blood and soil en · NOUN
Etymology
Calque of German Blut und Boden, a slogan of the Völkisch movement (including the Nazi Party), chiefly since the 1920s.
Meanings
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(uncountable) A nationalist, often fascist, ideology that sees genetic heritage (blood) and geographic territory (soil) as the most important values of a nation, typically associated with the idealisation of racial “purity”, reproductive fertility, agriculture and belligerence; examples include Nazism (cf. the concept of Lebensraum) and white nationalism in the United States.
Originator of the Nazi blood-and-soil racial theory, Richard Walther Darre became Agriculture Minister in July, 1933, and announced that his chief aim was to make Germany independent of the world in respect to her food supplies.
1953 September 6, “R.W. Darre Dead; Hitler Minister”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:Mr. Ramaswamy assailed the idea as a “blood and soil” conception of citizenship, one that is “un-American at its core” and “about as loony as anything the woke left has actually put up.”
2025 December 20, Richard Fausset, Ken Bensinger, quoting Vivek Ramaswamy, “Turning Point’s Annual Gathering Turns Into a Gripefest”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 21 Dec 2025:Representatives of this line of thought around the world are, in many cases, echoing eco-fascist ideas that themselves are rooted in an earlier age of blood-and-soil nationalism.
2021 November 21, Oliver Milman, “Climate denial is waning on the right. What’s replacing it might be just as scary”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 29 Mar 2022:
Translations (5)
sv blod och jord (nationalist mantra) · ru кровь и почва (nationalist mantra) · de Blut und Boden (nationalist mantra) · cmn 血與土 /血与土 (nationalist mantra) · az qan və torpaq (nationalist mantra)