(
German for "
habitat" or literally "living space") served as a major motivation for
Nazi Germany's territorial aggression, was a reinterpretation of the by then century-old concept of
Drang nach Osten. In his book
Mein Kampf,
Adolf Hitler detailed his belief that the German people needed
Lebensraum – for a
Großdeutschland, land, and raw materials – and that it should be taken in the East. It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport,
Germanise or enslave the
Polish, and later also
Russian and other
Slavic populations, and to repopulate the land with
reinrassig (racially pure)
Germanic peoples. The entire urban population was to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and allowing their replacement by a German
upper class.
Origins
The idea of a
Germanic people without sufficient space dates back to long before
Adolf Hitler brought it to prominence. The term
Lebensraum in this sense was coined by
Friedrich Ratzel in 1901, and was used as a slogan in Germany referring to the unification of the country and the acquisition of colonies, based on the English and French models. Ratzel believed that the development of a people was primarily influenced by their geographical situation and that a people that successfully adapted to one location would proceed naturally to another. These thoughts can be seen in his studies of zoology and the study of adaptation. This expansion to fill available space, he claimed, was a natural and necessary feature of any healthy species.
Ratzel himself emphasized the need for overseas colonies, to which Germans ought to migrate, not for expansion inside Europe. Wanklyn, (1961) argues that Ratzel's theory was designed to advance science, and that politicians distorted it for political goals. Thus Lebensraum was picked up and expanded by publicists of the day, including
Karl Haushofer and General
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. According to him, war, with the express purpose of achieving
Lebensraum, was a distinct "biological necessity." As he explained with regard to the Latin and Slavic races, "Without war, inferior or decaying races would easily choke the growth of healthy budding elements." The quest for
Lebensraum was more than just an attempt to resolve potential demographic problems: it was a necessary means of defending the German race against stagnation and degeneration."
In 1914, the concept of
Lebensraum was endorsed secretly by the Chancellor
Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg and the rest of the German government as a war aim in
World War I. Documents discovered by the German historian
Fritz Fischer have established that in the event of a German victory, the policy of the German government was to annex
Congress Poland, expel the entire Polish population, both Catholic and Jewish, and in their place settle millions of Germans as a part of a scheme for the German colonization of Eastern Europe. The significance of Fischer's discovery, as the Australian historian John Moses has noted, is that the goal of winning
lebensraum was already German policy long before 1933 and thus cannot be seen, as some German historians have argued, as solely Adolf Hitler's personal brain-child .
As the British historian
A. J. P. Taylor noted in his 1963 foreword "Second Thoughts" to his 1961 book
The Origins of the Second World War:
The German Empire planned to annex territory in both Lithuania and Poland for direct colonization by German colonists after forcible removal of Polish and Lithuanian population. As early as April 1915, the
Polish Border Strip plan against Poland, which was first suggested by General
Erich Ludendorff in 1914, was approved as a German war aim by the Chancellor
Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg. The German historian
Andreas Hillgruber argued that the foreign policy of General Ludendorff, with its demand for
lebensraum to be seized for Germany in Eastern Europe during World War I, was the prototype for German policy in World War II.
Lebensraum almost became a reality in 1918 during
World War I. The new Communist regime of
Russia concluded the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, ending Russian participation in the war in exchange for the surrender of huge swathes of land, including the
Baltic territories,
Belarus,
Ukraine, and the
Caucasus. However, unrest at home and defeat on the Western Front forced Germany to abandon these favorable terms in favor of the
Treaty of Versailles, by which the newly acquired eastern territories were agreed to sacrifice the land to
Lithuania,
Poland, and new nations such as
Estonia or
Latvia, and a series of short-lived independent states in
Ukraine.
The German historian
Andreas Hillgruber argued the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was the prototype for Hitler's vision of a great empire for Germany in Eastern Europe. Hillgruber wrote that:
The desire for
lebensraum was a key tenet of several nationalist and extremist groups in post-World War I Germany, notably the
Nazi Party under
Adolf Hitler. As the American historian
Gerhard Weinberg noted, German demands for territorial revision went beyond merely regaining land lost under the
Treaty of Versailles, and instead embraced calls for the German conquest and colonization of all Eastern Europe, regardless of whether the land in question had belonged to Germany before 1918 or not Likewise, the British historian
Hugh Trevor-Roper argued that the goal of overthrowing Versailles was only a prelude to seizing
Lebensraum in Eastern Europe for Germany with no regard as to where Germany's 1914 frontiers had been. In
Mein Kampf, Hitler was to write:
The official German history of World War II was to conclude that the conquest of
Lebensraum was for Hitler and the rest of the National Socialists the most important German foreign policy goal. At his first meeting with all of the leading generals and admirals of the
Reich on February 3, 1933, Hitler spoke of "conquest of
Lebensraum in the East and its ruthless Germanization" as his ultimate foreign policy objectives. For Hitler, the land which would provide sufficient
Lebensraum for Germany was the Soviet Union, which for Hitler was both conveniently a nation that possessed vast and rich agricultural land and was inhabited by what Hitler saw as Slavic
untermenschen (sub-humans) ruled over by what he regarded as a gang of blood-thirsty, but grossly incompetent Jewish revolutionaries. In Hitler's view, the idea of restoring the 1914 borders of the
Reich was absurd as those borders did not provide sufficient
Lebensraum; only a foreign policy that aimed at the conquest of the proper quantity of
Lebensraum would justify the necessary sacrifices that war entailed In Hitler’s view, history was dominated by a merciless struggle between different “races” for survival, and “races” that possessed large amounts of territory were innately stronger then those that did not.
Eberhard Jäckel has expressed a
Primat der Außenpolitik (“primacy of foreign policy”) interpration of German foreign policy as opposed to the
Primat der Innenpolitik ("primacy of domestic politics") thesis favored by some left-wing historians such as
Timothy Mason. Jäckel wrote that since Hitler regarded the conquest of
Lebensraum as his most important project, and since that could only be accomplished through war, domestic policy comprised simply preparing the nation for the inevitable struggle for
Lebensraum There are, however, many historians such as
Martin Broszat and
Hans Mommsen who dismiss this "intentionalist" approach, and argue that the concept was actually an "ideological metaphor" in the early days of
Nazism.
Implementation
The practical implementation of the
Lebensraum concept began in 1939 with Germany's
occupation of Poland. Later, the ideology was also 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:
The
Reichskommissariat territories would extend up to the European frontier at the
Urals. They were to have been early stages in the displacement and dispossession of Russian and other Slav people and their replacement with German settlers, following the Nazi
Lebensraum im Osten plans. When German forces entered Soviet territory, they promptly organized occupation regimes in the first two territories—the Reichskomissariats of Ostland and Ukraine. The defeat of the Sixth Army at the
Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, followed by defeat in the
Battle of Kursk in July 1943 and the
Allied landings in Sicily put an end to the plans' implementation.
Historical perspective
In his book
Mein Kampf,
Hitler notes that history is an open-ended struggle, and links the concept of
Lebensraum with his own brand of
racism and
social Darwinism. Nevertheless, historians debate whether Hitler's position on
Lebensraum was part of a larger program of world domination (the so-called "globalist" position) or a more modest "continentalist" approach, by which Hitler would have sufficed with the conquest of Eastern Europe. Nor are the two positions necessarily contradictory, given the idea of a broader
Stufenplan, or "plan in stages," which many such as
Klaus Hildebrand and the late
Andreas Hillgruber argue lay behind the regime's actions. Historian
Ian Kershaw suggests just such a compromise, claiming that while the concept was originally abstract and undeveloped, it took on new meaning with the invasion of the
Soviet Union. He goes on to note that even within the Nazi regime, there were differences of opinion about the meaning of
Lebensraum, citing
Rainer Zitelmann, who distinguishes between the near-mystical fascination with a return to an idyllic agrarian society (for which land was a necessity) as advocated by
Darré and
Himmler, and an industrial state, envisioned by Hitler, which would be reliant on raw materials and forced labor.
What seems certain is that echoes of lost territorial opportunities in Europe, such as the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, played an important role in the Hitlerian vision for the distant future:
Racism is not a necessary aspect of expansionist politics in general, nor was the original use of the term "
Lebensraum". However, under Hitler, the term came to signify a specific,
racist kind of expansionism. Karl Haushofer was an acquaintance of
Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy. Haushofer had limited influence on Hitler's ideals. "Haushofer primarily provided the academic and scientific support for the expansion of the Third Reich ." Haushofer ideas can be described by the expansion of heavily populated countries having the right to expand and gain land from less populated countries. This was his adaptation of Ratzel's
Lebensraum .
See also
Empire of Japan: 
