Habitat in the east

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“Securing German living space in the East” as “a task and obligation” for the pioneers after the war: National Socialist propaganda exhibition The Great Homecoming (1942).

Habitat in the East is a political term that is associated with the “Germanic” or “ Aryan ” settlement of areas outside the German borders, especially in (northern) Central and Eastern Europe. It was shaped by the völkisch movement in the Wilhelmine Empire and interpreted from a racial perspective by National Socialists in the German Reich from 1933 to 1945 . It provided the ideological background for the General Plan Ost commissioned by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler , which envisaged the expulsion of the “racially undesirable” population from the conquered areas in Central and Eastern Europe, their “ Germanization ” and economic exploitation.

Ideological forerunners of National Socialism

The German Imperium

The zoologist and geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904) first popularized the term “ living space ” in his scientific works Political Geography (1897) and Der Lebensraum (1901) , which could be developed in continental border colonization . He transferred Darwin's theories of the struggle for survival to geography and understood states as living beings that are engaged in a permanent struggle for living space and whose existence depends on its existence (→ social Darwinism ).

The völkisch movement and the Pan-German Association took up the term and used it in connection with Germans abroad, Germanness in the border areas and the expansion of the German people: German land must not be lost, and the goal must be the establishment of new German settlements . They were opposed to the established colonial societies in Germany: German colonial policy was almost exclusively shaped by economic considerations and was under strong Jewish influence. On the other hand, it must rather be about settleable space for a “pan-German and all-Germanic” oriented “large-scale settlement policy”. Non-European colonies did not play a major role. It is about “the East, which is directly connected to the German motherland. This is where fate points us: the Germanic compass points to the east ”. The German emigrants from America would have to be diverted to the east and workers and urban proletariat settled there in order to solve the social question . The popular national conception was a Germanic racial state on the “people's soil” of Central Europe, settled by German farmers and craftsmen, the “fathers of future warriors”. Paul de Lagarde had already described this vision of a German empire in 1875, the borderlines of which “in the west from Luxembourg to Belfort, in the east from Memel to the ancient Goths on the Black Sea, in the south at least include Trieste, and Asia Minor for future needs against the male. "

During the First World War

→ German war aims in the east 1918

Weimar Republic

In a message dated May 8, 1927, the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten , which was close to the DNVP , also called for new living space:

“The economic and social hardship of our people is caused by the lack of living and working space. The steel helmet supports every foreign policy which opens up settlement and work areas for the surplus population and which keeps the cultural, economic and political connection of these areas with the core and motherland alive. The Stahlhelm does not want the German people, driven into desperation by their misery, to become the prey and source of fire of Bolshevism. "

Likewise, the Chancellor Heinrich Brüning also spoke at a ministerial meeting on July 8, 1930 when formulating the reply to the European plan of the French Prime Minister Aristide Briand that Germany needed sufficient living space:

“Its prerequisites for a just and lasting order in Europe, in which Germany must have sufficient natural habitat, should be made clear. In economic terms, one should not be overly optimistic and one should not fail to prove the impending difficulties. One had to consider that Germany would be neither agriculturally nor industrially competitive as soon as the European customs barriers fell. "

The idea of ​​living space was popularized by Hans Grimm's novel Volk ohne Raum , published in 1926 .

National Socialist Program

Hitler's Mein Kampf

In his treatise Mein Kampf , written from 1924 to 1926 , Adolf Hitler developed his habitat plans in detail in a special chapter on Orientation to the East or Ostpolitik . He called for the German people to "secure the land they deserve on this earth" and stated:

“We National Socialists are deliberately drawing a line under the foreign policy direction of our pre-war period . We're starting where you ended six centuries ago. We stop the eternal German migration to the south and west of Europe and turn our gaze to the country in the east. We are finally ending the pre-war colonial and trade policy and moving on to the land policy of the future. But when we talk about new land in Europe today, we can primarily only think of Russia and the peripheral states subject to it. "

In his “ second book ”, unpublished during his lifetime , Hitler spoke of simply “removing” the people living in the annexed areas in order to be able to hand over “the land that was freed up” to their own people.

The decisive factor for this idea, based on the racial ideology , was Hitler's belief in a superior master race and in " subhumans ", to which he also counted the Slavs .

Key documents to the habitat program

An extensive list of key documents shows that Hitler consistently adhered to his war goals. However, after 1933 he never again mentioned the Soviet Union as a war target. In his speech to the generals on February 3, 1933, according to the Liebmann recording , he vaguely mentioned the East as a war target:

"How should pol. Power, when it is won, be needed? Not yet to say. Perhaps fighting for new export opportunities, perhaps - and probably better - conquering new living space in the east and the like. its ruthless Germanization. "

In his secret memorandum on the second four-year plan , in which he demanded that the Wehrmacht and the German economy be ready for war in four years, Hitler wrote:

“The final solution lies in expanding the living space or the raw material and nutritional basis of our people. It is the task of the political leadership to solve this question one day. "

Hitler's proclamation at the Reich Party Congress in September 1936 contained u. a. the following sentences:

“The problems of our national economic preservation are infinitely grave. 1. The 136 people on the square kilometer in Germany - even with the greatest efforts and the most skilful use of the available living space - cannot find their perfect nourishment from their own. "

On November 5, 1937, Hitler - recorded in the Hoßbach transcript - said in front of six men (three of whom were Commander-in-Chief of the Army , Navy and Air Force as well as War Minister Werner von Blomberg , Foreign Minister Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath and Hitler's Adjutant Hoßbach) that the German question of space was only could be resolved by war. He stated:

“The aim of German politics is to secure and maintain the mass of the people and their increase. So it is the problem of space. The German masses of people dispose of over 85 million people, who, according to the number of people and the closed nature of the settlement area in Europe, represent a racial core that is so tightly closed in itself as it cannot be found in any other country and, on the other hand, has the right to larger living space than with other peoples. "

On May 23, 1939, according to the Schmundt Protocol , Hitler stated before his commanders-in-chief:

“The living space, appropriate to the size of the state, is the basis for every power. You can do without for a while, but then the solution to the problem comes one way or another. The choice remains between ascent or descent. In 15 or 20 years the solution will be necessary for us. No German statesman can ignore the question longer. "

When Hitler addressed the commanders-in-chief on November 23, 1939 , Hitler stated before the commanders-in-chief:

“The increasing population required larger living space. My goal was to achieve a reasonable relationship between population and population area. This is where the fight must begin. No people can avoid solving this problem or they have to give up and gradually perish. "

In the areas to be conquered in Eastern Europe, Hitler wanted to settle at least 100 million Germans and other "Germanic" immigrants; To this end, with the General Plan East, a large part of the Nordic Slavs was to be assimilated within three centuries, the rest to be expelled to Siberia or to go as work slaves .

Effects in World War II

Russian prisoners of war Jews, Federal Archives, photo: Wehrmacht propaganda company (1941).

For the implementation of the National Socialist settlement visions in the General Plan East, expulsion and mass murder of the population living there were consciously accepted or actively pursued during the Russian campaign (see also Crimes of the Wehrmacht ).

The Nazi regime used the mass starvation of Soviet prisoners of war and Russian civilians, which it caused by the mass removal of food and looting by soldiers of the Wehrmacht , for its own purposes (→ Hunger Plan , Heinrich program ). The historian Henning Köhler takes the view that it was not about conquering new living space, because in 1941 there was not a sufficient number of Germans and people with allegedly “related blood” to settle the areas intended for conquest. Since the beginning of the World War Hitler had not spoken of living space in the East either.

“For him it was only about the control of this land mass and the enslavement of the population. The conquered area was not a space for life, but for death. "

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sven Lindqvist : Through the heart of darkness. A traveler to Africa on the trail of the European genocide. Campus, Frankfurt / New York 1999, ISBN 3-593-36176-0 , pp. 191-194. - On the “living space” concept of the European colonial powers recently: Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison : La République impériale. Politique et racisme d'État. Fayard, Paris 2009, pp. 329-352.
  2. ↑ Quotes from the section “The völkisch movement” quoted from Uwe Puschner : The völkisch movement in the Wilhelmine Empire. Language - race - religion. WBG, Darmstadt 2001, ISBN 3-534-15052-X .
  3. ^ Reinhard Kühnl : German fascism in sources and documents. 3rd edition, Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1978, ISBN 3-7609-0305-3 , p. 54.
  4. ^ Federal Archives : Files of the Reich Chancellery, The Brüning Cabinets I / II . Volume 1, Doc. 68.
  5. ↑ Karl Lange, 1965: "The term 'living space' in Hitler's Mein Kampf " (PDF, 12 pages; 695 kB)
  6. ↑ Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf. Two volumes in one volume. P. 742.
  7. ↑ Walther Hofer : The National Socialism. Documents 1933-1945. Fischer Bücherei, Frankfurt / Hamburg 1957, p. 181.
  8. ^ Wilhelm Treue : Documentation: Hitler's memorandum on the four-year plan. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . Volume 3, 1955, Issue 2, p. 204. ( online , PDF; 5 MB).
  9. ↑ Speeches of the Führer at the Party Congress of Honor in 1936 . Central publishing house of the NSDAP , Franz Eher Nachf., 1936, p. 15 f. ( Full text on Archive.org . The proclamation was read out by Adolf Wagner (reference: Siegfried Zelnhefer, Die Reichsparteitage der NSDAP , 1991, p. 96 ff.)
  10. ↑ http://www.ns-archiv.de/krieg/1937/hossbach/
  11. ↑ Wolfgang Michalka (Ed.): German History 1933–1945. Documents on domestic and foreign policy. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-596-15579-7 , p. 165.
  12. ↑ Wolfgang Michalka (Ed.): German History 1933–1945. Documents on domestic and foreign policy. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-596-15579-7 , p. 181.
  13. ^ Henning Köhler: Germany on the way to itself. A history of the century . Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2002, p. 392.