Did the German Popluation want Lebensraum

Just started "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin" by Timothy Snyder. He makes a comment relevant to this, except in Snyder's view it wasn't really "living room" and much as farm land that Hitler sought. But "Lebensraum" makes a better talking point. As far as the ordinary Geman, I suspect they weren't too concerned about details as long as they themselves weren't expected to do anything onerous. So, nebulous talk of an expanding Germany, sure, sounds good mein Fuhrer. We're number Ein!

Anyway, Snyder's view (remembering that Germany's inability to feed itself contributed to its defeat in WWI, and that for a brief period in 1918-19 Germany had control over extensive rich ag land in Eastern Europe, though too late and with not enough time to get them into back into full production to solve the food crisis in Germany.)
"The true Nazi agriculture policy was the creation of an eastern frontier empire. The German agricultural question would be resolved not within Germany but abroad: by taking fertile land from Polish and Soviet peasants - who would be starved, assimilated, deported, or enslaved. Rather than importing grain fro mteh east, Germany would export its farmers to the east. They would colonize the lands of Poland and the western Soviet union. Although Hitler spoke generally about the need for greater "living space," he never made quite clear to German farmers that he expected them to migrate in large numbers to the east."

 

Whether or not the German populace wanted "Lebensraum" or not, Hitler's tome of hate Mein Kampf clearly expressed the concept. When the Nazi party rose to its prominence in the thirties, surely these positions were not "unknown".

"Today many European states are like pyramids stood on their heads. Their European area is absurdly small in comparison to their weight of colonies, foreign trade, etc." (further on the same page) "...For Germany, consequently, the only possibility for carrying out a healthy territorial policy lay in the acquisition of new land in Europe itself."; "...not for territories outside of Europe (overseas), but for land on the home continent itself" (p. 139)

Add in this; "...If land was desired in Europe, it could be obtained by and large only at the expense of Russia, and this meant that the new Reich must again set itself on the march along the road of the Teutonic Knights of old, to obtain by the German sword, sod for the German plow, and daily bread for the nation." (p.140)

Whether or not the German populace "wanted" expansion to the east into the USSR territory or not is moot. Hitler's own policies were self-evident, and the party was given a near dominate position in the Reichstag by popular vote. Perhaps they didn't understand what he meant as a political position, currying favor with the voting populace or something, but they voted for his party if not for him personally. He lost both times he ran as a new "German" for political office, while his party picked up seats after the collapse of the global economy after 1929.

 

Indeed Clint, not only ordinary people but also all political parties have reached a consensus about the need to redraw the eastern frontiers, with no exceptions whatsoever. Also all Churches of the Reich with just one minor exception wanted to resume "Drang nach Osten". The motive was to connect all these yellow dots on the map below representing the "Sprachinseln" of Volksdeutsche. The only way was to remove all other peoples separating Volksdeutsche from the Reich. Millions of human beings were to be removed from the future Livingspace!

 

Thanks for the salute Clint, but there is even more to say on this subject.

There is yet another very interesting map shown below. That is a map of the Holly Roman Empire about 10th century. Frontier denoted with the red line is Germany under Otto I while Germany under Konrad II is denoted with the dotted red line. It is interesting to note that the German border after the WWII is almost identical to that achieved by Otto I, about a millennium ago! View on that map from today's perspective may be very different:

1. German view

It appears that Nazis have devastated efforts of many generations to shift the frontiers eastwards. All new territories gained after Otto I were lost in just 12 years of the Nazi regime.

2. Polish view

It is true that Germany has undergone a major territorial rollback under Hitler but Germans have retained all those territories of marches denoted with blue lines among rivers Oder and Elba! Poland has regained much of her territories but Germany has retained a lot of previously conquered living space!

3. Czech view

Czechs have got everything they lost over the past millennium. Borders are almost identical to those 1.000 years ago. No complaints whatsoever, I guess.

4. German view 2

German Language Islands (“Sprachinseln”) have vanished all over the Central Europe.

Is that an end of all problems or just a new beginning?

 

My impression is indeed that Lebensraum translates better into farm land although living room isn't bad either. I.e. room to make a decent living on and make Germany self sufficient in food production. What does he think people mean by "living room"?

 

I think at the best they thought to get a piece of land where to live and work. So that means Farmland, nothing more.

 

Landdienst volunteers in the Lebensraum aeras were not only Heimat Germans, there were also many Volksdeutsche and brother races 'Norwegians, Flemmish, Dutch etc... These were real small minorities among the German settlers and most of all they were abandonned in the East when the Germans retreated. Not much is known about their fate when the Russians got hold of these settlers. I don't know if any returned at all . I hope some of them were smart enough to leave before the retreat. My sources are pre 1945, so I have not much about the retreat. I vaguely heard rumors of some settlers who stayed in Russia, got maried and forgot their native language , but appart from a documentary on TV which showed former Germans soldiers who lived in Russia, I could not find anything about former settlers to confirm this. I 'm not talking about those who lived in Russia before the war, but about those who settled there in 1942-43. (Source: Führerdienst magazines , January to June 1944)

 

6 Thou shalt not kill
8 Thou shalt not steal
10 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house

The best way to get a farm is to buy it or inherit it, isn't it? Anything else is illegal. However, over the past centuries Germans had seemingly endless source of free land, at the East.

To be impartial on this matter I have decided to use exclusively German sources, Volksdeutsche literature. Without exception all of these »impartial« sources claim that German colonists came to »dünn bevölkerte Gebiete«. In English this can be translated »sparsely populated areas«. Okay, I can imagine that a desert is sparsely populated but Germans haven't bothered with deserts – they have taken the best of the best Lands. Banat, for example is known as a paradise of Hungary. Everyone who was in Hungary knows that every square inch of that land is highly fertile. Banat is even more fertile. Germans choose exactly that land to populate, but that land was always densely populated before Germans have made it sparsely populated. We all know this can be done either by increasing the death rate or decreasing the birth rate or both, at once. Yes, they made the Paradise of Hungary very sparsely populated before colonists came to the empty Paradise to populate it. Mass murders have been committed to make the Paradise empty long before Nazis. The concept of the Lebensraum was much older but equally reckless.

 

Picture yourself coming back home after four years of fighting in a war you didn’t want and find out that your family was murdered and people who took part in the death of you family live in your own house. A gun is in your hand. What would you do? Honestly, please.

 

The bad luck for the above mentioned is, that it had no value to the Nazis!

Yes, Tamino normally you would buy a Farm and the piece of land, but this wasn´t "normal" at that time. And to be honest in answering your question of what to do if you coming home. That was a "normal" (today i like this word) habit that the winner of a war took the country he want from the original owner. Thats to read in the war history from the early days of mankind.

 

I would say that modern lebensraum was an attempt to never be blockaded again, ashappened in the 1918 – 1919 food blockade .
The Post world war one blockade sowed a lot of turmoil in Germany. Unfortunatley, the Alliesshould have known better. Keeping thefood flowing after the war would have prevented the rise of extremism.

 

Well it was bit more complicated - the Blockade of Germany had been very successful militarily in the War.

At the Armistice, only America had a food surplus. She was prepared to sell to Germany but only for Gold. The other Allies were not happy because gold was about the only thing that Germany possessed that could repay the damage inflicted on French and Belgian industry and compensate for the war pensions that the Allies had to pay their wounded. Thus the more that America took, the less for them.

 

You raise a very good point, Scipio.
The difficulty with the food blockade was

the loss of well over a million German children after November 1918 hit Germany at the ‘gut level’.

as a poet said
“..It burns every evening,

Although it forgot me long ago.

And if a mishap shouldbefall me,

Who will stand by the lamppost,

With you, LiliMarlene?

 

A bit more than that from what I've read. If you haven't read it already I suggest Tooze's Wages of Destruction.

 

My grandfather was expelled from Alsace-Lorraine in 1919 when the French occupied the territories and executed kind of an ethnic cleansing - at least not killing many people but deport those who they thought were not French enough. Other members of the family were allowed to stay. My father's cousin was killed in action as a German soldier somewhere in Ukraine. At about the same time, another cousin, of German origin, was killed as a Foreign Legionnaire, fighting the Japanese in Hanoi. Alsace and the eastern part of Lorraine have been part of Germany for 1000 years, when Louis XIV occupied and annexed it illegally after the 30 years' war. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 failed to correct this for not to humiliate the French. The border between German-speaking and French-speaking peoples does not follow the course of the river Rhine but the summit of the Vosges mountains. The Alsacians do speak a German idiom in private.

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thank you!

1919 was the 'year of infamy' that sowed the seeds for 1939- yet gets forgotten in the records of ethnic cleansing.
Your family was probably loaded into the same uncleaned cattle cars that hauled looted livestock out of a starving post war Germany.


A
shamefull year, all too rapidly covered up. France wasn't starving France was vindictive.
Hidden Historical Fact: The Allied Attempt to Starve Germany in 1919. Fred Blahut.

 

Fascinating, (but off-thread) - was this in 1940 when there was a very brief 3 or 4 day battle between Vichy Vietnam and the Japanese? I think there were about 800 French casualties before teh French caved in and agreed to allow Japan to use Vietnam as a base for its aggression.

 

What Tooze missed, I believe, wat the 2.00 a bushel ( 20 .00 PLU in todays money) guaranteed floor price for American wheat http://explorationswa.com.au/Links/Tools/Historic_Value_of_the_Dollar.pdf had America awash in grain & headed for the first great farm crisis in one year. they should have dumped it for Weimar promissary notes.

 

Tooze isn't perfect by any means but I don't see how that impacts the point I was making about lebensraum. (I've seen his military expenations/discussions critiqued in some detail for instance.)

 

its old history. the United States was sitting on a mountain of government incentive priced grain financed at 2.59 / bushel. which fell to 89 cents by 1921.
How the Feds Took Over Farming
the entire corp could ahve been sold to psot war Germany for credit @ 2.50 plus a bushel, alleviating the food crisis.