Maria Leitner was in her forties when, in a series of articles published by foreign left-wing newspapers,* she set about relentlessly exposing the dark underbelly of Nazi rule. On her travels through rural Germany, she came across plenty of the Blut und Boden that had so inspired Hamsun and Williamson, but the blood and soil she encountered was far removed from the ‘romantic’ image of peasant life exploited by the Nazis.
