German environmental organizations have doggedly pursued environmental
protection through difficult times: hyperinflation and war, National
Socialist rule, postwar devastation, state socialism in the GDR, and
confrontation with the authorities during the 1970s and 1980s. The
author recounts the fascinating and sometimes dramatic story of these
organizations from their origins at the end of the nineteenth century to
the present, not only describing how they reacted to powerful social
movements, including the homeland protection and socialist movements in
the early years of the twentieth century, the Nazi movement, and the
anti-nuclear and new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s, but also
examining strategies for survival in periods like the current one, when
environmental concerns are not at the top of the national agenda.
Previous analyses of environmental organizations have almost invariably
viewed them as parts of larger social structures, that is, as components
of social movements, as interest groups within a political system, or as
contributors to civil society. This book, by contrast, starts from the
premise that through the use of theories developed specifically to
analyze the behavior of organizations and NGOs we can gain additional
insight into why environmental organizations behave as they do.