HISTORY 322 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Lebensraum, Sexually Transmitted Infection, Red Army
● Lebensraum as ideology: Race and Space
○ Space as not just a physical thing - many things occur in these spaces, socially
constructed, not something that is there without us acting on it
○ Only exists as such because we make meaning off of it - we interact with it
■ Just like time, only a socially constructed thing
○ Nazis thought of space as a given - constant unchanging thing that they needed to
live → hence Lebensraum
■ Sole purpose of this is to accommodate those who live in it
■ Nazis assumed that space can be shaped by human action
■ Natural, essential, spiritual quality can be destroyed but substance can never be
destroyed
● As it is for social institution
● Same as race - substance of race is unalterable by human action
○ Core of ideology of Lebensraum
○ Postulates a correspondence between race and space
○ Two concepts that are firm/hard/unmutiable by human action
○ Spaces that are calling for the germans to populate it
■ Vast territories are necessary for the fruitful and prosperous growth of any given
growth
● Core of ideology: only acquisition of space that is corresponding to the
racial makeup of the German nation is necessary for them to reach their
full potential
○ If the Nazis had won the war - used the skulls/bones of German
people and would say this is the natural progression/fate of the
people that the space rejected
○ Couldn’t have taken a different course
■ Inherent in this pull between race and space that this was
to unfold precisely in this fashion
■ This insistence on the way they were making the world
is the way that the world was naturally meant to be --
main potential of these types of arguments
○ Most of these spatial thinkers were less modernists and more
reactionary - looking to the past to idealize ways of life that were
lost and that Nazis wanted to reconstruct them
■ Conceived of the city as an organism - something that grows organically through
the cultural distinction of the race
● Germans don’t really like cities: most of Germany’s jews are in urban
places, model of the city is adapted to anticipate bombings, drug/sex/rock
and roll, mobs, crime, moral decay (prostitution, venereal disease, urban
ills, etc)
○ All the evil things happen in cities
● Revolutions - don’t happen in the fields
● Needed circulation of good - for people to maintain the people’s
community
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○ Flip-side of cities
■ Propaganda cinemas, education, marches/rallies, capital,
and display of loyalty all occur in cities
■ Most importantly: a centralized bureaucracy that allows
people to implement control that creates this kind of
rhetoric
■ Village: more self-sufficient
● Less wasteful in their ways
● Integrated into healthy environment w/ nature
● Healthy children are born here
● Disadvantages:
○ Infrastructure/Institutions of civilizations are disconnected
■ Hard to import/export information and goods
○ No center for cultural/commercial life
○ More primitive satisfaction of needs
■ Can lead for people to not be invested in much else
■ Don’t care about anything other than small surroundings
● Issues of modernists vs. anti-modernists
○ Try to reconcile by celebrating ancestral estate to think about
social organization as organic / rooted in deep history
■ Also though, the spaces they constructed can mimic
capabilities of organically grown spaces
● Bring in combination nature and infrastructure
● Ancestral estate - smallest link of spaces
○ Spatial order = Racial order - basic premise: assumed correspondence between qualities
of race and constitution of soil
■ In turn spatial organization is conceived as naturally interlacing units that
correspond to the communal structures of the Volk
■ One family estate - where race and space coincide - in perfect harmony
● Potential for contamination increases as these spaces grow in size
● Intimate space of the family - where race is reproduced
■ Municipalities in local communities: village community and space of village
■ Landscapes: administered by states
■ Reich’s Space: space they are trying to build - Volk
● All of the space that is supposedly calling for the race
● Shares in the characteristics of its soil (whatever that means) the various
qualities that are similar to qualities of the race
● In the conflict between two races, the stronger race would prevail
○ Weakness was not designed to flourish
○ People that come up with these concepts are very different
people
■ True of practitioners and intellectuals - how they thought
of themselves
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Space as not just a physical thing - many things occur in these spaces, socially constructed, not something that is there without us acting on it. Only exists as such because we make meaning off of it - we interact with it. Just like time, only a socially constructed thing. Nazis thought of space as a given - constant unchanging thing that they needed to live hence lebensraum. Sole purpose of this is to accommodate those who live in it. Nazis assumed that space can be shaped by human action. Natural, essential, spiritual quality can be destroyed but substance can never be destroyed. Same as race - substance of race is unalterable by human action. Postulates a correspondence between race and space. Two concepts that are firm/hard/unmutiable by human action. Spaces that are calling for the germans to populate it. Vast territories are necessary for the fruitful and prosperous growth of any given growth.
