Waldsterben: the 1980s German panic with modern parallels

On the 'ecological Holocaust' that gripped the German public but had little basis in fact.

Dear Reader,

Anyone looking an antidote to the general sense of panic swirling around the country this summer could do worse than reading up on the hysteria that gripped Germany in the 1980s over the allegedly irreversible death of large swathes of its forests.

The panic reached such heights by 1983 that the CDU raised Waldsterben (tree die off) to “the m…