R. Walther Darré
Encyclopedia
Richard Walther Darré was an SS
-Obergruppenführer
and one of the leading Nazi
"blood and soil
" (German: Blut und Boden) ideologists. He served as Reich
Minister of Food and Agriculture
from 1933 to 1942.
a Buenos Aires
neighbourhood, in Argentina
to Richard Oscar Darré, a German with Huguenot
ancestry, (born 10 March 1854, Berlin
; died 20 February 1929, Wiesbaden
) and the half-Swedish
/half-German Emilia Berta Eleonore, née Lagergren (born 23 July 1872, Buenos Aires
; died 20 July 1936, Bad Pyrmont
). His father moved to Argentina
in 1888 as a partner of the German international import/export wholesaler Engelbert Hardt & Co. Although his parents' marriage was not a happy one (according to Richard Walther, his father was a hard drinker and womanizer), they lived prosperously, and educated their children privately until they were forced to return to Germany as a result of worsening international relations in the years preceding World War I
. Darré gained fluency in four languages: Spanish
, German
, English
, and French
.
Darré's parents sent him to Germany at age nine to attend school in Heidelberg
; in 1911 he was sent as an exchange pupil to King's College School
in Wimbledon
. The rest of the family returned to Germany in 1912. Richard (as he was known in the family) then spent two years at the Oberrealschule in Gummersbach
, followed in early 1914 by the Kolonialschule for resettlement in the German colonies
at Witzenhausen
, south of Göttingen
, where his interest in farming was awakened.
After a single term at Witzenhausen, he volunteered for army service. He was lightly wounded a number of times while serving during World War I
, but fared better than most of his contemporaries.
When the war ended he contemplated returning to Argentina for a life of farming, but the family's weakening financial position during the years of inflation made this impossible. Instead he returned to Witzenhausen to continue his studies. He then obtained unpaid work as a farm assistant in Pomerania: his observation of the treatment of returning German soldiers there influenced his later writings.
In 1922 he moved to the University of Halle to continue his studies: here he took an agricultural degree, specialising in animal breeding. He did not complete his PhD studies until 1929, at the comparatively mature age of 34. During these years he spent some time working in East Prussia
and Finland
.
He was married twice. In 1922 he married Alma Staadt, a schoolfriend of his sister Ilse. He divorced Alma in 1927, and subsequently married Charlotte Freiin von Vittinghoff-Schell, who survived him. The first marriage produced two daughters.
, a Völkisch
youth group committed to the back-to-the-land movement. Against this backdrop Darré began to develop the idea that the future of the "Nordic race" was linked to the soil in what came to be known as "Blut und Boden". Here "Blut" (blood) represents race or ancestry, while "Boden" can be translated as soil, territory, or land. The essence of the theory was the mutual and long-term relationship between a people and the land that it occupies and cultivates.
Darré's first political article (1926) was on the subject of Internal Colonisation, which argued against Germany attempting to regain the lost colonies. Most of his writing at this time, however, was on technical aspects of animal breeding. His first book, Das Bauerntum als Lebensquell der nordischen Rasse ('Peasantry as the life-source of the Nordic Race'), was written in 1928. It asserted that German farms had previously been bestowed on one son, the strongest, ensuring the best were farmers, but partible inheritance had destroyed that. The ancient tradition had to be restored, as well as serious efforts made to restore the purity of Nordic blood, including exterminating the sick and impure.
In her biography of him, Anna Bramwell attempts to interpret his writing as an early example of "Green
" or Conservationist thinking: he advocated more natural methods of land management, placing emphasis on the conservation of forests, and demanded more open-space and air in the raising of farm animals., though this view has been challenged by other scholars, her books being described as "devoid of credible evidence" and containing "gross errors".
Those who heard and heeded Darré's arguments included Heinrich Himmler
, himself one of the Artamans.
Darré's work also glorified "peasant virtues" - as found in the remnants of the Nordics who lived in the country - and disparged city living.
"In his two major works, he defined the German peasantry as a homogeneous racial group of Nordic antecedents, who formed the cultural and racial core of the German nation. [..] Since the Nordic birth-rate was lower than that of other races, the Nordic race was under a long-term threat of extinction."
had introduced him to Adolf Hitler
, Darré in July 1930 joined the Nazi Party and the SS
. Darré's NSDAP number was 248,256 and his SS number was 6,882. Darré went on to become an active Nazi Reichsleiter
and to set up an agrarian political apparatus to recruit farmers into the party. 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. On 1 January 1932 he became head of the newly established SS Race and Settlement Main Office (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt or RuSHA), a fiercely racist and anti-Semitic organization, in the rank of a Gruppenführer
.
In his religious views, Dárre would belong to the paganist fraction within the Nazi movement (see: Religious aspects of Nazism
); however, unlike Heinrich Himmler
and Alfred Rosenberg
, he has not become a figure of interest in the speculation about Nazi occultism.
Darré's works were primarily concerned with the ancient and present Nordic peasantry (the ideology of Blood and soil
): within this context, he made an explicit attack against Christianity. In his two main works (Das Bauerntum als Lebensquell der Nordischen Rasse, Munich, 1927 and Neuadel aus Blut und Boden, Munich, 1930), Darré accused Christianity, with its "teaching of the equality of men before God," to have "deprived the Teutonic nobility of its moral foundations", the "innate sense of superiority over the nomadic tribes".
Soon after the Nazis came to power
in 1933, Darré became Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture succeeding resigned DNVP
leader Alfred Hugenberg
, and Reichsbauernführer (usually translated as Reich Peasant Leader, though the word Bauer also denotes Farmer), serving from June 1933 to May 1942. He was instrumental in founding the Nazi Reichsnährstand
corporation as part of the Gleichschaltung
process. Darré campaigned for big landowners to part with some of their land to create new farms, and promoted the controversial Reichserbhofgesetz, which reformed the inheritance laws to prevent splitting up of farms into smaller units.
He developed a plan for "Rasse und Raum" ("race and space", or territory) which provided the ideological background for the Nazi expansive policy on behalf of the "Drang nach Osten
" ("Drive to the east") and of the "Lebensraum
" ("Living space") theory expounded in Mein Kampf
. Darré strongly influenced Reichsführer-SS
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. In the course of the preparations for the Generalplan Ost
, Himmler would later break with Darré, whom he saw as too theoretical. Darré was generally on bad terms with Economy Minister Hjalmar Schacht
, particularly as Germany suffered poor harvests in the mid 1930s.
By September 1938, Himmler was already demanding that Darré step down as leader of the RuSHA in favour of Günther Pancke
. Darré finally had to resign as Reich Minister in 1942, ostensibly on health grounds, and was succeeded by his state secretary Herbert Backe
.
and tried him at the subsequent Nuremberg Trials
as one of 21 defendants in the Ministries Trial
, also known as the Wilhelmstrasse Trial (1947-1949).
He was charged under the following counts:
Darré was sentenced to seven years at Landsberg Prison
. He nevertheless was released in 1950 and spent his final years in Bad Harzburg
. He died in a Munich
hospital on 5 September 1953 of cancer of the liver, induced by alcoholism
. Darré is buried in Goslar
.
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
-Obergruppenführer
Obergruppenführer
Obergruppenführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the SA and until 1942 it was the highest SS rank inferior only to Reichsführer-SS...
and one of the leading Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
"blood and soil
Blood and soil
Blood and Soil refers to an ideology that focuses on ethnicity based on two factors, descent and homeland/Heimat...
" (German: Blut und Boden) ideologists. He served as Reich
Reich
Reich is a German word cognate with the English rich, but also used to designate an empire, realm, or nation. The qualitative connotation from the German is " sovereign state." It is the word traditionally used for a variety of sovereign entities, including Germany in many periods of its history...
Minister of Food and Agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
from 1933 to 1942.
Early life
Darré was born in BelgranoBelgrano, Buenos Aires
Belgrano is a leafy, northern barrio or neighborhood of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.- Location :The barrio of Palermo is to the southeast; Nuñez is to the northwest; Coghlan, Villa Urquiza, Villa Ortúzar and Colegiales are to the southwest....
a Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
neighbourhood, in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
to Richard Oscar Darré, a German with Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
ancestry, (born 10 March 1854, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
; died 20 February 1929, Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
) and the half-Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
/half-German Emilia Berta Eleonore, née Lagergren (born 23 July 1872, Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
; died 20 July 1936, Bad Pyrmont
Bad Pyrmont
-External links:* * -Multimedia:*...
). His father moved to Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
in 1888 as a partner of the German international import/export wholesaler Engelbert Hardt & Co. Although his parents' marriage was not a happy one (according to Richard Walther, his father was a hard drinker and womanizer), they lived prosperously, and educated their children privately until they were forced to return to Germany as a result of worsening international relations in the years preceding World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Darré gained fluency in four languages: Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
.
Darré's parents sent him to Germany at age nine to attend school in Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
; in 1911 he was sent as an exchange pupil to King's College School
King's College School
King's College School, commonly referred to as KCS, King's, or KCS Wimbledon, is an independent school for day pupils in Wimbledon in south-west London. The school was founded as the junior department of King's College London and occupied part of its premises in Strand, before relocating to...
in Wimbledon
Wimbledon, London
Wimbledon is a district in the south west area of London, England, located south of Wandsworth, and east of Kingston upon Thames. It is situated within Greater London. It is home to the Wimbledon Tennis Championships and New Wimbledon Theatre, and contains Wimbledon Common, one of the largest areas...
. The rest of the family returned to Germany in 1912. Richard (as he was known in the family) then spent two years at the Oberrealschule in Gummersbach
Gummersbach
Gummersbach is a city in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, being the district seat of the Oberbergischer Kreis. It is located 50 km east of Cologne. In the past it was nicknamed "the Lime Tree Town", because lime trees lined the main street...
, followed in early 1914 by the Kolonialschule for resettlement in the German colonies
German colonial empire
The German colonial empire was an overseas domain formed in the late 19th century as part of the German Empire. Short-lived colonial efforts by individual German states had occurred in preceding centuries, but Imperial Germany's colonial efforts began in 1884...
at Witzenhausen
Witzenhausen
Witzenhausen is a small town in the Werra-Meißner-Kreis in northeastern Hesse, Germany.It was granted town rights in 1225, and until 1974, it was a district seat....
, south of Göttingen
Göttingen
Göttingen is a university town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Göttingen. The Leine river runs through the town. In 2006 the population was 129,686.-General information:...
, where his interest in farming was awakened.
After a single term at Witzenhausen, he volunteered for army service. He was lightly wounded a number of times while serving during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, but fared better than most of his contemporaries.
When the war ended he contemplated returning to Argentina for a life of farming, but the family's weakening financial position during the years of inflation made this impossible. Instead he returned to Witzenhausen to continue his studies. He then obtained unpaid work as a farm assistant in Pomerania: his observation of the treatment of returning German soldiers there influenced his later writings.
In 1922 he moved to the University of Halle to continue his studies: here he took an agricultural degree, specialising in animal breeding. He did not complete his PhD studies until 1929, at the comparatively mature age of 34. During these years he spent some time working in East Prussia
East Prussia
East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...
and Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
.
He was married twice. In 1922 he married Alma Staadt, a schoolfriend of his sister Ilse. He divorced Alma in 1927, and subsequently married Charlotte Freiin von Vittinghoff-Schell, who survived him. The first marriage produced two daughters.
Political awakening
As a young man in Germany, Darré initially joined the Artaman LeagueArtaman League
The Artaman League was a German agrarian and völkisch movement dedicated to a Blut und Boden-inspired ruralism. Active during the inter-war period, the League became closely linked to, and eventually absorbed by, the Nazi Party.-Etymology:The term Artamanen had been coined before the First World...
, a Völkisch
Völkisch movement
The volkisch movement is the German interpretation of the populist movement, with a romantic focus on folklore and the "organic"...
youth group committed to the back-to-the-land movement. Against this backdrop Darré began to develop the idea that the future of the "Nordic race" was linked to the soil in what came to be known as "Blut und Boden". Here "Blut" (blood) represents race or ancestry, while "Boden" can be translated as soil, territory, or land. The essence of the theory was the mutual and long-term relationship between a people and the land that it occupies and cultivates.
Darré's first political article (1926) was on the subject of Internal Colonisation, which argued against Germany attempting to regain the lost colonies. Most of his writing at this time, however, was on technical aspects of animal breeding. His first book, Das Bauerntum als Lebensquell der nordischen Rasse ('Peasantry as the life-source of the Nordic Race'), was written in 1928. It asserted that German farms had previously been bestowed on one son, the strongest, ensuring the best were farmers, but partible inheritance had destroyed that. The ancient tradition had to be restored, as well as serious efforts made to restore the purity of Nordic blood, including exterminating the sick and impure.
In her biography of him, Anna Bramwell attempts to interpret his writing as an early example of "Green
Green politics
Green politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
" or Conservationist thinking: he advocated more natural methods of land management, placing emphasis on the conservation of forests, and demanded more open-space and air in the raising of farm animals., though this view has been challenged by other scholars, her books being described as "devoid of credible evidence" and containing "gross errors".
Those who heard and heeded Darré's arguments included Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, himself one of the Artamans.
Darré's work also glorified "peasant virtues" - as found in the remnants of the Nordics who lived in the country - and disparged city living.
"In his two major works, he defined the German peasantry as a homogeneous racial group of Nordic antecedents, who formed the cultural and racial core of the German nation. [..] Since the Nordic birth-rate was lower than that of other races, the Nordic race was under a long-term threat of extinction."
As a Nazi Party member
After Paul Schultze-NaumburgPaul Schultze-Naumburg
Paul Schultze-Naumburg was a Nazi architect and one of Nazi Germany's most vocal political critics of modern architecture...
had introduced him to Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, Darré in July 1930 joined the Nazi Party and the SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
. Darré's NSDAP number was 248,256 and his SS number was 6,882. Darré went on to become an active Nazi Reichsleiter
Reichsleiter
Reichsleiter , was the second highest political rank of the NSDAP next only to the office of Führer. Reichsleiter also served as a paramilitary rank, for the Nazi Party and was the highest position attainable in any Nazi-Organisation.The Reichsleiter reported directly to Adolf Hitler, in whose...
and to set up an agrarian political apparatus to recruit farmers into the party. 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. On 1 January 1932 he became head of the newly established SS Race and Settlement Main Office (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt or RuSHA), a fiercely racist and anti-Semitic organization, in the rank of a Gruppenführer
Gruppenführer
Gruppenführer was an early paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party, first created in 1925 as a senior rank of the SA.-SS rank:...
.
In his religious views, Dárre would belong to the paganist fraction within the Nazi movement (see: Religious aspects of Nazism
Religious aspects of Nazism
Historians, political scientists and even philosophers have studied Nazism with a specific focus on its religious or semi-religious aspects.The most prominent discourse here is the debate whether Nazism would constitute a political religion, but there has also been research on the millenarianistic,...
); however, unlike Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
and Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Rosenberg
' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
, he has not become a figure of interest in the speculation about Nazi occultism.
Blood and soil
Blood and Soil refers to an ideology that focuses on ethnicity based on two factors, descent and homeland/Heimat...
): within this context, he made an explicit attack against Christianity. In his two main works (Das Bauerntum als Lebensquell der Nordischen Rasse, Munich, 1927 and Neuadel aus Blut und Boden, Munich, 1930), Darré accused Christianity, with its "teaching of the equality of men before God," to have "deprived the Teutonic nobility of its moral foundations", the "innate sense of superiority over the nomadic tribes".
Soon after the Nazis came to power
Machtergreifung
Machtergreifung is a German word meaning "seizure of power". It is normally used specifically to refer to the Nazi takeover of power in the democratic Weimar Republic on 30 January 1933, the day Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany, turning it into the Nazi German dictatorship.-Term:The...
in 1933, Darré became Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture succeeding resigned DNVP
German National People's Party
The German National People's Party was a national conservative party in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. Before the rise of the NSDAP it was the main nationalist party in Weimar Germany composed of nationalists, reactionary monarchists, völkisch, and antisemitic elements, and...
leader Alfred Hugenberg
Alfred Hugenberg
Alfred Ernst Christian Alexander Hugenberg was an influential German businessman and politician. Hugenberg, a leading figure within nationalist politics in Germany for the first few decades of the twentieth century, became the country's leading media proprietor within the inter-war period...
, and Reichsbauernführer (usually translated as Reich Peasant Leader, though the word Bauer also denotes Farmer), serving from June 1933 to May 1942. He was instrumental in founding the Nazi Reichsnährstand
Reichsnährstand
The Reichsnährstand was a government body set up in Nazi Germany to regulate food production.-Foundation:The Reichsnährstand was founded by the Reichsnahrstandsgesetz of 13 September, 1933; it was led by R. Walther Darré.-Policies:...
corporation as part of the Gleichschaltung
Gleichschaltung
Gleichschaltung , meaning "coordination", "making the same", "bringing into line", is a Nazi term for the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control and tight coordination over all aspects of society. The historian Richard J...
process. Darré campaigned for big landowners to part with some of their land to create new farms, and promoted the controversial Reichserbhofgesetz, which reformed the inheritance laws to prevent splitting up of farms into smaller units.
He developed a plan for "Rasse und Raum" ("race and space", or territory) which provided the ideological background for the Nazi expansive policy on behalf of the "Drang nach Osten
Drang nach Osten
Drang nach Osten was a term coined in the 19th century to designate German expansion into Slavic lands. The term became a motto of the German nationalist movement in the late nineteenth century...
" ("Drive to the east") and of the "Lebensraum
Lebensraum
was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany...
" ("Living space") theory expounded in Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf is a book written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitler's political ideology. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926...
. Darré strongly influenced Reichsführer-SS
Reichsführer-SS
was a special SS rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945. Reichsführer-SS was a title from 1925 to 1933 and, after 1934, the highest rank of the German Schutzstaffel .-Definition:...
Himmler in his goal to create a German racial aristocracy based on selective breeding. The Nazi policies of eugenics
Nazi eugenics
Nazi eugenics were Nazi Germany's racially-based social policies that placed the improvement of the Aryan race through eugenics at the center of their concerns...
would lead to the annihilation of millions of non-Germans. In the course of the preparations for the Generalplan Ost
Generalplan Ost
Generalplan Ost was a secret Nazi German plan for the colonization of Eastern Europe. Implementing it would have necessitated genocide and ethnic cleansing to be undertaken in the Eastern European territories occupied by Germany during World War II...
, Himmler would later break with Darré, whom he saw as too theoretical. Darré was generally on bad terms with Economy Minister Hjalmar Schacht
Hjalmar Schacht
Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht was a German economist, banker, liberal politician, and co-founder of the German Democratic Party. He served as the Currency Commissioner and President of the Reichsbank under the Weimar Republic...
, particularly as Germany suffered poor harvests in the mid 1930s.
By September 1938, Himmler was already demanding that Darré step down as leader of the RuSHA in favour of Günther Pancke
Günther Pancke
Günther Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Pancke was an SS-Obergruppenführer and the Higher SS and Police Leader of Denmark....
. Darré finally had to resign as Reich Minister in 1942, ostensibly on health grounds, and was succeeded by his state secretary Herbert Backe
Herbert Backe
Herbert Backe was a German Nazi politician and Obergruppenführer in the SS.Backe was born in Batumi, Georgia, the son of a trader. He studied at the Tbilisi Gymnasium from 1905 and was interned on the outbreak of World War I as an enemy alien...
.
After the war
In 1945 the American authorities arrested Darré at Flak-Kaserne LudwigsburgFlak-Kaserne Ludwigsburg
Flak-Kaserne in Ludwigsburg, Germany, was the first barracks of the German regiment 25 and later of the American Army. It lies in South-West Germany near Stuttgart.-Developing history:...
and tried him at the subsequent Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
as one of 21 defendants in the Ministries Trial
Ministries Trial
The Ministries Trial was the eleventh of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S...
, also known as the Wilhelmstrasse Trial (1947-1949).
He was charged under the following counts:
- Count I: participation in the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression and invasion of other countries. Found not guilty.
- Count II: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace and crimes against humanity: The count was dismissed, the tribunal finding that no evidence was offered.
- Count IV: crimes against humanity, relating to offenses committed against German nationals from 1933 to 1939. The count was dismissed upon the arguments of defense counsel.
- Count V: atrocities and offenses committed against civilian populations between 1938 and 1945. Found guilty.
- Count VI: plunder and spoliation. Found guilty.
- Count VII: slave labor. Found not guilty.
- Count VIII: membership of criminal organizations. Found guilty.
Darré was sentenced to seven years at Landsberg Prison
Landsberg Prison
Landsberg Prison is a penal facility located in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about west of Munich and south of Augsburg....
. He nevertheless was released in 1950 and spent his final years in Bad Harzburg
Bad Harzburg
Bad Harzburg is a town in central Germany, in the Goslar district of Lower Saxony. It lies on the northern edge of the Harz mountains and is a recognised saltwater spa and climatic health resort.- Location :...
. He died in a Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
hospital on 5 September 1953 of cancer of the liver, induced by alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
. Darré is buried in Goslar
Goslar
Goslar is a historic town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the administrative centre of the district of Goslar and located on the northwestern slopes of the Harz mountain range. The Old Town of Goslar and the Mines of Rammelsberg are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.-Geography:Goslar is situated at the...
.
Works
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.- Peasantry as Life-Source of the German Race (1928)
- New Nobility from Blood and Soil (1929)
External links
- Das Erbhofgesetz
- Review of Anna Bramwell's biography of Darré, Blood and Soil
- Quotation of speech
- Neuordnung unseres Denkens "New Order of Our Thought" by Richard Walther Darré at archive.org
- Blut und Boden - Ein Grundgedanke des Nationalsozialismus "Blood and Soil - A Basic Tenet of National Socialism" by Richard Walther Darré at archive.org