This pre-German forest was supposed to hide a hoofed fugitive, and although it is a paraphrase of a quote from Stanisław Bareja's immortal comedy, the thing is not to laugh at. I am talking about a crazy idea which the Nazi tops came up with during World War II. The Nazis, obsessed with the occult, noticed a Proto-German primeval forest in the Białowieża Primeval Forest.
Since the primeval forest, reflecting the power of the Teutonic spirit, the animals should also be primal. Based on this assumption, the decision-makers of the Third Reich decided to let the artificially bred "aurochs" - ungulates, designed to reproduce a species long extinct, into the forest.
Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler and finally the Fuhrer himself - the Nazis on the summits of the Third Reich indulged in pagan occult rituals without hesitation, to summon the pure Germanic / Aryan spirit and help them win the war with magic forces . Goering, out of a fascination with Germanic mythology, gave his daughter the name Edda, such as the title of the Old German epic about gods and heroes. Himmler in his Wewelsburg Castle, which he had expanded and arranged in the style of ancient legends, intended to establish a center for Nazi religion. It was here that the leading Nazis took part in various ceremonies, incl. weddings and even funerals, arranged in a pagan, occult style. Some of these rituals were invented by Himmler himself.
The Nazis were going to recreate ... a round!
The decision-makers of the Third Reich, like no one else, were able to translate possession and obsessions into a method and consistently implement it. Already in 1935, they founded the Ahnenerbe - a Nazi research organization whose task was to trace the Aryan past and spiritual legacy. These people searched for old artifacts, such as st. Grail and other semi-legendary items, they robbed libraries, dug in the ground and performed all sorts of irrational actions to revive Germanic power, win the war and prove the superiority of the master race.
Reserve for the Nazis
After in June 1941, German tanks moved deep into Soviet Russia, the Nazis saw the original Germanic beauty in the Białowieża Primeval Forest. The passionate hunter Herman Goering was especially in love with her.
Following the example of Germanic warriors, he wanted to pursue wild game hunting in the ancient forest. So he came up with the idea to turn the Białowieża Primeval Forest into a great "Germanic" nature reserve. Here - in the woods untouched by civilization - the NSDAP activists with airguns were to feel like the heroes of "Edda Poetycka" with spears and axes.
The crazy idea was realized in no time at the expense of the local population. Mass executions and deportations have begun . Entire villages were demolished, orchards were cleared, wells were filled in, property was stolen. All this so that there is no trace of a human being in the wild forest. The Germans murdered over half a thousand people . Over 7,000 were displaced.
After the forest was "cleared", the Nazis began the second part of the plan. The ancient forest required ancient game. The science of the Third Reich, obsessed with a criminal ideology, had a ready answer to that. Cattle with long, widely spaced horns were delivered from East Prussia in military trucks. The reborn tur was supposed to feel at home.
Hitler's Cows
We are talking about an animal that walked the earth in the times of mammoths and saber-toothed tigers, inhabiting forests all over Europe. The aurochs have been hunted by people for millennia, they were also sacred and highly respected animals. No wonder the tours were respectable. The males could reach up to 2 meters in height and weigh up to 1000 kg. Already in the early Middle Ages, this species began to die out due to deforestation and intensive hunting. Interestingly, single individuals survived the longest, until the 18th century, in Ducal Prussia, for a long time the refuges of the turns were protected by the kings of Poland, and poachers were chased and punished. The last European round was killed in Ducal Prussia in 1755.
That seemed to be the end of the animal's history when, at the beginning of the 20th century, German zoologists, the brothers Lutz and Heinz Heck, had a crazy idea. They began research on the reconstruction of aurochs. The Heck brothers combined genetic and zoological tastes with chauvinistic ideology and a fascination with ancient German myths, where great and dangerous turns were repeated every now and then. Work on cattle crossbreeds gained momentum when the Nazis came to power in Germany. The Hecks quickly embraced the Nazi machine, and Hermann Goering himself became their patron.
Adult male Heck cattle that looks like a turkish at first glance.
Hitler's researchers made a simple assumption:a species did not become extinct as long as its genes "circulated" in other species. To genetically complete the round, they crossed as many as 15 breeds of cattle . Including Spanish bulls were mated with Highland cattle and breeds from Corsica and Hungary.
As a result, in 1932 the first male was born, resembling the original aurochs. It is true that the animal was clearly smaller than the actual round, but the Nazis trumpeted success. The reconstructed tours were put to the test in the Prussian forest reserve Rominsten, belonging to Göring. Effect? According to reports from the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, "Hitler's cattle" did have something of the original Teutonic spirit - it was very aggressive. As soon as the subject encountered a human, it immediately proceeded to attack. What's more - soon the recreated turns started to irritate Goering himself, because their aggressive nature made it impossible to feed the deer.
In 1942, when the Germans conquered Soviet Russia, the tours were transported and released in the Białowieża Primeval Forest, which, after merging with the Augustów and Knyszyńska Primeval Forests, was to become the world's largest primeval forest, completely wild and reserved for Nazi hunters.
Hitler's tours were great in Podlasie . They adapted well enough that they not only survived the cold winters, but also began to reproduce. At least, these are the relationships that have remained. On the other hand, no photographs documenting the life of aurochs in the Białowieża Primeval Forest have survived. It is also not known what happened to them, at least after a few years the herd was lost.
Possibly nothing innocent enough to pay for the sins of their creators. When the Soviet troops came here with a counteroffensive, the Red Army massively shot rounds called Nazi cows. Some of the animals were probably killed by the hungry local population. Perhaps it was also so that the stories about the good adaptation of the turns turned out to be only Nazi propaganda, and the animals died out on their own. Single specimens were seen in the forest right after the war. Later, however, after the Nazi tours, my hearing was lost.
Heck's cow and Polish ponies in the Oostvaardersplassen reserve in the Netherlands
This does not mean, however, that Heck's cattle were completely lost. About 2,000 animals live in reserves and zoos in Europe. Scientists, however, consider the experiment unsuccessful. Nazi cattle hardly resembles the mighty ancient aurochs at which the Germanic, Slavic and Asian tribes trembled. Heck's cattle with a height of up to 160 cm are closer to ordinary, but more rebellious cows than to a turn of up to 2 meters. So in the end, the Nazi "nadkowa" turned out to be nothing more than a pathetic caricature ...