Hitler and the Peasants

Gustavo Corni

• The structure crisis in German agriculture from the end of the 1st World War; National Socialist ideology and peasant protest before the accession to power; interlude - Alfred Hugenberg, "Dictator of the Economy"; the "Reichsnahrstand" in the National Socialist power system; the "Marktordnung"; internal colonization versus preservation of the large eastern estates; the Erbhof law - myth and reality of the new peasantry; the battle for production; extending the living-space - the myth of the Balkans; the exodus of the rural population and the shortage of agricultural labour; the 4 year plan the failure of the "Peasant Utopia"; a comparison with the agrarian policy of fascist Italy.