Richard Walther Darré Richard Walther Darré ( born Ricardo Walther Oscar Darré ; 14 July 1895 – 5 September 1953 ) was an SS - " Obergruppenführer " and one of the leading Nazi " blood and soil " ( German : " Blut und Boden " ) ideologists . He was appointed by Hitler as Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture . He served in that position from 1933 to 1942 . Early life . Darré was born in Belgrano , 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 ( Richard Walther remembered his father as a hard drinker and a 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 attended as an exchange pupil 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 , which awakened his interest in farming . 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 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 League , a " Völkisch " youth - group committed to the back - to - the - land movement . In this context he began to develop the idea of the linkage between the future of the Nordic race and the soil : the tendency which became known as " " Blut und Boden " " . Here " Blut " ( blood ) represents race or ancestry , while " Boden " expresses the concepts of soil , territory , or land . The essence of the theory involved the mutual and long - term relationship between a people and the land that it occupies and cultivates . Darré ' s first political article ( 1926 ) discussed " Internal Colonisation " and argued against Germany attempting to regain the lost colonies . Most of his writing at this time , however , concentrated on technical aspects of animal breeding . He wrote his first book , " Das Bauerntum als Lebensquell der nordischen Rasse " ( ' Peasantry as the life - source of the Nordic Race ' ) , 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 . Darré demanded the restoration of the ancient tradition , as well as serious efforts to restore the purity of Nordic blood , including exterminating the sick and impure . In her biography of Darré , Anna Bramwell interprets 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 . Other scholars , however , have challenged this view , seeing Bramwell ' s books 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 disparaged 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 . In July 1930 , after Paul Schultze - Naumburg had introduced him to Adolf Hitler , Darré 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 , " Reichsführer - SS " Himmler appointed him chief of the newly established SS Race and Settlement Main Office ( " Rasse - und Siedlungshauptamt " or RuSHA ) , a racist and antisemitic organization . Darré was given the rank of SS - " Gruppenführer " . The RuSHA was a department which implemented racial policies and was concerned with the racial integrity of the members of the SS . In his religious views , Dárre would belong to the Pagan faction 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 , " of having " 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 DNVP leader Alfred Hugenberg . He was also named " Reichsbauernführer " ( usually translated as Reich Peasant Leader , though the word " Bauer " also denotes Farmer ) . Darré was one of the few Nazi ministers who knew his field well . 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 . 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 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 . The transcript of a 1940 speech given by Darré was published in " Life magazine " , 9 December 1940 : " by blitzkrieg . . . before autumn . . . we shall be the absolute masters of two continents . . . a new aristocracy of German masters will be created [ with ] slaves assigned to it , these slaves to be their property and to consist of landless , non - German nationals . . . we actually have in mind a modern form of medieval slavery which we must and will introduce because we urgently need it in order to fulfill our great tasks . These slaves will by no means be denied the blessings of illiteracy ; higher education will , in future , be reserved only for the German population of Europe . . . " After the war . In 1945 the American authorities arrested Darré at Flak - Kaserne Ludwigsburg 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 . Darré is buried in Goslar . 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 .