Blood and soil
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Blood and Soil (German: Blut und Boden) was a phrase and doctrine exploited by Adolf Hitler to provide moral justification for the ejection of the Jewish, and generally non-Germanic, people.
[edit] Origin
Existing in the region long before Hitler, the phrase "Blood and Soil" itself serves as a less specifically anti-Semitic expression, referring to the nationalistic literary movement exemplified by Friedrich Griese among others. Such literature was principally concerned with nostalgic, idealized and even quasi-mystical depictions of German peasant life as an embodiment of the qualities of German blood and German soil and was generally aimed at a less intellectual audience than many other genres. While on a literal level, the term emphasizes nationalism and a group of people's right to live on the soil (land) from which they descend. When used by Hitler, it was applied to generalize the Jewish people as a race without roots or native land which therefore did not belong in Germany.
[edit] As a Nazi ideology
R. Walther Darré popularized the phrase at the time of the rise of Nazi Germany. Darré was an influential member of the Nazi party and a noted race theorist who assisted the party greatly in gaining support among common Germans. The phrase was simple in meaning and it helped many Germans fully recognize some of the goals of the Nazi party as well as accelerating racism against not only Jews but foreigners.
 |
This article on Nazi Germany is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
