Lebensraum

Lebensraum, meaning "living space," was a central ideological concept in Nazi Germany that Hitler used to justify territorial expansion eastward. Rooted in earlier German nationalist and social Darwinist thinking, the idea held that the German people required additional territory to thrive and grow as a nation. Hitler articulated this vision in Mein Kampf, arguing that Germany needed to acquire land in Eastern Europe—particularly from Slavic peoples, whom Nazi ideology deemed racially inferior—to secure resources, agricultural land, and room for a growing "Aryan" population.
This ideology drove a series of aggressive territorial moves in the late 1930s. In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria in what was called the Anschluss, uniting the two German-speaking nations and violating the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler framed it as a natural unification, and the move met little resistance from Western powers.

Later that year, Hitler demanded the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia with a substantial ethnic German population. Britain and France, desperate to avoid another war, pursued a policy of appeasement—a diplomatic strategy of making concessions to aggressive powers in hopes of preventing conflict. Traumatized by the devastation of the First World War and facing economic troubles at home, British and French leaders believed that satisfying Hitler's demands for territory with ethnic German populations might preserve peace. At the Munich Conference in September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French leaders agreed to let Germany annex the Sudetenland in exchange for Hitler's promise of no further expansion. Chamberlain famously declared he had secured "peace for our time."

That promise proved hollow. In March 1939, Germany occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia, dismembering the country entirely. This act finally discredited appeasement and demonstrated that Hitler's ambitions extended far beyond uniting ethnic Germans.

​The Munich Crisis

In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union shocked the world by signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression agreement between two ideological enemies. The pact included secret protocols dividing Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, with plans to partition Poland between them. This agreement freed Hitler from the threat of a two-front war and cleared the path for invasion. When Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, Britain and France declared war, beginning the Second World War.

Nazi - Soviet, Non-Aggression Pact