Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

But never mind all the talk about peasantry and smallholdings characteristic of Blut und Boden ideology.[58] The bureaucracy was not intended to deal with every German household involved in raising domestic animals. This was particularly obvious in the case of swine, which nearly every German country household kept. By 1937 about 5.3 million households reported pig rearing, of which only 3.5 million were commercial operations.[59] More important for my argument, out of a total of 24 million slaughtered pigs in that same year, there were about 32,000 registered breeding pigs, of which only 7,000 were boars. The aim was to raise the performance of all the swine in Germany by improving the performance of this breeding stock. The RNS directed its efforts to the owners of those 32,000 registered pigs (an elite army of Frontschweine, in RNS terminology) and ignored the vast number of Gebrauchtzüchter (subsistence breeders) who were not members of the breeders’ associations. The Frontschweine were only the pedigree breeders (Stammzüchter) who, in addition to their membership in the RNS associations, bred only one race in purity and kept detailed records of their herds including data on genealogy, feed intake, and diseases. To be considered a pedigree breeder, at least half of one’s boars had to be the result of inbreeding and their ancestry known for at least three generations.[60] Crucially, the status of pedigree breeder demanded performance tests of one’s herd, supervised by both the local breeders’ society and the local RNS structure.

Following the set of rules formulated by the RNS, no later than the fourth week after birth every piglet had to be earmarked by the pedigree breeder. The right ear had to show the register number of the mother and in the edge the piglet’s number; the piglet’s left ear was left free until the animal was included in the books kept by the RNS register office, after which it was marked with the register number and the register symbol.[61] For an animal to be considered to enter the register it had to include information of its male bloodline until the third generation up. Also, minimum performance records of the mother were demanded for a boar to have its name in the register. Only descendants of sows with a minimum of seven piglets in their first litters and whose fourth-week average weight in each litter reached at least 45 kilograms entered the register.

After the RNS took over of the German animal-breeding structure, the register books would become the basis for buying and selling breeding animals all over the Reich. More than that, the animal-breeding law (Tierzuchtgesetz) issued by the Führer in March 1936 as part of the Battle for Production specified that only stallions, bulls, boars, and rams included in the register could be marketed as breeding animals.[62] The opening words of the law were clear: “The Reichsminister for Food and Agriculture authorizes the measures to promote bodenständig animal breeding…. Only registered sires are to be used to cover dams… and only animals of designated races may be used for breeding.”

Two years later, Kühn-Archiv, the academic journal published by the Halle Agricultural Institute, invited contributions to a special issue organized by Gustav Frölich the Halle alumni who had a say in organizing and promoting animal breeding in Germany. The large majority of the 49 alumni who contributed were members of the RNS structure responsible for enacting the animal breeding law of 1936. The opening contribution was, of course, by the most distinguished of Frölich alumni, Richard Walther Darré, in his dual role as Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture and leader of the RNS.[63] Animal breeders, the law suggested, carried a great responsibility toward the German people. In Darré’s words, the raising of domestic animals was the economic backbone of Germany’s peasantry. Since according to Hitler’s dictum “the Third Reich will be a peasant Reich or it will pass like those of the Hohenzollern and the Hohenstaufen,” breeders were responsible for the survival of the Reich.[64] The Halle Institute’s task was to establish the performance standards guiding animal breeders to meet their responsibilities toward the German people.