Hitler and his God

Living Space for the Master Race

“See to it that the strength of our nation does not rest on colonial foundations”, wrote Hitler in Mein Kampf, “but on our own native territory in Europe. Never consider the Reich secure unless, for centuries to come, it is in a position to give every descendant of our race a piece of ground and soil that he can call his own. Never forget that the most sacred of all rights in this world is man’s right to the earth which he wishes to cultivate for himself and that the holiest of all sacrifices is that of the blood poured out for it.” 342 Hitler left no doubt where that piece of ground and soil was to be found. The conquest of “the East”, actually the territories belonging to Baltic, Slavonic and other peoples in eastern Europe, had been drawing the Germanic tribes for centuries, so much so that the Drang nach Osten (the impulse to move east) was, except for rare periods of friendly relations, something like a cyclic instinctive urge. Waves of Vikings rowed down the Dnieper from “Gothland”, mainly Sweden, to Kiev and Constantinople; the Teutonic Knights subjugated Prussia and the territories of what is now called Poland, the Balticum and the Ukraine; later, German settlers became landlords in these regions and their descendants were still living there, proud of their Germanic ancestry. (Stalin will send them to Siberia.)

Hitler formulated his Lebensraum (living space) theory for the first time clearly and in detail when writing Mein Kampf, whereas before he had used predominantly German resurgence and revenge against the French arch-enemy as the main themes of his speeches and propaganda. Yet, Russia, the East and Lebensraum had always been on his mind, and it could not have been otherwise after the fear of Communism caused by the 1917 October Revolution and its aftermath in Germany, a fear made worse by the spate of Red revolts within the country. Important centres of anti-Communism and anti-Semitism were the circles of Russian refugees in France and Germany. Most of these refugees belonged to the nobility and upper bourgeoisie, were therefore right-wing and connected with right-wing extremists in the host country. They were the people who carried The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion in their luggage. Alfred Rosenberg was a typical example, and so was Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, who marched not without reason by Hitler’s side in the Beer Hall Putsch and whose name might be much better known if he had not been killed.

“The drive for Lebensraum was never just a Nazi goal.” 343 The conquest of the East had, in fact, always been a matter of Teutonic pride, arrogance and cupidity. The Catholic Teutonic Knights deemed themselves a superior breed compared with the barbaric, heathen Pruss and similar vile peoples. (It is ironic that their Prussian descendants would proclaim themselves God’s favourite people, carriers of the highest culture and by right – which right? – lords of humanity.) Fritz Fischer has shown how in more recent times Germany’s “epochal turn against Russia” was initiated by Bethmann Hollweg in 1913. This happened, writes Fischer, after the Chancellor had been travelling through Russia in the previous year and seen with his own eyes, “in a kind of revelation”, what enormous riches of human and natural resources were available there.

Once more the primal cause of this epochal turn was German arrogance, for at that time Germany had brought about its first Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle). “Germany sees how its population is increasing day by day; its navy, industry and commerce are developing without comparison; it needs expansion, it has a claim to ‘a place in the sun’”, said the German Chancellor. 344 “A place in the sun” was one of the nationalist and pan-German slogans at the time. Was an expansion at the cost of other nations, and justified with “scientific”, pseudo-Darwinist arguments, really necessary for Germany? The enormous industrial and commercial growth around 1900 proved that it was not; and Christian von Krockow writes about the new Wirtschaftswunder after the Second World War: “On a drastically reduced national territory [Germany was broken up into two] one got nevertheless and at last the longed for Lebensraum, without having to use anything but personal industry.” 345

During his Landsberg retreat, Hitler’s views had not changed fundamentally: the Germans were to become the masters of the earth; they would avenge on France the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles (he entertained the same irrational hopes for an understanding with Great Britain as the German leadership before the Great War); the protagonist of the Aryan race, the Jew, had to be discarded in one way or another. But now Hitler dared to express what could only have drawn ridicule when he was still known as the Austrian corporal: Germany must conquer the world for the Aryan race, and they would begin where they had left off six centuries ago, in “the East”. In Landsberg prison he had had the time to reflect, to meditate, to round off the vision of his mission. And he had been profoundly influenced by the opinions of Alfred Rosenberg and, through Rudolf Hess, by the geopolitical theories of Karl Haushofer. A few days after his release from Landsberg, Hitler was on a visit at the Hanfstängl home. “To my horror he spouted a still further distilled essence of all the nonsense that Hess and Rosenberg had been concocting”, remembers Ernst Hanfstängl. “I am sure that this is the point at which his latest radical tendencies started to crystallize … Hess had succeeded in pumping his head full of the Haushofer thesis …” 346

Karl Haushofer, born in 1869, was a cultured military man who had become a major-general in the First World War. Earlier, he had been appointed military attaché to the German Embassy in Japan. At that time he had undertaken many travels in India, Tibet, Manchuria, China and Korea which would have a lasting influence on him. He was appointed honorary professor of geopolitics at Munich University in 1924 and published shortly afterwards his handbook Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean. A close friendship tied him to Rudolf Hess, who adulated Hitler and was one of the most enthusiastic Nazis. Haushofer, acquainted with Hitler since 1921, visited Hess several times in Landsberg prison, where he inevitably also met with Hitler, for Hess had a cell next to Hitler’s on the upper floor and these cells gave out unto a common room.

There is no doubt among historians that Haushofer, through his confidant and mouthpiece Hess, played an important role in matters of Hitler’s ideological outlook, more specifically his plans for the conquest of Lebensraum. What Haushofer’s influence meant concretely is still under discussion. According to Martin Allen: “Basically, geopolitics was the theory, as promulgated by Haushofer, that in the future the world would be restructured into an age of great land-empires, dominated by ‘the Heartland’, an area ‘invulnerable to sea-power in Central Europe and Asia’. This, Haushofer asserted, would revolutionize the world’s balance of power, ushering in a new age of stability, peace and prosperity for all.” 347

One finds in the works of the commentators on Hitler’s intentions conflicting versions of his plans of conquest. Some maps show Hitler’s Greater German Reich occupying the middle part of Europe, from Scandinavia to Italy, but other maps extend the Reich up to the Urals. Both land masses are supposed to be the base, established by Hitler, for future German world conquest. “Any thought of world politics is ridiculous as long as one does not rule the Continent”, Hitler is reported to have said in 1944. 348 Did he mean the European continent, or the land mass of which Europe is no more than a peninsula? He certainly stooped to having friendly relations with the Japanese, a coloured race of small stature, and declared them to be “honorary Aryans” to further his plans in Asia and the Pacific Ocean, in this relying on Karl Haushofer as the chief intermediary. The plans for his lifetime, as the founder of the Third Reich which others would have to build up and complete, did not include colonies. Water was an element Hitler disliked, and Ernst Hanfstängl, who maintains he tried to convince Hitler of the capacities of the USA, writes: “He thought only in European terms.” 349

How did Hitler justify his demand for living space in Mein Kampf? The principle was unequivocal: “Only a sufficiently large space on this earth can assure the independent existence of a people.” From this he deduced: “We, National-Socialists, must stick firmly to the aim that we have set for our foreign policy, namely that the German people must be assured of the territorial area which is necessary for it to exist on this earth. Only for such action as is undertaken to secure those ends can it be lawful in the eyes of God and our German posterity to allow the blood of our people to be shed again …

“State frontiers are established by human beings and may be changed by human beings. The fact that a nation has acquired an enormous territorial area is no reason why it should hold that territory perpetually. At most, the possession of such territory is a proof of the strength of the conqueror and the weakness of those who submit to him. And in this strength alone lives the right to possession. If the German people are imprisoned within an impossible territorial area and for that reason are face to face with a miserable future, this is not by the command of Destiny, and the refusal to accept such a situation is by no means a violation of Destiny’s laws. For just as no Higher Power has promised more territory to other nations than to the German, so it cannot be blamed for an unjust distribution of the soil. The soil on which we now live was not a gift bestowed by Heaven on our forefathers; they had to conquer it by risking their lives. So also in the future our people will not obtain territory, and therewith the means of existence, as a favour from any other people: they will have to win it by the power of a triumphant sword.” 350

Hitler drew of the Slavonic people a picture that was at the same time frightful and repulsive, and that would vindicate the barbaric invasion he seems to have envisioned even then. The main theme of his propaganda was that Germany had to be built up as a bulwark against the Danger from the East in its many shapes, that it was the knight in shining armour who would protect Europe and the values it stood for against the hordes from the Asian steppes (a metaphor already used by William II). The effects of this propaganda, developed and adapted by the SS, will attract thousands of idealistic young Europeans to join the divisions of the Waffen-SS and sacrifice their lives on the Russian plains. What Hitler really had in mind, and what he wrote in 1928 in a never published so-called “second book”, was “the idea that this Europe was not to arise as the result of a federation, but by the racially strongest nations [none other than the Germanic, of course] subjugating the others … National-Socialism will extend its revolution until the New Order has been achieved all through the world”. 351

“As things stand today, vast spaces still lie uncultivated all over the surface of the globe”, wrote Hitler in Mein Kampf. “Those spaces are only waiting for the ploughshare. And it is quite certain that nature did not set those territories apart as the exclusive pastures of any one nation or race, to be held unutilized in reserve for the future. Such lands await the people who have the strength to acquire it and the diligence to cultivate it. Nature knows no political frontiers. She begins by establishing life on this globe and then watches the free play of forces. Those who show the greatest courage and industry are the children nearest to her heart and they will be granted the sovereign right of existence.” 352

“We put an end to the perpetual Germanic march towards the South and West of Europe and turn our eyes towards the lands of the East. We finally put a stop to the colonial and trade policy of pre-war times and pass over to the territorial policy of the future. When we speak of new territory in Europe today, we must principally think of Russia and the border states subject to her. Destiny itself seems to wish to point out the way for us here … For the Russian State was not organized by the constructive political talent of the Slav element in Russia but was much more a marvellous exemplification of the capacity for state-building possessed by the Germanic element in a race of inferior worth … For centuries Russia owned the source of its livelihood as a State to the Germanic nucleus of its governing classes. But this nucleus is now almost wholly broken up and abolished … This colossal empire in the East is ripe for dissolution. And the end of the Jewish domination in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. We are chosen by Destiny to be the witnesses of a catastrophe which will afford the strongest confirmation of the nationalist theory of race.” 353