Editing Lebensraum (section)

=== Ideological motives ===
[[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 [[Drang nach Osten|eastward expansion of German territories]].<ref>{{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}}</ref> 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.<ref>Weinberg, Gerhard ''The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Diplomatic Revolution in Europe'' Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1970 pp. 6–7.</ref> 

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]].<ref>Jäckel, Eberhard ''Hitler's World View A Blueprint for Power'' Harvard University Press: Cambridge, US, 1981 pp. 34–35</ref> 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]].<ref>Poprzeczny, J. (2004), ''{{lang|pl|Odilo Globocnik}}, Hitler's Man in the East'', pp. 42–43, McFarland, {{ISBN|0-7864-1625-4}}</ref>

[[Nazi propaganda]] depicted Eastern Europe as historically Germanic territories, promoting the myth that these regions were stolen from [[Aryan race|Aryan races]] by [[Huns|Hunnic]] and [[Avars (Caucasus)|Avar]] tribes.<ref>{{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 }}</ref> Hitler viewed Slavs as primitive subhumans, and he detested the German empire's [[Dual Alliance (1879)|alliance with Austria-Hungary]] during World War I. In his works such as ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' and [[Hitlers Zweites Buch|''Zweites Buch'']], Hitler viewed the Slavs as lacking the capability to form a state.<ref>{{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}}</ref> 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.<ref>Richard Weikart, ''Hitler's Ethic'', p. 167</ref>