Race and Space (UK)

Hitler and the Nazis believed that the driving force of history was a struggle between races, a struggle that would only end when the superior race – in Hitler’s view, the Aryans – achieved supremacy over all the other races. By 1939, when Germany invaded Poland and ignited the Second World War in Europe, the Nazi vision of dominance increasingly necessitated the conquest and occupation of other countries. Historian Doris Bergen writes, ‘For Hitler, these two notions of race and space were intertwined. Any race that was not expanding, he believed, was doomed to disappear. Without living space—land to produce food and raise new generations of soldiers and mothers—a race could not grow.’ ¹

Germany’s annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938 was a significant first step in the Nazis’ efforts to expand the Reich. The acquisitions represented a symbolic as well as territorial victory. By regaining most of Germany’s First World War losses, Hitler sought to unite ethnic Germans – people of German descent, sharing supposed German blood – into one nation. Emboldened by success in Austria and the Sudetenland, the Nazis and many Germans were ready to go to war in 1939 for additional living space (Lebensraum) for their nation. The invasion of Poland that year instigated war in Europe and a succession of German military victories throughout the continent. By December 1941, Germany had conquered most of mainland Europe, from France in the west to the outskirts of Moscow in the Soviet Union in the east. This conquest brought about what Hitler saw as a ‘New Order’ in Europe.

This lesson provides insight into how the Nazis’ racial ideology shaped their military and expansion strategies, ultimately sparking the outbreak of the Second World War. However, it also highlights the cultural aspects of conquest, demonstrating how ordinary Germans’ belief in their ethnic superiority and the righteousness of their work as ‘cultural missionaries’ in foreign countries justified increasingly egregious acts of violence and mass murder. Indeed, the New Order the Nazis imposed on Europe carried significant benefits for many Germans. These included enhanced national and racial pride, material gains for German citizens in the form of cheap goods, as well as new jobs, homes, and land in conquered countries.

By reading eyewitness accounts, students will also gain an understanding of how Jews and other people deemed inferior by the Nazis experienced German occupation. For non-Germans, consequences of Nazi plans for race and space were economic loss, horrible suffering, and the death of millions who the Nazis believed could not be productive members of the Reich. These groups included mentally and physically disabled people, whose murder the Nazis justified as a necessity of war. They also included members of what the Nazis considered to be inferior races – such as Poles, Slavs, Roma, and Sinti – who were taken from their homes and often confined to camps and murdered, as well. The Nazi race and space world view of course involved special contempt for Jews, who were killed in increasing numbers as the war wore on.

• 1D. L. Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, 3rd edn (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 52.

This lesson focuses on the meaning and consequences of the Nazi ideology that historians refer to as ‘race and space’. Ideology can be a complicated concept to explain. In this lesson, it is defined as ‘a framework of beliefs and ideals about the way the world works’. The first activity in this lesson provides some suggestions for how to explain what an ideology is. Examples of ideologies can be helpful in explaining the concept to students, but it is important for you to choose a few examples that your students would likely recognise. If students are struggling to grasp the meaning of ideology, you might ask them to use the definition and the examples you provide to brainstorm together some additional examples of ideologies that influence people’s choices in the world today. Through the ensuing discussion, evaluating the examples that students brainstorm, you can help them come to a firmer understanding of the concept.

One activity in this lesson includes a mini-lecture, incorporated into the lesson PowerPoint, with the following related images: 

1. League of German Girls in the Warthegau
2. Jews in German-Polish Border Town
3. Exhibit on Germany’s Colonization of Poland

The following are key vocabulary terms used in this lesson:

1. Ideology
2. Expel
3. Missionary

Add these words to your Word Wall, if you are using one for this unit, and provide the necessary support to help students learn these words as you teach the lesson.

Finish the lesson by asking students to write a response in their journals to the following prompt:

What are some examples of ideologies that are influential in the world today? Choose one that you have encountered in your own life or have read about in the news and write about how it influences, positively or negatively, people’s choices and experiences.

To help students further contextualise the political, cultural, and social effects of the German occupation of Poland, you might share the following readings from Chapter 8 of Holocaust and Human Behaviour: The War against Poland: Speed and Brutality, Dividing Poland and Its People, and Colonising Poland. Each reading is followed by connection questions that you can use to help guide students’ analysis and discussion.

The Nazis’ race and space ideology also led them to target people with disabilities, who Hitler believed were ‘marginal human beings’. Programmes such as the T4 ‘euthanasia’ programme involved the medical killing of about 70,000 people with epilepsy, alcoholism, birth defects, hearing loss, mental illnesses, and personality disorders, as well as those who had vision loss or developmental delays or who even suffered from certain orthopaedic problems.

You can share the following resources with students to introduce them to the Nazis’ medical killing programme and the range of responses to it, from complicity to protest, by a variety of Germans (please note, some of the resources might be difficult to process for students and may not be appropriate to use in your classroom setting – please consider the needs of your students when deciding what you use in this extension):

• Reading: “Unworthy to Live”
• Reading: Bystanders at Hartheim Castle
• Reading: Protesting Medical Killing
• Video: Bishop von Galen and the War against the Disabled (7:04)