Ordering Space: Intersections of Space, Racism, and Extermination^*

* Translated from German by David Burnett.

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to rethink the concept of Lebensraum and its significant role in Nazi policies. During World War II, the notion of Lebensraum increasingly transcended its original geographic–geopolitical and agricultural frameworks. Nazi policy was based on the idea of racially homogenizing existing as well as conquered space. As opposed to earlier colonial land seizure, the Nazi policies of resettlement, expulsion, and murder of racially undesirable population groups were not the consequences of the occupation policy, but rather their very purpose and objective. Focusing on the category of space, this essay identifies certain continuities as well as significant breaks between colonialism and National Socialism. The author contends that the goal of colonial rule was the economic and political subjugation of the conquered countries, which necessitated heterogeneity as a structural principle. Lebensraum, on the other hand, represented a different and unprecedented model of domination, one that did not imagine, in colonial fashion, the spaces as being empty, but rather intended to empty these spaces and radically reorganize them for the purpose of racial selection.

KEYWORDS:

• Lebensraum
• ordering space
• racial homogenization
• population exchange
• extermination policy

Notes on contributor

Ulrike Jureit, Historian, since 2000: Research fellow at the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Research and Culture; 1991–1995: Academic staff, Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial; 1995–1998: Completion of doctoral degree at the University of Hamburg (doctoral thesis: “Patterns of Memory: Methodological Issues and Biographical Interviews with Survivors of Concentration and Death Camps”); 1998: Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bielefeld; 2000–2004: Head of exhibition and research project: Crimes of the German Wehrmacht: Dimensions of a War of Annihilation, 1941–1944.

Notes

* Translated from German by David Burnett.

1 On this hypothesis, see in particular Jürgen Zimmerer, Deutsche Herrschaft über Afrikaner: Staatlicher Machtanspruch und Wirklichkeit im kolonialen Namibia (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2001) or the English edition entitled From Windhoek to Auschwitz: On the Relationship Between Colonialism and the Holocaust (New York: Routledge, 2015); Jürgen Zimmerer, “Holocaust und Kolonialismus: Beitrag zu einer Archäologie des genozidalen Gedankens,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, vol. 51 (2003): pp. 1098–119; Jürgen Zimmerer, “Die Geburt des ‘Ostlandes’ aus dem Geist des Kolonialismus: Die nationalsozialistische Eroberungs- und Beherrschungspolitik in (post)kolonialer Perspektive,” Sozial.Geschichte, vol. 19 (2004): pp. 10–43. The following staunchly opposed this position: Robert Gerwarth and Stephan Malinowski, “Der Holocaust als ‘kolonialer Genozid’? Europäische Kolonialgewalt und nationalsozialistischer Vernichtungskrieg,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft, vol. 33 (2007): pp. 439–66.

2 For a detailed look at the overall question, see Ulrike Jureit, Das Ordnen von Räumen: Territorium und Lebensraum im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2012).

3 Ibid., especially pp. 127–59.

4 Thus, the newly founded area of German ethnic studies or Deutschtumsforschung after 1918 defined its concept of space as a theory of Volks- und Kulturboden and linked it to the claim that ‘forces of persistence and inertia’ (Beharrungskräfte), that is, German settlement and German cultural influence, be recognized as principles for regulating borders and space. See Michael Fahlbusch, “Wo der deutsche  …  ist, ist Deutschland!”: Die Stiftung für deutsche Volks- und Kulturbodenforschung in Leipzig 1920–1933 (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1994); Guntram Henrik Herb, Under the Map of Germany: Nationalism and Propaganda 1918–1945 (London: Routledge, 1997); Ingo Haar and Michael Fahlbusch, (eds.), Handbuch der völkischen Wissenschaften. Personen – Institutionen – Forschungsprogramme – Stiftungen (Munich: Saur, 2008).

5 See here the outstanding essay of Andreas Wirsching, “‘Man kann nur Boden germanisieren’: Eine neue Quelle zu Hitlers Rede vor den Spitzen der Reichswehr am 3. Februar 1933,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 49 (2001): pp. 517–50.

6 Karl Lange, “Der Terminus ‘Lebensraum’ in Hitlers ‘Mein Kampf,’” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 13 (1965): pp. 426–37. Whereas Lange finds the word a mere two times but claims that the words Boden and Raum are essentially used synonymously with it, I myself located the word Lebensraum ten times; see Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 148, 164, 165, 333 (twice), 334, 732, 740 (twice), 741. In any case, the term is used in reference to the size of the territory available to the German people, without being linked to a ‘theory of Lebensraum’ or even a specific concept. By comparison, the concept of Boden is used a total of 99 times, not counting compound words such as Bodenpolitik (land policy), Bodenerwerb (land acquisition), and Nährboden (breeding ground).

7 Bracher was presumably the first to speak about a ‘theory of Lebensraum’ having been developed prior to 1933; see Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, Cologne 1962, p. 226. Lange does not really differentiate between Lebensraum and Boden, but speculates that Hitler repeatedly used the phrase Grund und Boden (land) ‘for the sake of variation’; see Lange, Terminus Lebensraum, p. 427.

8 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 728; for a more detailed description of Nazi Bodenpolitik (land policy) explicitly not restricted to the revision of the Versailles Treaty, see Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 735ff.

9 See Wirsching, “Man kann nur Boden germanisieren,” pp. 517–50.

10 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 428.

11 Ibid.

12 Gerhard L. Weinberg, (ed.), Hitlers zweites Buch: Ein Dokument aus dem Jahr 1928 (Stuttgart: DVA, 1961), p. 81.

13 Weinberg, Hitlers zweites Buch, pp. 78–9.

14 Speech of Adolf Hitler on 3 February 1933, online at http://www.1000dokumente.de/index.html?c=dokument_de&dokument=0109_hrw&l=de.

15 Without its supplementary protocol, the pact would have been a classic reinsurance treaty, but the secret protocol along with the territorial agreements in the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty of 28 September went well beyond this and, in terms of contract law, constituted a temporary alliance against third parties. See the terms of the contract online at http://www.1000dokumente.de/index.html?c=dokument_ru&dokument=0025_pak&st=1939&l=de and http://www.1000dokumente.de/index.html?c=dokument_ru&dokument=0027_gre&st=1939&l=de.

16 The partition called for 188,000 square kilometers with about 22 million inhabitants of the previous Polish state to be ceded to Germany, whereas about 200,000 square kilometers and 13.2 million people were incorporated into the Soviet Union. The ethnic makeup varied considerably. In the territories ceded to Germany, about 80 percent were considered Polish and ten percent Jewish. Ethnic Germans, Ukrainians, and Byelorussians constituted the remaining minorities. In Soviet-occupied territory, about 40 percent were considered Polish, 34.2 percent Ukrainian, 8.5 percent Byelorussian, and 8.45 percent Jewish. Germans, Lithuanians, Russians, and Czechs did not compromise more than one percent of the population respectively. See Bogdan Musial, “Konterrevolutionäre Elemente sind zu erschießen”: Die Brutalisierung des deutsch-sowjetischen Krieges im Sommer 1941 (Berlin: Ullstein Verlag, 2000), pp. 24–30.

17 Secret Protocol of the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty of 28 September 1939, online at http://www.1000dokumente.de/index.html?c=dokument_ru&dokument=0027_gre&st=1939&l=de.

18 See Bogdan Musial, “Das Schlachtfeld zweier totalitärer Systeme. Polen unter deutscher und sowjetischer Herrschaft 1939–1941,” in Michael Mallmann and Bogdan Musial, (eds.), Genesis des Genozids. Polen 1939–1941 (Darmstadt: WBG, 2004), pp. 13–35.

19 See, in particular, the correspondence between the German boundary committee in Moscow and the Foreign Office in Berlin in the fall of 1939 in PAAA, Politische Abteilung V, Grenzziehung zwischen Deutschland und Russland im ehemaligen Polenstaat, Sign. 104398–99.

20 In practice, the selective granting of citizenship proved to be a complicated and hardly consistent procedure. Whereas in the newly acquired eastern territories only ‘inhabitants of German or related [artverwandt] blood’ were eligible for full German state citizenship, ethnic Germans [Volksdeutsche] could be awarded so-called Reich citizenship (Reichsbürgerschaft). At the same time, the prevailing policy of citizenship was based on the principle of privilege and was therefore conditional, allowing, for example, the revoking of citizenship. Citizenship law reveals an internal hierarchy among German citizens as well as the exclusion of so-called alien peoples (Fremdvölkische), who came under special laws with the loss of their existing citizenship. For more detail, see Dieter Gosewinkel, Einbürgern und Ausschließen: Die Nationalisierung der Staatsangehörigkeit vom Deutschen Bund bis zur Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), pp. 404–20.

21 Only the western half of Wartheland had belonged to Prussia before 1918. The administrative districts of Kalisch (Kalisz) and Hohensalza (Inowrocław) were under Russian rule before World War I. After 1939, the Warthegau included Lower Silesian territories; large parts of the erstwhile voivodeships of Posen, Lodz, and Pomorze; the western parts of the Radomsko Piotrkόw and Brzeziny districts; and the entire district of Gostynin. On the administrative structure and the persecution of Jews in the Warthegau, see the excellent study of Michael Alberti, Die Verfolgung und Vernichtung der Juden im Reichsgau Wartheland 1939–1945 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006).

22 This coupling can be seen quite clearly in the secret order of the Higher SS and Police Leader of Posen, Wilhelm Koppe, issued on 11 November 1919. See Klaus-Peter Friedrich, (ed.), Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland, 1933–1945, vol. 4 (München: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2014), doc. 34, p. 131.

23 See “Erlass des Reichsführer-SS für die Überprüfung und Aussonderung der Bevölkerung in den eingegliederten Ostgebieten” of 12 September 1940, in BA, R 43 II/646, fols. 32–6.

24 On the Wehrmacht in Poland, its crimes and cooperation with the SS, Einsatzgruppen, police, and paramilitary groups, see Jochen Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg: Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2006); Czesław Madajczyk and Berthold Puchert, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen, 1939–1945 (Berlin: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1988); Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Bogdan Musial, (eds.), Genesis des Genozids: Polen 1939–1941 (Darmstadt: WBG, 2004).

25 Dieter Pohl, Verfolgung und Massenmord in der NS-Zeit, 1933–1945 (Darmstadt: WBG, 2003), p. 49.

26 These anti-Jewish measures mainly followed Reinhard Heydrich’s guidelines for the handling of Jews issued by express letter on 21 September 1939 to the heads of the Einsatzgruppen; see Friedrich, Verfolgung und Ermordung, doc. 12, pp. 88–92. On setting up the ghetto in Lodz and the ghettoization of the Warthegau at the initiative of lower levels of administration, see Alberti, Reichsgau Wartheland, pp. 145–324.

27 On this process of disenfranchisement and concentration, see Alberti, Reichsgau Wartheland, pp. 98–126. On the ghetto in Litzmannstadt, see Jüdisches Museums Frankfurt am Main, (ed.), “Unser einziger Weg ist Arbeit”: Das Getto in Lodz, 1940–1944, (Vienna: Löcker, 1990); Andrea Löw, Juden im Getto Litzmannstadt: Lebensbedingungen, Selbstwahrnehmung, Verhalten (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006); Sascha Feuchert, Erwin Leibfried, and Jörg Riecke, (eds.), Die Chronik des Gettos Lodz/Litzmannstadt (Göttingen, Wallstein, 2007); Peter Klein, Die “Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt” 1940 bis 1944 : eine Dienststelle im Spannungsfeld von Kommunalbürokratie und staatlicher Verfolgungspolitik (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2009).

28 On the expulsion and persecution of the Jewish population in the first months of German occupation, see the anonymous report on the developments in Kalisz until November 1939 (recorded on 2 August 1941) in Friedrich, Verfolgung und Ermordung, doc. 47, pp. 155–62; anonymous report on the deportation of Jews from Posen in November 1939 (from ca. late 1940) in Friedrich, Verfolgung und Ermordung, doc. 48, pp. 162–5.

29 By spring of 1941, the German occupiers had deported about 460,000 individuals from all of the newly incorporated territories into the General Government. Well over a million Poles were displaced or expelled there by the end of the war. An overview of these policies of persecution and resettlement is offered by Götz Aly, “Endlösung”: Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen Juden (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1995), pp. 59–139; Czesław Madajczyk, “Allgemeine Richtlinien der deutschen Besatzungspolitik in Polen,” in Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk, (ed.), Polen unter deutscher und sowjetischer Besatzung 1939–1945 (Berlin: Fibre, 1988), pp. 37–51; Maria Rutowska, “Nationalsozialistische Verfolgungsmaßnahmen gegenüber der polnischen Zivilbevölkerung in den eingegliederten polnischen Gebieten,” in Młynarczyk, Polen, pp. 197–216; Bogdan Musial, “Die ‘vierte Teilung Polens,’” in Manuel Becker, Holger Löttel, and Christoph Studt, (eds.), Der militärische Widerstand gegen Hitler im Lichte neuer Kontroversen (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2010), pp. 25–50; on the economic exploitation, restructuring, and adaptation of the annexed territories, see Tadeusz Janicki, “Die deutsche Wirtschaftspolitik in den eingegliederten polnischen Gebieten, 1939–1945,” in Młynarczyk, Polen, pp. 79–102.

30 From there they were later deported to the death camps. By the end of the war, 2.7 million of the 3.5 million Polish Jews had been murdered. Two million died in the concentration and death camps; another fifth succumbed to the catastrophic conditions in the ghettos and labor camps. Most Polish Jews, about 1.8 million all in all, died in the General Government due to the mass deportations there. In the Warthegau, the figure was about 300,000, in Upper Silesia about 100,000, and in Danzig-West Prussia about 32,000. See Rutowska, “NS-Verfolgungsmaßnahmen,” p. 206.

31 Planungsgrundlagen für den Aufbau der Ostgebiete, ausgearbeitet von der Planungshauptabteilung des RKF und vorgelegt am 24. Januar 1940, in BA, R 49/157, fols. 1–21, reprinted with an incorrect date in Czesław Madajczyk, (ed.), Vom Generalplan Ost zum Generalsiedlungsplan (Munich: DeGruyter, 1994), doc. 1, pp. 3–14.

32 Diary entry of Alfred Rosenberg from 29 September 1939 after a conversation with Hitler at the Reich Chancellery in Friedrich, Verfolgung und Ermordung, doc. 15, pp. 96–7.

33 Ibid.

34 ‘Blond provinces’ is a term coined by Heinrich Himmler and used, for example, in a speech to party functionaries on 29 February 1940; see Heinrich Himmler, Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Ansprachen, (eds.) Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson (Frankfurt am Main: Propyläen Verlag, 1974), p. 142.

35 Mechthild Rössler, Sabine Schleiermacher, and Cordula Tollmien, (eds.), Der “Generalplan Ost”. Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Planungs- und Vernichtungspolitik (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993).

36 Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, vol. I, ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich: DeGruyter, 1987), p. 21.

37 At the same time, about 4,500 villages were documented between 1940 and 1943 in the Old Reich (Altreich), where agrarian and land reforms were supposed to take place. Here, too, there was a coupling of agrarian and eugenic policies in the screening procedures used; see Wolfram Pyta, “‘Menschenökonomie’: Das Ineinandergreifen von ländlicher Sozialraumgestaltung und rassenbiologischer Bevölkerungspolitik im NS-Staat,” Historische Zeitschrift, vol. 273 (2001): pp. 31–94.

38 See the seminal studies of Gerhard Wolf, Ideologie und Herrschaftsrationalität: Nationalsozialistische Germanisierungspolitik in Westpolen (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2012; Gosewinkel, Einbürgern und Ausschließen, pp. 404–20.

39 On the failure of territorial ‘solutions,’ see Michael Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten: Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2002), pp. 486–506; the English edition was published as An Uncompromising Generation: The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009).

40 Michael Wildt, “Der Fall Reinhard Höhn: Vom Reichssicherheitshauptamt zur Harzburger Akademie,” in Alexander Gallus and Axel Schildt, (eds.), Rückblickend in die Zukunft: Politische Öffentlichkeit und intellektuelle Positionen in Deutschland um 1950 und um 1930 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011), pp. 254–71; Michael Wildt, (ed.), Nachrichtendienst, politische Elite, Mordeinheit: Der Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers SS (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2003).

41 Reinhard Höhn, “Großraumordnung und völkisches Rechtsdenken,” Reich – Volksordnung – Lebensraum 1 (Darmstadt: L.C. Wittich Verlag, 1941), p. 261.

42 Ibid., p. 262.

43 Ibid., p. 287.

44 Werner Daitz, “Echte und unechte Großräume. Gesetze des Lebensraums,” Reich – Volksordnung – Lebensraum 2 (Darmstadt: L.C. Wittich Verlag, 1942), p. 86.

45 Reinhard Höhn, Reich – Großraum – Großmacht (Darmstadt: L.C. Wittich Verlag, 1942), p. 135.

46 The ramifications of a hierarchical legal order with respect to nationality law were elucidated by state secretary Wilhelm Stuckart in 1943. There was a ‘natural gradation of the population  … , since there is a difference in terms of the law of life and nature between the members of an ethnic group [Volkszugehörige], foreign peoples [Fremdvölkische], and foreign races [Fremdrassige].’ ‘Reich civil rights’ (Reichsbürgerrecht) was the name of the construct used to legally determine ‘blood membership’ (blutsmäßige Zugehörigkeit). Whereas ‘the race problem’ was initially the ‘core question of legislation on nationality and Reich citizenship [Staatsangehörigkeits- und Reichsbürgergesetzgebung],’ the main issue now was how to legally differentiate between related (artverwandt) and foreign (artfremd) peoples. Here, too, it was necessary to decide in a process of racial vetting who was a desirable or undesirable member of the family. Wilhelm Stuckart, “Staatsangehörigkeit und Reichsgestaltung,” Reich – Volksordnung – Lebensraum 5 (Darmstadt: L.C. Wittich Verlag, 1943), pp. 61, 74, 85.

47 Herbert Krüger, “Der Raum als Gestalter der Innen- und Außenpolitik,” Reich – Volksordnung – Lebensraum 1 (Darmstadt: L.C. Wittich Verlag,1941), pp. 77–176.

48 Werner Best, “Völkische Großraumordnung,” Deutsches Recht, vol. 10 (1940): pp. 1006–7; Werner Best, “Nochmals: Völkische Großraumordnung statt: Völkerrechtliche Großraumordnung,” Deutsches Recht, vol. 11 (1941): pp. 1533–4.

49 Ibid., p. 1007.

50 Following this idea, Best developed a spectrum of possible patterns of rule between leading people and subject peoples, differentiating between various hierarchies of dependence. There were quite different notions about the future order of nations (for example, about the so-called Helot peoples) within the SS leadership, as seen in the instructive study of Ulrich Herbert, Best: Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft, 1903–1989 (Bonn: Dietz Verlag, 1996), pp. 281–9.

51 Werner Best, “Großraumordnung und Großraumverwaltung,” Zeitschrift für Politik, vol. 32 (1942): pp. 406–12, first quoted along these lines and interpreted by Herbert, Best, p. 283. The term ‘political theory’ was also coined in this context by Herbert, Best, p. 297.

52 For the controversy between Schmitt and Höhn, especially the differences between ‘Großraum’ and ‘Lebensraum,’ see Jureit, Ordnen von Räumen, pp. 357–73.

53 Accompanying letter of Konrad Meyer to the Reichsführer-SS from 15 July 1941, in Madajczyk, Generalplan Ost, doc. 2, pp. 14–5.

54 Speech of Reinhard Heydrich on 2 October 1941 in Prague, in Madajczyk, Generalplan Ost, doc. 5, p. 21.

55 Speech of Heinrich Himmler to SS leaders in Berlin on 9 June 1942, in Himmler, Geheimreden, p. 159.

56 On Operation Zamość, see Bruno Wasser, “Die ‘Germanisierung’ im Distrikt Lublin als Generalprobe und erste Realisierungsphase des ‘Generalplans Ost,’” in Rössler, Generalplan Ost, pp. 271–93; Dieter Pohl, Von der “Judenpolitik” zum Judenmord: Der Distrikt Lublin des Generalgouvernements, 1939–1944 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1993), especially pp. 153–7; Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005).

57 Norbert Kunz, Die Krim unter deutscher Herrschaft: Germanisierungsutopie und Besatzungsrealität (Darmstadt: WBG, 2005). The extermination of the Jews that preceded resettlement was mainly carried out by Einsatzgruppe D; see the instructive study of Andrej Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord: Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion, 1941–1943 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2003).