Richard Walter Darre (14 July 1895 - 5 September 1953)
SS-Obergruppenfuhrer and one of the Nazi leading ideologists. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to a German father and half-Swedish, half-German mother. There exists nothing to indicate either of his parents were as fanatical about clinging to their ethnic heritage as the families of other top Nazis. This is not to say they were completely assimilative, but Darre’s personality allowed him to learn and gain fluency in four languages: English, Spanish, German, and French. He moved to Germany in the 1920’s and did not complete his PhD studies until 1929; at the comparatively old age of 34
He was born in Belgrano, a Buenos Aires neighbourhood, Argentina to a German father and half-Swedish, half-German mother. His father was director of an export/import company. Although his parents’ marriage was not a happy one, 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 the Great War. Darré’s personal upbringing was broad enough to allow him to gain fluency in four languages: English, Spanish, German, and French.
His 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 German Colonial School 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 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.
As a young man in Germany, Darré initially joined the “Artamans”, a ‘Volkish’ youth group who were committed to returning to the land. It was against this backdrop that Darré began to develop the idea that the Nordic race should be tied to the soil in what came to be known as “Blut und Boden[COLOR=red]”. His first political article in [/COLOR]1926 was on the subject of Internal Colonisation, which argued against Germany attempting to regain 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 (The peasantry as life-source of the Nordic Race) was written in 1928. He advocated more natural methods of land management, placing great emphasis on the conservation of forests, and demanded more open space and air in the raising of farm animals. Amongst those who heard and were impressed by these arguments was Artamans, himself one of the Artamans.
