Richard Walther Darré popularized the phrase at the time of the rise of Nazi Germany in his 1930 book ("A New Nobility Based On Blood And Soil"), in which he proposed a systematic eugenics program, arguing for selective breeding as a cure-all for the problems plaguing the state. In 1928, he had also written the book "Peasantry as the Life Source of the Nordic Race", in which he presented his theory that the alleged difference between Nordic people and Southeastern Europeans was based in the Nordic people's connection to superior land. Darré was an influential member of the Nazi Party and a noted race theorist who assisted the party greatly in gaining support among common Germans outside the cities. Prior to their ascension to power, Nazis called for a return from the cities to the countryside. This agrarian sentiment allowed opposition to both the middle class and the aristocracy, and presented the farmer as a superior figure beside the moral swamp of the city.