Animals in the Third Reich, second edition

For the cover of Animals in the Third Reich, Brett Rutherford - the Owner of Yogh and Thorn Books - and I chose a painting of horses by Franz Marc, a gifted artist of that era who specialized in horses and was banned by the Nazis. We did not want any swastikas. We did not want anything that seemed stereotyped or clichéd, since we hoped people might put aside their preconceived ideas and view the era in a new perspective. We even decided to avoid the color red. There are no simple lessons or morals in my book Animals in the Third Reich, except maybe that a lot more thinking remains to be done.

I have always felt it a matter of principle not to glibly dismiss difficult themes and questions. Almost two decades ago, I started to discover, much to my consternation, through documents that were then obscure that the Nazis had probably the strictest animal protection laws in the world, and that they laid much of the foundation for contemporary ethology. This had, in fact, often been informally observed, mostly as a grotesque and inexplicable irony. In the initial edition of my book Animals in the Third Reich, I systematically documented and discussed the phenomenon, but it still seemed like an inscrutable quirk of fate, and I did not have a conceptual framework with which to analyze it. In this new edition, and for the first time, I offer an explanation in the appendix entitled "Nazi Totemism."

Since the book touches on some highly emotional themes, perhaps misunderstandings may be inevitable. The temptation to project ones fears or hopes into the text may be hard for many people to resist. To an extent, I am, and have always been, resigned to that, since being misunderstood is a sort of occupational hazard for any serious author. It is something we should try to bear with dignity, remembering that the vocation offers many advantages in compensation. But I ask people to please not to think they know the book until they have read it and, hopefully, thought about it carefully.
Animals in the Third Reich