As soon as the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, they began to enact scores of animal protection laws, some of which are still operative in Germany. (See here for the 1933 legislation.) For example, in Nazi Germany, people who mistreated their pets could be sentenced to two years in jail. The Nazis banned the production of foie gras and docking the ears and tails of dogs without anesthesia, and they severely restricted invasive animal research. The Nazi Party established the first laws insuring that animal used in films were not mistreated and also mandated humane slaughter procedures for food animals and for the euthanasia of terminally ill pets…
In 1933, Hermann Göring announced he would "commit toconcentration camps those who still think they can treat animals as property." The feared Heinrich Himmler once asked his doctor, who was a hunter, "How can you find pleasure, Herr Kerstein, in shooting from behind at poor creatures browsing on the edge of a wood...It is really murder." Hitler…abhorred hunting and horse-racing and referred to them as "the last remnants of a dead feudal world." Sax chronicles many other examples in his fascinating book Animals In the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, And The Holocaust… Perhaps the most chilling episode in the bizarre annals of Nazi animal protectionism was a 1942 law banning pet-keeping by Jews…
The Fuhrer is a convinced vegetarian, on principle. His arguments cannot be refuted on any series basis. They are totally unanswerable… The extent of Hitler's vegetarianism, however, is a matter of dispute… I suspect that… was an inconsistent vegetarian. But so are most modern American "vegetarians", 70% of whom sometimes eat meat… leggi tutto.
Morale:
human-animal interactions are fraught with paradox and inconsistency… the Nazi animal protectionists represent examples of fundamentally bad people doing good things for animals. I suspect this pattern of behavior is rare. However, the converse -- fundamentally good people who treat animals badly -- is common.
