From the late eighteenth century, Germans increasingly identified the fate of their nation with that of their woodlands. A variety of groups soon mobilized the 'German forest' as a national symbol, though often in ways that suited their own social, economic, and political interests. The German Forest is the first book-length history of the development and contestation of the concept of 'German' woodlands. Jeffrey K. Wilson challenges the dominant interpretation that German connections to nature were based in agrarian romanticism rather than efforts at modernization. He explores a variety of conflicts over the symbol — from demands on landowners for public access to woodlands, to state attempts to integrate ethnic Slavs into German culture through forestry, and radical nationalist visions of woodlands as a model for the German 'race'. Through impressive primary and archival research, Wilson demonstrates that in addition to uniting Germans, the forest as a national symbol could also serve as a vehicle for protest and strife.

Sunday Times Bestseller‘A paradigm-smashing chronicle of joyous entanglement’ Charles Foster Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month (September) Are trees social beings? How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings?

In AD 9 half of Rome's Western army was ambushed in a German forest and annihilated. Three legions, three cavalry units and six auxiliary regiments - some 25,000 men - were wiped out. It dealt a body blow to the empire's imperial pretensions and was Rome's greatest defeat. No other battle stopped the Roman empire dead in its tracks. Although one of the most significant and dramatic battles in European history, this is also one which has been largely overlooked. Drawing on primary sources and a vast wealth of new archaeological evidence, Adrian Murdoch brings to life the battle itself, the historical background and the effects of the Roman defeat as well as exploring the personalities of those who took part.

With original research and interviews with survivors, a journalist reveals the brutal yet forgotten battles in Latvia during the final months of WWII. While the eyes of the world were on Hitler’s bunker, more than half a million men fought six cataclysmic battles in the fields and forests of Western Latvia known as the Courland Pocket. Just an hour from the capital Riga, German forces bolstered by Latvian Legionnaires were trapped with their backs to the Baltic. Forced into uniform by Nazi and Soviet occupiers, Latvian fought Latvian – sometimes brother against brother. Hundreds of thousands of men died for little territorial gain in unimaginable slaughter. When the Germans capitulated, thousands of Latvians continued a war against Soviet rule from the forests for years afterwards. An award-winning documentary journalist, Vincent Hunt travels through the modern landscape gathering eye-witness accounts, piecing together the stories of those who survived. He meets veterans who fought in the Latvian Legion, former partisans and a refugee who fled the Soviet advance to later become President, Vaira Vike-Freiberga. A survivor of the little-known concentration camp at Popervale details his escape from a death march and subsequent survival in the forests with a Soviet partisan group - and a German deserter. With detailed maps and expert contributions alongside rare newspaper archives, photographs from private collections and extracts from diaries translated from Latvian, German and Russian, Hunt assembles a ghastly picture of death and desperation in a nation both gripped by war and at war with itself.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, both the crisis of liberal democracy, as visible in, for example, the rise of far-right actors in Europe and the United States, and environmental crises, from declining biodiversity to climate change, are increasingly in the public spotlight. Whilst both areas have been analysed extensively on their own, The Far Right and the Environment: Politics, Discourse and Communication provides much needed insights into their intersection by illuminating the environmental communication of far-right party and non-party actors in Europe and the United States. Although commonly perceived as a ‘left-wing’ issue today, concerns over the natural environment by the far right have a long, ideology-driven history. Thus, it is not surprising that some members of the far right offer distinctive ecological visions of communal life, though, for example, climate-change scepticism is voiced too. Investigating this range of stances within their discourse about the natural environment provides a window into the wider politics of the far right and points to a close connection between the politics of identity and the imagination of nature. Connecting the fields of environmental communication and study of the far right, contributions to this edited volume therefore offer timely assessments of this often-overlooked dimension of far-right politics.

This non-fiction work gives us a vivid account of how events and circumstances played out in one location--Spessart Forest--in northwest Bavaria. Travel the road of peasant life through the centuries: through the wars, witch persecutions, famines, and heavy governance. Learn about life as a serf from the time of the earliest settlements to the time of mass emigrations; and how religion, schooling, and customs impacted on everyday existence. Read gripping stories of individuals, including stories of the author's own ancestors, which bring the forest's history to life, with page after page of fascinating revelations.

Northern Europe was, by many accounts, the birthplace of much of modern forestry practice, and for hundreds of years the region’s woodlands have played an outsize role in international relations, economic growth, and the development of national identity. Across eleven chapters, the contributors to this volume survey the histories of state forestry policy in Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, and Great Britain from the early modern period to the present. Each explores the complex interrelationships of state-building, resource management, knowledge transfer, and trade over a period characterized by ongoing modernization and evolving environmental awareness.

Germany boasts one of the strongest environmental records in the world. The Rhine River is cleaner than it has been in decades, recycling is considered a civic duty, and German manufacturers of pollution-control technology export their products around the globe. Yet, little has been written about the country's remarkable environmental history, and even less of that research is available in English. Now for the first time, a survey of the country's natural and cultural landscapes is available in one volume. Essays by leading scholars of history, geography, and the social sciences move beyond the Green movement to uncover the enduring yet ever-changing cultural patterns, social institutions, and geographic factors that have sustained Germany's relationship to its land. Unlike the American environmental movement, which is still dominated by debates about wilderness conservation and the retention of untouched spaces, discussions of the German landscape have long recognized human impact as part of the "natural order." Drawing on a variety of sites as examples, including forests, waterways, the Autobahn, and natural history museums, the essays demonstrate how environmental debates in Germany have generally centered on the best ways to harmonize human priorities and organic order, rather than on attempts to reify wilderness as a place to escape from industrial society. Germany's Nature is essential reading for students and professionals working in the fields of environmental studies, European history, and the history of science and technology.