Editing Lebensraum (section)

===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" />}}