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

[Futurist]

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 .

I thought that France was perceived as being unbeatable before its 1940 fall?

[ljadw]

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 .

I thought that France was perceived as being unbeatable before its 1940 fall?

The German Lebensraum was situated in the East,and Hitler did not plan a war against France + Britain . He even blamed in Mein Kampf Imperial Germany for its attack on France in 1914 .

[ljadw]

It existed already before 1901 : Lebensraum was only the German translation of what were doing UK, US, France, Russia and other countries who,in an epoch of social-Darwinism, considered it as their mission to colonize and exploit and civilize as most as territories as they could .

[Futurist]

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 .

I thought that France was perceived as being unbeatable before its 1940 fall?

The German Lebensraum was situated in the East,and Hitler did not plan a war against France + Britain . He even blamed in Mein Kampf Imperial Germany for its attack on France in 1914 .

But France had an alliance system in Eastern Europe!

[ljadw]

The alliance with Russia was already dormant, inactivated before WWI.
France did nothing when Germany attacked Russia in August 1914, nothing during the Liman von Sanders crisis, nothing during the crisis of the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina .
Russia also did nothing during the two Agadir crises .
The aim of France for its alliance with Russia was that Russia would help France when it was attacked by Germany, NOT that France would help Russia when it was attacked by Germany .
For Russia it was the opposite .
It was the same for Germany and Austria .

[GoeringsPetLion]

The Lebensraum theory was formulated by the German zoologist and geographer Friedrich Ratzel in his 1901 published book Der Lebensraum.

Ratzel argued that all organisms were engaged in a Kampf um Raum – a struggle for space – in which the strongest sought to expel or eliminate the weakest. This struggle for Lebensraum (living space) was extended to humans, and Ratzel made it clear that nations were inevitably engaged in the struggle to expand their living space if they wished to avoid decline.

Hawkins, Mike (1997). Social Darwinism in European and American thought, 1860–1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat. Cambridge University Press. p. 209.

The theory became popular in the Völkisch movement. Friedrich von Bernhardi wrote in his 1912 published book Deutschland und der nächste Krieg (Germany and the Next War),

Strong, healthy, and flourishing nations increase in numbers. From a given moment they require a continual expansion of their frontiers, they require new territory for the accommodation of their surplus population. Since almost every part of the globe is inhabited, new territory must, as a rule, be obtained at the cost of its possessors—that is to say, by conquest, which thus becomes a law of necessity.

Rudolf Heß, who was imprisoned with Hitler in Landsberg, was familiar with the theory through his professor for Geopolitics, Karl Haushofer.

In 1933, it was instructed in the Richtlinien für die Geschichtslehrbücher (Guidelines for History Textbooks) to indicate that the Germanic settlement reached over the Vistula River.

[Futurist]

Yep, unfortunately Lebensraum is heavily associated with a Social Darwinist mentality.

[George L Gregory]

Yep, unfortunately Lebensraum is heavily associated with a Social Darwinist mentality.

What is unfortunate is that the concept of ‘social Darwinism’ is often misunderstood and has negative connotations because the Nazis and other fascists in the past adopted and hijacked the concept to support their ideas.

Similarly, creationists misrepresent the concept of ‘social Darwinism’ to further their agenda.

[George L Gregory]

It existed already before 1901 : Lebensraum was only the German translation of what were doing UK, US, France, Russia and other countries who,in an epoch of social-Darwinism, considered it as their mission to colonize and exploit and civilize as most as territories as they could .

While it may have originally pretty much the same, once the pan-German and Völkisch movements adopted the term it began to be viewed in a more racial sense and thus was different. The Nazis’ use of the term was not the same as the British colonisation of India and elsewhere during the British Empire.

[Futurist]

Yep, unfortunately Lebensraum is heavily associated with a Social Darwinist mentality.

What is unfortunate is that the concept of ‘social Darwinism’ is often misunderstood and has negative connotations because the Nazis and other fascists in the past adopted and hijacked the concept to support their ideas.

Similarly, creationists misrepresent the concept of ‘social Darwinism’ to further their agenda.

So, what's the right way to look at Social Darwinism?

[George L Gregory]

Yep, unfortunately Lebensraum is heavily associated with a Social Darwinist mentality.

What is unfortunate is that the concept of ‘social Darwinism’ is often misunderstood and has negative connotations because the Nazis and other fascists in the past adopted and hijacked the concept to support their ideas.

Similarly, creationists misrepresent the concept of ‘social Darwinism’ to further their agenda.

So, what's the right way to look at Social Darwinism?

Not through the lens of someone who uses it to justify racial discrimination or someone who uses it deny evolution and further his/her creationist ideas.

Aren’t you aware that the concept became tarnished by the Nazis and similar people and declined in popularity after WW2? It’s the same as Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of an Übermensch (superman), the swastika symbol, the concept of eugenics, etc, they were ideas that were hijacked and have now been tarnished and a lot of people misunderstand them.

[ljadw]

Eugenics and Social Darwinism are still very strong today .
And in 1946 Julian Huxley became the first DG of Unesco .
Social Darwinism and racial discrimination are inseparable .
Eugenics was not hijacked by the Nazis : the Nazis were extreme supporters of eugenics .

[wm]

Darwinism is science. Racial discrimination is morality.
They have nothing in common.

[ljadw]

Social Darwinism results in discrimination .
Social Darwinism is saying that some people have the right to live and other people have not the right to live .
The result,inevitable result is that some one will say that people with physical/mental defects have not the right to live ( GB Shaw said : gaz them ) and that some one else said : Jews have physical and mental defects, thus they have no right to live .
Auschwitz did not arise from nihil : the terrain was prepared.

[George L Gregory]

Eugenics and Social Darwinism are still very strong today .
And in 1946 Julian Huxley became the first DG of Unesco .
Social Darwinism and racial discrimination are inseparable .
Eugenics was not hijacked by the Nazis : the Nazis were extreme supporters of eugenics .

Where are eugenics and social Darwinism “still very strong”?

It’s 2021, not 1946.

Darwinism is science. Racial discrimination is morality.
They have nothing in common.

Try telling that to a racist!