Hitler a vegetarian?

[Guest guest]

Hitler a vegetarian?

 

Dear John,

 

You people who say that we would all be more peaceful if we ate a

vegetarian diet always seem to forget that Adolph Hitler was a

vegetarian.

That pretty well destroys your belief system, doesn't it?

 

Anonymous

 

Dear Anonymous,

 

The belief that Adolph Hitler was a vegetarian is widespread, and you

are certainly not the only one who carries it. But that doesn't make

it true.

 

Robert Payne is widely considered to be Hitler's definitive

biographer. In his book, Hitler: The Life and Death of Adolph Hitler,

Payne says that Hitler's " vegetarianism " was a " legend " and

a " fiction " invented by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of

Propaganda. According to Payne:

 

" Hitler's asceticism played an important part in the image he

projected over Germany. According to the widely believed legend, he

neither smoked nor drank, nor did he eat meat or have anything to do

with women. Only the first was true. He drank beer and diluted wine

frequently, had a special fondness for Bavarian sausages and kept a

mistress, Eva Braun… His asceticism was fiction invented by Goebbels

to emphasize his total dedication, his self-control, the distance

that separated him from other men. By this outward show of

asceticism, he could claim that he was dedicated to the service of

his people. In fact he was remarkably self-indulgent and possessed

none of the instincts of the ascetic. "

 

Rynn Berry is historical advisor to the North American Vegetarian

Society and is on the Advisory Board of EarthSave. Publisher's Weekly

wrote of his thoughtful essay, " Why Hitler Was Not a Vegetarian, "

that it " lays to rest the myth that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. "

In the essay, Berry writes of the famous chef Dione Lucas:

 

" Dione Lucas was a sort of precursor of the popular television

`French' chef, Julia Childe. One of the first to open a successful

cooking school in the United States, Lucas was also one of the first

chefs to popularize French cuisine on television in the 1950s and

1960s. During the 1930s, prior to her coming to the United States,

she had worked as a chef at a hotel in Hamburg, where Adolph Hitler

was one of her regular customers. "

 

Indeed, Dione Lucas often cooked for Hitler. In her book, The Gourmet

Cooking School Cookbook, she makes it clear that this despot was by

no means the vegetarian Goebbel's myth would have us believe. Writing

of her recipe for stuffed squab, for example, she says:

 

" I learned this recipe when I worked as a chef before World War II,

in one of the large hotels in Hamburg, Germany. I do not mean to

spoil your appetite for stuffed squab, but you might be interested to

know that it was a great favorite of Mr. Hitler, who dined at the

hotel often. Let us not hold that against a fine recipe, though. "

 

Not only did Hitler eat meat, he went so far as to outlaw

organizations that advocated vegetarianism, and harshly rebuked all

proposals to ease Germany's food shortages that involved reductions

in meat consumption.

 

So the whole story that Hitler was a vegetarian is simply a myth,

invented by the infamous Joseph Goebbels. This man, as you no doubt

know, was not particularly loyal to the truth. In fact, one of his

more famous sayings is that if you tell a lie often enough, and loud

enough, people will believe it. Another was the bigger the lie, the

easier it is to get people to believe it.

 

The fiction that Hitler was a vegetarian was just one more of the

many lies that he told often and loud. It's certainly time that it be

seen for what it is — a falsehood deliberately constructed to advance

the Nazi cause and to perpetrate an image of Hitler that obscured the

reality of who and what he actually was.

 

Hitler was not a vegetarian. However, many remarkable human beings

have been, including Mahatma Gandhi, Leonardo da Vinci, Pythagoras,

George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, and Dennis Kucinich.

 

And let's not forget Paul McCartney.

 

It's going to take a lot more than a few of us giving up meat to

arrive at a peaceful world, but everything we can do helps.

 

Thanks for writing and giving me the opportunity to address this

question.

 

John

[Guest guest]

" You people who say that we would all be more peaceful if we ate a

vegetarian diet always seem to forget that Adolph Hitler was a

vegetarian. That pretty well destroys your belief system, doesn't it? "

 

It sounds as if the evidence shows that " Hitler was a vegetarian " is a myth.

But I don't particularly care if he was. The vegetarian/vegan diet is itself

" more peaceful " than a diet that includes meat/animal products for the obvious

reason that it involves less violence to animals. What Hitler ate can't change

that fact.

 

Peacefully,

Thea

 

 

 

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[Guest guest]

I agree. What is the point of proving that every despot or bad person

wasn't a vegetarian? By extension, is every vegetarian a good person?

A more productive response to a claim such as " X was Y, and X was

evil, therefore Y is evil " is point out that it is a logical phallacy.

We're missing the point if we have to do a biography of every evil

human in order to prove that vegetarians are fundamentally... what?

Unable to commit genocide? Unable to be bad people? And do we have to

write exposes on Nobel peace prize winning omnivores to prove they

have a dark side? This quickly becomes quite silly, and even more

unproductive.

 

Hitler was a man. Hitler was evil. Therefore Gandhi was evil, because

he was also a man.

 

Aaron Burr dueled with pistols. Aaron Burr was right-handed.

Therefore, Mother Teresa enjoys pistol duels.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

 

cheers,

e

 

On 10/8/05, Thea Langsam <thea_langsam wrote:

> " You people who say that we would all be more peaceful if we ate a

> vegetarian diet always seem to forget that Adolph Hitler was a

> vegetarian. That pretty well destroys your belief system, doesn't it? "

>

> It sounds as if the evidence shows that " Hitler was a vegetarian " is a

> myth. But I don't particularly care if he was. The vegetarian/vegan diet

> is itself " more peaceful " than a diet that includes meat/animal products for

> the obvious reason that it involves less violence to animals. What Hitler

> ate can't change that fact.

>

> Peacefully,

> Thea

>

>

>

> Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs. Try it free.

>

>

[Guest guest]

I don't know why folks are dumping on the posting about the Hitler

myth. It's an extremely common belief, often used in misguided

attempts to discredit vegetarianism. Sure it's a fallacious argument,

but it's easier to point out that it's just plain wrong than to try

to educate some people about the nature of logical fallacy.

 

So I was happy to read some authoritative citings concerning the issue.

 

.... Doug

 

 

" However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally

look at the results. " --Winston Churchill