One of the great oddities of Hitler’s very odd character is the oft recited puzzle – how was a man capable of killing millions of people also an anti-vivisectionist vegetarian?
In a November, 1938 article for the magazine Homes & Gardens describing Hitler’s mountain home, The Berghof, Ignatius Phayrethe wrote, “A life-long vegetarian at table, Hitler’s kitchen plots are both varied and heavy in produce. Even in his meatless diet Hitler is something of a gourmet — as Sir John Simon and Anthony Eden were surprised to note when they dined with him in the Chancellery at Berlin. His Bavarian chef…contrives an imposing array of vegetarian dishes, savoury and rich, pleasing to the eye as well as to the palate, and all conforming to the dietic standards which Hitler exacts.”
According to transcripts dated November 11, 1941, Hitler said, “One may regret living at a period when it’s impossible to form an idea of the shape the world of the future will assume. But there’s one thing I can predict to eaters of meat: the world of the future will be vegetarian.”
In a diary entry dated April 26, 1942, Joseph Goebbels described Hitler as a committed vegetarian, writing,
“An extended chapter of our talk was devoted by the Führer to the vegetarian question. He believes more than ever that meat-eating is harmful to humanity. Of course he knows that during the war we cannot completely upset our food system. After the war, however, he intends to tackle this problem also.”
People familiar with Hitler’s diet indicate that he ate meat prior to the Second World War but adopted a vegetarian diet some time in the late 1930s or early 1940s. Dione Lucas, his cook before the war, claimed that he would eat stuffed pigeon, Bavarian sausages and sliced ham. His food taster during the war stated that all the food she tested for Hitler was vegetarian, and that she recalled no meat or fish. Traudl Junge, who became Hitler’s secretary in 1942, reported that he “always avoided meat” but that his Austrian cook Kruemel sometimes added a little animal broth or fat to his meals. “Mostly the Fuehrer would notice the attempt at deception, would get very annoyed and then get tummy ache,” Junge said. “At the end he would only let Kruemel cook him clear soup and mashed potato.” In addition, Marlene von Exner who became Hitler’s dietician in 1943, reportedly added bone marrow to his soups without his knowledge because she “despised” his vegetarian diet.
“Don’t worry – he’s a vegetarian” – John Heartfield 1936
What is certain is that under Hitler and the Nazis, a raft of animal-protection laws were passed in Germany that were far in advance of other developed countries of the time. In 1934, a national hunting law known as Das Reichsjagdgesetz, the Reich Hunting Law, was passed in Germany to regulate how many animals could be killed per year, and to establish proper ‘hunting seasons’. The Reichstag also footed the bill for education on animal conservation at Primary, Secondary and College levels. Additionally, in 1935, another law was passed, the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz (Reich Nature Protection Act). This law placed several native species on a protection list including the wolf and Eurasian lynx. Additions were added later for forestry and the humane slaughter of living fish. Nazi Germany was also the first country to ban vivisection, enacting a total ban in April 1933. (Ironic considering the later grisly work of Dr. Mengele)
Biographer Robert Payne, in his biography of Hitler, The Life and Death of Adolph Hitler theorizes that whilst Hitler had his own personal reasons for being a vegetarian, the image of Hitler as a vegetarian ascetic was deliberately fostered by propaganda minster Joseph Goebbels, who released quotes such as this into the public realm:
“Do you know that your Führer is a vegetarian, and that he does not eat meat because of his general attitude toward life and his love for the world of animals? Do you know that your Führer is an exemplary friend of animals, and even as a chancellor, he is not separated from the animals he has kept for years?…The Führer is an ardent opponent of any torture of animals, in particular vivisection, and has declared to terminate those conditions…thus fulfilling his role as the savior of animals, from continuous and nameless torments and pain.”
There is a move amongst some current vegetarians to attempt to prove that Hitler was not a ‘true’ vegetarian – most prominent of these activists is Rynn Berry, who has written a book on the subject – Hitler: Neither Vegetarian nor Animal Lover.
Well, when I finally finish my great tome ‘Men Who Shaped the 20th Century’, Adolf will still feature near the top, but if you put the asceticism and mortification of the flesh to one side, he seems to share a characteristic with many veggies that I have known (and know) – an inability to really enjoy life to the full. I don’t think I’ve ever heard one of them sit back after a ‘meal’ and say ‘Mmm, that really hit the spot’ or even ‘Yum’ when they are eating.
Also, I read the other day that they (the men in white coats) have discovered that fish actually do feel pain – the pain of a hook in the gob, or the pain of your head being chopped off. Surely it is only a matter of time before some bright spark discovers that cabbages have feelings too?
Have you seen or tried the recipes from Yottam Ottolenghi MM? The veggie recipes in his book Plenty are magnificent
Onkel Adie was so ahead of the game, it is said that Bruno Gantz became a vegetarian, during the making of Downfall. Bruno played the part so well although I did think that he missed that certain misty eyed, far away look that Onkel Adie often had when things were going swimmingly well, the look that captivated tante Eva and had Magda Goebbels toying with her Luger.
Back in Kaiser Bill’s time a strange breed of sheep were brought from fields far away for his pleasure, they still roam wild today around Brandenburg, south east of Berlin as do wild boar, now encroaching upon Berlin’s suburbs, any existing animal rights legislation is about to go out of the window, as the little pigs eat the vegies, principles are all very well ja, except when they darken mein door and mein mushroom biryani.
There’s another post I could do on a similar topic Malty – Hitler’s attempted resurrection of the Auroch (aka ‘Nazi Cows) – might have to schedule that in for another Wikiworm!
Interesting that you mention Downfall – a terrific film built around the memoirs of Traudl Junge, who I mentioned in the post above – Addie’s personal secretary, who I’m sure was tupped by the old ram on numerous occasions when Eva was out of earshot
Downfall was a cracker worm, the final days in Berlin were portrayed just as the mother of an an old colleague once described, he was born on the unter den linden in 1942.
For some deeply disturbing aftershock, try Inheritance, the documentary about Monika Hertwig, Amon Goeth’s daughter, who revisits the house at Plaszow concentration camp where she lived and meets with Helen Jonas, the Jewish maid who worked for the Goeth household. This film, I think, comes as close as anything can in giving some sense of the depths of human depravity.
Tupped, never heard that one in a long, long time. Once involved in a shunt in Stockport, you’ve tupped me barrer said the bloke in front.
Paul Johnson is just one of several historian/analysts who have suggested a connection between Hitler’s vegetarianism (and his teetotalling) and his outrages. The argument is that these and other fads of the sandals-and-fruit juice brigade like nudism, deep ecology, “natural” this or that, etc. lead them to dreams of a bucolic utopia and a visceral hatred for those sweaty, smelly humans that block it. It’s only their marginalism that forestalls action. That may help explain Mr. Berry’s strange fixation with proving Hitler cheated.
It makes for an interesting analysis of the lessons of WW11 based on the personal habits of the leaders. Teetotalers and vegetarians lead brutal, but rationally planned and systematically administered totalitarian regimes. Vodka-soaked gluttons murder and oppress on whims. If it’s a champion of democracy you want, look to the man with a weakness for champagne and brandy.
Hitler did, by and large, abstain from evident and had an evident fondness for animals. If it were merely a propaganda tool he could have eaten it in private. Who would have squealed on the fuhrer? The correct response of those who refuse to consume flesh, if someone uses it as an insult, is that Stalin had a fondness for eating “lots of meat” – everything from quail to “delicious roast bear”; that Mao’s favourite dish was pork belly; that Saddam’s was boiled chicken and that Ted Bundy’s last meal was steak and John Wayne Gacy’s KFC. None of which is a necessary reflection on either vegetarians or carnivores.
(Whoops – wasn’t meant to be a reply.)
The unspoken assumption here is that trying to conquer Europe, dispatch the untermenschen and vegetarianism are incompatible, but I’m unsure why. Trying to conquer Europe is just good clean fun, tried by many others both before and since. It doesn’t require mass murder or industrialized killing, but I can’t say that they’re really incompatible. Rooting out the untermenschen is, of course, despicable but then so is vegetarianism. While perhaps not evil, vegetarianism is immoral in both theory and practice and a useful warning of the downside of bourgeois sentimentality.
That sounds a bit like a speech a young Woody Allen might have made to his mother to get out of eating his vegetables.
Yes it does, but nonetheless I’d like David to elaborate on his argument that vegetarianism is immoral in both theory and practice, as I’m keen to try it on my wife and mother-in-law.
It mistakes the interests of the phenotype for the genotype, or the individual for the, as it were, herd.
The life of the individual cow has its ups and downs, but cows as a genotype have been remarkably successful. A strategy by which a slow moving, tasty herbivore without much in the way of defensive weapons survives for millenia by shaping a symbiotic relationship with a successful omnivore has turnd out to be one of the most successful strategies adopted by any species. Not only is the herd protected from predators, but cows receive the benefit of cutting edge medine and scientific advancements. Think about the difference between cows and bison due to the willingness of cows (as a species) to be domesticated.
So vegetarianism is immoral in concept because it seeks to break the link between cows and people that has worked out so well for people and for cows. This is actually worse than, say, building a dam that threatens the snail darter or logging old growth forests and threatening some sub-species of owl because at least we get something tangible from the dam or logging. Here we’d be threatening the cow simply so we can feel smug about our own moral superiority.
Of course, vegetarianism is immoral in practice because, if it were to succeed, it would destroy the market for cow-based products, resulting in the killing off of the entire herd, except possible for some zoos until the animal right people close down the zoos. Plus, it denies other people pleasure, a livelihood, and protein for no particular reason.
Bloody brilliant.
Indeed. Boeuf Bourguignon as a Darwinian surivial mechanism.
Millions of cows across the world are herded into pens in which they are so tightly packed that they cannot turn, and pumped full of drugs as part of an effort to minimise the sickness that is the inevitable product of the shit and chemicals that clog the air, and we are discussing the immorality of vegetarians? If they were intelligent enough to talk I have a sneaking suspicion that their ire would be directed less towards lentil-eaters than people who have aided the construction a system by which their species is inflated to bizarre proportions so they can live lives of total discomfort and humans can have cheap beefburgers.
Or, you know, not.
I don’t think the above link worked, so let’s try that again:
Or, you know, not.
Possibly Ben, but ‘if they were intelligent enough to talk’… Big if, isn’t it? Can cows imagine something other than what is?
That said, what I like about David’s anti-veggie argument is that it is compatible with free-range, animal welfare type carnivorism. It’s more or less a Darwin-friendly version of the argument that God made the animals for our benefit.
They aren’t intelligent enough to talk, or, as far as we know, to think in terms of abstract concepts of particular sophistication but the point is that they are smart enough to feel. A dumb animal feels the sensation of liver abcesses, laminitis, electrocution and constriction just as keenly as any other creature. One risks submerging others in a bog of one’s own sanctimony on this issue, I’m aware, but the general indifference to the actual treatment of animals, in a country that lost its collective marbles when a cat was placed into a rubbish bin, is lamentable. Vegetarians at least draw attention to the issues involved – and, besides, even if one is not against killing creatures for food per se, the planet could not sustain 7 million carnivores on free range, grass fed animals.
That is a marvellous HG2TG clip, though. With the baffling exception of the screeching Trillian it was a decent adaptation. Certainly compared to the monstrosity of the film.
When government nationalizes blogging and imposes an accreditation scheme, I imagine a basic level of proficiency will be awared for successfully navigating a hundred comment thread on whether religion is a good or bad thing, but postgraduate mastery will be recognized in the fellow who can argue all night whether the pain of the cow or the carrot is more deserving of human compassion.
I love the cook smuggling meat broth into Hitler’s soup. Reminds me of that Woody Allen story about Hitler’s barber:
” I did not know Hitler was a Nazi.The truth was that for years I thought he worked for the phone company. “
Oh, and apparently vegetarianism causes climate change.