Attempts to nazify the Dutch veterinary profession: Veterinary medicine and animal protection in the Netherlands, 1933-1945

During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands (1940-1945), the Germans tried to change Dutch veterinary medicine along the lines of Nazi ideology dictated in the Third Reich. Two tergets of nazification are examined in this paper: animal protection and veterinary journals. The Dutch animal protection movement, in which only some veterinarians played an active role, sympathized with the aim of the occupier to introduce the Reichstierschutzgesetz of April 1933 in the Netherlands. However, its board hasitated to support this act, afraid of being accused of collaboration. The Abteilung Veterinärwesen stressed the fact that particularly veterinarians should make animal protection one of their priorities. Most Dutch vets remained indifferent, while only Nazi vets praised the ban on Jewish ritual slaughter in August 1940. In the course of the war food supply became a main problem in most larger cities. Under survival circumstances where dogs and cats were eaten, animal protection obtained a much lower priority. Dutch authorities hampered the enactment by legal objections and in 1944 the occupier renounced this target while it was considered less kriegswichtig.