Page "Lebensraum" Paragraph 13

In Hitler's view, the idea of restoring the 1914 borders of the Reich was absurd as those borders did not provide sufficient Lebensraum ; only a foreign policy that aimed at the conquest of the proper quantity of Lebensraum would justify the necessary sacrifices that war entailed.

In Hitler ’ s view, history was dominated by a merciless struggle between different “ races ” for survival, and “ races ” that possessed large amounts of territory were innately stronger than those that did not.

Eberhard Jäckel has expressed a Primat der Außenpolitik (“ primacy of foreign policy ”) interpretation of German foreign policy as opposed to the Primat der Innenpolitik (" primacy of domestic politics ") thesis favored by some left-wing historians such as Timothy Mason.

Jäckel wrote that since Hitler regarded the conquest of Lebensraum as his most important project, and since that could only be accomplished through war, domestic policy comprised simply preparing the nation for the inevitable struggle for Lebensraum.

The demand for Lebensraum was not just a Nazi dream.

At the London Economic Conference of 1933, the head of the German delegation, the Economics Minister Dr. Alfred Hugenberg of the German National People's Party, put forth a programme of German colonial expansion in both Africa and Eastern Europe as the best way of ending the Great Depression, which created a major storm at the conference.

For being indiscreet enough to advance the claim to Germany's lebensraum at a time when Germany was still more or less disarmed, Hugenberg was sacked from the German cabinet by Hitler.