page_title: Artaman League
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Artaman League / Development
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Zentralbild Reichsbauernführer Darré spricht Am 13.12.1937 sprach R.W. Darré während einer Großkundgebung des faschistischen Reichsnährstandes in Goslar. Lt. Angaben des Scherl-Bilderdienstes soll sich Darré von "3000 Vertretern des Landvolkes aus Niedersachsen.... über die Erzeugungsschlacht des kommenden Jahres" ausgelassen haben.
context_page_description: The Artaman League was a German agrarian and völkisch movement dedicated to a Blood and soil–inspired ruralism. Active during the inter-war period, the League became closely linked to, and eventually absorbed by, the Nazi Party.
context_section_description: Although Hentschel had developed his ideas before World War I, the Artaman League first formed in 1923. The Artamans formed part of the German Youth Movement, representing its more right-wing back-to-the-land elements. Under the leadership of Georg Kenstler they advocated  blood-and-soil policies with a strong undercurrent of anti-Slavism. This völkisch movement believed that the decline of the Aryan race could only be halted by encouraging people to abandon city life in favour of settling in the rural areas in the east. Whilst members wished to perform agricultural labour as an alternative to military service, they also saw it as part of their duty to violently oppose Slavs and to drive them out of Germany. The concepts were combined in the figure of the Wehrbauer, or soldier-peasant. Accordingly, the League sent German youth to work on the land in Saxony and in East Prussia in an attempt to prevent these areas being settled by Poles. To this end 2000 settlers were sent to Saxony in 1924 – both to work on farms and to serve as an anti-Slav militia. They also gave classes on the importance of racial purity and the Nordic race, and on the corrupting influence of city living and of Jews.
  Like many similar right-wing youth movements in Germany, the Artaman League lost impetus as the Nazi Party grew. By 1927, 80% of its membership had become Nazis. The League had disappeared by the early 1930s, with most of its membership having switched to the Nazis.
caption: Walther Darré speaking at a Reichsnährstand assembly under the slogan 'Blut und Boden' (blood and soil) in Goslar, 1937
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