Walther Darre
1895 – 1953 German (born in Argentina) Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture; SS-Obergruppenfuhrer
Originator of the 'Blood and Soil' ideology linking German race to the land.
- Religion
- Protestant background; a leading neo-pagan 'Blood and Soil' ideologue who romanticized a pre-Christian Germanic peasantry and rejected Christianity.
- Affiliations
- Nazi Party; SS; co-founder of the Artaman League; head of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office. His neo-paganism was ideological racial mysticism, real but distinct from ritual occultism.
Darre developed the 'Blood and Soil' doctrine that tied racial purity to peasant land and helped recruit early SS men through the Artaman movement. As agriculture minister and race office chief he pushed settlement and eugenic policies. Convicted at a later Nuremberg trial, he was released early and died in 1953.
Connections
- ally of Heinrich Himmler — Fellow Artaman and 'Blood and Soil' ideologue who helped staff the early SS.
- ally of Heinrich Himmler — Fellow Artaman who shaped the SS's racial-agrarian ideology.
- associate of Rudolf Hoss — Both came through the Artaman agrarian movement.