Post by galvez on Nov 29, 2003 16:04:35 GMT -5
The Origins of Lebensraum
The subject of how the Nazis perceived the Slavs and, in particular, the Russians has interested me given the status of current interethnic relations between various European groups in cyberspace.
Mind you, I am not out to create any kind of wedge between the Germanics and the Slavs -- as far as I am concerned, history speaks for itself: the brutality of the Nazi occupation of the USSR stirs up the emotions of ordinary Slavs much more than any putative phenotypic similarities between Western Europeans and Slavs. As Dienekes Pontikos has pointed out, groups survived historically through having a strong sense of group consciousness, which is forged through genetic and cultural ties. There is no "phenotypic consciousness": such an idea is an absurdity.
One who is not too familiar with European history is likely to see the German attempt to expand eastwards -- Lebensraum -- as a Nazi aberration, having culminated from years of diatribes against the supposedly culturally and genetically inferior Eastern Europeans. However, the roots of German expansionist ideology go back much further: for the Germans have historically been a dispersed people, although largely concentrated in what is today called Germany. Thus, there had been some tension among German intellectuals earlier in history on the subject of the final borders of any potential unified German state.
As A.J.P. Taylor puts it in Revolutions and Revolutionaries:
"Many Germans lived beyond the territory of the historic German states. To meet this difficulty, the German nationalists claimed that Germany existed wherever German was spoken. This did not mean that Germany existed where only German was spoken. In great areas of eastern Europe, the educated classes, the business classes and sometimes the landed classes spoke German, whereas the majority of the inhabitants, even in the towns and still more the peasants, spoke some other language -- Czech, Polish or Croat. What should happen then? The German liberals gave a confident answer: they were lesser peoples and should disappear" (102). (emphasis added)
As one can see, the Slavs historically have been perceived as inferior to the Germans -- this was not merely a chimerical fantasy from the Nazi regime, which lasted about 12 years, but instead had roots going back at least a century earlier, as nationalist movements sprang up all throughout Europe with improved literacy.
So, while some Slavs on the internet feel a spiritual bonding with the Germans and other West Europeans -- something they are certainly entitled to -- the feeling has not been reciprocated by West Europeans historically. Surprisingly, there has been talk among some German nationalists about reclaiming "German territory" which today exists in Eastern Europe and with predominantly Slavic populations (e.g., Königsberg, which is today named Kaliningrad). Very rarely do these so-called Slavic nationalists rebut these desires for German expansion into their territory, which leads one to believe they are not as patriotic as their fellow non-Nazi (or anti-Nazi) Slavs.
1. Taylor, A.J.P. Revolutions and Revolutionaries. New York: Atheneum. 1980.
2. en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%F6nigsberg
He's just showing an example of related propaganda.
