I’ve never heard it explained how Hitler and Himmler were vegetarians who refused to harm animals, but were fine exterminating people

The only explanation I’ve heard is that they hated harming animals yet didn’t mind harming Jews and slavs, because they saw them as sub-human, more so than animals. This doesn’t make any sense though.

The narrative seems to be that they saw animals as Nordic/aryan and refused to harm them because of that. I find it very hard to believe that they thought an indo European group (like Slavs) were literally further away from Germanic indo Europeans than cows and chickens.

If they were against harming sentient creatures but were willing to kill off Slavs and Jews because they thought it was politically necessary, that would not really be that philosophically strange, but it’s not what we’re told.