Did the Deep Ecologist Pentti Linkola Meet Heinrich Himmler?

For more than thirty years, Mikko Paunio (MD, MHS) has studied the new-old nature pantheism that was born in the UN framework, with its partners, the Club of Rome and the World Economic Forum. This religion has largely replaced Christianity in Western countries. Nature pantheism specifically draws upon the “wisdom” of theosophy, the esotericism and occultism of the world’s most famous con-artist, Madame Blavatsky, who claimed to have discovered the lost “truth” that unites world religions. Linkola’s extreme writings on population control—especially his promoted “life boat analogy”—have already probably inspired mass shootings around the world, including one in Finland.

Pentti Linkola’s Writings were Deeply Influenced by German Romanticism

Pentti Linkola, a deep ecologist, an amateur ornithologist, a fisherman and a university drop-out, was a very famous cultural figure in Finland. He has also gained a fair amount of international interest. He died in April 2020 at the age of 87 years. Outside of Finland, there is very little recognition of the fact, that he was an ardent Nazi.

Thus, it is time to revisit the dark undercurrents of German romanticism. It can be done by exploring the horrendous thinking of Linkola, whose whole extended family was strongly influenced by German culture and idealism. From his mother’s side, Linkola’s grandfather, Hugo Suolahti was a professor in German philology, who eventually became the Chancellor of the University of Helsinki. Young Pentti was very close to Hugo. Hugo’s brother Eino Suolahti was a doctor, the Chairman of the Duodecim Society and the Finnish Medical Association, with close ties to Germany. During WWII, Eino was the Chief Surgeon of the Defence Forces as a Major General of Pharmacy. He had had military training in Germany during WWI. He—as well as many other members of Pentti’s mother’s family—were actively involved in the far right political activities in the pre-war era, and were supporters of the Suur-Suomi idea (Great Finland i.e., Finland’s territorial expansion to the East) and devoted supporters of Finland’s brothers-in-arms alliance with the Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union. Pentti Linkola himself wrote in 1999, in his essay “Animal Rights in the Bible,” about his relationship with German romanticism, which readily reveals the very essence:

“And I’ve also had the kind of a flimsy idea that the cornerstone of the Western culture, Judaism, has been wholly human centered (even urban) and negative and cold towards nature and animals. I’ve even assumed I’ve seen one partial reason here for the clash between natural romantic Nazism and chillingly rational Judaism.”

August 1942: The Guest Heinrich Himmler

According to Pentti Linkola, Hugo and Eino were very close to each other. Both of them had a summerhouse in Tyrväntö. Both summerhouses were situated on the shores of Lake Vanajavesi. As a child, Pentti spent summers, from June 1st until August 31st (except late summer 1941), in Hugo’s summerhouse. Pentti’s father, Kaarlo Linkola a professor in botany, who later became rector of the University of Helsinki, died in late April 1942 at the age of 53. Thus, in 1942 Pentti had an ever-closer contact that summer with his beloved grandfather Hugo, who had just retired.

The notorious SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler came—in secrecy—to spend three nights in early August 1942, in Hugo’s brother’s Eino’s summerhouse. Himmler, his party, and his hosts spent a lot of time rowing on Lake Vanajavesi, or wandering in the wilderness picking berries and mushrooms on August the 3rd. The summerhouses of the Suolahti brothers were situated five kilometers apart and were easily accessible by boat.

Before going more into details of the early days of August 1942 in Tyrväntö, it is worth noting that a systematic review of Pentti Linkola’s adherence to Nazi ideology is available in Finnish. Later on, I will translate four excerpts from this review. These writings—to my understanding—have not been translated to English before. My idea is to give readers in the English-speaking world, an idea of how deeply Pentti Linkola was influenced by the Nazi ideology, and this might have a lot to do with his personal or otherwise intimate contact with Himmler as a nine-year-old boy, in a fragile state of mind, in early August 1942.

But before going to those excerpts, a few words of my own stance in regards to Mr Linkola and his thoughts and some words about the German Greens, the violence incited by Linkola’s thoughts, and his possible posthumous emergence in the Anglo-Saxon world.

Pentti Linkola’s Finland’s Green Party Program was Based on Nazi Ideology

I wrote an essay in the monthly journal of the Social Democratic Party of Finland in 1989. In that essay, I noted that the Green Party program, written by Pentti Linkola around that time, was directly copied from the Third Reich and it was not just about nature conservation, but also something else and very sinister [see, M. Paunio, “Eikö Historia opeta meille mitään—Johdatus vihreän ympäristökritiikin kritiikkiin” (“Does History not Teach us Anything—Introduction to the Critique of Environmentalism), Sosialistinen Aikakauslehti, 4 (1989), pp. 10-17]. I also predicted in this essay that authoritarian societal developments would be the result of the then already heated ecological debate. This seems truer than ever. Anna Bramwell’s famous book, Ecology in the 20th Century: A History, was published that year. In this book, Bramwell revealed that the Nazis were deep ecologists, inspired ultimately by German Romanticism.

I wrote my essay in the aftermath of the biggest-ever committee set up by the Finnish Government—namely, the Energy Committee (1987-1988). It was set up after the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The report of the Committee, possibly the essay and my later writings influenced the developments that led to Finland’s decision to continue building new nuclear reactors.

In 1987, the Prime Minister’s office hired me to give input to the committee’s work as a young public health researcher. I was responsible for the comparative life-cycle analysis of the public health effects of different primary energy sources. I was horrified—and still am, even more so—at the non-evidence-based fearmongering of the green ideologues, such as Pentti Linkola, when it comes to energy policy, and their hatred of energy production, their total disrespect of the great importance of the uninterrupted functioning of the power grid. These ideas and their promotion in mass media has had a devastating and poisonous effect on young people’s minds in the European Union and in the US. This all ultimately leads to a deep dishonesty and eventually to a catastrophe, largely the result of the deep ecologists’ widely disseminated unscientific, romantic worldview of the soon-collapsing earth, for their worldview has become an imperative for the current mad and irrational green policies in the European Union and the US.

Germany’s the Greens were Established by the Far-Left and Old Nazis in Offenbach, in 1979

According to Anna Bramwell, the German Green Party was established in 1979, in Offenbach, largely by two factions: Disappointed Marxists and old Nazis. The latter were often protégés of the occultist (anthroposophy) and Vice-Führer Rudolph Hess. Both of these factions shared many common positions, such as an anti-nuclear and anti-American stance, pro animal rights, pro nature conservation, pro organic farming, etc.

The old Nazis were ultimately expelled from the German Green Party. However, it is remarkable to notice how similar the contemporary EU green policies, promoted especially by the German Greens, are when compared to those promoted by the Nazis: Wind power, animal rights, vegetarianism, even the EU-2000 Natura directive had a predecessor in the Third Reich, namely Das Reichnaturschutzgesetz (26th June 1935), adopted by Adolf Hitler. Furthermore, although European greens are disguised in the mainstream media as liberals, they share the same authoritarian mentality of the Nazis and communists, by demanding strict obedience to everything they stand for: climate change alarmism, nature conservation, open borders policies, LBGTQ+ rights, animal rights, etc. Even the ever-rising anti-Semitism among the woke red green left is not a coincidence.

Pentti Linkola is Well-Known among English-Speaking Crackpots

Pentti Linkola has been and still is a well-known figure among English-speaking ecological thinkers, as well as both the real and the potential violent mass shooter crackpots. In 2014, Pentti Linkola even received a letter from the notorious Unabomber, i.e. Ted Kaczynski, who is serving life-imprisonment in the US.

In 1994, The Wall Street Journal (European edition) published Pentti Linkola’s population policy and anti-technological views on its front page. In this interview, Linkola said his number one enemy is the United States of America as it stands for everything he hates: economic growth and freedom. He stressed that everything humankind has created in the past 100 years must be destroyed. He said, that he was for a radical reduction of the world population, and he was quoted concerning a possible future world war:

“If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating, if it meant millions of people would die.”

Linkola’s promoted lifeboat analogy, published first in Finnish (1990), is now widely read by the crackpots on the internet:

“What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.”

In early November 2007, Pekka-Eric Auvinen, an 18-year-old Finn, shot seven of his fellow pupils, his headmistress and then himself in a school in southern Finland. Brendan O’Neill wrote an accurate op-ed of it in The Guardian explaining how Pentti Linkola’s thoughts were behind the killing spree. At the beginning of the shooting-spree, Pekka-Eric shouted: “The environmental revolution has started.”

Pekka Eric’s mother wrote for Elonkehä, the magazine for deep ecologists, as did Pentti Linkola. They both sat on the editorial board of the magazine. Pekka-Eric published a manifesto on the Internet before his killing spree. It was similar to those manifestos published by the shooters before the Christchurch and El Paso mass killings. Pekka-Eric was strongly influenced by Pentti Linkola. In his manifesto Pekka-Eric Auvinen portrayed himself as “an Uebermensch.” The shooting and Linkola’s connection with it, became taboo in Finland fairly soon after the incident, as Pentti Linkola enjoys widespread respect among the intellectuals, artists, writers and even among the clergy. The Bishop of Helsinki, Irja Askola (The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, a State Church), symbolically donated 10 ares from Pentti Linkola’s forest sanctuary to Pope Francis in January 2016. However, very soon after the shooting, one journalist asked Linkola, if Pekka-Eric Auvinen acted upon his ideological advice? Linkola replied:

“Hardly any philosophy has been behind it. If that act had been more systematic and effective, then maybe then.”

Linkola’s Posthumous Emergence in the English-Speaking World?

A new book, The Later Philosophy of Pentti Linkola (almost 400 pages), was published in English by an American (who lives in India) deep ecology philosopher and peak oil activist Haag A Chad. In this book, the author admits that Linkola is an authoritarian thinker who condemns democracy, but Chad remains silent about Linkola’s adherence to Nazi ideology. All morality—according to Linkola—is based on the sanctity of nature and the idea that we are one species among others. This is in line with Nazi ideology. Chad praises Linkola as the most important contemporary philosopher in the world, because of Linkola’s extreme anti-technological stance, which is close to the stance of the notorious eco-terrorist and serial murderer the Unabomber. Before writing the new book on Linkola’s philosophy, Chad wrote similar book about the Unabomber’s thinking.

Excerpts from Pentti Linkola’s Non-Translated Work, Revealing His Blatant adherence To Nazi Ideology

These four short excerpts (both comments and direct quotes) make the connection clear. To my knowledge they have not been translated into English before. So, they have not been available to the English-speaking readers before:

“Are the nature conservationists able to take the lead?” Linkola considers them far too soft. He urges to look at the model of the Nazis. “The Nazis were brisk when it came seeking power. They utilized the power of the word and the power of the fist so skillfully and effectively that they received great support.”

“Hitler’s dream was wildly romantic and aesthetic; he was fascinated by bold German heroism; he dreamed of healthy, powerful, self-conscious, beautiful and blue-eyed, forever young people who, in the midst of hard work, walked along to sports festivities as Wagner’s music roared.” (“Introduction” to Thinking, p. 220).

“One example is fascism. Linkola thought, that the two of them could recognize the service that fascism did, when it freed the planet from the burden of tens of millions of Europeans. And even so, that six million left “in an almost ideally painless, unharming manner” (Diary of a Dissident, p. 133).”

“In 2011, Linkola returned to the environmental impact of the Holocaust. He compares the Nazi gas chambers, the persecution of Stalin and the destruction caused by Britain and the United States by bombing German cities. He estimated—based on a memoir by the Auschwitz Commandant, among others— that the Nazi performance was the best, most ecological and humane. The victims’ houses and belongings were not destroyed. Rail transport was eco-efficient. The victims were reassured. The gas killed quickly. “Ideal for the eco-balance sheet was still the utilization of bodies, including hair.”

Heinrich Himmler’s Summer Vacation at Pentti Linkola’s Grand Uncle’s Summerhouse in early August 1942

Now back to the late July of 1942. On July the 29th Heinrich Himmler flew to Finland from war-ravaged Ukraine, in secrecy, on a Junkers Ju-52 airplane. He spent the first three days discussing with the Finnish military and civil leaders. There is still debate about what was discussed by Himmler and the Finnish political and military leaders. It has been argued, though not fully verified, that Himmler asked the Finnish authorities to send all Finnish Jews to Germany. Whatever the truth is, Finland did not deport her Jewish citizens to Germany, though 74 Jews did end up being deported to Nazi Germany. These individuals were either prisoners of war (up to 66) or refugees (eight, of whom all except one perished) from other parts of Europe.

One of the peculiarities of WWII was that Finnish Jews served as brothers-in-arms with the Germans against the Soviet Union. There was even one occasion, when a Jewish military physician., Major Leo Skurnik, heroically safeguarded and evacuated one German field hospital, which was under heavy Russian shelling. He also alone brought one German soldier from no man’s land. Germans awarded the Iron Cross to him for his heroic actions. However, after hearing that he would receive the Iron Cross, he told the Finnish General Hjalmar Siilasvuo to convey a message to the Germans authorities, that he would not accept their Iron Cross and that he would rather wipe his ass with it. General Siilasvuo conveyed Skurnik’s messages to the Germans. They demanded that Skurnik should be turned over to them for punishment, but Siilasvuo declined.

Late in the evening, on August the 2nd in 1942, Heinrich Himmler and his party—personal masseuse Felix Kersten, SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, SS-Hauptsturmführer Werner Grothmann and SS-Obersturmführer Josef Kiermayer came to Eino Suolahti’s (Pentti Linkola’s grand uncle) summerhouse in Tyrväntö. The accompanying Finnish hosts included three State Police officers, who were ordered to provide security to Himmler and to make a report of Himmler’s whereabouts during his visit to Finland. A copy of this report was available from the National Archives. I read it with my daughter, to see if any there was mention of a nine-year-old boy being close to or being introduced to Himmler. If so, Pentti Linkola, in a fragile state of mind after his father’s death, would have met personally Himmler.

State Police Report of Himmler’s whereabouts in Finland and Tyrväntö

The State Police report did not provide any evidence that Hugo Suolahti or his grandson were present at Eino’s summerhouse when Himmler was visiting, nor was there evidence that accompanied Himmler and his party when they walked in the forest and rowed on the lake all day on August the 3rd. However, Hugo Suolahti—very close to his brother, Eino—and a professor in German philology would have been an ideal companion to join the visiting Nazis that day, with his language skills and knowledge of the German culture. The report does not mention Pentti Linkola’s uncle Eino “Nenno” Suolahti’s presence that day. He was very close to Pentti, his younger brother Martti and older sister Airi. “Nenno” was also close in age to Pentti’s mother, Hilkka. Regardless, “Nenno” Suolahti did accompany Himmler and his party that day and during the entire visit, taking photographs.

Even if Pentti Linkola didn’t have any direct contact with Himmler, he must have had the opportunity to see the photographs taken by his uncle. They are still in the possession of the family. With certainty, Pentti Linkola was in Tyrväntö in early August 1942. Even if he didn’t have the opportunity to meet Himmler personally, he might have been greatly influenced by the visit. Obviously, he did at least have very intimate indirect connection with the visit as well as direct family ties. These ties could well have contributed to the grandiose, violent thoughts about his significant role in world history. He brags in his writings of the elite status and prominence of his extended family (“Thoughts and Memories—About the Old Educated Class—A View into the Century’s Ideological History,” 2006). Thus, as his extended upper echelon family was chosen to host this extremely influential but notorious historical figure, it could have contributed to his grandiose and sick thinking. On December 5, 2007, in the aftermath of the Jokela school-shooting, Helsingin Sanomat (the largest newspaper in Finland) asked Pentti Linkola on his 75th birthday, if he had met Heinrich Himmler? Pentti Linkola denied it by saying:

“No, Himmler was my grand uncle’s guest.”

In 1946 Pentti Linkola went to see a photograph exhibition in the Helsinki Art Hall of the just freed concentration camps and saw the horrific images. He came home upset and shouting. He was firmly convinced that what he saw was blatant war propaganda.

Pentti Linkola’s Monumental Failure to Live according to His own Teachings

Pentti Linkola tried disingenuously to show by his austere way of living as a simple fisherman in Tyrväntö, by Lake Vanajavesi, that he lived as he taught. This was his trademark. Pentti Linkola’s extreme stance against technology had only one exception—nylon fishing nets. They were the only things he would accept publicly as fruits of modern technological and scientific advancement. Because of this extreme anti-technological stance, as already mentioned, Pentti Linkola received a letter in 2014 from the notorious eco-terrorist and a serial murderer Ted Kaczynski, i.e., the Unabomber. Linkola never replied, as he deeply hated not only English-speaking countries, especially the US and England, but also the English language as well. To Pentti Linkola, “Germany was the country where culture was born and England was a despicable country in the North Sea covered by fog.”

Although Pentti Linkola has gained wide recognition in Finland and many other countries for his attempts to live as he taught, he failed this test miserably and monumentally. For example, he contracted juvenile diabetes, when he was 63 years of age. For the next 25 years, he received insulin three times a day, most of which was paid for by the National Health Insurance (KELA). Insulin for human therapeutic use was originally derived from the pancreases of cows and pigs and was produced and harvested from these animals for decades. However, by the time Linkola contracted the disease, biosynthetic human insulin for clinical use—manufactured by recombinant DNA technology—was already available for him. Thus, thanks to the advancements in science, there has not been any need to use animals to produce insulin since the 1980s.

Pentti Linkola chose the benefits of the Western science he so deeply hated and chose to live another 25 years instead of living as he had taught. At the end of the day, he was a phony imposter celebrated by the corrupt elite and even by the State Church of Finland, and apparently even by Pope Francis when he accepted Linkola’s symbolic forest sanctuary donation. He still is a celebrated disgrace of the Finnish elite class.

Pentti Linkola did everything in his life to throw Finland—including our National Health Insurance—under the bus. If he had lived according to his own rules, based on deep ecology, he should have chosen a shorter life-span. But he did not.

National Health Insurance can pay healthcare costs only if we manage to safeguard our vibrant export industry, sound energy system and sufficient economic growth, i.e., everything Pentti Linkola hated sincerely. He was able—along with the mainstream greens—to delay investments in the primary energy production in Finland for at least for 20 years. We thus now face an almost certain era of grid collapses in large areas of Europe, including the UK. Pentti Linkola and people like him have played an important role leading to this derailment process, which has ultimately resulted in the utopian and destructive European Union and the Green Deals of the US government.

Do Globalists have something even more Sinister waiting for us than Just the Crackpot Great Reset?

Two years before his death, a biography of Pentti Linkola, Ihminen ja legenda (A Human Being and a Legend), written by Riitta Kylänpää, a journalist, was published. It got the Finlandia Award in 2019 in the non-fiction book series. The prize was awarded by YLE’s (Finland’s BBC TV) news anchor, Matti Rönkä. YLE TV-news has repeatedly disseminated disinformation about acute public health effects of the Chernobyl accident. Five years ago, YLE-TV news was condemned by the industry’s own watch dog (JSN) for doing just that, 35-years after the Chernobyl accident; and YLE-TV news did it again this year 40 years after the accident. I have commented on similar false claims made in the recent popular HBO Chenobyl miniseries, in a British outlet, Reaction. The new biography by Kylänpää does not mention Pentti Linkola’s indirect role in the school shooting and remains silent about the excerpts given here above, in an apparent attempt to protect Pentti Linkola’s glorious reputation.

Reviewers and intellectuals praised the biography, and the newspapers, radio and TV were full of stories glorifying Linkola.

After Linkola’s death, the incumbent Minister for Foreign Affairs of Finland, Pekka Haavisto, and Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Krista Mikkonen, both from the Green League, expressed their condolences and praised Linkola’s significant efforts for nature conservation. Haavisto said that Linkola had influenced generations of environmentalists; and as Linkola did not defend human rights, there never was any disagreement about the conservation. Pekka Haavisto further tweeted:

“The news that Pentti Linkola has passed away stopped me. My own thinking was strongly influenced during school by Linkola’s pamphlet Dreams of a Better World. Linkola was creating a green movement. He lived as he taught. The great conservationist is gone.”

Pekka Haavisto and Krista Mikkonen are ardent globalists. Similar red-green politicians are in power both in the European Union and in the US. These politicians support the global sustainable development agenda of the United Nations, which is increasingly influenced by the ultra-rich oligarchs and Pope Francis, with their strange ideas of dismantling capitalism with the Great Reset program and making it more humane. I cannot escape the thought that the globalists have something even more sinister in their minds for us than just the Great Reset. We ordinary people have to stay vigilant now.

The reader can visit the photo gallery of Heinrich Himmler’s 1942 visit to Finland. Pentti Linkola’s beloved uncle Eino “Nenno” Suolahti took these photos.


Mikko Paunio, MD, MHS is Adjunct professor at the University of Helsinki, Department of Public Health. This article was originally written in May 2021 when the Greens in Germany peaked in polls before Bundestag Autumn elections and it for a short period it seemed that they would get the First Green Chancellor since 1945.