Additional *realistic* post-1800 cases of nations acquiring Lebensraum (living space)?

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Futurist,

Exactly.

And if it wasn't even on their horizon, why are we discussing it?

Cheers,

Sid

[Futurist]

Hi Futurist,

Exactly.

And if it wasn't even on their horizon, why are we discussing it?

Cheers,

Sid

Because they were dreaming about it but knew that it was just that--an unrealistic dream?

[Futurist]

Indeed, both Riga and Tallinn (Reval) look like suitable places to create a massive urban metropolis there if enough people will move and (permanently) settle there. After all, there will certainly be enough living space (Lebensraum) in these two places for this.

A metropolis on the shore of a large puddle the Baltic is. I would say the German ocean shipping ports would make such a metropolis unsustainable - unless the Russians would use it and they rather wouldn't.

The Germans were more interested in building a defensive Chinese wall on their Eastern border - the so called Polish border strip than expanding their possessions into hard to defend territories, and, God willing, making Latvia and Estonia their puppet states.

Their Lebensraum was going to be the ethnic cleansed Polish territories comprising the border strip.

1. Couldn't Germany have successfully encouraged ethnic Germans from Russia and maybe from certain parts of Austria-Hungary to settle in the Baltic states?

They were doing that but it required money, and they didn't have that much money.
It was all about money, after the Great War no sane person in Europe would want to endure the life of the 19th century American settlers.

wm, are you suggesting that the Germans did or didn't want to make Latvia and Estonia their puppet states?

Also, question for you: Do you know why Lodz wasn't included in the German Border Strip plan? According to the 1897 Imperial Russian census, there were almost 100,000 Germans in Lodz uyezd, or 22.6% of this uyezd's total population:

https://datatowel.in.ua/pop-composition ... ensus-1897

You can use Google Translate to look at this interactive map in English, for what it's worth.

[wm]

Łódź wasn't included because they couldn't afford to Germanize such a large city, as evidenced by the fact they couldn't even afford to Germanize the strip.

Did Germany really need such tiny puppets for anything?
The Germans fled in droves from German East already. There were so many of them they had a word for it. Nobody was going to abandon Berlin or the Ruhr to milk cows in some sticks.
And anyway, was anybody going to ask the Russians about such puppetry in such strategically important places?

[Futurist]

Łódź wasn't included because they couldn't afford to Germanize such a large city, as evidenced by the fact they couldn't even afford to Germanize the strip.

Lodz was already partially Germanized, though. As I said, Lodz uyezd was almost 25% German in 1897.

Did Germany really need such tiny puppets for anything?
The Germans fled in droves from German East already. There were so many of them they had a word for it. Nobody was going to abandon Berlin or the Ruhr to milk cows in some sticks.

What do you mean "sticks"?

And anyway, was anybody going to ask the Russians about such puppetry in such strategically important places?

Well, Russia will still keep St. Petersburg, so it's all good!

[ljadw]

The German country population was going down by 6 million between 1907 and 1939 ( 1.5 million between 1933 and 1939 ).Nothing could stop the Landflucht .And the Landflucht started already in the 19th century .
It happened in all European countries .
That's why the colonization of the east was an illusion : there were no million German colonists available .

[wm]

Even if each of them got a latifundium full of natives working for free?

[ljadw]

Even if each of them got a latifundium full of natives working for free?

Yes .
There were 120 million people living in the Soviet regions west of the Urals . You can't kill or expel 120 million people . One million colonists can not live among 120 million aborigines and force them to work for free . The natives would rebel and kill the colonists .
If the products of the conquered territories were cheaper than the products of the Alt Reich,millions in the Alt Reich would lose their work .
And these products could be cheaper only if they were subsidized by the tax payers from the Alt Reich . It is an illusion that products made by slaves are cheaper than products made by free people .
If the products from the east were not cheaper, the colonists would lose their job .
In both cases,it would mean the end of Germany . BEFORE 1953 .
Hitler had read too much the stories of Karl May and he thought,wrongly,that what had been possible in the 19th century in the US,was also possible in the east in the 20th century .
Give me one reason why the 80 million Germans of the Alt Reich would buy the products of the one million colonists of the east and how they would pay it .
The great estates of East Prussia were already broken before WWI . The great estates in the east would suffer the same fate .

[wm]

I don't quite understand why Russian food was a threat to Germany if Germany wasn't food self-sufficient,
and imported mountains of food spending hard currency it didn't have in the process.

And in fact, the entire of Europe wasn't food self-sufficient.
The 120 million needed food too; it wasn't like they were going to live on air alone.

[ljadw]

During the war, Germany did not need the food of the USSR, it was feeding itself with the help of the occupied/allied countries in Western Europe .
Germany was self-sufficient and would be even more self-sufficient after the war .
Besides, where would the average German get the additional money to buy more food from the east ?There is no such thing as free food .
And, why would the average German need more food after the war? And why would the farmers of the Alt Reich not be able to produce this food .
1 Germany had not the money for the investments needed to colonize the east .The costs of General Plan Ost were estimated at 67 billion RM,as much as the German GDP. Other estimates were going to 144 billion RM.
2 Germany had not the colonists needed to colonize the east .The estimates of the needed colonists were going to 12 million .Where would Germany get 12 million colonists ?
3 Germany had not the manpower needed to occupy the east ,which was a minimum of 1.5 million men.
4 The colonists would not be certain that there would be a sales market for their products .It is not enough to produce, you need also to sell .This does not only apply to food,but also to oil :if the Russian oil would be cheaper than the German oil and than the synthetic oil,those would be broken and very big firms would disappear with catastrophic results for the economy . If the Russian oil would cost more, no one would buy it .
5 What would become to the original population of the conquered territories west of the Urals ?You can't kill or expel 120 million people . If you could and would do it, who would produce the food ,who would produce the oil ? Not the few hundred of thousands of colonists .
The whole thing was a suicidal dream .

[Futurist]

Even if each of them got a latifundium full of natives working for free?

So, basically, with the German colonists becoming a new version of Russia's nobility, but without an actual Russian Tsar? :

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

[Futurist]

I don't quite understand why Russian food was a threat to Germany if Germany wasn't food self-sufficient,
and imported mountains of food spending hard currency it didn't have in the process.

And in fact, the entire of Europe wasn't food self-sufficient.
The 120 million needed food too; it wasn't like they were going to live on air alone.

Did Russia actually have enough food for both itself and for the rest of Europe to avoid malnutrition and starvation, though?

[ljadw]

The amounts of food that Germany got from Russia after and before June 1941 was meaningless .
The population of Europe east of the Rhine til the border with the USSR was as big as the population of the USSR :some 180 million and than one had to add the population of France, Italy ,Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, UK and Scandinavia : an other 180 million .
Thus, could the USSR feed 540 million people ? NO .
The USSR had already big problems to feed its own population : see the famine of 1932.
Besides, even if it had enough food to feed the rest of Europe, it would be impossible to transport this food out of Russia .

[wm]

During the war, Germany did not need the food of the USSR, it was feeding itself with the help of the occupied/allied countries in Western Europe .
Germany was self-sufficient and would be even more self-sufficient after the war .

Germany badly needed Russian food, in the long term 1981 calories were harmful to health of the entire population.

The overall conclusion to be drawn from the figures in Table 3.2 is that imports by Germany from Western Europe compensated only in part for the decline in imports from South-eastern Europe.
German domestic production fell only a little until the last year of the war, but at the same time more foreign workers had to be fed. One estimate of the daily calorie allowance in Germany shows it decreasing from 2,435 in 1939-1940 to 1981 in 1943-1944.

Hence, as Milward, Tooze, and most recently Collingham have argued, the attractions of the U.S.S.R., and especially the Ukraine, as a potential source of food.
War, Agriculture, and Food: Rural Europe from the 1930s to the 1950s

[ljadw]

The attraction was a myth .The Ukraine was NOT the grain basket of Europe.This existed only in Hitler's imagination . Russia today and the other European countries are able to feed their population without the grain of Ukraine .Germany could have done the same in WWII.The German net imports( net,because Germany was forced to invest a lot of money in Ukraine ) were meaningless and could not have stopped the decrease of the daily calorie
allowance .
From : The Legacy of Fortress Europe
German Imports ( in millions of RM ) in 1940,1941, 1942, 1943
USSR
545
325
482
243

Belgium
228
562
705
681

And, I like to see the proofs that the imports from SE Europe (Balkans ) were decreasing .
From Tooze Table A 5 :
The German domestic grain consumption remained stable during the war :from 25,1 million tons in 1938-1939 to 25 million in 1943-1944,while the net imports were going up from 2,5 to 4.6 million.
That proves
1 that there was no decrease of the daily calorie allowance
2 that the imports from Ukraine were not important : 4.6 million tons were imported in 43-44 while the Ukraine was lost in that period : the imports came from elsewhere .