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Old April 21st, 2009 #1
Peer Fischer
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Join Date: Dec 2006
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Default Heck Cattle

Hitler has only got one bull (and it's alive and well in the West Country)

Ancient breed resurrected by Nazis to 'purify' the countryside set up home here

By Cahal Milmo, Chief Reporter

Hitler wanted them to be Aryan cows – ancient beasts resurrected from a time before Europe was populated by "racially degenerate" wildlife.

Hermann Goering was so keen to recreate the one-time prey of Roman hunters that he employed two Nazi scientists to breed the once mighty aurochs back into existence.

The project seemed to have ended with the Second World War when nearly all the cattle kept in Berlin and Munich's zoos were destroyed.

But some 70 years later, the fruit of this deluded labour to bring back to life the gargantuan bovines which roamed Eurasia can now be found peacefully chewing the cud in a few fields on the Devon-Cornwall border.

A herd of 13 Heck cattle, named after the two German zoologist brothers who bred the long-horned, stocky cattle in the Nazi-funded project, has been acquired by a West Country conservationist as part of a rare breeds farm.

Derek Gow, who already has a collection of beavers, polecats and water voles, bought the nine cows and four bulls from a Belgian conservation park which had bred a herd of the shaggy Heck cattle from the few surviving animals left in Munich's Hellabrunn Zoo after 1945.

Mr Gow, 44, who runs a farm at Lifton, near Dartmoor, said: "The Nazis wanted to recreate the aurochs to evoke the power of the folklores and legends of the Germanic peoples. Between the two wars there was thinking that you could selectively breed animals – and indeed people – for Aryan characteristics that were rooted in runes and folklore. Young men hunted these bulls as preparation for battle and leadership in war. Hunting was a very big part of what people like Goering did. This was something that was considered very manly to do."

http://www.independent.co.uk/environ...y-1672104.html
 
 

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