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23 - Lebensraum, Autarky, and a New Imperial Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2025

By
Richard Overy
Edited by
Mark Roseman  and
Dan Stone
Mark Roseman
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Dan Stone
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
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Summary

Achieving “living space” for the German people was one of Hitler’s central aims. The concept was developed in the late nineteenth century and popularized in the 1920s after Germany lost territory at the end of the First World War. Hitler saw the concept as essential for the survival of the German people. The object was not just space, but imperial space that could be exploited for resources and whose population would serve German needs. This “greater economic area” was to be self-sufficient (autarkic) as far as possible, creating a German-centered economic bloc to reflect what some German economists assumed was the way the world economy was developing. The war against the Soviet Union was intended to complete this program of imperial expansion and provide room for the surplus German population as well as generous supplies of food and raw materials.

Keywords

Living spaceautarkyGerman imperialismgreat economic areaNational Socialist spatialities

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Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Holocaust , pp. 484 - 501
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

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