World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Age

World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Age
with John M. Kinder
Part of our 1939-1945 series
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDG3XyxGI5lD4207e-oiLxUxZ9rSlyRm2&si=EeNTOE9KSkYgNP3f
Also part of our Home Front series
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDG3XyxGI5lBkmmdluQKJB11iNawiPzlk&si=LKh9926NF5sxLH7Q
Also part of our History Re-analysed series
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDG3XyxGI5lDyxZvSXCtVqV9oSawTT5-j&si=U3MXdwWiGtUfgL9X

As Europe lurched into war in 1939, zookeepers started killing their animals. On September 1, as German forces invaded Poland, Warsaw began with its reptiles. Two days later, workers at the London Zoo launched a similar spree, dispatching six alligators, seven iguanas, sixteen southern anacondas, six Indian fruit bats, a fishing cat, a binturong, a Siberian tiger, five magpies, an Alexandrine parakeet, two bullfrogs, three lion cubs, a cheetah, four wolves, and a manatee over the next few months. Zoos worldwide did the same. The reasons were many, but the pattern was clear: The war that was about to kill so many people started by killing so many animals. Why? And how did zoos, nevertheless, not just survive the war but play a key role in how people did, too?

In this show we will look at how zoos survived the deadliest decade of global history. More than anything before or since, World War II represented an existential threat to the world's zoological institutions. Some zoos were bombed; others bore the indignities of foreign occupation. Even zoos that were spared had to wrestle with questions rarely asked in public: What should they do when supplies ran low? Which animals should be killed to protect the lives of others? And how could zoos justify keeping dangerous animals that might escape and run wild during an aerial attack?

John M. Kinder is director of American Studies and professor of history at Oklahoma State University. He is the author of Paying with Their Bodies: American War and the Problem of the Disabled Veteran, published by the University of Chicago Press, and coeditor of Service Denied: Marginalized Veterans in Modern American History.

Buy the Book:
US https://bookshop.org/a/21029/9780226827667
UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/World-War-Zoos-Deadliest-Conflict/dp/0226827666

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