The Bloodless Revolution
Page 56
The old vegetarian argument against wastefully feeding grains to animals became increasingly important to the Nazis as they careered towards the food shortages of the Second World War. Hitler is said to have complained that thirty-seven per cent of German land was wastefully taken up by pasturage, ‘So it’s not man who eats grass, it’s his cattle’; potatoes, on the other hand – the staple of the German diet – occupied only one per cent: ‘If it was three per cent,’ Hitler claimed, ‘we’d have more to eat than is needed.’ Göring accordingly published a vigorously blunt ordinance declaring that farmers who wasted their grain by feeding it to beef-cattle were ‘traitors’. Franz Wirz, a member of the Nazi Committee on Public Health, similarly complained that it took about 90,000 calories of grain to produce just 9,300 calories of pork (thus wasting nearly nine-tenths of agricultural produce). Land currently used to grow grains for livestock, he insisted, should be converted to growing horticultural products for people.56
Vegetarianism once again rose to prominence in war time as it had in seventeenth-century England and in revolutionary France. In the face of food shortages, meat-eating was stigmatised as an unpatriotic indulgence and an inefficient use of resources. Malthus had predicted that populations would outstrip food supplies and that increasing agricultural output was the only way of feeding more people. Failing that, he warned, there would be famine or war until populations fell back to a sustainable level. To what extent were the Nazis – whose social theories were drenched in Malthusian rhetoric – fulfilling Malthus’ theories? Gandhi, meanwhile, was developing the arguments of Malthus’ vegetarian opponents who called for vegetarianism as a way of avoiding the grim prospect of war. But – as Malthus warned – were the Indians thereby nurturing a growing population unprotected by the buffer of the luxury of meat, and therefore vulnerable to famine? Both Malthus and his vegetarian opponents had always recognised that subsisting on arable produce could increase the carrying capacity of a nation’s land. Gandhi and Hitler, it seems, had come to occupy this common ground.
If it seems relatively easy to accept that health promotion and urgent food production were part of the Nazis’ Fascist regime, it may be harder to comprehend that Nazi Germany was the site of the strictest animal protection laws then in existence. The state that conducted unspeakable experiments on living humans before sending them in their millions to the gas chambers simultaneously protected animals from vivisection. The Nazis even promulgated instructions on the humane slaughter of fish and crustaceans which today are still unprotected by legislation. It was Hermann Göring (a keen but environmentally sensitive hunter) who ushered in the animal protection laws. But other Nazis were just as passionate about keeping animals from harm. Himmler allegedly detested the very idea of ‘shooting from behind cover at poor creatures browsing on the edge of a wood, innocent, defenceless, and unsuspecting’, and he called it ‘pure murder’. Hitler himself renownedly loved animals; he was said to believe that they were intelligent, perhaps even capable of language, and he developed intense relationships with his dogs, notably Blondi. After he and Eva Braun ate their final vegetarian meal of spaghetti and tomato sauce in 1945 before killing themselves in their bunker, Hitler saved Blondi from living in a non-Nazi world by feeding it a trial dose of cyanide. (Ironically, the Russian forensics examining Hitler’s charred remains claimed that it was his yellowed teeth, ‘typical of a vegetarian’, that gave them the clue that the body they were examining was his.)57
Hitler as friend of animals: Nazi propaganda material
Hitler’s concern for animal welfare has probably been exaggerated to emphasise the paradox of his appalling policies. Contemporaries were aware of the inconsistencies; one French vegetarian cookbook found in Hitler’s library, for example, was ironically dedicated to ‘Monsieur Hitler, the vegetarian, and thus the man of peace’.58 But the disturbing fact remains that sentimental relations to animals are by no means incompatible with cruelty towards humans; indeed, they are frequently seen to coincide in misanthropic individuals who fail to incorporate satisfactorily into human society, and turn to animals for more compliant social interactions. Recent scholars have pointed out that the Nazis’ animal protection laws reveal a distinctly xenophobic emphasis, for example in banning kosher and halal methods of slaughter. When writing about Hitler’s vegetarianism, Goebbels noted that Hitler was ‘anti-Christian as well as anti-Jewish’ because ‘Both have no point of contact to the animal element, and thus, in the end, they will be destroyed.’ Nazi biology textbooks taught that ‘there exist no physical or psychological characteristics which would justify a differentiation of mankind from the animal world.’ The Reichsmarschall in 1933 threatened to commit to concentration camps ‘those who still think they can treat animals as inanimate property’.59
Anthropocentrism had long been associated with the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The Nazis’ animal protection legislation, their vegetarianism and the persecution of the Jews were all elements of one common Fascist front, centring on the purification of the human ecological system from what they perceived as ‘unnatural’ corruptions. In Table Talk, Hitler is alleged to have claimed – almost like Percy Shelley – that ugly organisms like toads were unnatural corruptions of nature (created when frogs ate unsuitable food). It was his planned global dietary revolution that would bring nature back to its pristine purity.60 This aspect of Hitler’s vegetarianism has often been traced (with limited evidence) to the influence of his ideological hero, the opera composer Richard Wagner (1813–83) who, like Shelley and Gandhi and even apparently Hitler, seemed to think that carnivores themselves were ‘unnatural’ or at least undesirable members of the ecosystem.61 Wagner wrote in 1881 that returning to the natural vegetarian diet would help to purify humanity from the corruptions brought on by meat-eating and racial mixing and protect against Jewish aggression: ‘true and hearty fellowship with the vegetarians, the protectors of animals, and the friends of temperance’ was the only hope for humanity. ‘I feel less fellow-suffering for people than for animals,’ wrote Wagner, explaining that animals had no way of rising above their suffering as humans did. Hitler may have absorbed such views from Wagner; certainly the drive for Fascistic purification was a shared principle.62
The association of Judaism and anthropocentrism to bolster Fascist political fulminations has survived into the present day. There are still supporters of the Greek Fascist, Maximiani Portas alias Savitri-Devi (dubbed ‘Hitler’s Priestess’ by the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke). Savitri-Devi emigrated to India during the Second World War and tried to get Hitler to join forces with his ‘Aryan’ counterparts among high-caste Hindus. Her books – printed by a publisher involved in Holocaust denial and reissued as recently as 1991 – cobbled together an attack on Judaeo-Christian anthropocentrism with brutal Social Darwinism, based on the mandate that ‘You cannot “de-nazify” Nature.’ Hindu scriptures, according to Savitri-Devi, reveal that humans have no special place in the natural world and thus there is no contradiction in eliminating non-Aryan humans while cherishing animals. She laments that ancient forests have been destroyed to build roads, cities and to grow food for ‘more and more people who might as well never have been born’. She preferred the idea of wiping out humanity to seeing nature utterly destroyed.63 It was precisely the idea that humans were part of the animal world, and thus inexorably caught up in the fight for ecological supremacy, that rationalised, within the Fascists’ minds, some of their greatest atrocities.
Thus the Nazis – who occasionally cited the Indians to bolster their vegetarian arguments – fall in line with numerous other figures in the history of vegetarianism’s assault on Judaeo-Christian anthropocentrism. They took previously constructive ideas to extremes that are hardly imaginable in their ferocity. Understandably, vegetarians have often found the association with Hitler uncomfortable. It has been argued that Hitler did sometimes eat meat and that the image of him as a celibate, ascetic leader was a cynical invention of his press officials.64 (Ironically, this im
age of a leader whose austerities liberated his mind and body for the unbridled execution of patriotic duties, may have been inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, books on whom appear in Hitler’s library.65) Of course, that Hitler was a vegetarian need be no more relevant to a vegetarian than the fact that other Nazis were meat-eaters is relevant to meat-eaters. Although vegetarianism was an integral part of Hitler’s Fascist ideology, this does not imply that vegetarianism has anything intrinsically Fascist about it.
With such precedents in the history of both vegetarianism and ecology, the modern debate has become a minefield hemmed in by a Scylla on the Right and Charybdis on the Left. A thoroughly considered view, however, reveals that both vegetarianism and ecology had long histories before they were appropriated by either the Nazis or their ideological opponents. Disputing people’s perceptions and treatment of the natural world has been one of the most pervasive lines of cultural production in human history. The idea of vegetarianism has played a significant role in this for centuries; it cannot be tied down to any one political viewpoint. European vegetarians challenged humanity’s reckless exploitation of the animal kingdom. We owe to them – and especially the Indian philosophies that backed them up – some of the environmental sensibilities we enjoy today.
Arguments that rage now still follow many of the traditional lines. Among the prominent animal liberationists, Professor Peter Singer is a direct intellectual descendant of the Utilitarians, and like them objects to causing unnecessary suffering. He includes animal sensations in the sum of the greater common good, but in contrast to most of his Utilitarian forebears who justified meat-eating, he calculates that it is unjustifiable for humans to kill animals for food.66 Ecologists, whose views often clash with animal liberationists, are more difficult to define, partly because the term can be used to describe scientists who study ecosystems, political theorists who think human society should follow ecological laws, or people who simply attribute intrinsic value to ecologies. These last, often termed Deep Ecologists or biocentrists, have been perhaps most maligned, to the extent that it has become common to associate them with Fascism – an association no more necessary than vegetarianism and Nazism.
Ecologists – like myself – argue that Singer’s election of sentience as the criterion for moral considerability is an extension (rather than obliteration) of the old anthropocentric speciesism which attributes moral worth to entities according to how similar they are to ‘us’. Surely the only hope (and that a slim one) is to realise that all organisms are bound up in a web of mutual dependence; that regardless of the human attribution of ‘rights’ or ‘moral worth’, ecologies must be sustained if we – and any of the other elements of the biosphere – are to avoid severe hardship, or worse. This becomes an important issue when methods of acquiring food are at stake, and it is by no means clear that the prescriptions of animal liberationists of imposing universal vegetarianism would be either the most ecologically sensible or even the best way of reducing animal suffering. There are ecologically sustainable ways of procuring meat for human sustenance – not least the regulated culling of wild animals – which even from the animal welfare perspective causes less harm to animals than arable cultivation. Furthermore, there are vast tracts of the earth where properly managed grazing of domestic animals is the only way of symbiotically sustaining the lives of both the animals and the humans who depend upon them.
In any case, the principal argument against eating meat must surely be the one that unites both the animal welfare and ecological perspectives – as well as that of human self-interest. The world’s remaining forests are currently being destroyed to make way for grazing and for the cultivation of soya beans. The bulk of these nutritious pulses are used to feed animals which end up on the dinner plates of the affluent West and, increasingly, China. This ecological devastation – coupled with the vast resource-use the meat industry engenders – threatens not just ecosystems and local people whose lives depend on the sustainable use of their land, but the whole of humankind. The equation is simple: if we ate less unsustainably produced meat we would destroy fewer forests, use less water, emit fewer greenhouse gases and conserve the world’s resources for future generations.67 Insofar as it is desirable to avoid serious problems for both the natural environment and our own food security, there are compelling reasons, at the very least, to reduce our consumption of meat.
* * *
*Vegetarian boarding houses established by Sylvester Graham.
†North American Indians.
ABBREVIATIONS
Reference Works
OED: Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition) on CD-ROM, Version 2.0 (1999),
Oxford University Press, Oxford
ODNB: Matthew, H.C.G. and Harrison, Brian, eds (2004), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols, Oxford University Press, Oxford
DNB: Stephen, Leslie and Lee, Sidney, eds (1885–1900), Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford University Press, Oxford
ESTC: English Short Title Catalogue, The British Library, London
Serials and Journals
CR = The Critical Review or Annals of Literature, A. Hamilton, London
GM = The Gentleman’s Magazine; or, Monthly Intelligencer (1731–1914), London
EM = The European Magazine and London Review vols 11–9 (1787–1791), J. Sewell, London
PT = Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
PA = A Perfect Account of The Daily Intelligence, [London]
WIC = The Weekly Intelligencer of the Common-Wealth, [London]
MF = Mercurius Fumigosus, or the Smoking Nocturnall, Communicating Dark and
Hidden Newes, [London]
MPC = Madras Public Consultations
ANF = Roberts. A. and Donaldson, J., eds (1885–6), Ante-Nicene Fathers, American Edition, New York
NPNF1 = Schaff. P., ed. (1887–92), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st Series, 14 vols, American Edition, New York
NPNF2 = Schaff. P. and Wace, H., eds (1890–1900), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers,
2nd Series, 14 Vols, American Edition, New York
Newton Manuscripts and Library
Keynes = Newton Manuscripts in the Keynes collection, King’s College Library, Cambridge, UK
Yahuda = Newton Manuscripts in the Yahuda Collection, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem, Israel
Tr/NQ = Books in Newton’s personal library held in Trinity College, Cambridge, UK
(d) = the cited page is folded down, showing that Newton read and marked it
(d2) = the cited page is folded at the bottom
(ds) or (d2s) = a crease on the page suggesting the page was once folded over
Dating Systems
n.s. = the year according to the New (Gregorian) System of dating (Britain and British colonies changed to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, thus shifting the beginning of the ‘legal’ year from 25March to 1 January)
o.s. = Old System
The Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy
Spy, I–VIII = [Marana, Giovanni P. (et al.?)] (1691), The First Volume of Letters Writ
by a Turkish Spy, 2nd edn, H. Rhodes, London
Anon. (1692), The Second Volume of Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, 3rd edn,
H. Rhodes, London
Anon. (1692), The Third Volume of Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, 2nd edn,
H. Rhodes, London
Anon. (1692), The Fourth Volume of Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy,
H. Rhodes, London
Anon. (1692), The Fifth Volume of Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy,
H. Rhodes, London
Anon. (1694), The Sixth Volume of Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy,
J. Hindmarsh, London
Anon. (1694), The Seventh Volume of Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy,
H. Rhodes, London
Anon. (1694), The Eighth and Last Volume of Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy,
J. Hindmarsh, London
Works by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Unless otherwise stated, Shelley’s poems are quoted from Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poetical Works, ed. T. Hutchinson and G.M. Matthews (Oxford, 1971)
QM = ‘Queen Mab’
PU = ‘Prometheus Unbound’
Mg = ‘Mazenghi’ or ‘Marenghi’
DW = ‘The Daemon of the World’
Other works by Shelley quoted from Percy Bysshe Shelley (1926–30), The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, eds. Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck, 10 vols (London and New York, 1926–30)
RI = ‘The Revolt of Islam’, later called ‘Laon and Cythna’
V.Sys = ‘Of the Vegetable System of Diet’ (in vol. VI)
Vind = ‘A Vindication of Natural Diet’ (in vol. VI), originally published (1813) by
J.Callow, et al., London
Libraries and Archives
BL = British Library, London
OIOC = Oriental and India Office Collections, in the British Library, London
NLS = National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh
CUL = Cambridge University Library
NRA = National Register of Archives
Transcription conventions
All quotations are in the spelling of the original work quoted, except that the use of i/j and u/v has been modernised; the old long s has been altered to ‘s’; contractions have been silently expanded where necessary; inserted emendations in manuscripts have been enclosed thus, > <; clarifications and authorial comments have been placed inside square brackets.