, implemented the world's first "animal-rights" laws, and established restrictions on the commercial exploitation of wilderness.
He has been described as follows:
"If he did not like cats, it was only because they ate birds.
"He could not bear to eat meat, since it meant the death of a living creature. He refused to have so much as a rabbit or a trout sacrificed to provide his food. He would allow only eggs on his table, because egg laying meant that the hen had been spared rather than killed...
"He drank only water. He did not smoke and would not tolerate smoking in his presence..." (1)
Sounds like a perfectly reasonable, politically-correct New Age Man of the present day and age, does it not? An environmentalist -- animal-rightist -- vegetarian -- health-conscience person, who was deeply caring, and concerned for the life of "Mother Earth" and Her creatures?
This enlightened human was none other than: Adolph Hitler
Hitler was passionate in his desire to stamp out smoking. "To Hitler, smoking was decadent; not smoking was a step on the road to racial superiority." In what may presage the type of society some in America would like to see, Hitler Youth were given the task of conducting anti-smoking patrols throughout Germany, and smoking was strictly forbidden to them.
"But tobacco remained the focus of the anti-cancer drives. In the state of Thüringen, of which Jena is a part, a ban was placed on smoking on trams and in many public places. Policemen were forbidden from lighting up while on duty and pregnant women were not allowed to smoke at all.
"A telegram from Hitler to State heads reads: "I congratulate those working to free humanity from one of its most dangerous poisons."
As for ecology, the historian Robert Pois, in National Socialism and the Religion of Nature, sums up the Nazi view of nature as primeval teutonic nature mysticism, pseudo-scientific ecology, irrationalist anti-humanism, and a mythology of racial salvation through a return to the land.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote: "When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of nature, they come into conflict with the very same principles to which they owe their existence as human beings. Their actions against nature must lead to their own downfall."
Peter Staudenmaier, in an essay titled Fascist Ecology: The "Green Wing" of the Nazi Party, describes both Hitler and Himmler as "...strict vegetarians and animal lovers, attracted to nature mysticism and homeopathic cures, and staunchly opposed to vivisection and cruelty to animals. Himmler even established experimental organic farms to grow herbs for SS medicinal purposes. And Hitler, at times, could sound like a veritable Green utopian, discussing authoritatively and in detail various renewable energy sources (including environmentally appropriate hydropower and producing natural gas from sludge) as alternatives to coal, and declaring 'water, winds and tides' as the energy path of the future."
When the Nazi Party came into power in 1933, one of its priorities was to implement its "progressive" environmental policies... The Reichsnaturschutzgesetz of 1935 established laws every modern environmentalist would be proud of... restrictions on the commercial exploitation of wilderness, reforestation programs, protection of animals, plants, and "natural monuments", and the world's first "animal rights" laws. The Nazi agricultural minister from 1933 to 1942 was Walther Darré, who implemented a massive campaign for organic farming. Darré was a rabid racist who described the Jews as "weeds".
The Nazi concept of "Lebensraum" was established as a way to move German society back to a simple, agrarian society. Darré wrote: "The concept of Blood and Soil gives us the moral right to take back as much land in the East as is necessary to establish a harmony between the body of our Volk and the geopolitical space."
Hitler, who loved nature but despised humanity, devised means to decrease the population of the Earth, and attempted to wipe out whole groups of people, such as the Jews and gypsies... who in the Nazi view were "weeds" to be eradicated. Try as he would, however, he could not come CLOSE to the goals of population decrease described by the environmentalists of today, such as Jacques Costeau, who believed we had to "do-away-with" at least 350,000 humans a day to deliver the Earth from their terrible burden.
Another leader of the "Deep Ecology" movement, David Foreman, who was one of the original founders of Earth First!, believes that nature is always right, and should allowed to take its course. In 1987, while Ethiopians were starving to death, he was quoted as saying, "The worst thing we could do in Ethiopia is to give aid [to the starving children] -- the best thing would be to just let nature seek its own balance, to let people there just starve."
He was also quoted as saying, "We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity's sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight."
Before the Islamic attacks on the World Trade Center, after hundreds of attacks by eco-terrorists, the FBI considered eco-terrorism to be the greatest domestic terror threat facing America. There is little difference, however, since the environmental movement, the Left, and Islam have many things in common, have many ties to each other, and are all working to destroy Western Civilization.
Prince Phillip of England: "If I could be reincarnated, I would return as a killer virus to lower human population levels."
Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalogue: "We have wished, we eco-freaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into the Stone Age."
Earth First! Newsletter: "If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS."
Dr. Van den Bosch, University of California, expressed his lack of concern for "all those little brown people in poor countries" who might be saved from disease if DDT was used.
David Graber, biologist, National Park Service: "Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planet: Some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along."
Charles Wurster, chief scientist, Environmental Defense Fund: "There are too many people and [banning DDT] is as good a way to get rid of them as any."
Dr. Paul Taylor, professor of philosophy, City College of New York: "Given the total, absolute, and final disappearance of Homo Sapiens not only would the Earth's Community of Life continue to exist but the ending of the human epoch on Earth would be greeted with a hearty 'good riddance.'"
(1) Description by his personal friend, Belgian General Leon Degrelle. From HITLER, DEMOCRAT, Chapter One, The Enigma of Hitler.