Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

So here we have a scientific institution whose very architecture is rooted in the soil. Science, which allegedly is responsible for objectifying the world, for detaching things from their local contexts, supposedly should have worked in the opposite direction instead of being attached to the land.[115] And again, as in the Portuguese case, architecture doesn’t make the main argument. The interesting point is that the standardized forms of life being produced by the works undertaken at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Animal Breeding were not only themselves rooted in the German soil; they were also produced to root Germans into the national soil. Only the new fat pigs, making efficient use of national fodders, sustained the community of Blut und Boden announced by Darré and guaranteed the nutritional freedom of the German Volk as articulated by Backe.

Fascist Pigs

Scientists had been developing animal performance tests before Nazis came to power. One could thus suggest that these were no more than tools that the Nazis would use in subsequent years to achieve their goals for food policy. Such an interpretation doesn’t account for the fact that these goals, as expressed by Darré, were also defined by academics in the aftermath of the traumatic hunger that affected Germans during World War I. The political Nazi imagination was already being molded by Frölich and by other scientists who were tinkering with the possibilities of producing animals less dependent on foreign imports. Autarky only made sense with performance tests proving animals could thrive on the national soil. Pigs responding well to the performance tests thus may be seen as carrying with them the 1914–1918 experience. They were veteran pigs, and thus German pig breeders called themselves Frontschwein.

^{Figure 4.10 Buildings and laboratories of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Animal Breeding.}

^{(Jahrbuch der Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft, 1941.)}

This veteran fighter status for pigs calls for probing other dimensions of fascism in order to make the case that the expression “fascist pigs” is more than blague. The combination of performance tests, fats, and rootedness in the soil may guide us in systematizing the connections between pigs and the fascist nature of Nazism. Militarism, which makes an important part of any proper fascist regime, was not limited to the reference to World War I. As understood by Darré, mobilization for the nutrition of the German people with domestic sources was perceived to be as crucial for the survival of the Volk as having a well-equipped military. More to the point, fatter and rooted-in-the-soil pigs were to contribute to Germany’s preparedness for war, as intended by the 1936 Four-Year Plan. Fat, rooted-in-the-soil pigs were a major asset for waging war, promising to overcome the alleged causes of Germany’s defeat in World War I. Closely associated with fascist militarism was exacerbated nationalism, nurtured by the feeding of the people through produce from the national soil. Pigs fed on fodders imported from the United States or Argentina didn’t have the same nationalizing effects as those fed on tuber crops produced on estates in eastern Germany. Also, fatter pigs ensured that Germans were getting their daily intake of fats from their national soil. By rearing pigs in compliance with the performance standards established by scientists and distributed by the RNS’s extended network, one was contributing to a common national aim and not just to one’s individual profit. Pigs served first and foremost to nurture the national community, not to thrive in capitalist markets. This transcendent nature of pig rearing and feeding was also made present by RNS leaflets urging German women to feed animals on leftovers from their households. The RNS promoted a peasant life organized neither in individualistic liberal terms nor in terms of social class, establishing instead a corporatist structure transcending both. The mammoth state structure of the RNS was built on the implementation of such standards as the animal performance tests developed at Göttingen and Halle. Performance tests ensured that pigs were fat and rooted in the soil (bodenständig), making pigs contributing to the Nazi regime through militarism, nationalism, transcendentalism, and statism. These four dimensions condense much of the phenomenon of fascism, and it is thus reasonable to assert that performance tests selected those pigs performing fascism. In other words, performance tests were designed to produce fascist pigs.