Lebensraum
Lebensraum ("Living space") is an idea that was used to justify the expansionist politics of Nazi Germany.
The idea of a Germanic people without sufficient space dates back long before Adolf Hitler brought it to prominence, however: the term Lebensraum was coined by Friedrich Ratzel in the late 19th century, when it was 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. Ratzel believed the development of a people is primarily influenced by their geographical situation, and that a people that successfully adopted 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 Klaus 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, explicity identified the Eastern Europe as a source of new space.
Hitler himself was attracted to these Pan-European ideals, but was initially unsure as to where the space should come from. Indeed, he admonished Germany's wartime government for supporting Austria-Hungary against Russia. By the time that Mein Kampf was published in 1926, though, Hitler had come to believe that Russia was, in fact, the direction in which Germany should expand. He had become suspicious of the links between the Bolshevik revolutionaries and the Jews, and decided that only through the elimination of the Eastern European Jewry could Germany acquire its living space.
The elements of the program outlined in Mein Kampf included 3 general ideas:
- idea of military expansion and force expulsion of the nations of (Poland,Ukraine, Russia and other countries) in order to prepare settlements for German people (both Reichsdeutsche and Volksdeutsche). The German historians underlined German claims to those countries.
- idea of supporting a high birth rate among the German women, to increase the country's population.
- idea of selection of young German women and German soldiers, in order to produce optimal from the racial point of view Germanic material to replace soldiers killed in action. Implemented in institutions recalling brothels.
The attempts to implement the Lebensraum happenned in Zamosc County and Warteland (see Generalplan Ost). The biggest failure of Lebensraum was the fact, that Germans didn't want to settle down in the East and Germany didn't have many spare people for colonisation. The resistance from the local population was greater then expected.
The Lebensraum ideology was a major factor in Hitler's launching of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941.
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.
