Adolf
Loved His Liver Dumplings
By Mickey Z.
30 January, 2007
Countercurrents.org
When you dwell in a heavily conditioned
society such as ours, those who spout conventional wisdom are rarely
asked for evidence. This goes for the left or the right. Take Michael
Moore...(please). He's done a fair amount to infuriate the status quo
media, sure, but when he writes "vegetarian is unhealthy"
or "humans need protein, and lots of it" or "put down
those
sprouts and pick up a T-bone!" his flesh-eating exhortations would
fit neatly between commercials and have all the talking heads nodding
in unison. Of course, if he appeared on TV and declared that cow's milk
is only for calves, he wouldn't even have enough time to address the
raucous and mocking demands for reams of documentation.
Here's another bit of conventional wisdom (sic): Adolf Hitler was a
vegetarian.
In his 2004 book, Hitler: Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover, author
Rynn Berry boldly dispenses with any protocol by getting his unconventional
declaration out of the way right up front in the book's title: "neither
vegetarian nor animal lover." There, he said it. Now what...and
why does/should it matter?
Hitler's dietary choices may not be of vast historical importance...but
instead they do hold polemical value. Belligerent meat-eaters often
toss off the "But Hitler was a vegetarian" line as a method
of allegedly discrediting a plant-based diet. After all, their "logic"
goes, if the epitome of evil himself eschewed meat, what possible good
could come from such a lifestyle? While this premise obviously lacks
even a shred of intellectual validity, one cannot discount the emotional
power invoked by associating Nazism with vegetarianism. Rynn Berry himself
has dealt directly with this phenomenon. As the author of Famous Vegetarians
and Their Recipes, he tells of facing "at every bookstore signing,
at every lecture, on every phone-in talk show, at least one person (who)
has asked...half-mockingly: 'Is Hitler in your book?'" Thus, in
the name of setting the record straight, Berry has marshaled the evidence
necessary to take on the Hitler-as-veggie dogma.
Most of what Berry has dug up displays an even more variable use of
the label "vegetarian" than we endure today. Robert Payne,
a Hitler biographer, explains that the German dictator "had no
fondness for meat except in the form of sausages, and never ate fish,
he enjoyed caviar." (Is sausage considered a vegetable in Germany?)
A second biographer wrote: "Hitler's vegetarianism was quite strict...
He avoided any kind of meat, with the exception of an Austrian dish
he loved, Leberknödl."
For those of you scoring at home, Leberknödl are liver dumplings.
Even the venerable New York Times fell prey to the amazing elasticity
of the term "vegetarianism." In a May 30, 1937 article entitled,
"At Home with the Führer," the newspaper of record found
this passage fit to print: "It is well known that Hitler is a vegetarian
and does not drink or smoke. His lunch and dinner consist, therefore,
for the most part of soup, eggs,
vegetables, and mineral water, although he occasionally relishes a slice
of ham and relieves the tediousness of his diet with such delicacies
as caviar."
That revealing description-veggies are tedious, flesh is a delicacy-is
pretty much how the Times portrays a plant-based diet to this day. It
also helps illustrate why Nazis like Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels
attempted to portray Hitler as a veggie lover. As the Times cleverly
hinted at, the tedium of vegetarianism (even with the occasional slice
of ham to
relish) would require a man of remarkable discipline to adhere to it.
In a culture less inundated by propaganda, Hitler's non-vegetarian status
would be apparent and even if the Führer didn't eat meat, few would
regard this as a judgment on vegetarianism. However, this is America,
the land of denial...and that means books like Hitler: Neither Vegetarian
Nor Animal Lover are required reading.
Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
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