Editing Lebensraum (section)

==Historical retrospective==
{{Further|Nazi foreign policy debate}}

===Scale===
[[File:KarlHaushofer RudolfHess.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|The [[geopolitician]] [[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.<ref name="Kershaw">{{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}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{harvnb|Kershaw|2015|pp=244–245}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Kershaw" />

During the Posen speeches, Himmler spoke about the deaths of millions of Soviet prisoners of war and [[forced labour under German rule during World War II|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 of children for forced Germanization by Nazi Germany|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.<ref name="himmler" />}}

===Ideology===
[[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.<ref>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.</ref> 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.<ref>Adolf Hitler, ''[[Mein Kampf]]''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971, p. 644</ref> 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.<ref>{{harvnb|Hitler|1939|p=646}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{harvnb|Hitler|1939|p=653}}</ref>}}

=== Factor that played a role in Germany's defeat ===
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 [[Eastern European Jewry|Jews]], [[Romani people|Romanis]], [[Slavs]],  etc., and eventually, the collapse of [[Nazi Germany]] itself.<ref>{{harvnb|Giaccaria|Minca|2016|pages=34–37}}</ref> 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=<ref>{{harvnb|Giaccaria|Minca|2016|pages=36, 37}}</ref><ref>{{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''}}</ref>|title="War Land on the Eastern Front" (2000)}}