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| | LRB | Neal Ascherson : Imagined Soil (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-03) |
 | | In the west, though, the three centuries spent ‘rectifying’ or canalising the Rhine, the draining and settlement of the North German moors or the building of the great dams around the Ruhr were usually justified in terms of improvement, convenience and progress. |
 | | Looking greedily towards the Pripet marshes, the Nazi planner Heinrich Wiepking-Jürgensmann declared in 1942 that ‘the spirit and energies of the human races are distinguished from each other in the landscape with the sharpness of a knife.’ The Slavs were indolent, the Germans industrious, the Jews parasitic. |
 | | To drain the Pripet region and plant Germanic colonies, as Frederick had done in the Oderbruch, was also to drain away unhealthy races. |
| www.lrb.co.uk /v28/n07/asch01_.html (3732 words) |
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