Unbeknownst to many, the highway to modern environmentalism passed through Nazi Germany. By 1935, the Third Reich was the greenest regime on the planet. Many scholars have rightly focused on Nazi racism over the years, but have often failed to notice that German Social Darwinism was rooted in ecology. What the Nazis derogatively labeled "the Eternal Jew," the Jew who tried to overcome nature through international commercialism and cosmopolitanism, was specifically targeted. It is thus no coincidence that sweeping Nazi environmental legislation preceded the racially charged anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws. Furthermore, the quest for Lebensraum in the East, was far more than just another form of colonial expansionism. It was also a sinister eco-imperial plan designed to Germanize the landscape by removing populations of people who were unsuited to their environment, and by turning it into a beautiful natural park for the future health of the German race.
