1. Herbert Friedrich Wilhelm Backe was a German politician and SS Senior group leader in Nazi Germany who served as State Secretary and Reichsminister in the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
16 Facts About Herbert Backe
1. 2.
Herbert Backe was a doctrinaire racial ideologue, a long-time associate of Richard Walther Darre and a personal friend of Reinhard Heydrich.
3.
Herbert Backe developed and implemented the Operation Hunger that envisioned death by starvation of tens of millions of Slavic and Jewish "useless eaters" following Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union.
4.
Herbert Backe was born in Batumi, Georgia, the son of a retired Prussian lieutenant turned trader.
5.
Herbert Backe's mother was a Caucasus German, whose family had emigrated from Wurttemberg to Russia in the early 19th century.
6.
Herbert Backe studied at the Tbilisi gymnasium from 1905 and was interned on the outbreak of World War I as an enemy alien because he was a citizen of Prussia.
7.
Herbert Backe moved to Germany during the Russian Civil War with the help of the Swedish Red Cross.
8.
Herbert Backe joined the SA in 1922, and in 1925 he joined the Nazi Party at Hanover.
9.
In 1927 Herbert Backe was inspector and administrator on a big farm in Pomerania.
10.
On 27 October 1933, after the Nazi seizure of power, Herbert Backe became the State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture, and in the same month he joined the SS.
11.
Herbert Backe became a member of the Prussian State Council and in October 1936 he was made the agricultural representative to Hermann Goring's Four Year Plan.
12.
When Reichsminister of Food and Agriculture Richard Walther Darre was placed on an extended leave of absence on 23 May 1942, Herbert Backe was charged with carrying out his responsibilities, among which was his role as Reich Farmers Leader in the Nazi Party national leadership, though nominally remaining State Secretary.
13.
On 9 November 1942, Herbert Backe was promoted to SS-Senior Group Leader, a rank roughly equivalent to lieutenant general.
14.
Herbert Backe was a prominent member of the younger generation of Nazi technocrats who occupied second-tier administrative positions in the Nazi system, such as Reinhard Heydrich, Werner Best, and Wilhelm Stuckart.
15.
The most important accomplice of Herbert Backe was Hans-Joachim Riecke, who headed the agricultural section of the Economic Staff East.
16.
Herbert Backe was retained as Reichsminister of Food and Agriculture in Hitler's will and he remained in that position in the short-lived Flensburg Government led by Grossadmiral Karl Donitz until 23 May 1945.