LEBENSRAUM

Living Space for The German People

LEBENSRAUM
L E B E N S R A U M , O R L I V I N G S PA C E , W A S A P O L I C Y O F T H E
NAZIS DURING WWII TO CONQUER TERRITORY IN EUROPE
FOR GERMAN USE.
T H E F I R S T M E N T I O N O F L E B E N S R A U M A C T U A L LY D AT E S
B A C K T O 1 9 0 1 . A G E O G R A P H E R N A M E D F R I E D R I C H R AT Z E L
B E G A N L O O K I N G AT T H E W AY S T H AT P L A N T S , A N I M A L S ,
A N D M A N A D A P T E D T O A N D C O M P E T E D F O R L I V I N G S PA C E .
I N 1 9 0 1 , R AT Z E L F I R S T U S E D T H E T E R M ' L E B E N S R A U M ' A N D
DEFINED IT AS THE EXACT GEOGRAPHICAL AREA NEED TO
S U P P O R T A L I V I N G S P E C I E S AT I T S C U R R E N T P O P U L AT I O N
SIZE AND MODE OF EXISTENCE.

THE GEOPOLITICAL CONCEPT OF LEBENSRAUM ("LIVING

S PA C E " ) W A S P R O F F E R E D B Y O T H E R S I N G E R M A N Y D E C A D E S
BEFORE ADOLF HITLER CAME TO POWER.
IN 1871, FOR EXAMPLE, LEBENSRAUM WAS A POPULAR
P O L I T I C A L S L O G A N D U R I N G T H E E S TA B L I S H M E N T O F A
U N I T E D G E R M A N Y.
AT T H I S T I M E , L E B E N S R A U M U S U A L LY M E A N T F I N D I N G
A D D I T I O N A L " L I V I N G S PA C E " B Y A D D I N G C O L O N I E S ,
FOLLOWING THE EXAMPLES OF THE BRITISH AND FRENCH
EMPIRES.

[W]ithout consideration of "traditions" and

prejudices, it [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.

--- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Hitler changed the concept of Lebensraum. Rather than adding

colonies to make Germany larger, Hitler wanted to enlarge Germany
within Europe.

Hitler

looked east for Germany's expansion in Europe. It

was in this view that Hitler added a racist element to
Lebensraum. By stating that the Soviet Union was run by
Jews, then Hitler concluded Germany had a right to take
Russian land.

For centuries Russia drew nourishment from this

Germanic nucleus of its upper leading strata. Today it can
be regarded as almost totally exterminated and
extinguished. It has been replaced by the Jew.
Impossible as it is for the Russian by himself to shake off
the yoke of the Jew by his own resources, it is equally
impossible for the Jew to maintain the mighty empire
forever. He himself is no element of organization, but a
ferment of decomposition. The Persian empire in the
east is ripe for collapse. And the end of Jewish rule in
Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state
ADOLF HITLER, MEIN KAMPF

Thus,

in Nazi ideology, Lebensraum meant the expansion of

Germany to the east in search of a unity between the German Volk
and the land (the Nazi concept of Blood and Soil).
The Nazi modified theory of Lebensraum became Germany's
foreign policy during the Third Reich.
Nonetheless, National Socialism (Nazism), the ideology of the Third
Reich established racism specifically anti-Semitism as a
philosophic basis of Lebensraum-as-geopolitics; which Adolf Hitler
presented as Nazi racist ideology in his political autobiography Mein
Kampf (192628).

IN AN ERA WHEN THE EARTH IS

G R A D U A L LY B E I N G D I V I D E D U P
A M O N G S TAT E S , S O M E O F W H I C H
EMBRACE ALMOST ENTIRE
CONTINENTS, WE CANNOT SPEAK
OF A WORLD POWER IN
C O N N E C T I O N W I T H A F O R M AT I O N
WHOSE POLITICAL MOTHER
COUNTRY IS LIMITED TO THE
ABSURD AREA OF FIVE HUNDRED
THOUSAND SQUARE KILOMETERS.

--- ADOLF HITLER, MEIN KAMPF

I N D E E D , A N I M P O R TA N T R E A S O N F O R H I S D E C I S I O N T O
I N VA D E T H E S O V I E T U N I O N I N J U N E 1 9 4 1 WA S H I S D E S I R E
T O A C Q U I R E T H E L E B E N S R A U M T H AT H E H A D B E E N S E E K I N G
FOR GERMANY SINCE 1925.
HE ENVISAGED SETTLING GERMANS AS A MASTER RACE IN
WESTERN RUSSIA, WHILE DEPORTING MOST OF THE
R U S S I A N S T O S I B E R I A A N D U S I N G T H E R E M A I N D E R A S S L AV E
LABOUR.

PLANNED OR UNPLANNED?

The geopolitician Karl Haushofer (left) provided the Nazis with the rationalisations
(intellectual, academic, scientific) for Lebensraum, transmitted to Chancellor Adolf
Hitler, by way of Rudolf Hess (right), who was Haushofer's student.

Moreover, the geopolitical interpretations of national

living-space of 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.
[96]

In June 1941, the invasion of the Soviet Union

began. It was conceived from the first by the
Germans both as a racist war of extermination and
as a campaign intended to exploit the occupied
territory economically. The Nazi leadership
planned in advance the death by starvation of 30
million people in the territory they hoped to
conquer, in order to create additional 'living space'
(Lebensraum) for Germans.

PLANNED UNPLANNED