Richard-Walter Darré (14 July, 1895 - 5 September, 1953), SS-Obergruppenführer, was one of the Nazi leading ‘blood and soil’ ideologists. He served as Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture from 1933 to 1942.

He was born in Belgrano, a Buenos Aires neighbourhood, Argentina to a German father and half-Swedish, half-German mother. His father was director of an export/import company. There exists nothing to indicate either of his parents were as fanatical about clinging to their ethnic heritage as the families of other top Nazis. This is not to say they were completely assimilative, but Darre's personal upbringing was broad enough to allow him to learn and gain fluency in four languages: English, Spanish, German, and French.

He moved to Germany at age nine and attended school in Heidelberg, Godesberg, King's College School in Wimbledon, and Witzenhausen. He was wounded a number of times while serving during World War One, on the Western Front, in the artillery. in the 1920's and did not complete his PhD studies until 1929; at the comparatively old age of 34. As a young man in Germany Darré initially joined the "Artamans", a 'Volkish' youth group who were committed to returning to the land. It was against this backdrop that Darré began to develop the idea that the Nordic race should be tied to the soil in what came to be known as "Blut und Boden". Amongst those who heard and were impressed by these arguments was Heinrich Himmler, himself one of the Artamans. He went on to become an active Nazi and in the Summer of 1930 he set up an agrarian political apparatus to recruit farmers into the NSDAP. Darré saw three main roles for this apparatus: to exploit unrest in the countryside as a weapon against the urban government; to win over the peasants as staunch Nazi supporters; to gain a constituency of people who could be used as settlers to displace the Slavs in future conquests in the East. In all he was fairly successful in turning the countryside to National Socialism.

Soon after the Nazis had come to power, from June 1933 to May 1942, Darré served as the Reichsminister of Food and Agriculture, Director of the Reich and Settlement Office ('Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt' or RuSHA), and Reich Peasant Leader. He played a leading part in setting up the SS Race and Resettlement Office, a fiercely racist, anti-Semitic organization. He developed a plan for "Rasse und Raum" (race and space, or territory) which provided the ideological background for the Nazi expansive policy. Darré strongly influenced SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler in his goal to create a German racial aristocracy based on selective breeding. The Nazi policies of eugenics would lead to the annihilation of millions of non-Germans until the end of the war. Himmler would later break with Darré, whom he saw as too theoretical and he was generally on bad terms with Hjalmar Schacht, particulary as Germany suffered poor harvests in the mid 1930s. Darré was captured in 1945 and tried at the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings (the Ministry Case, 1947-49). Sentenced to seven years in prison, he was released in 1950 and died in Munich on 5 September, 1953 of liver failure.

Darré's writings have proven fairly influential on those modern day right wing extremists who also believe in the decadence of urban life and the nobility of self-sufficiency. His two main writings were Das Bauerntum als Lebensquell der nordischen Rasse (1928) and Neuadel aus Blut und Boden(1934), translated into English as "The Peasantry as Life Source of the Nordic Race" and "A New Nobility of Blood and Soil" respectively.

Works

• Peasantry as Life-Source of the German Race (1928)
• New Nobility from Blood and Soil (1929)

References

• Blood and Soil: Richard Walther Darre and Hitler's "Green Party" by Anna Bramwell (Kensal Press, 1985, ISBN 0946041334)
• Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 edited by Philip Rees, (1991, ISBN 0130893013)
• The Plough and the Swastika: The NSDAP and Agriculture in Germany, 1928-45 by J.E. Farquharson (London, 1976, reprinted by Landpost Pr, 1992, ISBN 1880881039)

External Links

Review of Anna Bramwell's biography of Darre, Blood and Soil (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Omega/5844/greennazi.html)