The Gateway Chronicle 2020

8
Political Ideologies
Lebensraum: The Nazis’ plan for the
East and the largest war crime in history
L
ebensraum as a concept has existed
in Germany since Friederich
Ratzel first wrote about it in 1901.
The idea grew to mean expansion of German
territory to accommodate Germany’s
growing population For Germany, this direction
was often east, towards the vast
lands of Eastern Europe and Russia. In the
20 th century, twice Germany has driven
eastwards under an autocratic government
to conquer land in eastern Europe.
The first was during the World War One,
where the German Empire in
tandem
with
Austria-
Hungary
bludgeoned the
Russian Empire into civil
war, setting up puppet regimes
with plans to colonies areas of Poland,
the Baltic States and Ukraine
under the abortive Septemberprogramm
which involved the ethnic
cleansing of Jews and Poles
from areas of annexed Poland.
However, it is the second attempt
which is the focus of today’s
piece; Nazi Germany’s Generalplan
Ost (Master Plan for the East).
The idea of Lebensraum in Nazi ideology
was popularized by the movement’s eventual
leader, a certain Adolf Hitler. In the
titular Mein Kampf, he states that ‘the German
people must be assured the territorial
area which is necessary for it to exist’ and
‘the German frontiers are an outcome of
chance and only temporary frontiers’. This
outlines the framework of his idea, primarily
the expansion of Germany into
Eastern Europe at the expense of other nations,
to create more space for the burgeoning
German population (despite the
fact that the German birth rate had been
declining since the 1880s). Furthermore,
they needed to secure resources, such as
farmland, so that Germany would never
be hit with the kind of mass starvation
that happened to Germany in World War
One, due to the Entente blockade, and raw
materials to power German industry and
further the principle of Autarky (German
economic independence and self-reliance).
This was also partially based on his hatred
of both Jews and Soviet Communism,
which he saw as linked through
the
conspiracy
theory
that Jews
organised the
1917 Russian Revolution and
were using communism as a tool
for world domination.
The idea was already there
within the Nazi party but,
upon the commencement of
World War Two, the Nazis
now planned to make this idea
a reality, with all the horror that
entailed. For this, the Nazis gradually
began development on Generalplan
Ost, their plan for genocide, ethnic
cleansing and colonisation in Central and
Eastern Europe, the extent of which was
known only to the top echelon of the Nazi
party. The plan was divided into 2 phases,
Kliene Planung and Gross Planung. The former
dictated German colonial policy during
the war, whilst the latter was due to be
implemented over 30 years to cement German
control. The Kliene Planung was partially
completed during the war, consisting
of the killing of any leaders, whether
political, military or cultural, in the Eastern
European states as well as Jews,