Does Germany's defeat in WWII & expulsion of Germans from the East symbolize the end of the agrarian German mentality?

[Futurist]

After all, in spite of the fact that Germany was already highly urbanized, the Nazis certainly had an unusual love for the German peasant and for Germany's pre-industrial, agrarian past.

Also, the territories that ethnic Germans got expelled from after the end of World War II were mostly agrarian.

In addition to this, though, I know that many ethnic Germans from the eastern parts of Germany actually moved to the western parts of Germany in the late 19th and early 20th century in the form of the Ostflucht. Thus, the Nazis' attempt to acquire Lebensraum in the East might be interpreted as a last-ditch (and ultimately unsuccessful) effort by Germans with an agrarian mentality to reverse the trend of industrialization and westward movement that began in Germany in the late 19th century.

Indeed, any thoughts on what I wrote here?

[Futurist]

Indeed, what the Nazis wanted to do with their Wehrbauer (soldier peasants) appears to indicate that the Nazis wanted to try creating a new (peasant-based, as the original one was) Ostsiedlung:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrbauer



Indeed, Adolf Hitler even wrote about the (original peasant-based) Ostsiedlung favorably in Mein Kampf:

http://www.angelfire.com/folk/bigbaldbo ... nKampf.pdf

"And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of
our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless
German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long
last we break of the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil
policy of the future.

If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal
border states."

Indeed, please pay special attention to the part of the quote above which I myself have bolded (for emphasis, of course).

[Futurist]

Also, though, please pay attention to the fact that the German provinces from where ethnic Germans were expelled after the end of World War II were mostly rural--at least back in 1910:

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/doc ... ge_id=3073



Indeed, here are the percentage of the population who lives in communities with 4,999 or less inhabitants in each of these German provinces and in Germany itself back in 1910:

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/doc ... ge_id=3073

Posen: 74.2%
East Prussia: 73.1%
West Prussia: 68.4%
Pomerania: 62.1%
Silesia: 57.2%
Germany (total): 51.2%

Thus, you can see that all of these German provinces were more rural than Germany itself was--at least back in 1910. Thus, the loss of these German provinces and the expulsion of the ethnic German population of these provinces after the end of World War II appears to have been a fatal and destructive blow to the agrarian German mentality.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Futurist,

I tend to agree. Despite inheriting a widely urbanized, technically adept, technologically advanced, industrialized state, Nazism seemed to want to recreate through the acquisition of lebensraum an imagined agrarian golden age that never existed. Perhaps the effectiveness of the British blockade by 1918 sent them in this direction?

The territorial losses were not simply agrarian as Silesia, Germany's second most important industrial region, was also lost.

I think the predominance of any "agrarian German mentality" had already passed by 1900, or earlier. The Nazis were throwbacks, not "futurists"!

What made Germany powerful in WWII was more what the Nazis inherited, and rather less what they contributed themselves.

Putting the Nazis in charge of Germany was like giving a boy-racer the keys to a Porsche. He might make it round a few bends, but he was going to come off the road sooner or later.

Cheers,

Sid

[Sheldrake]

I donlt think anyone in post war Germany was seriously trying to settle Germans on the land. The Federal Republic was formed from the more urban half of Germany. One of the aims of the much maligned EEC Common agricultural policy was to ease the transition of the small inefficient agricultural sector to less labour intensive more efficient modern practices. The demographics of modern Germany make the country a country of immigrants rather than a source of emigrants Germany needs

The eastern marks of historic "Gross Deutchland" are still major agricultural suppliers, as the shelves of Polish products - in Aldi and Lidl testify.

[ljadw]

After all, in spite of the fact that Germany was already highly urbanized, the Nazis certainly had an unusual love for the German peasant and for Germany's pre-industrial, agrarian past.

Also, the territories that ethnic Germans got expelled from after the end of World War II were mostly agrarian.

In addition to this, though, I know that many ethnic Germans from the eastern parts of Germany actually moved to the western parts of Germany in the late 19th and early 20th century in the form of the Ostflucht. Thus, the Nazis' attempt to acquire Lebensraum in the East might be interpreted as a last-ditch (and ultimately unsuccessful) effort by Germans with an agrarian mentality to reverse the trend of industrialization and westward movement that began in Germany in the late 19th century.

Indeed, any thoughts on what I wrote here?

No no : this is not correct : already before the war, the Germans were voting with their feet : they were leaving the country for the cities,and the Lebensraum attempt by the nazis was doomed to fail : there would be no millions of Germans, even no hundreds of thousands willing to colonize the East .

[Futurist]

After all, in spite of the fact that Germany was already highly urbanized, the Nazis certainly had an unusual love for the German peasant and for Germany's pre-industrial, agrarian past.

Also, the territories that ethnic Germans got expelled from after the end of World War II were mostly agrarian.

In addition to this, though, I know that many ethnic Germans from the eastern parts of Germany actually moved to the western parts of Germany in the late 19th and early 20th century in the form of the Ostflucht. Thus, the Nazis' attempt to acquire Lebensraum in the East might be interpreted as a last-ditch (and ultimately unsuccessful) effort by Germans with an agrarian mentality to reverse the trend of industrialization and westward movement that began in Germany in the late 19th century.

Indeed, any thoughts on what I wrote here?

No no : this is not correct : already before the war, the Germans were voting with their feet : they were leaving the country for the cities,and the Lebensraum attempt by the nazis was doomed to fail : there would be no millions of Germans, even no hundreds of thousands willing to colonize the East .

That is exactly why I said that it was a "last-ditch" attempt to reverse this trend. Indeed, by "last-ditch," I mean a desperate final effort to achieve this.

[Piotr Kapuscinski]

(peasant-based, as the original one was) Ostsiedlung

I'm not sure if Ostsiedlung was really so much peasant-based as Hitler imagined. In some regions lots of Western peasants indeed came, but in some regions newcomers settled mostly in cities, while the countryside remained largely Slavic-inhabited until those Slavs abandoned their language and adopted German (often forced to do so by legally enforced bans on using Slavic languages, aimed at rooting them out).

Check for example this book (but it's only about areas which are today East Germany, plus Poland's West Pomerania around Szczecin):

Gerald Stone, "Slav Outposts in Central European History: The Wends, Sorbs and Kashubs", chapter 2, "Coexistence and Erosion 1200-1500".

There you can also find information about legally imposed bans on using Slavic language in the HRE and other kinds of discrimination.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Peter K.

The excerpts from Slav Outposts in Central European History: The Wends, Sorbs and Kashubs looks fascinating on Googlebooks. As soon as the second-hand price comes down a bit on Amazon or Abebooks, I shall buy a copy.

Thanks for the tip.

Sid.

[Piotr Kapuscinski]

The excerpts from Slav Outposts in Central European History: The Wends, Sorbs and Kashubs looks fascinating on Googlebooks.

This English book about early Slavic history is also good:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Early-Slavs-C ... MTS5K99AVM

Thus, you can see that all of these German provinces were more rural than Germany itself was--at least back in 1910.

About occupational structure of Prussian eastern provinces more can be found here (in English):

http://www.wne.uw.edu.pl/files/8214/265 ... _WP157.pdf

You will find data on percentages of rural / agricultural population, etc.

[Christoffer]

Attack of Russia was Hitler's mistake. Otherwise result would be different.

[Futurist]

Hi Futurist,

I tend to agree. Despite inheriting a widely urbanized, technically adept, technologically advanced, industrialized state, Nazism seemed to want to recreate through the acquisition of lebensraum an imagined agrarian golden age that never existed. Perhaps the effectiveness of the British blockade by 1918 sent them in this direction?

Yes, the effectiveness of the British blockade might have certainly been a factor in the Nazis having this mentality. However, another factor might have been the Nazis' embrace of romantic nationalism combined with a Nazi belief in Social Darwinism (which, in the Nazis' minds, matched well with the Medieval German eastward migration in the Ostsiedlung).

The territorial losses were not simply agrarian as Silesia, Germany's second most important industrial region, was also lost.

What exactly is your source that Silesia was Germany's second most important industrial region during this time, Sid? Indeed, I would certainly like to take a look at this source.

Also, though, as my data above shows, at least in 1910, even Silesia was less urbanized than Germany as a whole was during this time.

I think the predominance of any "agrarian German mentality" had already passed by 1900, or earlier. The Nazis were throwbacks, not "futurists"!

Oh, I certainly agree that the Nazis' love of the German peasant was outdated in early 20th century Germany. Indeed, quotes such as this one by Adolf Hitler appear to fit more in the Middle Ages than in early 20th century Germany:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrbauer ... _community

"Thus, Hitler stated "we shall again find in the countryside the blessing of numerous families. Whereas the present law of rural inheritance dispossesses the younger sons, in future every peasant's son will be sure of having his patch of ground."[17]"

What made Germany powerful in WWII was more what the Nazis inherited, and rather less what they contributed themselves.

Putting the Nazis in charge of Germany was like giving a boy-racer the keys to a Porsche. He might make it round a few bends, but he was going to come off the road sooner or later.

Cheers,

Sid

Frankly, I certainly completely agree with all of this.

[Futurist]

I donlt think anyone in post war Germany was seriously trying to settle Germans on the land.

In post-World War II Germany? No, of course not! Indeed, I certainly never disputed this!

The Federal Republic was formed from the more urban half of Germany. One of the aims of the much maligned EEC Common agricultural policy was to ease the transition of the small inefficient agricultural sector to less labour intensive more efficient modern practices. The demographics of modern Germany make the country a country of immigrants rather than a source of emigrants Germany needs

Yes; correct!

The eastern marks of historic "Gross Deutchland" are still major agricultural suppliers, as the shelves of Polish products - in Aldi and Lidl testify.

Yes, I think that this is correct. However, present-day Germany certainly has (much) less agricultural and rural areas than pre-1945 Germany had.

[Futurist]

(peasant-based, as the original one was) Ostsiedlung

I'm not sure if Ostsiedlung was really so much peasant-based as Hitler imagined. In some regions lots of Western peasants indeed came, but in some regions newcomers settled mostly in cities, while the countryside remained largely Slavic-inhabited until those Slavs abandoned their language and adopted German (often forced to do so by legally enforced bans on using Slavic languages, aimed at rooting them out).

Check for example this book (but it's only about areas which are today East Germany, plus Poland's West Pomerania around Szczecin):

Gerald Stone, "Slav Outposts in Central European History: The Wends, Sorbs and Kashubs", chapter 2, "Coexistence and Erosion 1200-1500".

There you can also find information about legally imposed bans on using Slavic language in the HRE and other kinds of discrimination.

You might very well be correct in regards to this, Peter. However, in spite of this, the Ostsiedlung occurred at a time when Europe was still overwhelmingly rural. In turn, this might have been at least a part of the basis and the inspiration for the Nazis' agrarian German mentality (combined with a need to acquire Lebensraum in the East, of course) in the early 20th century.

[Piotr Kapuscinski]

I have recently bought these two books (written in Polish) about the Ostsiedlung:

- Jan M. Piskorski, "The Rural Colonization of Western Pomerania in the 13th Century and at the Beginning of the 14th Century..."
- D. Leśniewska, "German Colonization and Colonization on the German Law in Medieval Bohemia & Moravia in the Light of Historiography"

Here are Tables of Contents in German (there is no English version unfortunately):

1) Piskorski's book:

Table of Contents



German Summary



2) Leśniewska's book: