Animal welfare in Nazi Germany
There was widespread support for animal welfare in Nazi Germany[1] (German: Tierschutz im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland) among the country's leadership.
[5] In his private diaries, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels described Hitler as a vegetarian who was contemptuous of Judaism and Christianity for the ethical distinction they drew between the value of humans and the value of animals;[6][5] Goebbels also mentions that Hitler planned to discourage slaughterhouses in the German Reich following the conclusion of World War II.
On April 21, 1933, almost immediately after the Nazis came to power, the parliament began to pass laws for the regulation of animal slaughter.
[14][15] This law listed many prohibitions against the use of animals, including their use for filmmaking and other public events causing pain or damage to health,[16] feeding fowls forcefully and tearing out the thighs of living frogs.
[17] The two principals (Ministerialräte) of the German Ministry of the Interior, Clemens Giese and Waldemar Kahler, who were responsible for drafting the legislative text,[15] wrote in their juridical comment from 1939, that by the law the animal was to be "protected for itself" ("um seiner selbst willen geschützt"), and made "an object of protection going far beyond the hitherto existing law" ("Objekt eines weit über die bisherigen Bestimmungen hinausgehenden Schutzes").
[18] On February 23, 1934, a decree was enacted by the Prussian Ministry of Commerce and Employment which introduced education on animal protection laws at primary, secondary and college levels.
[20] On June 28, 1935, Nazi Germany enacted legislation that created a separate category in Paragraph 175 for "fornication with animals" and penalized with up to five years in prison.
The Nazi government implemented policies to achieve "nutritional freedom" by discouraging the population's consumption of certain foods.
[22] A law imposing total ban on vivisection was enacted on August 1933, by Hermann Göring as the prime minister of Prussia.
[24] However, the law was revised by a decree 3 weeks later on September 1933, with more lax provisions, allowing the Reich Interior Ministry to distribute permits to some universities and research institutes to conduct animal experiments under conditions of anesthesia and scientific need.
Cancer research during the Nazi regime was very advanced, and many studies on the harm of smoking were conducted in Germany during this period.
[31] In 1939, the SS doctor, Sigmund Rascher, performed a series of experiments on animals with the direct cooperation of Himmler.
These animals vomited, excreted feces uncontrollably, lost control of their body movements, and convulsed until they died.
In one of the scenes in the film, German researchers (who are trying to find a cure for multiple sclerosis) conduct experiments on mice in an attempt to infect them with the disease.
When one of the lab mice drags its hind leg, one of the researchers calls out to his colleagues excitedly, expressing joy at having succeeded in paralyzing the mouse.
[38] On June 12, 1944, the head of the Military Academy of Medicine in Berlin, the virologist, Eugen Haagen sent a letter to Brigadier General Walter Schreiber in which he complained that his laboratory mice were running out and asked for a new supply: "May I ask you to endeavor to secure for me several thousand mice of both sexes, preferably only young animals.
[43] A non-exhaustive list of hunters among notable Nazis includes: Among Hitler's cabinet ministers: Hermann Göring,[44] Heinrich Himmler,[45][46][47] Joachim von Ribbentrop,[45] Wilhelm Keitel,[48] Hans Frank;[49][50] Among Gauleiters and other senior Nazi politicians: Arthur Greiser,[51] Erich Koch,[46][47] Karl Kaufmann,[43][47] Max Amann;[52] Among SS and Waffen-SS generals: Reinhard Heydrich,[53][54] Oswald Pohl,[55][47] Odilo Globocnik,[47] Gottlob Berger,[56][47] Sepp Dietrich,[57] Werner Lorenz,[58] Karl Wolff,[45][47] Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski,[47] Otto Rasch;[59] Among top army commanders: Erwin Rommel,[60] Heinz Guderian,[61][62] Eduard Dietl,[63] Adolf Galland;[64] Among the Nazi staff in Auschwitz: Rudolf Höss,[65] Richard Baer,[66][67] Eduard Wirths,[68] Horst Schumann,[69] Victor Capesius.
[73] In this capacity he produced and financed an international hunting exhibition in Berlin in 1937, which Hitler visited on November 6 that year.
[76] In the Buchenwald concentration camp, the Nazis established a falconry park and a hunting hall in honor of Göring.
There was a game reserve in the place where elk, donkeys, wild boars, mouflon sheep, pheasants, foxes and other animals were kept.
[15] According to an article published in Kaltio, one of the main Finnish cultural magazines, Nazi Germany was the first state in the world to place the wolf under protection.
[43] On July 21, 1941, the SS officer and member of the Einsatzkommando, Felix Landau, noted in his diary: "The men got a day off, and some of them went hunting.
[87] Hitler even claimed in 1942 that the whaling industry could provide more products to the German economy, and that it was important to continue developing it.
[88] As part of the war effort, Nazi Germany made use of horses, donkeys, mules, oxen and dogs.
[98][99] This massacre, which violated the laws for the protection of animals and was also not necessary from a military point of view, was an expression of the scorched earth policy introduced by the Nazi regime.
[92] The RAF parachuted baskets with 20,000 pigeons in German occupied countries for the purpose of transmitting information back to Britain.
[102] At the beginning During WW2 the Zoos and traveling menageries in Germany received orders to shoot all the beasts of prey in them, probably as an air-raid precaution and as part of the austerity measure the war necessitates.
[104][106] Even before the outbreak of World War II, at the time of the pogroms of Kristallnacht in 1938, the Nazi mob had abused not only the Jews but also their pets.
[107] More formally, on May 15, 1942, the Nazis issued an order instructing all Jews to bring all their pets to collection points where they will be euthanized.
However these organizations, such as the 100,000-member strong Friends of Nature, were disbanded because they advocated political ideologies that were illegal under Nazi law.
