New Nobility of Blood and Soil

The Doctrine Behind the Slogan

Blut und Boden, Blood and Soil, is one of the most recognizable phrases of the Third Reich era. Most people who use it, whether approvingly or critically, have never read the book that gave it intellectual substance. Richard Walther Darré's Neuadel aus Blut und Boden, published in 1930, three years before the Nazi seizure of power, is that book. It lays out a coherent agrarian-racial philosophy that would later become the foundation of the SS's resettlement program and the Reich's entire peasant policy.

Darré's Argument

Darré was an agronomist by training, and his argument is rooted in a specific claim: that the health of a people depends on a rooted peasant class tied to the land, and that urbanization and industrialization destroy the biological and cultural stock of a nation. He calls for a "new nobility" selected not by birth into aristocratic families but by hereditary fitness and commitment to agricultural life. The book blends genetics, soil science, medieval German legal history, and racial theory into a single program.

Historical Significance

Darré served as Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture from 1933 to 1942. His ideas shaped real policy. Reading this book is essential for understanding how agrarian romanticism, racial ideology, and state power combined in practice during the Third Reich period. This is a primary source, not a commentary.

About This Edition

Author: Richard Walther Darré
Publisher: Antelope Hill Publishing
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781953730497