No.
Oh, I'm sorry, did you want more of an explanation? Well, okay.
Hi it’s Emily from Bite Size Vegan and welcome to another vegan nugget. If you ever have
an extended conversation about veganism, or even one that's not so extended, there are
two topics that I guarantee you will be brought up: bacon and Hitler. Although “Hitler bacon”
would be a new one. You see the argument goes something like this, “well Hitler was vegetarian.”
And...well, not, that’s really it.
I’m going to address the validity of this argument after I first address its value.
Let’s say Hitler was a vegetarian, or a even a vegan. So what? How about all of the
horrific people throughout history who were not vegan or vegetarian? Does that mean that
everyone who consumes animal products is automatically on the same level as the likes of Stalin,
Osama bin Laden, Jeffrey Dahmer, and countless other animal-consuming sociopaths throughout
history? Including Hitler, by the way, as we shall soon see. It’s simply not a valid
argument, or really an argument at all. So lets get down to the facts, shall we?
Hitler was far from vegetarian, though there are valid reasons why people believe he was.
According to historian Robert Payne in his text "The Life And Death Of Adolf Hitler,"
the myth of Hitler’s vegetarianism was more or less a PR campaign orchestrated by Hitler’s
minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels. Payne states that, “Hitler’s asceticism played
an important part in the image he projected over Germany. According to the widely believed
legend, he neither smoke nor drank, nor did he eat meat or have anything to do with women.
Only the first was true…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 outwards show of aestheticism, he could claim that he was dedicated to the service
of his people.” While in reality, Payne writes that Hitler was “remarkably self
indulgent and possessed none of the instincts of the aesthetic.”
Beyond this PR campaign to portray Hitler as a master of self-control, there is some
credence to him eschewing meat at some times. In his mind-blowing text "Eternal Treblinka:
Our Treatment Of Animals And The Holocaust," author Charles Patterson illuminates some
of Hitler’s rather unsightly medical conditions, saying that Hitler “suffered from indigestion
and episodic stomach pains that had troubled him from adolescence, as well as from excessive
flatulence and uncontrollable sweating…He discovered that when he reduced his meat intake,
he did not sweat as much and there were fewer stains in his underwear.” He apparently
also believed that increasing his vegetable consumption improved the odors of his flatulence.
I’m not making this sh*t up, people. See the blog post in the description for all the
citations and references.
Regardless of his conditions, Hitler never gave up the indulgence of his favorite meat
dishes, which, according to Dr. Fritz Redlich in his text "Diagnosis Of A Destructive Prophet,"
were Bavarian sausages, liver dumplings, and stuffed roasted game.
Now not only was Hitler not a vegetarian himself, but he was also vehemently against vegetarianism.
James Patterson writes that when Hitler “came to power in 1933, he banned all the vegetarian
societies in Germany, arrested their leaders, and shut down the main vegetarian magazine
published in Frankfurt…During the war Nazi Germany banned all vegetarian organizations
in the territories it occupied, even though vegetarian diets would have helped alleviate
wartime food shortages.”
Now a huge tenant of veganism, and I’m not just talking a vegan diet here, but actual
veganism, is compassion towards animals. Hitler’s treatment of animals was very much like his
treatment of humans: abrasive, abusive and cruel. Hitler would often carry around a dog-whip
and viciously beat his dog in public. His biographer Ian Kershaw writes that “with
his dogs, as with every human being, he came into contact with, any relationship was based
upon subordination to his mastery.”
Hitler based his treatment of the Jews on the assembly line slaughterhouses of the United
States. Hitler idolized Henry Ford, whose own inspiration for his revolutionary assembly
line came from visiting a Chicago slaughterhouse as a young man. Hitler essentially built his
own assembly line slaughterhouses, replacing the animals with human beings. As Gary Yourofsky
says, if you walk into any slaughterhouse today, remove the animals and replace them
with people, you've recreated Dachau and Auschwitz.
So as you can see, Hitler was as far from a vegetarian as you can get. I hope this helps
clear up this persistent myth. For a full list of citations and references for the information
in this video, please refer to the linked blog post in the description below. Now share
this video around so we can keep busting this myth, give it a thumbs up if you liked it,
and if you’re new, I’d love to have you as a subscriber. Now get out there, live vegan
and I’ll see you soon!