The Lebensraum , is a German word usually translated by “vital space”. It is a concept which returns to the idea of territory sufficient for, initially, to ensure survival of people and in the second time, to support its growth. This territory can be obtained by “purifying it” (the “Final solution” Nazi) or by conquering it (by the war, generally).
This idea is generally known to have been one of the principal justifications of the Nazi S for the expansionist policy of the Germany during the Second world war. However, it is not to regard as a “ idea nazie ”, because it is, following the example many other nationalist policies (for example, the Manifest Destiny American), a simple clarification of the Expansionnisme.
Origins
The idea of Germanic people lacking space is quite former to Adolf Hitler, but it is him which carried it to its apogee.The term Lebensraum was invented by Friedrich Ratzel towards the end of the 19th century and was employed like slogan in Germany for the unification of the country and the acquisition of colony S according to the models British and French. Did Ratzel believe that the development of people was mainly influenced by his geographical location and that people being adapted successfully to a place would proceed themselves (?) naturally at another place. According to him, it was necessary to fill space available. The expansion was thus a device normal and necessary of all the healthy species.
These beliefs were proposed by Karl Haushofer and Friedrich von Bernhardi. In its book of 1912, Germany and the new war , Bernhardi supplemented the assumptions of Ratzel and, for the first time, clearly identified the Europe of the East like source of new space.
In 1926, the book Volk ohne Raum of Hans Grimm (title which one can translate by people without space ) was published. This book will become traditional in Germany and its title a slogan of NSDAP.
Colonial use
See also: German colonial Empire
Towards the end of the 19th century, under the German Empire, the German socio-economic situation is problematic: the Chômage is particularly high and much of people homeless person sleep on the pavements - even with Berlin.
The German government studies the theory of the Lebensraum of Ratzel, and concludes from it that colonization is a means of increasing at the same time the empire and “vital” space for the Germans. Second Reich regards the south-west of Africa (Namibia, inter alia) as the colony most adapted for the growth of the empire.
Nazi use
In Mein Kampf, Hitler changes the concept of Lebensraum : rather than to add colonies to make Germany larger, he wants to increase his country inside Europe. He thus starts again the idea of an expansion towards the East ( Drang nach Osten ) and adds racist elements to the Lebensraum .
As from 1931, these theories will be in particular put in practice by the Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (“Office of the race and the settlement” or RuSHA), directed by Walther Darré until 1938, then inter alia by Otto Hoffmann and Richard Hildebrandt.
September 1st, 1939 the Poland is invaded, the political opponents and the intellectual elites and nuns are locked up by it in the concentration camps. Hitler characterizes the inhabitants of the Soviet Union and the Slaves in general like “under-people” and gives each other the right to conquer the Soviet grounds. It engages then its policy of extermination anti-semite ( Einsatzgruppen then death camps).
See too
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