How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

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How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#1

Post by Futurist » 05 Jan 2021, 23:39

How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people? Or was this idea never actually truly successfully sold to the German people, but with them nevertheless deciding to go along with Hitler and the Nazis for other reasons, such as due to Hitler's initial sweeping successes and due to their fear of Communism and of what would happen if Germany were to lose this war? In other words, might the German people have not cared that much about Lebensraum pre-war and only became supportive of this idea during the war in response to the threat that other countries posed to Germany--which in turn in their mind necessitated a strong Germany, which could have been achieved through the German conquest of a lot of Lebensraum?

Thoughts on this?

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Re: How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#2

Post by wm » 06 Jan 2021, 00:05

Maybe because the essence of Lebensraum was quite reasonable?
The foreign policy of a People's State must first of all bear in mind the duty of securing the existence of the race which is incorporated in this State.

And this must be done by establishing a healthy and natural proportion between the number and growth of the population on the one hand and the extent and resources of the territory they inhabit, on the other. That balance must be such that it accords with the vital necessities of the people.

What I call a healthy proportion is that in which the support of a people is guaranteed by the resources of its own soil and sub-soil. Any situation which falls short of this condition is none the less unhealthy even though it may endure for centuries or even a thousand years. Sooner or later, this lack of proportion must of necessity lead to the decline or even annihilation of the people concerned.
Mein Kampf


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Re: How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#3

Post by pugsville » 06 Jan 2021, 01:57

Futurist wrote:
05 Jan 2021, 23:39
How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people? Or was this idea never actually truly successfully sold to the German people, but with them nevertheless deciding to go along with Hitler and the Nazis for other reasons, such as due to Hitler's initial sweeping successes and due to their fear of Communism and of what would happen if Germany were to lose this war? In other words, might the German people have not cared that much about Lebensraum pre-war and only became supportive of this idea during the war in response to the threat that other countries posed to Germany--which in turn in their mind necessitated a strong Germany, which could have been achieved through the German conquest of a lot of Lebensraum?

Thoughts on this?
There was no need to.

Well it was not a large part of Nazi election propaganda, almost no one read "Mien Kampf" before the Nazi seizure of power.

It Did appeal strongly to existing political groups which already existed.

It was one of things that woudl appeal strongly to those who were supportive of the Idea, but so background that others woudl not, I mean those opposed to the Nazis had so much more to object to, it was never really going to able to be used as propaganda weapon within Germany against the Nazis. Sure unpopular in Poland and Russia, but not core groups in German inter war politics

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Re: How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#4

Post by Futurist » 06 Jan 2021, 02:21

wm wrote:
06 Jan 2021, 00:05
Maybe because the essence of Lebensraum was quite reasonable?
The foreign policy of a People's State must first of all bear in mind the duty of securing the existence of the race which is incorporated in this State.

And this must be done by establishing a healthy and natural proportion between the number and growth of the population on the one hand and the extent and resources of the territory they inhabit, on the other. That balance must be such that it accords with the vital necessities of the people.

What I call a healthy proportion is that in which the support of a people is guaranteed by the resources of its own soil and sub-soil. Any situation which falls short of this condition is none the less unhealthy even though it may endure for centuries or even a thousand years. Sooner or later, this lack of proportion must of necessity lead to the decline or even annihilation of the people concerned.
Mein Kampf

Quite reasonable, perhaps, if it could be done cheaply, as in the case of the US in the early and mid-19th centuries. This wasn't actually an option for 20th century Germany, though.

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Re: How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#5

Post by wm » 06 Jan 2021, 03:32

The goal was a great power status, not Lebensraum. Lebensraum was a means to achieve a great power status.

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Re: How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#6

Post by Futurist » 06 Jan 2021, 03:39

wm wrote:
06 Jan 2021, 03:32
The goal was a great power status, not Lebensraum. Lebensraum was a means to achieve a great power status.
Which could in any case not be achieved without another Great War with possibly unprecedented casualties.

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Re: How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#7

Post by wm » 06 Jan 2021, 03:43

It can't be denied that the British with their fytw attitude were a problem.
Without them a German-dominated Europe would be achievable.

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Re: How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#8

Post by Futurist » 06 Jan 2021, 03:54

wm wrote:
06 Jan 2021, 03:43
It can't be denied that the British with their fytw attitude were a problem.
Without them a German-dominated Europe would be achievable.
There were also the French, who looked pretty formidable until their unexpected collapse and fall in 1940. Though I'm unsure that France could actually survive a long war with Germany without having Britain by its side. France did have 2x less people than Germany had in 1939, after all--excluding France's colonies.

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Re: How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#9

Post by ljadw » 06 Jan 2021, 10:34

The OP assumes, without proof, that the idea of Lebensraum was invented by the Nazis and sold to the German people, while the idea of Lebensraum existed already before Hitler was born .

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Re: How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#10

Post by ljadw » 06 Jan 2021, 10:35

Futurist wrote:
06 Jan 2021, 03:39
wm wrote:
06 Jan 2021, 03:32
The goal was a great power status, not Lebensraum. Lebensraum was a means to achieve a great power status.
Which could in any case not be achieved without another Great War with possibly unprecedented casualties.
This is unproven .

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Re: How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#11

Post by wm » 06 Jan 2021, 10:56

Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan certainly would agree that more land is a good thing.

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Re: How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#12

Post by George L Gregory » 06 Jan 2021, 16:57

Lebensraum was not a Nazi invention and it’s worth noting that what the Nazis had in mind - to conquer the East and enslave and kill the millions of Eastern Europeans - was not what they told the Germans. They simply told the Germans that they needed more land.

Hitler was clear in Mein Kampf about what Lebensraum meant for the Nazis:

“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 off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre–War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.”

And, in his Second Book which was never published during his lifetime:

“The National Socialist Movement, on the contrary, will always let its foreign policy be determined by the necessity to secure the space necessary to the life of our Folk. It knows no Germanising or Teutonising, as in the case of the national bourgeoisie, but only the spread of its own Folk. It will never see in the subjugated, so called Germanised, Czechs or Poles a national, let alone Folkish, strengthening, but only the racial weakening of our Folk.”

“The völkisch State, conversely, must under no conditions annex Poles with the intention of wanting to make Germans out of them some day. On the contrary, it must muster the determination either to seal off these alien racial elements, so that the blood of its own Folk will not be corrupted again, or it must, without further ado, remove them and hand over the vacated territory to its own National Comrades.”

Richard Weikart in Hitler’s Ethic wrote:

“Between 1933 and 1937 Hitler never publicly advocated war or expansionism. He rarely (if ever) even used the term “living space” (Lebensraum) in public. In his first year in power he was asked point blank by a British journalist in an interview about the phrase, “Volk without Space,” which was causing angst in British circles. Hitler conceded that Germany was overpopulated, and he suggested that other powers should make concessions to them because of it. However, he vigorously denied that Germany would resort to arms, insisting instead that Germany would rely only on peaceful negotiations.

In May 1937 — with Germany already well under way in its rearmament program — Hitler began speaking publicly once again about the need for living space. During his May Day speech that year he praised German laborers for their diligence and ability. However, the German Volk “is living in a space much too tight and too confined to possibly provide it everything it needs,” he continued. Hitler then
maintained that because of its lack of space the “struggle for life” is more difficult for Germans than for other peoples. He continued, “Life itself puts every generation under an obligation to wage its own battle (Kampf) for that life.” Though Hitler did not specifically mention war as a means for gaining living space, by invoking the “struggle for life” he was moving ever closer to divulging his real aims: offensive warfare. In other public speeches in 1937 and thereafter he also stressed the need for more living space, though before the outbreak of World War II he never openly indicated war as the necessary means. In his May Day speech in 1939, for instance, after stressing the importance of living space, he asserted, “The highest command for us is the securing of German Lebensraum.” Then to allay fears that this might arouse, he immediately (and hypocritically) proclaimed his commitment to peace. Even taking Hitler’s hyperbole into account, it is evident that acquiring living space was a moral imperative for Hitler.

Hitler’s private speech on November 23, 1937, to the Adolf Hitler School in Sonthofen, where the Nazis were prepping future German leaders, was almost exclusively about Germany’s need for living space. Hitler rattled off statistics about the amount of land controlled by various European countries, the United States, China, Brazil, and Japan.

Then he compared the populations of other European countries with Germany’s population. The lesson was elementary: Germany was getting the short end of the stick and needed to become more assertive in foreign policy. Otherwise, he warned, “ Our lack of space will result in the death of our Volk.” Germany has a moral right to pursue more living space, he asserted, but ultimately only power can decide who has the moral right to land. Though Hitler stopped short of openly advocating war, most of his audience probably comprehended the thinly veiled point. Again we see that Hitler regarded expansionism as a righteous cause.”

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Re: How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#13

Post by wm » 06 Jan 2021, 17:32

The comparision is in Mein Kampf too.
November 9, 1923
In front of Hitler there hung a huge map of Europe on which he sought to demonstrate, with his index finger nervously pointing here and there, that a mass era naturally also required mass armies, that soldiers must not become toys for super-shrewd general-staffers, that limiting oneself to a small professional army meant limiting oneself to a petty, cowardly, narrowly confined foreign policy.
In speaking, Hitler was gripped by a sort of ecstasy: His exegesis became prophecy:
"One day we shall command colossal spaces, shall have to be concerned with the security of colossal areas. Can that be done with a hundred thousand men? With three hundred thousand men? Millions will we mobilize! "
The Infancy of Nazism: The Memoirs Of Ex-Gauleiter Albert Krebs

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Re: How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#14

Post by George L Gregory » 06 Jan 2021, 19:20

The following are a couple of quotes from David Irving’s Hitler’s War:

“Without using the word itself as yet, he addressed the question of Ger- many’s Lebensraum: ‘First,’ he said, ‘we must see to it that we get elbow room – that is our top priority. . . Only then can our government again begin working in the national interest toward a nationalist war.This would certainly be brought to a victorious conclusion.We can take steps to see that the necessary secrets are kept. Before the World War the secrets of things like the -centimetre mortar and the flame-thrower were rigorously kept.’”

“With all the generals Hitler had one powerful argument. He was going to restore to Germany her striking power, regardless of the restrictions of Versailles.Very shortly after ‘seizing power’ he had asked to meet the gen- erals, and had borrowed Hammerstein’s official apartment at No.  Bendler Strasse for the reception. It was February , . Arriving with Lammers and Wilhelm Brückner, his own towering adjutant in SA uniform, Hitler was nervous and showed it throughout the dinner party; he then tapped his glass for silence and delivered a speech of which Hammerstein’s adjutant, Major Horst von Mellenthin, took a detailed note.This reads in part:
There are two possible ways of overcoming our desperate situation: firstly, seizing by force new markets for our production; secondly, obtaining new Lebensraum for our population surplus.* A peace-loving public will not stomach objectives like these. It will have to be prepared for them.
Germany must recapture complete freedom of decision.This will not be feasible unless we first win political power.This is why my aim is to restore our political strength first.
* Another general present, Curt Liebmann, noted his words thus:‘We might fight for new export markets; or we might – and this would be better – conquer new Lebensraum in the east, and Germanise it ruthlessly.’”

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Re: How did Hitler and the Nazis manage to sell the idea of Lebensraum to the German people?

#15

Post by Futurist » 07 Jan 2021, 01:02

ljadw wrote:
06 Jan 2021, 10:34
The OP assumes, without proof, that the idea of Lebensraum was invented by the Nazis and sold to the German people, while the idea of Lebensraum existed already before Hitler was born .
It wasn't invented by the Nazis (it was invented in 1901, I believe), but the Nazis certainly did a lot to popularize this idea.

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