Editing Lebensraum (section)

==First World War nationalist premise==
[[File:Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg 1913b.jpg|thumb|upright|Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, [[Chancellor of Germany (German Reich)|Chancellor of Germany]] 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|Kriegs&zwnj;ziel}}), which was secretly ordered by [[Chancellor of Germany (German Reich)|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&nbsp;km<sup>2</sup>}}). {{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.<ref>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</ref>

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.<ref name="Hillgruber-1981">Hillgruber, Andreas. ''Germany and the Two World Wars'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981 pp. 41–47</ref> The decisive campaigns of Imperial Germany almost realised {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} in the East, especially when [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic|Bolshevik Russia]] unilaterally withdrew as a combatant in the "Great War" among the European [[great power]]s—the [[Triple Entente]] (the [[Russian Empire]], the [[French Third Republic]], and the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]]) and the [[Central Powers]] (the [[German Empire]], [[Austria-Hungary]], the [[Ottoman Empire]], and the [[Kingdom of Bulgaria]]).<ref>{{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}}</ref>

In March 1918, in an effort to reform and modernise the [[Russian Empire]] (1721–1917) into a [[soviet republic (system of government)|soviet republic]], the [[Bolshevik]] government agreed to the strategically onerous territorial cessions stipulated in the [[Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (Russia–Central Powers)|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.<ref>[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 }}.</ref> 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.<ref name="Hillgruber-1981" /> 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.<ref>''A Companion to World War I'', p. 436.</ref> 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:<ref>Hillgruber, Andreas. ''Germany and the Two World Wars'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981, pp. 46–47.</ref>

{{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 River (Russia)|Don]] east of [[Rostov, Yaroslavl Oblast|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.<ref>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.</ref> 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.<ref>See [http://www.colby.edu/personal/r/rmscheck/GermanyC2.html Raffael Scheck, ''Germany 1871–1945: A Concise History'' (2008)]</ref> 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).<ref>{{lang|pl|Immanuel Geiss Tzw. polski pas graniczny 1914–1918. Warszawa}} (1964).</ref> In ''[[The Origins of the Second World War]]'', the British historian [[A. J. P. Taylor]] wrote:<ref>{{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}}</ref>

{{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 (historian)|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)}}