Editing Lebensraum (section)

==Origins==
{{multiple image
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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 ''[[On the Origin of Species|Origins of Species]]'' (1859).<ref>[[Michael Heffernan (academic)|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.</ref> In 1897, the geographer and [[ethnography|ethnographer]] [[Friedrich Ratzel]] in his book {{lang|de|Politische Geographie}} applied the word {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} ("living space")<ref name="WM&ZR" /> to describe physical geography as a factor that influences human activities in developing into a society.<ref>[[Holger H. Herwig]], "Geopolitik: Haushofer, Hitler and Lebensraum", ''Geopolitics, Geography and Strategy'' (eds. [[Colin S. Gray|Colin Gray]] & Geoffrey Sloan, London & Portland: Frank Cass, 1999), p. 220.</ref> In 1901, Ratzel extended his thesis in his essay titled "''{{lang|de|Lebensraum|italic=no}}''".<ref name="The Columbia Encyclopedia 1993">''The Columbia Encyclopedia'', 5th Ed., (1993). pp. 2282–2283.</ref> 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.<ref name="USHMM" />

Between 1886 and 1914 {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} became increasingly used as a justification for the [[German colonization of Africa]];<ref name=":0">{{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}}</ref> and was an influential factor during the [[Herero and Nama genocide]] in [[German South West Africa]],<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{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}}</ref> from 1904<ref name=":0" /><ref name="Germanyagrees">{{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]]}}</ref> to 1908.<ref name="Germanyagrees" /> The ethnic cleansing of Herero and Nama people was done in response to an attack on German settlers and soldiers on 12 January 1904.<ref>{{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}}</ref>

During the [[First World War]], the [[Blockade of Germany (1914–1919)|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 [[Russian Empire|Russia]] to gain control of their resources to prevent such a situation from occurring in the future.<ref>Robert Millward. ''The State and Business in the Major Powers: An Economic History, 1815–1939''. Routledge, 2013. p. 108.</ref> In the period between the First and the Second World Wars, [[German nationalism|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 [[Treaty of Versailles|at Versailles]].<ref>{{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}}</ref><ref>Vincent, C. Paul (1997). ''A Historical Dictionary Of Germany's Weimar Republic, 1918–1933''. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 511–513.</ref> 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.<ref name="The Columbia Encyclopedia 1993" /> Yet, to resolve German [[Human overpopulation|overpopulation]], Ratzel pointed out that Imperial Germany (1871–1918) required overseas colonies to which surplus Germans ought to emigrate.<ref>Wanklyn, Harriet. ''Friedrich Ratzel: A Biographical Memoir and Bibliography''. London: Cambridge University Press. (1961) pp. 36–40. {{ASIN|B000KT4J8K}}</ref>

===Geopolitics===
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.<ref>''Encyclopædia Britannica'', 15th Ed., vol. 9, p. 955.</ref> 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.<ref name="Encyclopaedia Britannica">''Encyclopædia Britannica'', 15th Ed., vol. 6, p. 901.</ref>

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]].<ref>Evans, Richard J. ''The Coming of the Third Reich'' (2004) p. 35.&nbsp;{{ISBN|1-59420-004-1}}.</ref>

===Racial ideology===
[[File:Wochenspruch der NSDAP 17 December 1939 (für unseren Lebensraum).jpg|thumb|Poster from the ''[[Wochenspruch der NSDAP]]'' 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 [[Nazism|Nazi]] geopolitics of "inevitable expansion" would reverse overpopulation, provide natural resources, and uphold German national honor.<ref>Stephen J. Lee. ''Europe, 1890–1945''. p. 237.</ref> 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.<ref>{{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}}</ref><ref>{{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}}</ref>

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 "[[Eastern Europe|the East]]".<ref name="E/N301"/> 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.<ref name="Encyclopaedia Britannica" />

=== Prussian policy ===
Some Prussian politicians were increasingly thinking in terms of ''Lebensraum'' by 1907.<ref>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.</ref> In 1902, the [[Prussia|Prussian]] government had already allocated 200,000,000 '''[[German mark (1871)|ℳ︁]]''' for purposes of German colonization of [[Prussian Partition|Polish portions]] of eastern Prussia. These funds were intended to support the creation of settlements by acquiring Polish estates.<ref>{{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}}</ref> By 1907, Prussian Chancellor [[Bernhard von Bülow|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.<ref>{{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}}</ref>

In 1903, the Prussian authorities tried a Polish countess for "presenting a false heir" for an estate near [[Wróblewo, Szamotuły County|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.<ref>{{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}}</ref>