Lebensraum#First World War nationalist premise

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| image1 = Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R35179, Prof. Friedrich Ratzel.jpg

| caption1 = The German geographer and ethnographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904) coined the word {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} (1901) as a term of human geography, which the Nazis adopted as a by-word for the aggressive territorial expansion of Germany into the Greater Germanic Reich.

| image2 = Rudolf Kjellen.jpg

| caption2 = The Swedish political scientist Johan Rudolf Kjellén (1864–1922) interpreted Friedrich Ratzel's ethnogeographic term, {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} as a geopolitical term, which the Nazis applied to justify German warfare.

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{{See also|Ostsiedlung}}

In the 19th century, the term {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} was used by the German geographer and biologist Oscar Peschel in his 1860 review of Charles Darwin's Origins of Species (1859).Michael Heffernan, "{{lang|fr|Fin de Siècle, Fin du Monde?}} On the Origins of European Geopolitics; 1890–1920", Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geopolitical Thought, (eds. Klaus Dodds, & David A. Atkinson, London & New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 45. In 1897, the geographer and ethnographer Friedrich Ratzel in his book {{lang|de|Politische Geographie}} applied the word {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} ("living space") to describe physical geography as a factor that influences human activities in developing into a society.Holger H. Herwig, "Geopolitik: Haushofer, Hitler and Lebensraum", Geopolitics, Geography and Strategy (eds. Colin Gray & Geoffrey Sloan, London & Portland: Frank Cass, 1999), p. 220. In 1901, Ratzel extended his thesis in his essay titled "{{lang|de|Lebensraum|italic=no}}".The Columbia Encyclopedia, 5th Ed., (1993). pp. 2282–2283. Ratzel pointed to historical precedent in the Middle Ages, when the social and economic pressures of rapid population growth in the German states had led to a steady colonization of Germanic peoples in Eastern Europe.

Between 1886 and 1914 {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} became increasingly used as a justification for the German colonization of Africa;{{Cite journal |last=Lerp |first=Dörte |date=11 October 2013 |title=Farmers to the Frontier: Settler Colonialism in the Eastern Prussian Provinces and German Southwest Africa |url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03086534.2013.836361 |journal=The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History |language=en |volume=41 |issue=4 |pages=567–583 |doi=10.1080/03086534.2013.836361 |issn=0308-6534}} and was an influential factor during the Herero and Nama genocide in German South West Africa,{{Cite AV media |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbon6HqzjEI |title=Namibia: Genocide and the Second Reich (BBC) |date=2018-04-07 |last=bildungskanal |access-date=2025-04-26 |via=YouTube}} from 1904{{Cite news |last=Oltermann |first=Philip |date=28 May 2021 |title=Germany agrees to pay Namibia €1.1bn over historical Herero-Nama genocide |url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/28/germany-agrees-to-pay-namibia-11bn-over-historical-herero-nama-genocide |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210601024320/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/28/germany-agrees-to-pay-namibia-11bn-over-historical-herero-nama-genocide |archive-date=1 June 2021 |access-date=26 April 2025 |work=The Guardian}} to 1908. The ethnic cleansing of Herero and Nama people was done in response to an attack on German settlers and soldiers on 12 January 1904.{{Cite web |title=German-Herero conflict of 1904–07 {{!}} African Genocide, Colonialism & Reparations {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/German-Herero-conflict-of-1904-1907 |access-date=2025-04-26 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}

During the First World War, the Allied naval blockade of the Central Powers caused food shortages in Germany, and resources from German colonies in Africa were unable to slip past the blockade; this caused support to rise during the war for a {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} that would expand Germany eastward into Russia to gain control of their resources to prevent such a situation from occurring in the future.Robert Millward. The State and Business in the Major Powers: An Economic History, 1815–1939. Routledge, 2013. p. 108. In the period between the First and the Second World Wars, German nationalists adopted the term {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} in their political demands for the re-establishment of the German colonial empire, which had been dismembered by the Allies at Versailles.{{Cite journal |last=Smith |first=Woodruff D. |date=February 1980 |title=Friedrich Ratzel and the Origins of Lebensraum |journal=German Studies Review |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=51–68 |doi=10.2307/1429483 |jstor=1429483}}Vincent, C. Paul (1997). A Historical Dictionary Of Germany's Weimar Republic, 1918–1933. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 511–513. Ratzel said that the development of a people into a society was primarily influenced by their geographic situation (habitat) and that a society that successfully adapted to one geographic territory would naturally and logically expand the boundaries of their nation into another territory. Yet, to resolve German overpopulation, Ratzel pointed out that Imperial Germany (1871–1918) required overseas colonies to which surplus Germans ought to emigrate.Wanklyn, Harriet. Friedrich Ratzel: A Biographical Memoir and Bibliography. London: Cambridge University Press. (1961) pp. 36–40. {{ASIN|B000KT4J8K}}

Friedrich Ratzel's metaphoric concept of society as an organism—which grows and shrinks in logical relation to its {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} (habitat)—proved especially influential upon the Swedish political scientist and conservative politician Johan Rudolf Kjellén (1864–1922), who interpreted that biological metaphor as a geopolitical natural-law.Encyclopædia Britannica, 15th Ed., vol. 9, p. 955. In the political monograph {{lang|de|Schweden}} (1917; Sweden), Kjellén coined the terms {{lang|sv|geopolitik}} (the conditions and problems of a state that arise from its geographic territory), {{lang|sv|œcopolitik}} (the economic factors that affect the power of the state), and {{lang|sv|demopolitik}} (the social problems that arise from the racial composition of the state) to explain the political particulars to be considered for the successful administration and governing of a state. Moreover, he had a great intellectual influence upon the politics of Imperial Germany, especially with {{lang|sv|Staten som livsform}} (1916; The State as a Life-form), an earlier political-science book read by the society of Imperial Germany, for whom the concept of {{lang|sv|geopolitik}} acquired an ideological definition unlike the original, human-geography definition.Encyclopædia Britannica, 15th Ed., vol. 6, p. 901.

Kjellén's geopolitical interpretation of the {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} concept was adopted, expanded, and adapted to the politics of Germany by publicists of imperialism such as the militarist General Friedrich von Bernhardi (1849–1930) and the political geographer and proponent of geopolitics Karl Haushofer (1869–1946). In {{lang|de|Deutschland und der Nächste Krieg}} (1911; Germany and the Next War), General von Bernhardi developed Friedrich Ratzel's {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} concept as a racial struggle for living space, explicitly identified Eastern Europe as the source of a new, national habitat for the German people, and said that the next war would be expressly for acquiring {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}—all in fulfillment of the "biological necessity" to protect German racial supremacy. Vanquishing the Slavic and the Latin races was deemed necessary because "without war, inferior or decaying races would easily choke the growth of healthy, budding elements" of the German race—thus, the war for {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} was a necessary means of defending Germany against cultural stagnation and the racial degeneracy of miscegenation.Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich (2004) p. 35. {{ISBN|1-59420-004-1}}.

File:Wochenspruch der NSDAP 17 December 1939 (für unseren Lebensraum).jpg series, 17 December 1939. Hitler's quote reads: "We are fighting for the security of our people and for our living space."]]

In the national politics of Weimar Germany, the geopolitical usage of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} is credited to Karl Ernst Haushofer and his Institute of Geopolitics, in Munich, especially the ultra-nationalist interpretation of it, which was used as a justification for the desire to avenge Germany's military defeat at the end of the First World War (1914–18) and the desire to reverse the dictates of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which reduced Germany geographically, economically, and militarily. Hitler said that the Nazi geopolitics of "inevitable expansion" would reverse overpopulation, provide natural resources, and uphold German national honor.Stephen J. Lee. Europe, 1890–1945. p. 237. In {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}} (1925; My Struggle), Hitler presented his conception of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} as the philosophic basis for the Greater Germanic Reich that was destined to colonize Eastern Europe—especially Ukraine in the Soviet Union—and so resolve the problems of overpopulation, and that the European states had to accede to his geopolitical demands.{{Cite book |last=Fest |first=Joachim C. |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1021362956 |title=Hitler |date=2013 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |isbn=978-0-544-19554-7 |oclc=1021362956}}{{cite book |editor1=Wsevolod W. Isajiw |editor2=Yuri Boshyk |editor3=Roman Senkus |date=1992 |title=The Refugee Experience: Ukrainian Displaced Persons After World War II |publisher=CIUS Press |page=9 |isbn=9780920862858}}

The Nazi Party's usages of the term {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} were explicitly racial, to justify the mystical right of the racially superior Germanic peoples ({{lang|de|Herrenvolk}}) to fulfill their cultural destiny at the expense of racially inferior peoples ({{lang|de|Untermenschen}}), such as the Slavs of Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and the other non–Germanic peoples of "the East". Based upon Johan Rudolf Kjellén's geopolitical interpretation of Friedrich Ratzel's human-geography term, the Nazi regime (1933–45) established {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} as the racist rationale of the foreign policy by which they began the Second World War, on 1 September 1939, in an effort to realise the Greater Germanic Reich at the expense of the societies of Eastern Europe.

Some Prussian politicians were increasingly thinking in terms of Lebensraum by 1907.Woodruff D. Smith, Professor of History, University of Texas, S.A. (1989). The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. p. 126. In 1902, the Prussian government had already allocated 200,000,000 ℳ︁ for purposes of German colonization of Polish portions of eastern Prussia. These funds were intended to support the creation of settlements by acquiring Polish estates.{{Cite news |title=To Germanize Prussian Poland O GE; Bill Introduced in the Diet – Advance of Polish Element Causes Alarm. |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1902/05/22/101952528.html |access-date=2024-08-31 |work=The New York Times |language=en |issn=0362-4331}} By 1907, Prussian Chancellor Bülow was promoting bills that explicitly called for the forced sale of Polish estates. A bill in late 1907 asked for another $100,000,000 for expropriations.{{Cite news |date=1907-12-14 |title=Polish Policy Modified; Prussian Government is to Limit Expropriation of Estates |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1907/12/14/archives/polish-policy-modified-prussian-government-is-to-limit.html |access-date=2024-08-31 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}

In 1903, the Prussian authorities tried a Polish countess for "presenting a false heir" for an estate near Wróblewo. The case, tried in Berlin, generated crowds of people and police. Observers expressed concern that Prussian "race partiality" would result in a guilty verdict.{{Cite news |title=Countess Kwilecki Freed; Crowds of Poles Outside the Court House in Berlin Cheer the News of Her Acquittal. |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1903/11/26/102030993.html |access-date=2024-08-31 |work=The New York Times |language=en |issn=0362-4331}}

File:Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg 1913b.jpg from 1909 until 1917, was a proponent of German {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} as a natural right of Imperial Germany.]]

{{Main|Septemberprogramm}}

In September 1914, when the German victory in the First World War appeared feasible, the German government introduced the {{lang|de|Septemberprogramm}} as an official war aim ({{lang|de|Kriegs‌ziel}}), which was secretly ordered by Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg (1909–17), whereby, upon achieving battlefield victory, Germany would annex territories from western Poland to form the Polish Border Strip ({{lang|de|Polnischer Grenzstreifen}}, {{circa|30,000 km²}}). {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} would be realised by way of ethnic cleansing, the forcible removal of the native Slavic and Jewish populations, and the subsequent repopulation of the border strip with ethnic-German colonists; likewise, the colonisations of Lithuania and Ukraine. However, military over-extension lost the war for Imperial Germany, and the {{lang|de|Septemberprogramm}} went unrealised.Carsten, F.L. Review of Griff nach der Weltmacht, pp. 751–753, in the English Historical Review, vol. 78, Iss. No. 309, October 1963, pp. 752–753

In April 1915, Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg authorised the Polish Border Strip plans in order to take advantage of the extensive territories in Eastern Europe that Germany had conquered and held since early in the war.Hillgruber, Andreas. Germany and the Two World Wars, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981 pp. 41–47 The decisive campaigns of Imperial Germany almost realised {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} in the East, especially when Bolshevik Russia unilaterally withdrew as a combatant in the "Great War" among the European great powers—the Triple Entente (the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic, and the United Kingdom) and the Central Powers (the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria).{{Cite book |last=Riasanovsky |first=Nicholas |title=A History of Russia |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2000 |isbn=0-19-512179-1 |edition=6th |page=458}}

In March 1918, in an effort to reform and modernise the Russian Empire (1721–1917) into a soviet republic, the Bolshevik government agreed to the strategically onerous territorial cessions stipulated in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (33% of arable land, 30% of industry, and 90% of the coal mines of Russia). As a result, Russia yielded to Germany much of the arable land of European Russia, the Baltic governorates, Belarus, Ukraine, and the Caucasus region.[http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWbrest.htm Spartacus Educational: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071021032507/http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWbrest.htm |date=2007-10-21 }}. Despite such an extensive geopolitical victory, tactical defeat in the Western Front, strategic over-extension, and factional division in government compelled Imperial Germany to abandon the Eastern European {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} gained with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in favour of the peace-terms of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), and yielded those Russian lands to Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine.

As a {{lang|la|casus belli}} for the conquest and colonisation of Polish territories as living-space and defensive-border for Imperial Germany, the {{lang|de|Septemberprogramm}} derived from a foreign policy initially proposed by General Erich Ludendorff in 1914. Twenty-five years later, Nazi foreign policy resumed the cultural goal of the pursuit and realisation of German living-space at the expense of non-German peoples in Eastern Europe with the September Campaign (1 September – 6 October 1939) that began the Second World War in Europe.A Companion to World War I, p. 436. In Germany and the Two World Wars, the German historian Andreas Hillgruber said that the territorial gains of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) were the imperial prototype for Adolf Hitler's Greater German Empire in Eastern Europe:Hillgruber, Andreas. Germany and the Two World Wars, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981, pp. 46–47.

{{Blockquote|At the moment of the November 1918 ceasefire in the West, newspaper maps of the military situation showed German troops in Finland, holding a line from the Finnish fjords near Narva, down through Pskov–Orsha–Mogilev and the area south of Kursk, to the Don east of Rostov. Germany had thus secured Ukraine. The Russian recognition of Ukraine's separation, exacted at Brest–Litovsk, represented the key element in German efforts to keep Russia perpetually subservient. In addition, German troops held the Crimea, and were stationed, in smaller numbers, in Transcaucasia. Even the unoccupied "rump" Russia appeared—with the conclusion of the German–Soviet Supplementary Treaty, on 28 August 1918—to be in firm, though indirect, dependency on the {{lang|de|Reich}}. Thus, Hitler's long-range aim, fixed in the 1920s, of erecting a German Eastern Imperium on the ruins of the Soviet Union was not simply a vision emanating from an abstract wish. In the Eastern sphere, established in 1918, this goal had a concrete point of departure. The German Eastern Imperium had already been—if only for a short time—a reality.|author=Andreas Hillgruber|title=Germany and the Two World Wars (1967)|source=}}

The {{lang|de|Septemberprogramm}} (1914) documents "{{lang|de|Lebensraum}} in the East" as philosophically integral to Germanic culture throughout the history of Germany; and that {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} is not a racialist philosophy particular to the 20th century.Moses, John. "The Fischer Controversy", pp. 328–329, in Modern Germany: An Encyclopedia of History, People and Culture, 1871–1990, Vol. 1, Dieter Buse and Juergen Doerr, eds. Garland Publishing: New York, 1998, p. 328. As military strategy, the {{lang|de|Septemberprogramm}} was unsuccessful due to its infeasibility, with too few soldiers to realise the plans during a two-front war. Politically, the {{lang|de|Programm}} allowed the Imperial Government to learn the opinions of the nationalist, economic, and military elites of the German ruling class who financed and facilitated geopolitics.See [http://www.colby.edu/personal/r/rmscheck/GermanyC2.html Raffael Scheck, Germany 1871–1945: A Concise History (2008)] Nationally, the annexation and ethnic cleansing of Poland for German {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} was an official and a popular subject of "nationalism-as-national-security" endorsed by German society, including the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP).{{lang|pl|Immanuel Geiss Tzw. polski pas graniczny 1914–1918. Warszawa}} (1964). In The Origins of the Second World War, the British historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote:{{Cite book |last=Alan J. Taylor |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=50OVGzQ-GooC |title=The Origins of the Second World War |publisher=Hamish Hamiltion |year=1976 |isbn=9780141927022 |location=London |page=23 |quote=Second Thoughts (Foreword, 1963 Ed.) |orig-year=1963}}

{{Blockquote|It is equally obvious that {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} always appeared as one element in these blueprints. This was not an original idea of Hitler's. It was commonplace at the time. {{lang|de|Volk ohne Raum}} (People Without Space), for instance, by Hans Grimm sold much better than {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}} when it was published in 1925. For that matter, plans for acquiring new territory were much aired in Germany during the First World War. It used to be thought that these were the plans of a few crack-pot theorisers or of extremist organisations. Now we know better. In 1961, a German professor Fritz Fischer reported the results of his investigations into German war aims. These were indeed a "blueprint for aggression", or, as the professor called them, "a grasp at world power": Belgium under German control, the French iron-fields annexed to Germany, and, what is more, Poland and Ukraine to be cleared of their inhabitants and resettled with Germans. These plans were not merely the work of the German General Staff. They were endorsed by the German Foreign Office and by the "Good German", Bethmann–Hollweg.|author=Alan J. Taylor|title=The Origins of the Second World War (1961)}}

In the national politics of the Weimar Republic (1919–33), the German eugenicists took up the nationalist political slogan of {{lang|de|Volk ohne Raum}}, and matched it with the racial slogan {{lang|de|Volk ohne Jugend}} (a People without Youth), a cultural proposition that ignored the declining German birth rate (since the 1880s) and contradicted the popular belief that the "German race" was a vigorous and growing people. Despite each slogan (political and racial) being contradicted by the reality of such demographic facts, the nationalists' demands for {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} proved to be ideologically valid politics in Weimar Germany.{{Cite book |last=Paul Weindling |title=Health, Race and German Politics Between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1993 |isbn=978-0-521-42397-7 |page=343}}Robert Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology p. 69 {{ISBN|0-396-06577-5}}

In the lead-up to {{lang|de|Anschluss}} (1938) and the invasion of Poland (1939), the propaganda of the Nazi Party in Germany used popular feelings of wounded national identity aroused in the aftermath of the First World War to promote policies of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}. Studies of the homeland focused on the lost colonies after the establishment of the Second Polish Republic, which was ratified by the Treaty of Versailles ({{lang|de|Volk ohne Raum}}), as well as the "eternal Jewish threat" ({{lang|de|Der ewige Jude}}, 1937). Emphasis was put on the need for rearmament and the pseudoscience of superior races in the pursuit of "blood and soil" ({{lang|de|Blut und Boden}}).{{Cite book |last=Lisa Pine |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1ymC_kb-_WcC&q=Raum |title=Education in Nazi Germany |publisher=Berg |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-84520-265-1 |page=(48), 1893}}

During the twenty-one-year inter-war period between the First (1914–18) and the Second (1939–45) World War, {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} for Germany was the principal tenet of the extremist nationalism that characterised German party politics. The Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, demanded not only the geographic reversion of Germany's post-war borders (to recuperate territory lost by the Treaty of Versailles), but also the German conquest and colonisation of Eastern Europe (whether or not those lands were German before 1918).Weinberg, Gerhard The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Diplomatic Revolution in Europe 1933–1936, Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1970 pp. 166–168 To that end, Hitler said that flouting the Treaty of Versailles was required for Germany to obtain needed {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} in Eastern Europe.Trevor-Roper, Hugh "Hitler's War Aims" pp. 235–250 in Aspects of the Third Reich, edited by H.W. Koch, Macmillan Press: London, United Kingdom, 1985 pp. 242–245. During the 1920s, Heinrich Himmler—as a member of the Artaman League, an anti-Slav, anti-urban, and anti-Semitic organisation of "blood and soil" ideology—developed the {{lang|de|Völkisch}} ideas that advocated {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}, for the realisation of which he said that the:

{{Blockquote|Increase [of] our peasant population is the only effective defense against the influx of the Slav working-class masses from the East. As six hundred years ago, the German peasant's destiny must be to preserve and increase the German people's patrimony in their holy mother earth battle against the Slav race.Anthony Read, The Devil's Disciples, p. 159.}}

Image:Mein Kampf dust jacket.jpeg}} (1926–28), Hitler's political autobiography, presented the racist philosophy of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} advocated for Germany by the Nazi Party.]]

In {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}} (1925), Hitler dedicated a full chapter—titled "Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy"—to outlining the need for the new "living space" for Germany. He claimed that achieving {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} required political will, and that the Nazi movement ought to strive to expand population area for the German people and acquire new sources of food.Hitler, Adolf, {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}}, Houghton Mifflin, 1971, p. 646. {{ISBN|978-0-395-07801-3}}.

{{lang|de|Lebensraum}} became the principal foreign-policy goal of the Nazi Party and the government of Nazi Germany (1933–45). Hitler rejected the restoration of the pre-war borders of Germany as an inadequate half-measure towards reducing purported national overpopulation.Roberts, Andrew. The Storm of War, p. 144. {{ISBN|978-0-06-122859-9}} From that perspective, he opined that the nature of national borders is always unfinished and momentary, and that their redrawing must continue as Germany's political goal.{{Cite book |first=Shelley |last=Baranowski |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iA-NZ_RgP5kC&q=continental+Lebensraum |title=Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-0521857390 |page=151}} Identifying the conquest of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} as a major ideological goal of his party, Hitler wrote in "Mein Kampf":

{{Blockquote|And so, we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre–War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the East. At long last, we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre–War period and shift to the soil policy of the future. But when we speak of new territory in Europe today we must principally think of Russia and the border States subject to her.Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. Two – The National Socialist Movement|, Ch. XIV: Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy}}

The ideologies found at the root of Hitler's implementation of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} modeled that of German colonialism of the New Imperialism period as well as the American ideology of manifest destiny. Hitler had great admiration for the United States' territorial expansion and saw the destruction of Native American peoples and their cultures that took place during the United States' westward expansion as a template for German expansion. He believed that in order to transform the German nation into a world superpower, Germany had to expand their geopolitical presence and act only in the interest of the German people. Hitler had also viewed with dismay the German reliance on food imports by sea during the First World War, believing it to be a contributing factor to Germany's defeat in the war. He believed that only through {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} could Germany shift "its dependence for food... to its own imperial hinterland".{{Cite web |last=Snyder |first=Timothy |date=8 March 2017 |title=Hitler's American Dream: Adapted from Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning |url=https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/03/nazi-germanys-american-dream-hitler-modeled-his-concept-of-racial-struggle-and-global-campaign-after-americas-conquest-of-native-americans.html |access-date=25 November 2019 |website=Slate.com |publisher=Tim Duggan Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC}}

Hitler's bio-geo-political doctrine of Lebensraum consisted of two components existing in tension: the materialist endeavour to expand Germanic territories and the mystical quest to revive what the Nazis viewed as the "idealized German medieval past". The explicit embrace of these contradictions was evident in the promulgation of Nazi slogans such as "Blut und Boden" (blood and soil). National Socialism was presented by its ideologues as an organic world-view ("Weltanschauung") that subordinated all aspects of life—physical bodies, soul, mind, culture, government, religion, education, economy, etc.—into an "organic totality" existing within Lebensraum.{{harvnb|Giaccaria|Minca|2016|pages=30–33}}{{Cite journal |last=Neumann |first=Boaz |date=2002 |title=The National Socialist Politics of Life |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3115178 |journal=New German Critique |volume= |issue=85 |pages=107–130 |doi=10.2307/3115178 |jstor=3115178 }} Defining Nazism as a "Weltanschauung" during his speech at the 1933 Nuremberg rally, Hitler stated:

"Already in the word 'Weltanschauung' lies the solemn proclamation of a decision that all acts are based upon a certain point of view and a visible tendency. Such a view can be true or false: it is the starting point for every opinion on the appearance and events of life, and is therefore a binding and obligating law for every act. The more such an opinion covers the natural law of organic life, the better its conscious utility can be applied for the sake of the people's life."

In the unpublished sequel to {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}} ({{Langx|en|My struggle}}), the Zweites Buch (1928, Second Book), Hitler further presents the ideology of Nazi {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}, in accordance with the then-future foreign policy of the Nazi Party. To further German population growth, Hitler rejected the ideas of birth control and emigration, arguing that such practices weakened the people and culture of Germany, and that military conquest was the only means for obtaining {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}:

{{Blockquote|The National Socialist Movement, on the contrary, will always let its foreign policy be determined by the necessity to secure the space necessary to the life of our Folk. It knows no Germanising or Teutonising, as in the case of the national bourgeoisie, but only the spread of its own Folk. It will never see in the subjugated, so called Germanised, Czechs or Poles a national, let alone Folkish, strengthening, but only the racial weakening of our Folk.Adolf Hitler, {{lang|de|Zweites Buch}}, p. 26}}

Therefore, the non-Germanic peoples of the annexed foreign territories would never be Germanised:

{{Blockquote|The {{lang|de|völkisch}} State, conversely, must under no conditions annex Poles with the intention of wanting to make Germans out of them some day. On the contrary, it must muster the determination either to seal off these alien racial elements, so that the blood of its own Folk will not be corrupted again, or it must, without further ado, remove them and hand over the vacated territory to its own National Comrades.Adolf Hitler, {{lang|de|Zweites Buch}}, p. 29}}

Image:Nuremberg laws.jpg (1935) of Nazi Germany employed scientific racism to exclude Jews from mainstream society. People with four German grandparents (white circles) were classified as of "German blood," those with one or two Jewish grandparents (black circles) were considered to be {{lang|de|Mischling}}, of "Mixed blood", while those with three or more Jewish grandparents were deemed to be Jews.]]The conquest of living space for Germany was the foremost foreign-policy goal of the Nazis towards establishing the Greater Germanic Reich that was to last a thousand years.Messerschmidt, Manfred "Foreign Policy and Preparation for War" from Germany and the Second World War, Vol. I, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1990 pp. 551–554. On 3 February 1933, at his initial meeting with the generals and admirals of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler said that the conquest of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} in Eastern Europe and its "ruthless Germanisation" were the ultimate geopolitical objectives of Reich foreign policy.Weinberg, Gerhard The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970 pp. 26–27.Hitler-quotation recorded by Curt Liebmann on February 3, 1933: "How shall political power be used once it has been won. Cannot be decided now. Maybe fighting for new export opportunities, maybe—and probably better—conquering new Lebensraum in the East and its ruthless Germanisation." Source: Wolfgang Michalka: Deutsche Geschichte 1933–1945. Dokumente zur Innen- und Außenpolitik. Frankfurt am Main 1999, {{ISBN|3-596-50234-9}}, pp. 17f. Vgl. Thilo Vogelsang: Neue Dokumente zur Geschichte der Reichswehr 1930–1933. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 2, 1954, Volume 4, pp. 397–436, esp. p. 435. Original quotation in German: „Wie soll pol. Macht, wenn sie gewonnen ist, gebraucht werden? Jetzt noch nicht zu sagen. Vielleicht Erkämpfung neuer Export-Mögl., vielleicht—und wohl besser—Eroberung neuen Lebensraumes im Osten u. dessen rücksichtslose Germanisierung." The USSR was the country to provide sufficient {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} for the Germans, because it possessed much agricultural land, and was inhabited by Slavic {{lang|de|Untermenschen}} ruled by Jewish Bolshevism.Weinberg, Gerhard The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970 pp. 12–13. The racism of Hitler's {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} philosophy allowed only the Germanisation of the soil and the land, but not of the native peoples, who were to be destroyed, by slave labour and starvation.Richard Bessel, Nazism and War, p. 36 {{ISBN|0-679-64094-0}}

Anti-Slavism was a central component of the NSDAP's racist ideology, and a driving force behind Nazi Germany's irredentist schemes to seize "Lebensraum" through the eastward expansion of German territories.{{Cite book |last=Borejsza |first=Jerzy W. |title=A ridiculous hundred million Slavs: Concerning Adolf Hitler's world-view |publisher=Polskiej Akademii Nauk |year=2017 |isbn=978-83-63352-88-2 |location=Warsaw, Poland |page=176 |translator-last=French |translator-first=David}} In the worldview of Adolf Hitler, the idea of restoring the 1914 borders of the German {{lang|de|Reich}} (Imperial Germany, 1871–1918) was absurd, because those national borders did not provide sufficient {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} for the German population; only a foreign policy for the geopolitical conquest of the proper amount of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} would justify the necessary sacrifices entailed by war.Weinberg, Gerhard The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Diplomatic Revolution in Europe Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1970 pp. 6–7.

Hitler thought that history was dominated by a merciless struggle for survival among the different races of mankind; and that the races who possessed a great national territory were innately stronger than those races who possessed a small national territory—which the Germanic Aryan race could take by what he viewed as their natural right.Jäckel, Eberhard Hitler's World View A Blueprint for Power Harvard University Press: Cambridge, US, 1981 pp. 34–35 Such official racist perspectives for the establishment of German {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} allowed the Nazis to unilaterally launch a war of aggression ({{lang|de|blitzkrieg|italic=no}}) against the countries of Eastern Europe, ideologically justified as historical recuperation of the Oium (lands) that the Slavs had conquered from the native Ostrogoths.Poprzeczny, J. (2004), {{lang|pl|Odilo Globocnik}}, Hitler's Man in the East, pp. 42–43, McFarland, {{ISBN|0-7864-1625-4}}

Nazi propaganda depicted Eastern Europe as historically Germanic territories, promoting the myth that these regions were stolen from Aryan races by Hunnic and Avar tribes.{{Cite journal |last=de Betoño |first=Fernández |date=2020 |title=The Nazi anti-urban utopia: 'Generalplan Ost' |url=https://www.redalyc.org/journal/5117/511767145006/html/ |journal=Mètode Science Studies Journal |volume=10 |pages=165–166 |doi=10.7203/metode.10.13009 |s2cid=242269651 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220501150039/https://www.redalyc.org/journal/5117/511767145006/html/ |archive-date=1 May 2022 |via=Universitat de Valencia |doi-access=free|hdl=10550/89373 |hdl-access=free }} Hitler viewed Slavs as primitive subhumans, and he detested the German empire's alliance with Austria-Hungary during World War I. In his works such as Mein Kampf and Zweites Buch, Hitler viewed the Slavs as lacking the capability to form a state.{{Cite book |last=Weikart |first=Richard |title=Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-349-38073-2 |location=New York |pages=71–73}} Although Hitler openly spoke about the need for living space in the 1920s, he never publicly spoke about it during his first years in power. It was not until 1937, with the German rearmament program well under way, that he began again to publicly speak about the need for living space.Richard Weikart, Hitler's Ethic, p. 167

File:Pflichten der polen.jpg

{{Main|Generalplan Ost|Greater Germanic Reich|Heim ins Reich}}

The bio-geo-political nature of Nazi Weltanschauung was the core ideological force that instigated Nazi Germany to launch its violent project in pursuit of a new global order. This scheme aimed to dissolve the contradictions between the Nazi conceptualizations of "race" and "space" through the creation of a Germanic Lebensraum and achievement of world domination by the Nordic people. This combination of biopolitical and geo-political agenda of the Nazi Reich became the basis for its Germanization policies, the mission of what it regarded as the "purification of the Volksgemeinschaft", as well as its state-sponsored genocidal apparatus.{{harvnb|Giaccaria|Minca|2016|page=37}}

On 6 October 1939, Hitler told the Reichstag that after the fall of Poland the most important matter was "a new order of ethnographic relations, that is to say, resettlement of nationalities".Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, p. 150. On 20 October 1939, Hitler told General Wilhelm Keitel that the war would be a difficult "racial struggle" and that the General Government was to "purify the Reich territory from Jews and Polacks, too."Document 864-PS [translation]", in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Volume III: Documents 001-PS-1406-PS. District of Columbia: GPO, 1947. pp. 619–621. Likewise, in October 1939, Nazi propaganda instructed Germans to view Poles, Jews, and Gypsies as {{lang|de|Untermenschen}}.Tomasz Szarota. {{lang|de|"Polen unter deutscher Besatzung, 1939–1941" – Vergleichende Betrachtung}} (in German); p. 43. – {{lang|de|"Es muss auch der letzten Kuhmagd in Deutschland klargemacht werden, dass das Polentum gleichwertig ist mit Untermenschentum. Polen, Juden und Zigeuner stehen auf der gleichen unterwertigen Stufe."}} Propaganda Ministry (October 24, 1939), Order No. 1306, [in:] {{Cite book |last=Bernd Wegner |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nRSxAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Kuhmagd+in+Deutschland%22 |title=Zwei Wege nach Moskau: Vom Hitler-Stalin-Pakt bis zum 'Unternehmen Barbarossa' |publisher=Piper Verlag GmbH |year=1991 |isbn=978-3492113465 |location=München/Zürich |author-link=Bernd Wegner}}

Nazi Germany's pursuit of its bio-geo-political ambitions was carried out through fanatical perpetration of a racist war of annihilation (Vernichtungskrieg) which inflicted industrial-scale terrorism against entire populations. These policies resulted in the genocide of numerous ethnic groups in German-occupied territories, including the Jews, Poles, Russians, Romani people, etc. and also contributed to the failure of German war aims.{{harvnb|Giaccaria|Minca|2016|pages=33–36}} Nazi policies in German-occupied territories were marked by spontaneous adaptation, on-the-fly modifications, and bureaucratic competition, underscoring the impulsive nature of Hitlerism.{{harvnb|Giaccaria|Minca|2016|page=29}}

In 1941, in a speech to the Eastern Front Battle Group Nord, Himmler said that the war against the Soviet Union was a war of ideologies and races, between Nazism and Jewish Bolshevism and between the Germanic (Nordic) peoples and the {{lang|de|Untermenschen}} peoples of the East.{{Cite book |last=Stein |first=George H. |url=https://archive.org/details/waffensshitlerse00stei_0 |title=The Waffen SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War, 1939–1945 |publisher=Cornell University Press |year=1966 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/waffensshitlerse00stei_0/page/126 126]–127 |quote=When you, my friends, are fighting in the East, you keep that same fight against the same subhumans, against the same inferior races that once appeared under the name of Huns, and later—1,000 years ago during the time of King Henry and Otto I—the name of the Hungarians, and later under the name of Tatars, and then they came again under the name of Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Today, they are called Russian under the political banner of Bolshevism. (Heinrich Himmler speaking to SS soldiers, July 13, 1941, Stettin. Wikiquote.).}} Moreover, in one of the secret Posen speeches to the {{lang|de|SS-Gruppenführer}} at Posen, Himmler said: "the mixed race of the Slavs is based on a sub-race with a few drops of our blood, the blood of a leading race; the Slav is unable to control himself and create order."[http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English22.pdf Volume 7. Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 Excerpt from Himmler's Speech to the SS-Gruppenführer at Posen (4 October 1943).] German History in Documents and Images. Retrieved 06 June 2016. In that vein, Himmler published the pamphlet {{lang|de|Der Untermensch}}, which featured photographs of ideal racial types, Aryans, contrasted with the barbarian races, descended from Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan, to the massacres committed in the Soviet Union dominated by Jewish Bolshevism.Koon, Claudia. The Nazi Conscience, p. 260.

With the Polish decrees (8 March 1940), the Nazis ensured that the racial inferiority of the Poles was legally recognized in the German Reich, and regulated the working and living conditions of Polish laborers ({{lang|de|Zivilarbeiter}}).{{cite book |last=Evans |first=Richard J. |title=The Third Reich at War: 1939–1945 |year=2008 |publisher=Penguin Group |location=New York |isbn=978-0-14-311671-4 |page=351}} The Polish decrees also established that any Pole "who has sexual relations with a German man or woman, or approaches them in any other improper manner, will be punished by death."{{Cite book |last=Robert Gellately |url=https://archive.org/details/backinghitlercon00gell |title=Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany |date= 2001 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-160452-2 |page=[https://archive.org/details/backinghitlercon00gell/page/155 155] |url-access=registration}} The {{lang|de|Gestapo|italic=no}} were vigilant of sexual relations between Germans and Poles, and pursued anyone suspected of race defilement ({{lang|de|Rassenschande}}); likewise, there were proscriptions of sexual relations between Germans and other ethnic groups brought in from Eastern Europe.{{Cite book |last=Robert Gellately |title=The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933–1945 |publisher=Clarendon Press |year=1990 |isbn=978-0-19-820297-4 |page=224}}

{{quote box|"Hitler's ideas of Lebensraum, also elaborated in Mein Kampf, meant that his desire to expand German power and control to the east with the intention of colonising this territory with German settlers would involve the expulsion, enslavement and death of the Slavs who lived there.. If the awful counterfactual of a Nazi victory had come to pass... Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians would surely have shared the fate of the Poles and been eliminated culturally and ethnically as distinct peoples and nations. Genocidal actions against those peoples would have been completed."

| source = — Historian Norman Naimark{{Cite book |last1=Kiernan |last2=Lower |last3=Naimark |last4=Straus |first1=Ben |first2=Wendy |first3=Norman |first4=Scott |title=The Cambridge World History of Genocide |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2023 |isbn=978-1-108-48707-8 |editor-last=Kiernan |editor-first=Ben |volume=3: Genocide in the Contemporary Era, 1914–2020 |location=University Printing House, Cambridge |pages=359, 377 |chapter=15: The Nazis and the Slavs – Poles and Soviet Prisoners of War |doi=10.1017/9781108767118 |editor-last2=Lower |editor-first2=Wendy |editor-last3=Naimark |editor-first3=Norman |editor-last4=Straus |editor-first4=Scott}}

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As official policy, {{lang|de|Reichsführer SS}} Heinrich Himmler said that no drop of German blood would be lost or left behind to mingle with any alien races;Richard Overy, The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, p. 543 {{ISBN|0-393-02030-4}} and that the Germanisation of Eastern Europe would be complete when "in the East dwell only men with truly German [and] Germanic blood".Mark Mazower, Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe, p. 181. In the secret memorandum Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East (25 May 1940), Himmler outlined the future of the Eastern European peoples: (i) division of native ethnic groups found in the new living-space; (ii) limited, formal education of four years of elementary school (to teach them only how to write their names and to count to five hundred); and (iii) obedience of the orders of Germans.Himmler, Heinrich. (25 May 1940). Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law (US Government Printing Office, District of Columbia). pp. 147–150, No. 10. Vol. 13.

Despite Nazi Germany's official racism, the extermination of Eastern European native populations was not always necessary because the racial policy of Nazi Germany regarded some Eastern European peoples as being of Aryan-Nordic stock, especially the local leaders.[https://web.archive.org/web/20040219121503/http://www.dac.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm Hitler's plans for Eastern Europe] On March 4, 1941, Himmler introduced the German People's List ({{lang|de|Deutsche Volksliste}}), which intended to segregate the inhabitants of German-occupied territories into categories of desirability according to criteria.Richard Overy, The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, pp. 543–544 {{ISBN|0-393-02030-4}} In the same memorandum, Himmler advocated the kidnapping of children who appeared to be Nordic because it would "remove the danger that this subhuman people ({{lang|de|Untermenschenvolk}}) of the East through such children might acquire a leader class from such people of good blood, which would be dangerous for us because they would be our equals."Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius. The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 187Lynn H. Nicholas. Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web. New York: Vintage, 2006, p. 241. According to Himmler, the destruction of the Soviet Union would have led to the exploitation of millions of peoples as slave labor in the occupied territories and the eventual re-population of the areas with Germans.{{cite book |last1=Longerich |first1=Peter |title=Heinrich Himmler: A Life |date=2012 |publisher=OUP Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-959232-6 |page=515 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GBQchepZ-7EC |language=en}}

Nazi Germany's initiation of Operation Barbarossa was motivated by the racial theories and bio-political doctrines of the NSDAP, which were fervently anti-Slavic, anti-communist and anti-semitic. The Nazi party's doctrine of Lebensraum was central to its programme of waging a racial war against Russia, a geopolitical agenda advanced by Hitler since the 1920s.{{Cite book |last=Borejsza |first=Jerzy W. |title=A ridiculous hundred million Slavs: Concerning Adolf Hitler's world-view |publisher=Polskiej Akademii Nauk |year=2017 |isbn=978-83-63352-88-2 |location=Warsaw, Poland |pages=175, 176 |translator-last=French |translator-first=David}}

During the final months of the Second World War, Nazi Germany intensified its anti-Semitic, anti-Slavic, and anti-communist propaganda. Hitler fanatically reiterated the core ideological tenets of Nazism, such as his goal of expanding German territories eastwards in pursuit of Lebensraum. He continued to advocate the Germanic settler-colonial project in Eastern Europe, including his desire to exterminate a significant portion of the Slavic populations.{{Cite book |last=Borejsza |first=Jerzy W. |title=A ridiculous hundred million Slavs: Concerning Adolf Hitler's world-view |publisher=Polskiej Akademii Nauk |year=2017 |isbn=978-83-63352-88-2 |location=Warsaw, Poland |pages=168, 175, 176 |translator-last=French |translator-first=David}} In his letter to German field marshal Wilhelm Keitel written on 29 April 1945, Hitler stated:

“Our goal must still be the capture of living space in the East for the German nation.”{{Cite book |last=Borejsza |first=Jerzy W. |title=A ridiculous hundred million Slavs: Concerning Adolf Hitler's world-view |publisher=Polskiej Akademii Nauk |year=2017 |isbn=978-83-63352-88-2 |location=Warsaw, Poland |page=168|translator-last=French |translator-first=David}}

The Deutsche Volksliste was split into four categories. Men in the first two categories were required to enlist for compulsory military service. Membership in the {{lang|de|Schutzstaffel}} (SS) was reserved for men from Category I only:

Hitler, who was born in the ethnically diverse Austrian-Hungarian Empire, avowed in {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}} (1926) that Germanising Austrian Slavs by language during the Age of Partitions could not have turned them into fully fledged Germans, because no "Negro" nor a "Chinaman" would ever "become German" just because he has learned to speak German. He believed that no visible differences between peoples could be bridged by the use of a common language. Any such attempts would lead to the "bastardization" of the German element, he said.{{harvp|Hitler|1939|pp=801–803}} Likewise, Hitler criticized the previous attempts at Germanisation of the Poles in the Prussian Partition as an erroneous idea, based on the same false reasoning. The Polish people could not possibly be Germanised by being compelled to speak German because they belonged to a different race, he said; "the result would have been fatal" for the purity of the German nation because the foreigners would "compromise" by their inferiority "the dignity and nobility" of the German nation. During the war, Hitler remarked in his "Table Talk" that people should only be Germanised if they were to improve the German blood line:

File:Die 'großzügigste Umsiedlungsaktion' with Poland superimposed, 1939.jpg in 1940 (dark grey) after the conquest of Poland together with the USSR, showing pockets of German colonists resettled into the annexed territories of Poland from the Soviet "sphere of influence" during the {{lang|de|Heim ins Reich}} action. A red outline of pre-war Poland is superimposed here over the original Nazi propaganda poster; the original German print made no mention of Poland.{{Cite book |last=Lynn H. Nicholas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PeUKT6d9khIC |title=Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |year=2011 |isbn=978-0307793829 |page=194 |author-link=Lynn H. Nicholas |via=Google Books}}]]

{{Blockquote|There is one cardinal principle. This question of the Germanisation of certain peoples must not be examined in the light of abstract ideas and theory. We must examine each particular case. The only problem is to make sure whether the offspring of any race will mingle well with the German population and will improve it, or whether, on the contrary (as is the case when Jew blood is mixed with German blood), negative results will arise. Unless one is completely convinced that the foreigners whom one proposes to introduce into the German community will have a beneficial effect, well, I think it's better to abstain, however strong the sentimental reasons may be which urge such a course on us. There are plenty of Jews with blue eyes and blond hair, and not a few of them have the appearance which strikingly supports the idea of the Germanisation of their kind. It has, however, been indisputably established that, in the case of Jews, if the physical characteristics of the race are sometimes absent for a generation or two, they will inevitably reappear in the next generation.Hitler's Table Talk, p. 475}}

File:P_20221107_205156_vHDR_Auto_(1).jpg envisaged in the Nazi-era propaganda map "Das Grossdeutschland in der Zukunft" (1943). The map depicts occupied Eastern Europe as a settler-colonial territory of Nazi Germany.{{Cite web |title=Kartenskizze eines zukünftigen Europa unter deutscher Herrschaft |trans-title=Sketch map of a future Europe under German rule |url=https://www.dhm.de/lemo/bestand/objekt/d2a24325 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170614003327/https://www.dhm.de/lemo/bestand/objekt/d2a24325 |archive-date=14 June 2017 |website=Deutsches Historisches Museum}}]]

Informed by the blood and soil beliefs of ethnic identity—a philosophic basis of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}—Nazi policy required destroying the USSR for the lands of Russia to become the granary of Germany. The Germanisation of Russia required the destruction of its cities, in an effort to vanquish Russianness, Communism, and Jewish Bolshevism.Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine Under Nazi Rule pp. 35–36 {{ISBN|0-674-01313-1}} To that effect, Hitler ordered the Siege of Leningrad (September 1941 – January 1944), to raze the city and destroy the native Russian population.Edwin P. Hoyt, Hitler's War p. 187 {{ISBN|0-07-030622-2}} Geopolitically, the establishment of German {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} in the east of Europe would thwart blockades, like those that occurred during the First World War, which starved the people of Germany.Richard Bessel, Nazism and War, p. 60 {{ISBN|0-679-64094-0}} Moreover, using Eastern Europe to feed Germany also was intended to exterminate millions of Slavs, by slave labour and starvation. When deprived of producers, a workforce, and customers, native industry would cease and disappear from the Germanised region, which then became agricultural land for settlers from Nazi Germany.Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine Under Nazi Rule p. 45 {{ISBN|0-674-01313-1}}

The Germanised lands of Eastern Europe would be settled by the {{lang|de|Wehrbauer}}, a soldier–peasant who was to maintain a fortified line of defence, which would prevent any non–German civilisation from arising to threaten the Greater Germanic Reich.Robert Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology p. 190 {{ISBN|0-396-06577-5}} At a conference in 1941, Hitler stated:

{{Blockquote|text="There is only one task: Germanization through the introduction of Germans [to the area] and to treat the original inhabitants like Indians. … I intend to stay this course with ice-cold determination. I feel myself to be the executor of the will of history. What people think of me at present is all of no consequence. Never have I heard a German who has bread to eat express concern that the ground where the grain was grown had to be conquered by the sword. We eat Canadian wheat and never think of the Indians."Minutes of Hitler Conference, 17 October 1941 reproduced in Czesław Madajczyk, ed., Generalny Plan Wschodni: Zbiór dokumentów (Warszawa: Glówna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, 1990)}}

Plans for the Germanisation of western Europe were less severe, as the Nazis needed the collaboration of the local political and business establishments, especially that of local industry and their skilled workers. Moreover, Nazi racial policies considered the populations of western Europe more racially acceptable to Aryan standards of racial purity. In practice, the number and assortment of Nazi racial categories indicated that "East is bad and West is acceptable"; thus, a person's "race" was a matter of life or death in countries under Nazi occupation.Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web p. 263 {{ISBN|0-679-77663-X}}

The racist ideology of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} also comprised the North German racial stock of the northern-European peoples of Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, Sweden); and the continental-European peoples of Alsace and Lorraine, Belgium and northern France;{{citation needed|date=June 2020}} whilst the United Kingdom would either be annexed or be made a puppet state.Gerhard L. Weinberg, Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders p. 11 {{ISBN|0-521-85254-4}} Moreover, the poor military performance of the Italian armed forces forced Fascist Italy's withdrawal from the war in 1943, which then made northern Italy a territory to be annexed to the Greater Germanic Reich.

;Collaborationism

File:Vlassof.Himmler.jpg, the leader of the Russian collaborationist movement]]

For political expediency, the Nazis continually modified their racist politics towards non–Germanic peoples—and so continually redefined the ideological meaning of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}—in order to collaborate with other peoples, in service of the Reich's foreign policy. Early in his career as leader of the Nazis, Adolf Hitler said he would accept friendly relations with the USSR, on condition that the Soviet government re-establish the disadvantageous borders of European Russia, which were demarcated in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918). This made possible the restoration of Russo–German diplomatic relations.Peter D. Stachura. The Shaping of the Nazi State. p. 31.

In 1921–22, Hitler said that German {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} might be achieved with a smaller USSR, created by sponsoring anti-communist Russians in deposing the Communist government of the Bolsheviks; however, by the end of 1922, Hitler changed his opinion when there arose the possibility of an Anglo–German geopolitical alliance to destroy the USSR. However, following the invasion of the USSR in Operation Barbarossa (1941), the strategic stance of the Nazi régime towards a smaller, independent Russia was affected by political pressure from the German Army, who asked Hitler to endorse the creation of the anti–Communist Russian Liberation Army (ROA) and its integration into the Wehrmacht operations in Russia. The ROA was an organization of defectors, led by General Andrey Vlasov, who meant to depose the régime of Joseph Stalin and the Russian Communist Party.Geoffrey A. Hosking. Rulers and Victims: The Russians in the Soviet Union. Harvard University Press, 2006 p. 213.

Initially, Hitler rejected the idea of collaborating with the peoples in the East.Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History, pp, 544, 551 However, Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels and Alfred Rosenberg were in favor of collaboration against Bolshevism and offering some independence to the peoples of the East.Ulrich Herbert, Hitler's Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany Under the Third Reich, pp. 260–261Robert Edwin Herzstein, The war that Hitler won: Goebbels and the Nazi media campaign, p. 364 In 1940, Himmler opened up membership for people he regarded as being of "related stock", which resulted in a number of right-wing Scandinavians signing up to fight in the Waffen-SS. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, further volunteers from France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and Croatia signed up to fight for the Nazi cause.{{Cite AV media |url=http://www.worldmediarights.com/index.php?hidAction=episode&eid=50 |title=The Waffen-SS |series=Gladiators of World War II |access-date=26 April 2015 |website=worldmediarights.com}} After 1942, when the war turned decisively against Nazi Germany, further recruits from the occupied territories signed up to fight for the Nazis. Hitler was worried about the foreign legions on the Eastern Front; he remarked that "One mustn't forget that, unless he is convinced of his racial membership of the Germanic {{lang|de|Reich}}, the foreign legionary is bound to feel that he's betraying his country."Trevor-Roper, Gerhard L. Weinberg, Hitler's Table Talk 1941–1944: Secret Conversations, p. 305

After further losses of manpower, the Nazis tried to persuade the forced foreign laborers in the Reich to fight against Bolshevism. Martin Bormann issued a memorandum on 5 May 1943:

{{Blockquote| It impossible to win someone over to a new idea while insulting his inner sense of worth at the same time. One cannot expect the highest level of performance from people who are called beasts, barbarians, and subhuman. Instead, positive qualities such as the will to fight Bolshevism, the desire to safeguard one's own existence and that of one's country, commitment and willingness to work are to be encouraged and promoted. Moreover, everything must be done to encourage the necessary cooperation of the European peoples in the fight against Bolshevism.{{Cite web |title=Martin Bormann's Circular of May 5, 1943, which included a Memorandum on the General Principles Governing the Treatment of Foreign Laborers Employed in the Reich (dated April 15, 1943) |url=http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/docpage.cfm?docpage_id=2943}}}}

In 1944, as the German army continually lost battles and territory to the Red Army, the leaders of Nazi Germany, especially {{lang|de|Reichsfuhrer-SS}} Heinrich Himmler, recognized the political, ideological, and military value of the collaborationist ROA in fighting Bolshevism.{{Cite book |last=Andreyev |first=Catherine |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ORYvFXeW8OAC |title=Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Emigré Theories |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1989 |isbn=978-0521389600 |location=1st paperback edition. Cambridge, England |pages=53, 61}} Secretly, Himmler in his Posen speeches remarked: "I wouldn't have had any objections, if we had hired Mr. Vlasov and every other Slavic subject wearing a Russian general's uniform, to make propaganda against the Russians. I wouldn't have any objections at all. Wonderful."

{{Further|Generalplan Ost|Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany (1939–1944)|Ural Mountains in Nazi planning|Wehrbauer}}

File:Bundesarchiv R 49 Bild-0128, Gelsendorf, Aussiedlung von Polen.jpg}} in 1939.]]

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-J09397, Lodz, Millionster Umsiedler im Wartheland.jpg welcomes the millionth Eastern European {{lang|de|Volksdeutscher}} to be resettled in annexed Polish territories, March 1944.]]

Nazi policies in German-occupied territories were marked by spontaneous adaptation, on-the-fly modifications, and bureaucratic competition, underscoring the impulsive nature of Hitlerism. Nazi Germany's pursuit of its bio-geo-political ambitions was carried out through fanatical perpetration of a racist war of annihilation (Vernichtungskrieg) which inflicted industrial-scale terrorism against entire populations. These policies resulted in the genocide of numerous ethnic groups in German-occupied territories, including the Jews, Poles, Russians, Romani people, etc. and also contributed to the failure of German war aims.

The Polish Campaign was Nazi Germany's first implementation of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} policy, beginning with the Occupation of Poland (1939–1945). In October 1939, Heinrich Himmler became the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood, tasked with returning all ethnic Germans ({{lang|de|Volksdeutsche}}) to the {{lang|de|Reich}}, preventing harmful foreign influences upon the German people, and creating new settlement areas (especially for returning {{lang|de|Volksdeutsche}}).Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: A Life, p. 528.

From mid–1940, the ethnic cleansing (forcible removal) of Poles from the {{lang|de|Reichsgau Wartheland}} initially occurred across the border, to the General Government (a colonial political entity ostensibly autonomous of the Reich); then, after the invasion of the USSR, the displaced Polish populations were jailed in {{lang|de|Polenlager}} (Pole-storage camps) in Silesia and sent to villages designated as ghettoes. In four years of Germanisation (1940–44), the Nazis forcibly removed some 50,000 ethnic Poles from the Polish territories annexed to the Greater German {{lang|de|Reich}}, notably some 18,000–20,000 ethnic Poles from Żywiec County, in Polish Silesia, effected in Action Saybusch.{{Cite web |last=Anna Machcewicz |date=16 February 2010 |title=Mama wzięła ino chleb |url=http://tygodnik.onet.pl/1,41565,druk.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120318131952/http://tygodnik.onet.pl/1%2C41565%2Cdruk.html |archive-date=18 March 2012 |access-date=5 May 2012 |website=Historia |publisher=Tygodnik Powszechny}}{{Cite web |last=Mirosław Sikora |date=20 September 2011 |title=Saybusch Aktion – jak Hitler budował raj dla swoich chłopów |url=http://www.fronda.pl/news/czytaj/tytul/saybusch_aktion_-_jak_hitler_budowal_raj_dla_swoich_chlopow_15558 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111106143810/http://www.fronda.pl/news/czytaj/tytul/saybusch_aktion_-_jak_hitler_budowal_raj_dla_swoich_chlopow_15558 |archive-date=6 November 2011 |access-date=May 5, 2012 |website=OBEP Institute of National Remembrance, Katowice |publisher=Redakcja Fronda.pl |language=pl}}

The Nazi invasion of Poland consisted of atrocities committed against Polish men, women, and children. The German population's psychological acceptance of the atrocities was achieved with Nazi propaganda (print, radio, cinema), a key factor behind the manufactured consent that justified German brutality towards civilians; by continually manipulating the national psychology, the Nazis convinced the German people to believe that Slavs and Jews were Untermenschen.Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War, p. 102 For example, leaders of the Hitler Youth were issued pamphlets (such as On the German People and its Territory) meant to influence the rank-and-file Hitler Youth about the necessity of Nazi racist practices in obtaining {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} for the German people.{{Cite web |year=1937 |title=On the German People and its Territory |url=http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/hjhandbuch.htm |publisher=Vom deutschen Volk und seinem Lebensraum, Handbuch für die Schulung in der HJ |language=de}} Likewise, in the {{lang|de|Reich}} proper, schoolchildren were given propaganda pamphlets (such as You and Your People) explaining the importance of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} for the future of Germany and the German people.{{Cite web |year=1940 |editor-last=Fritz Bennecke |title=You and Your People (Volk) |url=http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/du.htm |website=Vom deutschen Volk und seinem Lebensraum, Handbuch für die Schulung in der HJ |publisher=Franz Eher, 1937 |language=de |location=Munich}}

On 21 June 1941, Himmler commissioned the drafting of Generalplan Ost (GPO), which was to be the blue-print of German expansionist and extermination policies in Eastern Europe. The draft, which was based on the proposals of Nazi agronomist Konrad Meyer, were forwarded to Hitler for approval. On 16 July 1941, Hitler appointed Alfred Rosenberg as Reich Minister for Occupied Eastern Territories, giving him directives to monitor SS activities. GPO was approved by Hitler's orders in May 1942 and became the official occupation program of Nazi Germany in July 1942. The program launched the genocide of millions of Slavs, Jews, Romani people, etc. through various methods like mass-killings, forced starvations, extermination through slave labour, etc. Ethnic cleansing was initiated to forcibly displace remaining non-Germanic inhabitants eastwards. Under the objectives of Generalplan Ost, the evacuated territories were to be colonized by over 10 million German settlers and establish the blueprint for a Greater Germanic Reich. Germanization campaigns were extolled in Nazi propaganda as the modern adaptation of what it portrayed as "civilizing missions" of the Teutonic Order.{{sfn|Evans|2008|p=173}}{{sfn|Longerich|2012|pp=527–530, 577–580}}

Concerning the geographic extent of the Greater Germanic {{lang|de|Reich}}, Adolf Hitler rejected the Ural Mountains as an adequate eastern border for Germany, arguing that such mid-sized mountains would not suffice as the boundary between the "European and Asiatic worlds", and that only a living wall of racially pure Aryans would suffice as a border. He also advocated that permanent war in the East would "preserve the vitality of the race":

{{Blockquote|The real frontier is the one that separates the Germanic world from the Slav world. It is our duty to place it where we want it to be. If anyone asks where we obtain the right to extend the Germanic space to the east, we reply that, for a nation, its awareness of what it represents carries this right with it. It is success that justifies everything. The reply to such questions can only be of an empirical nature. It is inconceivable that a higher people should painfully exist on a soil too narrow for it, while amorphous masses, which contribute nothing to civilization, occupy infinite tracts of a soil that is one of the richest in the world ...

We must create conditions for our people that favour its multiplication, and we must, at the same time, build a dike against the Russian flood ... Since there is no natural protection against such a flood, we must meet it with a living wall. A permanent war on the eastern front will help form a sound race of men, and will prevent us from relapsing into the softness of a Europe thrown back upon itself. It should be possible for us to control this region to the east with two hundred and fifty thousand men, plus a cadre of good administrators ...

This space in Russia must always be dominated by Germans.Rich, Norman (1974). Hitler's War Aims: the Establishment of the New Order, pp. 327–329.}}

In 1941, the Reich decided that within two decades, by the year 1961, Poland would have been emptied of Poles and re-populated with ethnic-German colonists from Bukovina, Eastern Galicia, and Volhynia.Volker R. Berghahn "Germans and Poles 1871–1945" in Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural Identities and Cultural Differences, Rodopi 1999. The ruthless Germanisation that Hitler enacted for {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} was attested in the reports of {{lang|de|Wehrbauer}} (soldier–peasant) colonists assigned to ethnically-cleansed Poland—of finding half-eaten meals on the table and unmade beds in the houses given them by the Nazis.{{cite book |last1=Nicholas |first1=Lynn H. |author-link=Lynn H. Nicholas |title=Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web |date=2006 |publisher=Vintage Books |location=New York |isbn=0-679-77663-X |pages=213–214}} Baltic Germans from Estonia and Latvia were evaluated for racial purity; those classified to the highest category, {{lang|de|Ost-Falle}}, were resettled in the Eastern Wall.{{harvnb|Nicholas|2006|p=213}}

Moreover, the Germanisation of Russia which began with Operation Barbarossa (June–September 1941) meant to conquer and colonise European Russia as the granary of Germany.Madajczyk, Czesław. {{lang|de|"Die Besatzungssysteme der Achsenmächte. Versuch einer komparatistischen Analyse"}} in {{lang|la|Studia Historiae Oeconomicae}} vol. 14 (1980): pp. 105–122, quoted in Gerd R. Ueberschär and Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hitler's War in the East, 1941–1945: A Critical Assessment Berghahn Books, 2008 (review ed.). {{ISBN|1-84545-501-0}}. For those Slavic lands, the Nazi theorist and ideologue Alfred Rosenberg proposed administrative organisation by the {{lang|de|Reichskommissariate}}—countries consolidated into colonial realms ruled by a commissar:

In 1943, in the secret Posen speeches, Heinrich Himmler spoke of the Ural Mountains as the eastern border of the Greater Germanic Reich. He asserted that the Germanic race would gradually expand to that eastern border, so that, in several generations' time, the German {{lang|de|Herrenvolk}}, as the leading people of Europe, would be ready to "resume the battles of destiny against Asia", which were "sure to break out again"; and that the defeat of Europe would mean "the destruction of the creative power of the Earth". Nonetheless, the Ural Mountains were a secondary objective of the secret {{lang|de|Generalplan Ost}} (Master Plan East) for the colonisation of Eastern Europe.Madajczyk, Czeslaw (1962). [http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/GPO/gpoarticle.HTM General Plan East: Hitler's Master Plan For Expansion]. Polish Western Affairs, Vol. III, No. 2.

The never-established Reichskommissariat Turkestan would have been the closest territory to Imperial Japan's north-westernmost extents of its own Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, as a "living wall" said to be defending the easternmost {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} lands. It also would have elevated higher-social-class Chinese and nearly all Japanese-ethnicity populations as "honorary Aryans", partly to Hitler's own stated respect in Mein Kampf towards those specific East Asian ethnicities.

The early stages of {{lang|de|Lebensraum im Osten}} ({{lang|de|Lebensraum}} in the East) featured the ethnic cleansing of Russians and other Slavs (Galicians, Karelians, Ukrainians, et al.) from their lands, and the consolidation of their countries into the {{lang|de|Reichskommissariat}} administration that extended to the Ural Mountains, the geographic frontier of Europe and Asia. To manage the ethnic, racial, and political populations of the USSR, the German Army promptly organized collaborationist, anti-Communist, puppet governments in the {{lang|de|Reichskomissariat Ostland}} (1941–45) and the {{lang|de|Reichskommissariat Ukraine}} (1941–44). Nonetheless, despite the initial strategic successes of Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army's counterattack victories against the German Army at the Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942 – February 1943) and at the Battle of Kursk (July–August 1943) in Russia, plus the Allied Operation Husky (July–August 1943) in Sicily, thwarted the full implementation of Nazi {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} in Eastern Europe.

{{Further|Nazi foreign policy debate}}

File:KarlHaushofer RudolfHess.jpg Karl Haushofer (left) provided the Nazis with intellectual, academic, scientific rationalisations for {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}, transmitted to Chancellor Adolf Hitler, by way of Rudolf Hess (right), who was Haushofer's student.]]

The scope of the enterprise and the scale of the territories invaded and conquered for Germanisation by the Nazis indicated two ideological purposes for {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}, and their relation to the geopolitical purposes of the Nazis: (i) a program of global conquest, begun in Central Europe; and (ii) a program of continental European conquest, limited to Eastern Europe. From the strategic perspectives of the {{lang|de|Stufenplan}} ("Plan in Stages"), the global- and continental-interpretations of Nazi {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} are feasible, and neither exclusive of each other, nor counter to Hitler's foreign-policy goals for Germany.{{Cite book |last=Kershaw |first=Ian |title=The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kt-2CgAAQBAJ&q=Stufenplan |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |year=2015 |isbn=978-1474240963 |pages=134, 155 |author-link=Ian Kershaw |via=Google Books}}

Within the Reich régime proper, the Nazis held different definitions of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}, such as the idyllic, agrarian society that required much arable land, advocated by the blood-and-soil ideologist Richard Walther Darré and {{lang|de|Reichsführer-SS}} Heinrich Himmler; and the urban, industrial state, that required raw materials and slaves, advocated by Adolf Hitler.{{harvnb|Kershaw|2015|pp=244–245}} Operation Barbarossa—the invasion of the Soviet Union in summer 1941—required a compromise of concept, purpose, and execution to realise Hitler's conception of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} in the Slavic lands of Eastern Europe.

During the Posen speeches, Himmler spoke about the deaths of millions of Soviet prisoners of war and foreign labourers:

{{Blockquote|One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the SS men: We must be honest, decent, loyal and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What other nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary, by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only insofar as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished.}}

Racism usually is not a concept integral to the ideology of territorial expansionism; nor to the original meaning of the term {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} ("biological habitat"), as defined by the ethnographer and geographer Friedrich Ratzel. Nonetheless, Nazism, the ideology of the Nazi Party, established racism as a philosophic basis of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}-as-geopolitics; which Adolf Hitler presented as Nazi racist ideology in his political autobiography {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}} (1926–28). Moreover, the geopolitical interpretations of national living-space by the academic Karl Haushofer (a teacher of Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy) provided Adolf Hitler with the intellectual, academic, and scientific rationalisations that justified the territorial expansion of Germany—by the natural right of the German Aryan race—to expand into, occupy, and exploit the lands of other countries, regardless of the native populations.Rosenberg, Matt (November 1, 2008). [http://geography.about.com/od/politicalgeography/a/geopolitics.htm "Geopolitics."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090822164553/http://geography.about.com/od/politicalgeography/a/geopolitics.htm |date=2009-08-22 }} About.com. In {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}}, Hitler explained the living-space "required" by Nazi Germany:

{{Blockquote|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 kilometres.Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971, p. 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.{{harvnb|Hitler|1939|p=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 entire area those advantages which lie in its unified magnitude.{{harvnb|Hitler|1939|p=653}}}}

Several historians have evaluated the Nazi pursuit of "Lebensraum" as a reckless endeavor that played a role in Germany's military defeat during the Second World War. As the Wehrmacht began capturing vast swathes of territories in Eastern Europe during the early phase of the war, the bio-geo-political program of Lebensraum led to the intensification of self-destructive policies by Nazi military forces, culminating in the genocide of Jews, Romanis, Slavs, etc., and eventually, the collapse of Nazi Germany itself.{{harvnb|Giaccaria|Minca|2016|pages=34–37}} Elucidating the self-destructive characteristics of Nazi practices, historian Vejas Liulevicius wrote:

{{Blockquote|text="The regime used modern techniques for the goal of a terrible future utopia which classical modernity would not recognize, seeking space, rather than development. While the Soviets retreated, “trading space for time,” the Nazis gave up time to gain space—seeking an everlasting, timeless present of destructive expansion in their vision of the Ostland. As the tide of events turned in the East, Hitler refused to give up the spaces conquered and forbade withdrawal again and again, producing military disasters. The ideological primacy of Raum was fatal in its consequences in the East. At long last, this was brought home to Germans as the Red Army invaded their territory by 1945, turning the utopia of Raum into a nightmare of the advancing East."|source={{harvnb|Giaccaria|Minca|2016|pages=36, 37}}{{Cite book |last=Gabriel Liulevicius |first=Vejas |title=War Land on the Eastern Front |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-511-49718-6 |location=Cambridge, UK |page=272 |chapter=8: The triumph of Raum}}|title="War Land on the Eastern Front" (2000)}}

Since the end of World War II, the term {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} has been used in relation to different countries, including China,{{Cite book |last1=Ian G. Cook |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_1UrBxTJnD0C&pg=PA140 |title=China's Third Revolution: Tensions in the Transition Towards a Post-Communist China |last2=Geoffrey Murray |publisher=Psychology Press |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-7007-1307-3 |page=140}}{{Cite book |last1=Orville Schell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=10gh6j463nAC&pg=PT607 |title=The China Reader: The Reform Era |last2=David L. Shambaugh |publisher=Random House |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-307-76622-9 |pages=607–608}} Egypt,{{Cite book |last=Gabriel R. Warburg, Uri M. Kupferschmidt |title=Islam Nationalism and Radicalism in Egypt and the Sudan |publisher=Praeger |year=1983 |isbn=978-0275910983 |page=217}}{{Cite book |last=John Marlowe |title=Arab Nationalism and British Imperialism |publisher=Praeger |year=1961 |isbn=978-1258497705 |page=78}} Israel,{{Cite book |last=Krämer |first=Gudrun |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tWrW_CKODdQC&pg=PA322 |title=A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-0-691-15007-9 |page=322}}{{Cite book |last=Finkelstein |first=Norman |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vNb5VkyxDlYC&pg=PR29 |title=Image and Reality of the Israel–Palestine Conflict |publisher=Verso Books |year=1995 |isbn=978-1-85984-442-7 |page=xxix}}{{Cite book |last=Bidwell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Fi_CThWrKCAC&pg=PA441 |title=Dictionary of Modern Arab History |publisher=Routledge |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-7103-0505-3 |page=441 |quote=The Israeli government began to expropriate more Arab land as {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} for Jewish agricultural rather than strategic settlements and to take water traditionally used by local farmers. A particularly unjust example led to the Land Day Riots of March 1976 but in 1977 Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon stated that there was a long term plan to settle 2 million Jews in the occupied Territories by 2000: this was an ideological pursuit of Greater Israel.}}{{Cite book |last=El-Din El-Din Haseeb |first=Khair |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SgyKLXaBcxIC&pg=PA226 |title=The Future of the Arab Nation: Challenges and Options: Volume 2 |publisher=Routledge |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-136-25185-6 |page=226 |quote=In light of Israel's international relations and its broad regional concept of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}, it will retain and even improve the degree of its military superiority.}}{{Cite book |last=Graham |first=Stephen |title=Cities, War and Terrorism: Towards an Urban Geopolitics (Studies in Urban and Social Change) |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |year=2004 |isbn=978-1-4051-1575-9 |page=204 |doi=10.1002/9780470753033.index |quote=Eitam argues that, ultimately, Israel should strive to force or 'persuade' all Arabs and Palestinians to leave Israel and the occupied territories—to be accommodated in Jordan and the Sinai (Egypt) ... Eitam has even explicitly used the German concept of Lebensraum (living space)—a cornerstone of the Holocaust—to underpin his arguments.}} Turkey,{{Cite book |last=Tufekci |first=Ozgur |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u-mKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA17 |title=The Foreign Policy of Modern Turkey: Power and the Ideology of Eurasianism |date=2017 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-1-78673-117-3 |page=17 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last=Stein |first=Aaron |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315657110 |title=Turkey's New Foreign Policy: Davutoglu, the AKP and the Pursuit of Regional Order |date=2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-315-65711-0 |edition=1 |pages=7 |language=en |doi=10.4324/9781315657110}}{{Cite journal |last1=Klinke |first1=Ian |last2=Bassin |first2=Mark |date=2018-07-01 |title=Introduction: Lebensraum and its discontents |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305748817302451 |journal=Journal of Historical Geography |language=en |volume=61 |pages=53–58 |doi=10.1016/j.jhg.2018.05.019 |issn=0305-7488 |s2cid=150111274}} Poland,{{Cite journal |last=Balogun |first=Bolaji |year=2017 |title=Polish Lebensraum: the colonial ambition to expand on racial terms |url=http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/123365/14/Polish%20Lebensraum%20-%20Original%20Manuscript.pdf |journal=Ethnic and Racial Studies |volume=41 |issue=14 |pages=1–19 |doi=10.1080/01419870.2017.1392028 |s2cid=148720825}} and the United States.Neil Smith, American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization, (Berkeley & Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 27–28.

{{Reflist}}

• {{Cite book |last=Hitler |first=Adolf |url=http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601.txt |title=Mein Kampf |date= 1939 |publisher=Hurst and Blackett |others=Introduction by James Vincent Murphy, the Irish translator of {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}} who worked in Goebbels's Ministry of Propaganda from 1934 to 1938 (died 1946) |at=The copy contains both, Vol. 1: A Retrospect, and Vol. 2: The national Socialist Movement, fully unexpurgated; in text file format without pagination |id=Reprinted in 1939 (before the US entered the war) by Houghton Mifflin, Boston Massachusetts. This book is still banned from publication in Germany |quote=Note: The term {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}, as loan-word adopted in the English historiography long after World War II ended, does not appear in the first prewar translation of the original. |author-link=Adolf Hitler |via=Project Gutenberg Australia}} [Also:] {{Cite book |last=Hitler |first=Adolf |display-authors=0 |url=https://archive.org/stream/meinkampf035176mbp/meinkampf035176mbp_djvu.txt |title=Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler |publisher=Reynal A Hitchcock; published by arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Company |others=Introduction by John Chamberlain et al. |year=1941 |format=DjVu |id=Paginated, Complete and Unabridged |via=Internet Archive}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Giaccaria |first1=Paolo |last2=Minca |first2=Claudio |chapter=For a Tentative Spatial Theory of the Third Reich |title=Hitler's Geographies: The Spatialities of the Third Reich |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-226-27442-3 |editor-last=Giaccaria |editor2-last=Minca |editor-first=Paolo |editor2-first=Claudio |location=Chicago}}

• {{Cite book |last=Kamenetsky |first=Ihor |url=https://archive.org/details/SecretNaziPlansForEasternEuropeAStudyOfLebensraumPolicies_201609 |title=Secret Nazi Plans for Eastern Europe: A Study of Lebensraum Policies |publisher=Bookman Associates |year=1961 |location=New York }}

• [http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/about/04/ussr.asp?WT.mc_id=wiki The Invasion of the Soviet Union and the Beginnings of Mass Murder] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20121228101815/http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/about/04/ussr.asp?WT.mc_id=wiki |date=2012-12-28 }}, in the Yad Vashem website
• [https://www.obersalzberg.de/fileadmin/_processed_/2/7/csm_WKUTOPIEenglisch_7e504013e9.jpg Utopia: The Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201129164755/https://www.obersalzberg.de/fileadmin/_processed_/2/7/csm_WKUTOPIEenglisch_7e504013e9.jpg |date=2020-11-29 }}{{snd}}A map of Nazi plans for German empire
• [https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/hitler_lebensraum_01.shtml Hitler and {{lang|de|Lebensraum|nocat=y}} in the East], by Jeremy Noakes

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