In 1934, Hitler passed a law called Das Reichsjagdgesetz (the Reich Hunting Law), which regulated how many animals could be killed per year, and to establish proper ‘hunting seasons’. Animal conservation was included in Primary, Secondary and College levels, and in 1935, the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz (Reich Nature Protection Act) was passed. The Nazi’s were also the first to create environmental protection laws in history.

This is a somewhat problematic statement that takes something that is factually correct, but does not analyze it thoroughly. This assertion ignores the distinction between conceptualization and execution. For example, the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz (Reich Nature Protection Law, or RNG) was arguably the most comprehensive law for the protection of the environment in the world when it was enacted in 1935. Yet the same state that enacted the RNG, which stipulated that any public works project needed to consult local conservationists, it also advanced a ruthless exploitation of natural resources in the name of economic autarky. In numerous cases, the needs of the war economy triumphed over the legal principles behind the RNG. Many German environmentalists playing a much less prominent role in the direction of state policy as it evolved in the late 1930s. They could gain traction when the needs of remilitarization were not apparent, but were much less likely to if environmental protection came at the expense of industry. For example, Frank Uekötter’s monograph on Nazi-era conservation, The Green and the Brown, notes that environmental protectionists in Baden were able to prevent the construction of a hydroelectric plant in the Wutach Gorge during wartime through their exploitation of local patronage networks to ensure that the state enforced the RNG. By contrast, the earlier efforts of the Heimat activist Ludwig Finckh to close the neighboring basalt quarry at Hohenstoffeln Mountain hinged on the quarry no longer being economically feasible.

The assertion also ignores that environmentalist ideas often became associated with Volkisch sentiments. German writers on the environment conceptualized the environment in racialized terms during the Third Reich. A healthy forest or land was a sign of an Aryan land. Hans Klose, who wrote a majority of the RNG, Klose, who wrote a majority of the RNG’s text, in a December 1939 speech claimed that although Germans have always possessed a strong affinity to nature, it was only after 1933 that the Germans possessed a government that sided with nature. Klose encouraged his audience to fully comply and educate the public on rationale behind the RNG and conservation in general. Similarly, a 1942 editorial from Gartenbau im Reich that reflected a radicalization of environment was Max K. Schwarz’s 1942 “Zeitgemäße Gedanken über Garten- und Landschaftsgestaltung.” Schwarz’s perspective was that landscaping, whether individualized gardens or the planning of cities, had to reflect a racialized nature. “The landscape,” he asserted, “is not determined by the determination of a single thought, but rather by the entire Volk. Only the Volk itself can comprehensively design the countryside.” According to Schwarz, the dynamic character of National Socialism had made it possible for human beings to more completely understand themselves and their role in nature. He then developed a theory of total nature which is not to be enjoyed just for its aesthetic value but for the insights they can give into the Volksgemeinshaft. For example, he instructed his readers that “plants are should not only be appreciated go for passive viewing, but appreciated more so for their organic and influential connection with the body and their own environment.” This vision of nature was only to be cherished and enjoyed through the unique character of the German race. This implicit embrace of a racialized conversation efforts was even more noticeable in Walter Schoenichen’s editorial “Naturschutzgebiete der neuen Reichsgaue.” Appearing in the December 1941 issue popular middle-class magazine Westermann’s Monatshefte, Schoenichen described, in vivid language, the unspoiled paradise in the newly-absorbed territories in Poland and the protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. According to Schoenichen, the experience of a raw unblemished nature needed to be protected by a large national park system found in other nations. Such a park system would be “an uplifting thought that [a national park] would be dedicated to the highest and proudest summits of the Greater German Reich which is devoted to the spiritual edification of the German Volk and its reverence for nature.”

Of course, when dealing with the issue of pollution and environmental degradation, German writers would invoke the familiar spectres of Poles and Jews. SS-affiliate authors for General Plan Ost would claim that soil erosion and depletion of the environment were typical behaviors of inferior races and the SS-led new order would erase this damage through the Grünaufbau (greening) of Polish and Soviet lands. “Hag und Heimat” by Heinrich Friederich Wiepking-Jürgensmann, Heinrich Himmler’s special representative for the Reich Commissariat for the Consolidation of German Nationhood (RKfDV) and a prominent prewar landscape architect, drew a very tight connection between this new Heimat and the Grünaufbau. Wiepking-Jürgensmann explained to the public in the article “Hag und Heimat” the spirit of the special relationship between the Heimat and nature developed under SS patronage. “Hag und Heimat,” written in a clear and colloquial style, contended that this symbiosis was fully congruent with the racial principles that the SS also protects in the Greater German Reich. For example, he wrote that “the landscape is an unmistakable mirror of the Volk and their entire being; in the neglected landscape the greatest robber is only the most efficient inmate of the land.” The double-meaning of this passage indicated that not only has the SS liberated the Volkdeutsche in the Eastern territories, but its previous non-German governments mismanaged the land so much as to corrupt its inhabitants. Erhard Mäding was one of the landscape designers and a colleague of Wiepking-Jürgensmann, was brought into the fold of the Generalplan Ost in his capacity as consultant to RKfDV. Enjoying a rank of Major in the SS, he outlined a thorough reordering of the East in which Germans would live in balance with nature. His 1942 Deutsche Arbeit article “Landgestaltung als volkpolitische Aufgabe” condensed various state directives that would foster such harmony. Although concerned mostly with the erection of small villages and hamlets, Mäding insisted that the archetypical Eastern city would act as nodal point to connect the Eastern territories with the rest of the Reich. These metropolises would then emerge as triumphant example of the Germanic race by emulating the architectural principles of their smaller neighbors. “For these cities,” he wrote, “urban design guidelines have been developed for the purpose of securing all of the developmental possibilities for German communal life, love of Heimat, and cultural spirit.” The provision of leisure amenities to the smaller settlements would check the growth of these cities by ensuring a healthy and content population. The design of open-air parks, monuments, and festival areas would “reflect the settlers’ desire to create and [as such] will determine decisively the administrative measures for all departments. In Mäding’s formulation, the future peasant communities will incorporate the best elements of the city such as leisure and modern administration while the urban areas reflect the principles of the peasant Volk by virtue of being an integral component of this organic National Socialist community. Both these men would be involved in the planning of the new order of the East and sought to harmonize sound environmental planning with the ideological prerogatives of the Third Reich.

So while the Third Reich did have an environmentalist agenda, such an agenda was subordinate to the wider prerogatives of the Third Reich. Activists working in this system had to self-coordinate and make their values fit in within a new politicized context. For some individuals, this was an easy task and pursuing a racialized view of the land and nature gave them access to the corridors of power. Others found that the state paid lip-service to environmentalism. And environmentalist discourse during the Third Reich was often inseparable from conceptualizing nature as a resource for the express use and enjoyment by Aryans.

Sources

Brüggemeier, Franz-Josef, Mark Cioc, and Thomas Zeller. How Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005.

Lekan, Thomas. Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885-1945. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Uekötter, Frank. The Green and the Brown: A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

I can't say whether they were the first ever environmental protection laws and this may depend on the sort of scope one means by "environmental protection laws" but The United States National Park Service and practice of establishing certain areas as national parks precede the Third Reich by a few years.

Yellowstone National Park was founded in 1872, and the National Park Service was founded by Woodrow Wilson in 1916 with the mission of protecting the scenery and nature therein, among others.

Source, the National Park Service History page: http://www.nps.gov/aboutus/history.htm

There's a lot about the economy of Nazi Germany in faq: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwii#wiki_nazi_economics.

If you haven't read Gotz Aly's "Hitler's Beneficiaries" I highly recommend it. In this book he makes the argument that hitler's policies were exceptionally socialist at times, and essentially prioritized the German citizens at the expense of the rest of Europe. While its not a direct answer to your environmental concerns, his commentary on how Hitler managed social programs that aided workers, and the middle/lower class are enlightening, and demonstrates how Infeasible the process/policies were in the long term!

Hitler never really wanted to kill the Jews (already brilliantly debunked within the thread),

I could not find this in the thread. any trued to this?