Editing Lebensraum (section)

== Hitlerite doctrine of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} ==
[[Image:Mein Kampf dust jacket.jpeg|thumb|upright|{{lang|de|[[Mein Kampf]]}} (1926–28), Hitler's political autobiography, presented the racist philosophy of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} advocated for Germany by the Nazi Party.]]

In {{lang|de|[[Mein Kampf]]}} (1925), Hitler dedicated a full chapter—titled "Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy"—to outlining the need for the new "living space" for Germany. He claimed that achieving {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} required political will, and that the Nazi movement ought to strive to expand population area for the German people and acquire new sources of food.<ref>Hitler, Adolf, {{lang|de|[[Mein Kampf]]}}, Houghton Mifflin, 1971, p. 646. {{ISBN|978-0-395-07801-3}}.</ref>

{{lang|de|Lebensraum}} became the principal foreign-policy goal of the Nazi Party and the [[government of Nazi Germany]] (1933–45). Hitler rejected the restoration of the pre-war borders of Germany as an inadequate half-measure towards reducing purported national overpopulation.<ref>Roberts, Andrew. ''The Storm of War'', p. 144. {{ISBN|978-0-06-122859-9}}</ref> From that perspective, he opined that the nature of national borders is always unfinished and momentary, and that their redrawing must continue as Germany's political goal.<ref>{{Cite book |first=Shelley |last=Baranowski |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iA-NZ_RgP5kC&q=continental+Lebensraum |title=Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-0521857390 |page=151}}</ref> Identifying the conquest of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} as a major ideological goal of his party, Hitler wrote in "''Mein Kampf''":

{{Blockquote|And so, we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre–War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the East. At long last, we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre–War period and shift to the soil policy of the future. But when we speak of new territory in Europe today we must principally think of [[Soviet Union|Russia]] and the border States subject to her.<ref>Adolf Hitler, ''Mein Kampf'', Vol. Two – The National Socialist Movement|, Ch. XIV: Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy</ref>}}

The ideologies found at the root of Hitler's implementation of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} modeled that of [[German colonial empire|German colonialism]] of the [[New Imperialism]] period as well as the American ideology of [[manifest destiny]]. Hitler had great admiration for the United States' [[Territorial evolution of the United States|territorial expansion]] and saw the destruction of [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] peoples and their cultures that took place during the United States' westward expansion as a template for German expansion. He believed that in order to transform the German nation into a world [[superpower]], Germany had to expand their geopolitical presence and act only in the interest of the German people. Hitler had also viewed with dismay the German reliance on food imports by sea during the First World War, believing it to be a contributing factor to Germany's defeat in the war. He believed that only through {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} could Germany shift "its dependence for food... to its own imperial hinterland".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Snyder |first=Timothy |date=8 March 2017 |title=Hitler's American Dream: Adapted from Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning |url=https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/03/nazi-germanys-american-dream-hitler-modeled-his-concept-of-racial-struggle-and-global-campaign-after-americas-conquest-of-native-americans.html |access-date=25 November 2019 |website=Slate.com |publisher=Tim Duggan Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC}}</ref>

Hitler's bio-geo-political doctrine of ''Lebensraum'' consisted of two components existing in tension: the materialist endeavour to expand Germanic territories and the mystical quest to revive what the Nazis viewed as the "idealized German medieval past". The explicit embrace of these contradictions was evident in the promulgation of Nazi slogans such as "''[[Blut und Boden]]''" (blood and soil). National Socialism was presented by its ideologues as an organic world-view ("''[[Weltanschauung]]''") that subordinated all aspects of life—physical bodies, soul, mind, culture, government, religion, education, economy, etc.—into an "organic totality" existing within ''Lebensraum''.<ref>{{harvnb|Giaccaria|Minca|2016|pages=30–33}}</ref><ref name="Neumann 2002 107–130">{{Cite journal |last=Neumann |first=Boaz |date=2002 |title=The National Socialist Politics of Life |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3115178 |journal=New German Critique |volume= |issue=85 |pages=107–130 |doi=10.2307/3115178 |jstor=3115178 }}</ref> Defining Nazism as a "''Weltanschauung''" during his speech at the [[Nuremberg rally|1933 Nuremberg rally]], Hitler stated: <blockquote>"Already in the word '''Weltanschauung''<nowiki/>' lies the solemn proclamation of a decision that all acts are based upon a certain point of view and a visible tendency. Such a view can be true or false: it is the starting point for every opinion on the appearance and events of life, and is therefore a binding and obligating law for every act. The more such an opinion covers the natural law of organic life, the better its conscious utility can be applied for the sake of the people's life."<ref name="Neumann 2002 107–130"/></blockquote>

=== {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}} sequel, 1928 ===
In the unpublished sequel to {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}} ({{Langx|en|My struggle}}), the ''[[Zweites Buch]]'' (1928, ''Second Book''), Hitler further presents the ideology of Nazi {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}, in accordance with the then-future foreign policy of the Nazi Party. To further German population growth, Hitler rejected the ideas of [[birth control]] and emigration, arguing that such practices weakened the people and culture of Germany, and that military conquest was the only means for obtaining {{lang|de|Lebensraum}}:

{{Blockquote|The National Socialist Movement, on the contrary, will always let its foreign policy be determined by the necessity to secure the space necessary to the life of our Folk. It knows no Germanising or [[Teutons|Teutonising]], as in the case of the national [[bourgeoisie]], but only the spread of its own Folk. It will never see in the subjugated, so called Germanised, Czechs or Poles a national, let alone Folkish, strengthening, but only the racial weakening of our Folk.<ref>Adolf Hitler, {{lang|de|Zweites Buch}}, p. 26</ref>}}

Therefore, the non-Germanic peoples of the annexed foreign territories would never be Germanised:

{{Blockquote|The {{lang|de|völkisch}} State, conversely, must under no conditions annex Poles with the intention of wanting to make Germans out of them some day. On the contrary, it must muster the determination either to seal off these alien racial elements, so that the blood of its own Folk will not be [[miscegenation|corrupted]] again, or it must, without further ado, remove them and hand over the vacated territory to its own National Comrades.<ref>Adolf Hitler, {{lang|de|Zweites Buch}}, p. 29</ref>}}

=== Foreign-policy prime directive ===
[[Image:Nuremberg laws.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.3|The [[Nuremberg Laws]] (1935) of Nazi Germany employed [[scientific racism]] to exclude Jews from mainstream society. People with four German grandparents (white circles) were classified as of "German blood," those with one or two Jewish grandparents (black circles) were considered to be {{lang|de|Mischling}}, of "Mixed blood", while those with three or more Jewish grandparents were deemed to be Jews.]]The conquest of living space for Germany was the foremost foreign-policy goal of the Nazis towards establishing the [[Greater Germanic Reich]] that was to last a thousand years.<ref>[[Manfred Messerschmidt|Messerschmidt, Manfred]] "Foreign Policy and Preparation for War" from ''[[Germany and the Second World War]]'', Vol. I, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1990 pp. 551–554.</ref> On 3 February 1933, at his initial meeting with the generals and admirals of [[Nazi Germany]], Adolf Hitler said that the conquest of {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} in Eastern Europe and its "ruthless [[Germanisation]]" were the ultimate geopolitical objectives of Reich foreign policy.<ref>Weinberg, Gerhard ''The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Diplomatic Revolution in Europe'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970 pp. 26–27.</ref><ref>Hitler-quotation recorded by Curt Liebmann on February 3, 1933: "How shall political power be used once it has been won. Cannot be decided now. Maybe fighting for new export opportunities, maybe—and probably better—conquering new Lebensraum in the East and its ruthless Germanisation." Source: Wolfgang Michalka: Deutsche Geschichte 1933–1945. Dokumente zur Innen- und Außenpolitik. Frankfurt am Main 1999, {{ISBN|3-596-50234-9}}, pp. 17f. Vgl. Thilo Vogelsang: Neue Dokumente zur Geschichte der Reichswehr 1930–1933. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 2, 1954, Volume 4, pp. 397–436, esp. p. 435. Original quotation in German: „Wie soll pol. Macht, wenn sie gewonnen ist, gebraucht werden? Jetzt noch nicht zu sagen. Vielleicht Erkämpfung neuer Export-Mögl., vielleicht—und wohl besser—Eroberung neuen Lebensraumes im Osten u. dessen rücksichtslose Germanisierung."</ref> The USSR was the country to provide sufficient {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} for the Germans, because it possessed much agricultural land, and was inhabited by Slavic {{lang|de|[[Untermensch]]en}} ruled by [[Jewish Bolshevism]].<ref>Weinberg, Gerhard ''The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Diplomatic Revolution in Europe'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970 pp. 12–13.</ref> The racism of Hitler's {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} philosophy allowed only the Germanisation of the soil and the land, but not of the native peoples, who were to be destroyed, by slave labour and starvation.<ref>[[Richard Bessel]], ''Nazism and War'', p. 36 {{ISBN|0-679-64094-0}}</ref>

=== 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>