The German historian Klaus Hildebrand described Darré together with Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg as one of the leaders of the "agrarian" fraction within the NSDAP who championed anti-industrial and anti-urban "blood and soil" ideology, expansion into Eastern Europe to win Lebensraum, an alliance with Great Britain to defeat the Soviet Union, and staunch opposition to restoring the pre-1914 German colonial empire.[14] The "agrarian" fraction took the view that Wilhelmine imperialism had taken Germany in the wrong direction by colonizing lands that were unsuitable for mass colonization by German settlers and had unwisely antagonized Britain.[14] The lesson that the Nazi "agrarians" drew from the Second Reich was that Germany must restrict its ambitions to the continent of Europe in order to win an alliance with Britain and land suitable for German colonization.[14] On 1 January 1932, Reichsführer-SS Himmler appointed him chief of the newly established SS Race and Settlement Main Office (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt or RuSHA), a racist and antisemitic organization. Darré was given the rank of SS-Gruppenführer. The RuSHA was a department which implemented racial policies and was concerned with the racial integrity of the members of the SS.[15]