The Lebensraum Lie - Theory

White Americans of European heritage felt the Native Americans were unable to use the rich territory of the unsettled United States as effective as them. Not much difference there.

 

He had no illusions about the possibility of a peace of compromise with either Stalin or the West ,while the generals thought otherwise. We know that they were wrong .

He was also neither a military genious,nor a stupid corporal ,the mistakes he made did not prevent Germany from winning the war, neither did they cause the defeat of Germany .

He was also not a megalomanic: the fact that his dream (and the dream of millions of Germans ) of a great German empire that would extend to the Wolga/the Urals was not(no longer feasible) made him not a megalomanic :his generation was fascinated by the conquest of the West, by the conquest of Canada, Australia and Africa,and wanted to do the same : the dream of a great German empire was already present before WWI and became even more vivacious after WWI : Volk ohne Raum was written in 1926.Hitler invented nothing:he said openly what millions of Germans were dreaming about, were yearning for .A lot of people were suffering from megalomania : Leopold from Belgium who forced the Congo on Belgium ( a territory that was 80 times greater than Belgium), Mussolini who wanted to restore the Roman Empire, Britain that colonized Africa from Capetown to Suez, France with the Sahara,Japan in Asia,US who were going from coast to coast.Europe was obsessed by such dreams when Hitler was born in 1889 .

 

I see what your saying and I agree with the notion of his intelligence
There is a medium between the two spectrums. He was not a genious, as the other poster mentioned, nor was he a moron. However, wanting to push east and actually doing it are two different things. Regardless of whether or not the push east was accepted and desired by the public makes no difference to the fact that Hitler was directly responsible for the failure from the beginning until the bitter end.

 

Where to begin with this mishmash of a thread?

1) Racism was rife, not only in Germany, but throughout Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. "Racial cleansing" was "in".
2) Extra-judicial Death squads operated in the Weimar Republic, killing and suppressing opponents to the right wing agenda of hidden, secret rearmament, already in the 1920s.
3) Right-wing nationalist parties of all stripes vied for power in Germany; NSDAP was the one that succeeded in bludgeoning the others into submission, absorbing their membership by hook or by crook.

You don't win control over a political party, and then wipe out similar parties, then take over an entire parliament, then a country, by being stupid.

 

Without Hitler the result would be the same .Germany was simply to weak to dominate Europe (as was already proven in WWI ) .

 

Some say, it dominates Europe NOW...

The difference between Nazis capturing Eastern Europe and Pilgrims fighting against native americans was: The pilgrims had nothing and needed land, America is big enough, coexistence was possible. Germans already had a comparably wealthy country and enough room, at least when they regained some of losses of World War 1 or Austria.

 

Every square inch of land on the planet was taken from somebody, generally taken from somebody who took it from a third, fourth and fifth somebody. You can't view history as a game of musical chairs in which the only the last conqueror is held accountable. In the case of the Indian Wars, we were taking land from tribes who took it from earlier tribes who took it from even earlier tribes. It's history. It's ridiculous to push some collective guilt over events that transpired long before we were born. Hell, it's ridiculous to feel collective guilt over events that are transpiring now. None of us can affect the trajectory of world events.

Europe is the same. Germany is actually a younger country than the US. It didn't completely confederate until the mid-19th century. Poland didn't become an independent republic until the early 20th century. Great Britain's history goes back through French, Norman, Viking, Angles, Saxons, etc, etc, until you get back to the Celts who took it so long ago that nobody really knows the nature of the various people who lived there prior to that.

We tend to view history through a prism that illuminates the most recent past as more important than events preceding that period. It's a skewed view that tends to apply current social and moral constructs to events that took place in very different constructs. Fish and bicycles. History just "is." It's not a morality lesson.

 

So might makes right, and lebensraum is kosher.

Not Losing, is the key.

 

You're applying morality to something that has no relevance. Fish and bicycles. GB and the USSR didn't go to war with Germany because of their racial (moral) policies, they went to war because they were invaded or in the case of GB, were allied to a nation that was invaded (France). The US didn't go to war with Germany until they declared war on us. Morality had nothing to do with any of this.

You can despise Nazi policies but still recognize that world events rarely, if ever, are tied our own sense of morality. If that weren't true we'd attack most of the Gulf states tomorrow. After all, women are chattel without rights, minorities are abused, gays hung in town squares. Why shouldn't we attack and depose such odious regimes? Well, we don't because it isn't in our economic interest to do so. Morality has nothing to do with it.

 

So its commonplace and expected... So why was it so bad in modern Nazi times? They were taking land back that was taken from them, as well as taking land that at one time or another was taken from someone else, as you described.

 

It has relevance, as it did in 1939.

Because somewhere along the line in the last 300 years, despotism (autocratic rule) was replaced with democratic systems that required the rulers to be held accountable to the rule of law. Further, an international system was created, defining how countries were expected to behave internationally towards each other.

Therefore; the behaviour of states towards their own citizens is an internal matter. No one fought Germany because of its internal policies.

 

Fish and bicycles. Nations will always behave in ways that benefit themselves, no matter how we feel about it, how international bodies feel about it, how the citizens of neighboring states feel about it, how their own citizens feel about it. Look at Russia and Ukraine, China and Tibet, Iran and everybody, Saud and everybody. Nobody is going to hold any of them accountable for their actions until those actions cross the line to dramatically affect the economy or bottom line interests of other nations.

We can wail at the unfairness of it all, but it changes nothing. The UN is a ridiculous body shaking their fists at clouds. Our individual nations aren't much better.

I'm not defending the status quo or the general state of the world, just pointing out reality.

 

To be quite correct Poland became an independent country around 966.

 

Followed by various occupations and invasions going both ways right up until the last 25 years, which is rather my point. In the last 100 years Poland has spent more time as a German or Soviet client state than an independent republic, and much of what is Poland today was Germany a generation ago. That's why I say that taking a snapshot of any nation at a particular point in history and holding that up as definitive misses the point.

 

Still in the last hundred years Poland wasn't internationally recognized as a legitimate country only for a year (in 1917). In her over 1000 year long history didn't exist maybe for 50 years.
Poland certainly is not younger than the US. Poland was a major European power, capable of conquering Moscow long before the US was created.

 

wasn´t Poland and Warsaw almost conquered by the communists in the 1920´s or so. And the commander-was it Stalin for the communiststs?

 

I think you're missing my point. What is "Poland?" What is the "US?" Where do the borders start and end? How much of Poland was once Germany? How much of Ukraine was once Poland? How much of the US was once France, Spain, Mexico, Huron or Sioux? Why not count the US prior to European arrival since it already was a connected group of states (tribes) with borders, trade, laws, government?

Do nations begin when we recognize a certain form of government or do earlier variations count? If an aristocracy counts, then why not the Huron nation, or the English roots we threw off? How about language, should it count at all? Most of those Hurons married into the English speaking northern colonies and then states yet their dna didn't change. The Germans who lived in northern Poland now speak Polish.

Nationalism gets pretty muddy when you dig into questions like this. Borders move. Language changes. Governments change. Occupiers come and go.

In short, I'm pointing out that history is a game of musical chairs. It doesn't make sense to go back to a certain point and conclude that *this* is the definitive map of a nation's borders, historical origin, roots, when a generation before or after it was all different. "People" retain their identity, but nations are fluid.

 

The 2016 Poland is the direct descendant of the 1000 Poland, and they have documents to prove it. The 2016 USA is not a descendant of any earlier power structure existing there.
Continuity of existence makes a big difference. So for example Polish Jews were able even in the twentieth century to successfully reference laws established in the fourteenth century - because it was the same country.

A country exists as long as it is able to defend its territory, or at least is recognized by some major power. Like for example the Baltic countries were recognized by the US despite their annexation by the USSR.
It really doesn't matter it is/was aristocracy or democracy.

 

My point exactly. The rest is all pretty subjective and political. The German parts of Poland will likely never be German again because the allies had the power to enforce that land grab. It's now too late. The same is true in the opposite sense, with Ukraine. The international powers don't have the political will to oppose the current land grab by Russia.

People endure. Nations change.

 

Maybe it should be mentioned it's not because the Allies, but because Germany in 1990 voluntarily declared the frontier final and inviolable:

The Contracting Parties declare that the frontier between them is inviolable now and in future and mutually pledge to respect unconditionally their sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The Contracting Parties declare that they have no territorial claims against each other and they shall not put forward such claims in future.