HITLER'S DESTRUCTION AND CONSTRUCTION PLAN: LEBENSRAUM

 

BIRTH AND RISE

The concept of Lebensraum was not defined until the early 20th century. It was first coined by geographer and etnographer Friedrich Ratzel. Ratzel who believed that the strongest state would survive, also advocated for the concept of exploitation. The Pan-German League, a group aiming to unite all people speaking Germanic languages, embraced Ratzel’s ideas. Friedrich von Bernhardi, in his book ‘Germany and the Next War’, proposed the use of military force for Germany to expand into Eastern Europe to realize Lebensraum. The Brest-Litovsk treaties, which ended World War I, endorsed German occupation and coloniazation that emerged in the Baltic Sea and present day Belarus.

LEBENSRAUM IN HITLER'S GERMANY

The Treaty of Versailles was signed to establish peace after World War I. This treaty imposed many restrictions on Germany, including reparations for war damages. Germans found the terms of treaty both humiliating and economically and militarily crippling. Adolf Hitler opposed these measures and blamed Jews for Germany’s situation, which further fueled his embrace of Lebensraum. He set his sights on the natural resources of Siberia and the agricultural riches of Ukraine. Lebensraum also had a racist aspect; Hitler likened it to America’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ ideology, which advocated for the expansion of American settlers across the continent in the 19th century. According to Hitler, the Slavic and Jewish inhabitants of the East were ‘Untermenschen’ or subhuman beings. Hitler, whose greatest desire was to make Germany a world power, first articulated Lebensraum in the Hossbach Memorandum. When the German population exceeded 80 million, Hitler predicted that Germany would not be able to sustain this population in the near future, unable to feed them or meet their agricultural needs, resulting in significant foreign exchange debt and ultimately insurmountable problems. By pursuing an aggressive and expansionist policy, they argued that they would expel the races they deemed inferior from their lands, benefit from their territories and bring prosperity to the German race. The lack of objection from the British to these invasions and the disregard of warnings from Russia gave Hitler the confidence to continue his invasions unabated. Hitler’s annexation of Austria, with no interference from the West, emboldened him to similarly take Czechoslovakia. However, when it came to Poland, things did not go as Hitler planned, leading to the outbreak of World War II as a result of this invasion.

LEBENSRAUM AND ANSCHLUSS

Nazi Germany pursued an aggressive foreign policy throughout the 1930’s, ultimately leading to the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 in Europe. The desire of Germany to expand its territories before and during the war, known as the Lebensraum policy, resulted in millions of Jews coming under German control. On March 11-13, 1938, Nazi Germany annexed the neighboring country of Austria, an event known as the ‘Anschluss’. The Anschluss marked the first implementation of the Lebensraum policy by the Nazi Germany regime. By annexing Austria, the Nazis violated the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint-Germain, which explicitly prohibited the unification of Austria and Germany. However, the acceptance of the Anschluss by the other countries, without imposing any sanctions on the Nazis for violating international agreements, was a significant concession allowed Adolf Hitler’s Lebensraum policy to continue unchecked. Hitler’s and the Nazis’ two main goals were to unite all Germans under a Nazi German Empire and to complete Lebensraum. The Anschluss was highly popular both in Germany and Austria, leading to violent incidents against the Jewish population in Austria, leading to violent incidents against the Jewish population in Austria as a result.

 LEBENSRAUM AND HOLOCAUST

As the German military forces advanced eastward for the Lebensraum plan, the number of people they killed increased, contributing significantly to the Holocaust and leading to tragic consequences. The Nazis, aiming to realize this vision, targeted not only Jews but also other ethnic, social, political and religious groups. Among the victims were Roma, homosexuals, Poles and Soviets. An estimated six million European Jews and millions of others lost their lives as a result of state-sponsored systematic killings and other policies of the Nazi regime, including Lebensraum. 

LEBENSRAUM IN MEIN KAMPF

In his book Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote an article titled ‘Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy’, emphasizing the need for Germany’s new living space. He claimed that achieving Lebensraum required political will and that the National Socialist Movement must strive to expand the territory and obtain new food resources for the German people. Hitler rejected the restoration of Germany’s pre-war borders as an inadequate measure aimed at reducing the so-called national surplus population. From this perspective, he argued that the nature of national borders was always unfinished and temporary, advocating for the necessity of redrawing these borders as Germany’s political goal. Therefore, Hitler defined the geopolitics of Lebensraum as the ultimate political will of his party. He concluded with the statement, ‘Here we National Socialists are consciously drawing a line under the pre-war period’s foreign policy trend. We are continuing from where we left off six centruies ago. We are stopping the endless movement of Germans to the South and west and turning our gaze to the lands in the East. Finally, we are breaking away from the pre-war period’s colonial and trade policies and transitioning to the future’s land policy.’ After Hitler came to power, Lebensraum became the ideological principle of Nazism.

SOURCES

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lebensraum

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lebensraum

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1429483

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-territorial-aggression-the-anschluss

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/lebensraum-and-anschluss/

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