Only through the conquest of new Lebensraum could Germany really prosper and the direction of this settlement drive was obvious. The Third Reich would start where the Germanic tribes had left off ‘. . . six hundred years ago. We will stop the eternal Germanic migration to the south and west and direct our vision towards the land in the east.’33 At the Nuremberg trials Darré tried to present himself as a harmless advocate of the peasantry.34 But there can in fact be no serious doubt that he and Backe were from the start fully complicit in Hitler’s dreams of conquest.
