The German geographer Friedrich Ratzel first introduced the term Lebensraum in his 1897 book Politische Geographie (Political Geography). According to Ratzel, a nation-state should become self-sufficient by acquiring resources and territories in order to maintain independence and thrive internationally.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Germany embraced Lebensraum as the basis for its foreign policy. German defeat in World War I and the subsequent loss of overseas colonies and territories on the European continent fueled the sense of national humiliation. Adolf Hitler had exploited this sense and blamed the post-war socio-economic suffering of German society on ethnic minorities (namely, Jewish and Slavic people, among others) and political “enemies.” During the interwar period, Lebensraum became an ideological tool utilized to justify Nazi Germany’s racial policies, expansionism, and militarism.
Friedrich Ratzel & The Concept of Lebensraum
Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904) was a German scientist and geographer. He is regarded as the “father” of political geography, which acquired popularity in the 19th century. Ratzel relied on the Darwinian theory of evolution and stated that the characteristics of different nationalities were determined by their geographical environment.
Inspired by Darwin’s evolution theory, Ratzel compared the state to a living organism. He claimed that young states needed territories to sustain themselves, just like a living organism needs nutrients to grow. Just as organisms are bound to their environments, Ratzel believed states were also tied to their geographic locations.
Ratzel argued that the development of all species, including humans as a race, was influenced by their ability to adapt to geographical circumstances; those who successfully adapt to one location naturally migrate to others. Thriving species strive to expand the territory they occupy. This concept of territorial expansion was linked to the idea of Lebensraum—living space.
Ratzel’s theory of the state as a living organism was successfully utilized in 19th-century Germany to portray newly born Germany as an aggressive “Giant State” needing to “consume” territories in order to thrive.
Indeed, Germany emerged as Europe’s major economic and military force throughout the second half of the 1800s. Under Otto von Bismarck’s leadership, Germany expanded its territories in Europe and overseas in Africa, the Western Pacific, and East Asia.
Karl Haushofer & The Concept of Lebensraum
Friedrich Ratzel’s theory acquired considerable attention among German authors and philosophers at the beginning of the 20th century. Karl Haushofer, also a geographer and Ratzel’s disciple, inspired by the concept of Lebensraum, further adapted it to Nazi ideology. He became a key figure, immensely shaping German socio-political discourse. It is widely acknowledged among historians that Haushofer was responsible for making it a household name in Germany.
According to Haushofer, Lebensraum was based on the idea that racially superior people have a moral obligation to confiscate the land of inferior peoples. Haushofer viewed Germany’s geographical location as extremely unfavorable and constrained in terms of military advancements. Additionally, Germany had limited food and raw materials. Darwin’s theory of the “struggle for survival” became the “struggle for space.”
Haushofer, within the broader context of geopolitical strategy, further developed the idea of Lebensraum into what he termed “the study of Darwinian natural selection as it related to specific areas such as blood, race, genetic inheritance, ancestral land, and culture.”
Haushofer, along with other figures like Heinrich Himmler, provided a theoretical base for Nazi racial policies, which culminated in Holocaust. The author Thomas Cussans states in his book The Holocaust: Origins, History, and Aftermath (2021) that Haushofer’s vision intended “to demonstrate not merely the superiority of Aryan genetics but also the inferiority of Jewish genetics.”
Karl Haushofer was the founder of the journal Zeitschrift für Geopolitik in 1934. He successfully utilized the platform to popularize the ideas of social Darwinism and emerging doctrines of geopolitics.
Rudolf Hess, a member of the National Socialist Party and an advocate of geopolitics, played a key role in introducing Adolf Hitler to Haushofer’s ideas. As an enthusiast of geopolitics, Hess helped familiarize Hitler with the works of prominent authors in the field.
As history shows, the National Socialist regime adopted and misused this concept both ideologically and politically, radicalizing Germany socially, politically, and militarily.
Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf & Nazi Ideology in Interwar Germany
From 1908 to 1913, Adolf Hitler lived in Vienna, Austria. He became familiar with the works of leading authors of theories on racial superiority, known as radical social Darwinism and Pan-Germanism. The latter outlined the superiority of the German race and the need for its expansion. Hitler was also exposed to the heated anti-Semitic and nationalist sentiments in Vienna, which formed the base of Hitler’s views on Lebensraum and the concept of a racially pure German Aryan Race.
The final shape of Hitler’s Lebensraum was formed while Adolf Hitler served prison terms at Landsberg prison for the failed Munich Beer Hall Coup in November 1923. During his time in prison, Hitler grew close to Haushofer, who provided Hitler with geopolitical literature, including the works of Friedrich Ratzel. During this period, Hitler wrote his infamous book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), drawing on a variety of sources.
Hitler himself viewed his work as a guideline of Nazi doctrine, outlining his views on race, expansion, and political strategy. In Mein Kampf, Hitler justified the war for territorial expansion with the idea of the German race’s superiority. Lebensraum would be achieved through the elimination of those deemed inferior according to Nazi ideology. A full chapter—entitled “Eastern Policy” (or “Ostpolitik” in German)—outlined the necessity for a new “living space” for Germany.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler stated that Nazi Germany should “concentrate all of its strength on marking out a way of life for our people through the allocation of adequate Lebensraum for the next one hundred years,” which implied the territorial expansion and the abolition of those deemed inferior.
Based on Hitler’s ideas laid forth in Mein Kampf, three key foreign policy goals of the Third Reich were established:
1. Revision of the Treaty of Versailles: Hitler believed that borders of states were not fixed, and the restoration of pre-World War I Germany would not solve the issue of alleged national overpopulation.
2. The unification of the German-speaking people: According to Adolf Hitler, certain races were inherently superior and needed more territory to expand and thrive. Nazi ideology considered the “superior” Germanic Aryan race to have a natural right to expand into new lands. Nazi propaganda machine actively promoted the idea that Eastern Europe was historically German and had been stolen from the Aryan race. Lebensraum was utilized to ideologically justify the invasion of Eastern Europe.
3. The expansion eastwards to accommodate the needs of racially superior German people: The vast territories of the Soviet Union, rich in resources, fell in the category of Germany’s Lebensraum. In 1936, during the annual party meeting, Hitler stated:
“If the Urals with their immeasurable raw material riches, Siberia with its rich forests, and the Ukraine with its measureless areas of grain lay in Germany, under national-socialist leadership, the region would swim in surplus… Every single German would have more than enough to live on.”
Hitler envisaged settling Germans in western Russia. Most of the local population, mainly Slavs, would be deported to Siberia for slave labor. According to Nazi ideology, Slavic people were considered subhumans (German: Untermenschen), unable to create civilization.
Lebensraum & German Expansion in Europe
By the time Adolf Hitler became the head of the Third Reich in 1933, the concept of Lebensraum had become “a critical component in the Nazi worldview that drove both its military conquests and racial policy.”
In March 1938, Nazi Germany invaded neighboring Austria. The Anschluss, or the merging of the two nations, was successfully completed. In September 1938, Czechoslovakia followed. Nazi Germany annexed the region known as Sudetenland, which was primarily populated by ethnic Germans.
In September 1939, Adolf Hitler invaded Poland. The Treaty of Versailles established the Second Polish Republic. Important strategic German locations were handed over to the newly established Polish state, including West Prussia, Posen (Poznań), Upper Silesia, and Memmel territories.
Concrete measures were taken to clear the East and prepare it for German colonization. Prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, widely known as Operation Barbarossa, a set of detailed economic and demographic policy guidelines, known as the Generalplan Ost (General Plan East), was prepared. The plan stated, “Many tens of millions of people in this territory will become superfluous and will have to die or migrate to Siberia… With regard to this, absolute clarity must reign.”
The Legacy of Lebensraum for the Third Reich
Historian Vejas Liulevicius claims that Germany’s ultimate failure in World War II was caused by the Nazi ideology’s obsession with the idea of Lebensraum. Hitler aimed to secure and enlarge the Lebensraum; in doing so, he frequently disregarded more rational military alternatives in favor of holding onto territory that he had already conquered. Hitler repeatedly refused to let German withdrawals or strategic retreats, particularly during Operation Barbarossa when the Red Army advanced. This was the case during the battles of Stalingrad, Kursk, Operation Bagration, and the Battle of Bulge, all of which occurred between 1943 and 1945.
Vejas Liulevicius wrote in his book War Land on the Eastern Front, published in 2000:
“The regime used modern techniques for the goal of a terrible future utopia, which classical modernity would not recognize, seeking space rather than development. While the Soviets retreated, ‘trading space for time,’ the Nazis gave up time to gain space—seeking an everlasting, timeless present of destructive expansion in their vision of the Ostland. As the tide of events turned in the East, Hitler refused to give up the spaces conquered and forbade withdrawal again and again, producing military disasters. The ideological primacy of Raum was fatal in its consequences in the East. At long last, this was brought home to Germans as the Red Army invaded their territory by 1945, turning the utopia of Raum into a nightmare of the advancing East.”
Adolf Hitler utilized the idea of Lebensraum to accomplish his political and ideological objectives. He exploited it to validate Nazi racist policies against ethnic minorities and to justify expansionism.
He further employed the concept of carrying out propaganda to gain public support and enhance mobilization within German society. These steps ultimately resulted in World War II, a huge death toll, intense socioeconomic changes, mass migration, and the Holocaust.
