The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - ELTE BTK Történelem Szakos Portál

Kałan, Dariusz
The Ukrainian Question in German Foreign Policy
(March 1938 - September 1939)
Ukraine has played a great role in German political thought since at least
18 th century. In the complex of common projects, the essential issue was the
image of Ukraine as a path to Russia. Writers, politicians and historians, such
as Theodor Schiemann, Friedrich Naumann or Paul Rohrbach, the author of
often-quoted maxim „who reigns in Kiev, reigns in Moscow” 1 , were convinced
that the capture of Ukraine will become the grounds for economic and political
crash of Russian Empire.
However, the revival of folkish ideology in the early 1920s along with a
new geopolitical conceptions designed by Friedrich Ratzel and popularized by
Karl Haushofer allowed the role of Ukraine itself to be identified and valued.
Haushofer, a professor of the University of Munich and creator of theoretical
background of Adolf Hitler’s foreign policy, directed the German geopolitical
expansion eastward. In his opinion there was a need to search for so-called
„living space” (Lebensraum) for Germany due to its rise to greater prominence
in Europe. Ukraine, abounded with fecund soils and numerous of raw
materials, full of wild unspoiled landscapes, has been considered the perfect
place for German colonization. Hence, during the 1930s Nazis didn’t lose sight
of Ukraine as the crucial facet of all the variations of their eastern policy
projects. The most audacious one, created by Richard Darré in 1932, assumed a
German leadership role in the territories from Finland in the north through
Poland, Ukraine, Hungary and Balkans to Georgia in the south 2 .
Though Hitler did not mention Ukraine itself in an exposition of his political
ideology in „Mein Kampf”, he clearly knew that Ukraine is crucial for
Lebensraum to be successfully implemented. Hermann Rauschning, the author
of „Hitler Speaks”, cited the Poland-related conversation with Führer from
1934. Rauschning had suggested that Polish government would take back some
selected western territories bordering with Germany, but in return should be
given soils located at the Baltic Sea (Lithuania) and at the Black Sea (Ukraine).
After Hitler carefully analyzed this proposal he finally declared: „These
gentlemen will have to Ukraine slip their mind” 3 . Obviously, this short
statement is nothing like how Ukraine was described during the World War II.
Four months after the Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union Hitler wrote:
„There is no country that can be to larger extent autarkic than Europe will be.
Where is there a region capable of supplying iron of the quality of Ukrainian
1
WILSON, Andrew. Ukraińcy. Translated by Marek Urbański. Warszawa, 1992. 306.
2
RAUSCHNING, Hermann: Rozmowy z Hitlerem. Translated by Ryszard Turczyn.
Warszawa, 1994. 44.
3
Ibidem, 130.
103