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There was widespread support for animal welfare in Nazi Germany, and the Nazis took a variety of measures to ensure animals were protected. Many Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring, were supporters of animal rights and conservation. Several Nazis were environmentalists, and species protection and animal welfare were significant issues in the Nazi regime. Heinrich Himmler made an effort to ban the hunting of animals. Göring was a professed animal lover and conservationist, who, on instructions from Hitler, committed Germans who violated Nazi animal welfare laws to concentration camps. The current animal welfare laws in Germany are modified versions of the laws introduced by the Nazis. In his private diaries, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels described Hitler as a vegetarian whose hatred of the Jewish and Christian religions stemmed from the ethical distinction these faiths drew between the value of humans and the value of other animals; Goebbels also mentions that Hitler planned to ban slaughterhouses in the German Reich following the conclusion of World War II. ==Measures== At the end of the nineteenth century, kosher butchering and vivisection were the main concerns regarding animal protection in Germany. These concerns continued among the Nazis. According to Boria Sax, the Nazis rejected anthropocentric reasons for animal protection—animals were not to be protected for human interests—but for themselves. In 1927, a Nazi representative to the Reichstag called for actions against cruelty to animals and kosher butchering.〔 In 1931, the Nazi Party proposed a ban on vivisection. In early 1933, representatives of the Nazi Party to the Prussian parliament held a meeting to enact this ban. On April 21, 1933, almost immediately after the Nazis came to power, the parliament began to pass laws for the regulation of animal slaughter.〔 On April 21, a law was passed concerning the slaughter of animals. On April 24, Order of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior was enacted regarding the slaughter of poikilotherms. Germany was the first nation to ban vivisection. A law imposing total ban on vivisection was enacted on August 16, 1933, by Hermann Göring as the prime minister of Prussia. He announced an end to the "unbearable torture and suffering in animal experiments" and said that those who "still think they can continue to treat animals as inanimate property" will be sent to concentration camps.〔 On August 28, 1933, Göring announced in a radio broadcast: Göring also banned commercial animal trapping, imposed severe restrictions on hunting, and regulated the shoeing of horses. He imposed regulations on the boiling of lobsters and crabs. In one incident, he sent a fisherman to a concentration camp〔 for cutting up a bait frog.〔 On November 24, 1933, Nazi Germany enacted another law called ''Reichstierschutzgesetz'' (Reich Animal Protection Act), for protection of animals. This law listed many prohibitions against the use of animals, including their use for filmmaking and other public events causing pain or damage to health, feeding fowls forcefully and tearing out the thighs of living frogs. The two principals (''Ministerialräte'') of the German Ministry of the Interior, Clemens Giese and Waldemar Kahler, who were responsible for drafting the legislative text,〔 wrote in their juridical comment from 1939, that by the law the animal was to be "protected for itself" ("''um seiner selbst willen geschützt''"), and made "an object of protection going far beyond the hitherto existing law" ("''Objekt eines weit über die bisherigen Bestimmungen hinausgehenden Schutzes''").〔Clemens Giese and Waldemar Kahler (1939). ''Das deutsche Tierschutzrecht, Bestimmungen zum Schutz der Tiere'', Berlin, cited from: Edeltraud Klüting. ''Die gesetzlichen Regelungen der nationalsozialistischen Reichsregierung für den Tierschutz, den Naturschutz und den Umweltschutz'', in: Joachim Radkau, Frank Uekötter (ed., 2003). ''Naturschutz und Nationalsozialismus'', Campus Verlag ISBN 3-593-37354-8, p.77 (in German)〕 On February 23, 1934, a decree was enacted by the Prussian Ministry of Commerce and Employment which introduced education on animal protection laws at primary, secondary and college levels.〔 On 3 July 1934, a law ''Das Reichsjagdgesetz'' (The Reich Hunting Law) was enacted which limited hunting. On July 1, 1935, another law ''Reichsnaturschutzgesetz'' (Reich Nature Conservation Act) was passed to protect nature.〔 According to an article published in ''Kaltio'', one of the main Finnish cultural magazines, Nazi Germany was the first in the world to place the wolf under protection.〔(Animal Rights in the Third Reich )〕 In 1934, Nazi Germany hosted an international conference on animal protection in Berlin. On March 27, 1936, an order on the slaughter of living fish and other poikilotherms was enacted. On March 18 the same year, an order was passed on afforestation and on protection of animals in the wild.〔 On September 9, 1937, a decree was published by the Ministry of the Interior which specified guidelines for the transportation of animals. In 1938, animal protection was accepted as a subject to be taught in public schools and universities in Germany.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Animal welfare in Nazi Germany」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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