Germans have been obsessed with mountains and forests since time immemorial. Nazi ideologues often celebrated the National Socialist movement as a religion of nature. Hanns Springer’s Ewiger Wald (Eternal Forest), a semi-documentary released in 1936, is a deeply profound statement of religious faith. Its first ten minutes are a literal hymn to nature and rural rootedness, depicting forests through the seasons, a visual metaphor for birth, death, and rebirth throughout the ages.