Lebensraum

Lebensraum is the German term for "habitat"; used both in ecological and sociological contexts, it literally means "living room." When used in English, it refers to a motivation of the National Socialist (or Nazi) government of Germany and its expansionist policies, which aimed to provide extra space for the growth of the German population.

Origins

The idea of a Germanic people without sufficient space dates back long before Adolf Hitler brought it to prominence. The term Lebensraum in this sense was coined by Friedrich Ratzel in 1897, used as a slogan in Germany referring to the unification of the country and the acquisition of colonies, as per the English and French models. It was adapted from Darwinian and other scientific ideas of the day about how ecological niches are filled. Similar concepts are still used today in geography and biology. page 217.

Ratzel believed the development of a people is primarily influenced by their geographical situation and that a people that successfully adapted to one location would proceed naturally to another. This expansion to fill available space, he claimed, was a natural and necessary feature of any healthy species.

These beliefs were furthered by scholars of the day, including Karl Haushofer and Friedrich von Bernhardi. In von Bernhardi's 1912 book Germany and the Next War, he expanded upon Ratzel's hypotheses and, for the first time, explicitly identified Eastern Europe as a source of new space.

The attempts to implement the Lebensraum happened in Zamosc County and Wartheland (see Generalplan Ost). The biggest obstacle to implement the Lebensraum further was the fact that by the end of 1942 the Sixth Army was defeated at Stalingrad. After the second big defeat in the tank battle at Kursk during July 1943 and the Allied landings in Sicily, all further Lebensraum plans came to a halt.

The Lebensraum ideology was a major factor in Hitler's launching of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. The Nazis hoped to turn large areas of Soviet territory into German settlement areas as part of Generalplan Ost.

Developing these ideas, Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg, proposed that the Nazi administrative organization in lands to be conquered from the Soviets be based upon the following Reichskommissariats:

Ostland (Baltic States, Belarus and eastern Poland),
Ukraine (Ukraine and adjacent territories),
Kaukasus (Caucasus area),
Moskau (the Moscow metropolitan area and adjacent European Russia)

The Reichskommissariat territories would extend up to the European frontier at the Urals. These administrative entities were to have been early stages in the displacement and dispossession of Russian and other Slav peoples and their replacement with German settlers, following the Nazi "Lebensraum im Osten" plans.

Rosenberg also feared the danger of "Grossrussische Expansion" (a supposed Soviet expansionist policy), and advocated "preventive armed action" to protect the German nation against this alleged threat.

When German forces entered Soviet territory, they promptly organized occupation regimes - the Reichskomissariats of Ostland and Ukraine. The development of the expansionist ideas continued in these territories until 1943-44, when the military situation reversed following the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk.

Hitler on Lebensraum

In an era when the earth is gradually being divided up among states, some of which embrace almost entire continents, we cannot speak of a world power in connection with a formation whose political mother country is limited to the absurd area of five hundred thousand square kilometers. --- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971, page 644.

Without consideration of traditions and prejudices, Germany must find the courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation. --- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, page 646.

For it is not in colonial acquisitions that we must see the solution of this problem, but exclusively in the acquisition of a territory for settlement, which will enhance the area of the mother country, and hence not only keep the new settlers in the most intimate community with the land of their origin, but secure for the total area those advantages which lie in its unified magnitude. --- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, page 653.

Lebensraum in fiction

Lebensraum is also the name of a contemporary play by playwright Israel Horovitz, in which the chancellor of Germany wakes up one night after a nightmare and decides to invite 6 million Jews to come live in Germany as restitution for the Holocaust.

References

External links

Hitler and 'Lebensraum' in the East By Jeremy Noakes
Utopia: The Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation - map of Nazi plans

German loanwords | Nazi Germany

Origins

Hitler on Lebensraum

Lebensraum in fiction

See also

Expansionist movements in other countries

References

External links

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Lebensraum

Origins

Hitler on Lebensraum

Lebensraum in fiction

See also

Expansionist movements in other countries

References

External links