Why read The Green and the Brown?

Book cover of The Green and the Brown: A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany

Book description

This study provides the first comprehensive discussion of conservation in Nazi Germany. Looking at Germany in an international context, it analyses the roots of conservation in the late nineteenth century, the gradual adaptation of racist and nationalist thinking among conservationists in the 1920s and their indifference to the Weimar Republic.…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Green and the Brown as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Judith Sumner

Author

Conservation was an offshoot of the Blut und Boden (blood and soil) ideology of the Third Reich, in which Aryan families were linked to the land through a hereditary right and the promotion of rural values.

Native plants and countryside habitats were considered superior and worthy of preservation, and conservation evolved from its 19th-century origins to nationalist thinking in the 1930s. I was particularly intrigued by the Dauerwald (continuous forest), a set of forestry practices in which clear-cutting was replaced by selective cutting, keeping habitats and plant populations intact.

The growing demand for wood in the wartime economy required conservation,…

From Judith's list on natural environmental science Nazi Germany.