Adolf Hitler once proclaimed, “we will not only create a Germany
of power, but also a Germany of beauty.” Much earlier, and
spoken at a time when Germany had been financially suffering for
many years from what they deemed to be the international crisis
of capitalism foisted upon them by the Treaty of Versailles,
Hitler once simplified the purpose of the National Socialist
movement, “I have the ambition to make the German people rich
and Germany beautiful.” While scholar after scholar has spilled
a lot of ink describing Nazi Germany’s political power and the
Third Reich’s economy, relatively few have paid much attention
to the second aspect of Hitler’s overall plans for Germany – to
make it beautiful. This certainly would have included Hitler’s
grandiose romantic plans to help turn cities like Berlin into a
Greco-Roman Germania, but it also included sweeping
environmental legislation at the federal level that made Nazi
Germany the greenest regime on the planet by 1935. By 1935, Nazi
Germany had passed three la