Drang nach Osten
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Template:Lang (Template:IPA; Template:Lit 'Drive to the East',<ref name="Best_2008">Ulrich Best, Transgression as a Rule: German–Polish cross-border cooperation, border discourse and EU-enlargement, 2008, p. 58, Template:ISBN</ref><ref name="Osmańczyk_2003">Edmund Jan Osmańczyk, Anthony Mango, Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements, 2003, p. 579, Template:ISBN</ref> or 'push eastward',<ref name="Lerski_1996">Jerzy Jan Lerski, Piotr Wróbel, Richard J. Kozicki, Historical Dictionary of Poland, 966–1945, 1996, p. 118, Template:ISBN</ref> 'desire to push east')<ref>Marcin Zaborowski, Germany, Poland and Europe, p. 32</ref> was the name for a 19th-century German nationalist intent to expand Germany into Slavic territories of Central and Eastern Europe.<ref name="Osmańczyk_2003"/><ref name="Wippermann">Template:Lang, 1981, p. 87</ref> In some historical discourse, Template:Lang combines historical German settlement in Central and Eastern Europe, medieval (12th to 13th century)<ref>Drang nach Osten in the Encyclopædia Britannica</ref> military expeditions such as those of the Teutonic Knights (the Northern Crusades), and Germanisation policies and warfare of modern German states such as those that implemented Nazism's concept of Lebensraum.<ref name="Lerski_1996"/><ref>Ingo Haar, Historiker im Nationalsozialismus, p. 17.</ref>
In Polish works the term Template:Lang could refer to programs for the Germanization of Poland,<ref> Template:Cite book</ref> while in 19th-century Germany the slogan was used variously of a wider nationalist approbation of medieval German settlement in the east and the idea of the "superiority of German culture".<ref name="Best_2008"/> In the years after World War I the idea of a Template:Lang ('drive to the west'), an alleged Polish drive westward—an analogy of Template:Lang—circulated among German authors in reaction to the loss of eastern territories and the Polish Corridor.<ref name="Best_2008"/><ref name="Hayes_1994">Bascom Barry Hayes, Bismarck and Mitteleuropa, 1994, p. 17, Template:ISBN</ref>
The concept of Drang nach Osten became a core element of Nazi ideology. In Mein Kampf (1925–1926), Adolf Hitler declares the idea to be an essential element of his reorganisation plans for Europe. He states: "It is eastwards, only and always eastwards, that the veins of our race must expand. It is the direction which nature herself has decreed for the expansion of the German peoples."<ref> Hitler, a chronology of his life and time. Milan Hauner, Macmillan, 1983, p. 197.</ref>
Origin of the term
The first known use of Template:Lang was by the Polish journalist Julian Klaczko in 1849, yet it is debatable whether he invented the term as he used it in form of a citation.<ref name="Lawaty_2003">Andreas Lawaty, Hubert Orłowski, Template:Lang, 2003, p. 34, Template:ISBN</ref> Because the term is used almost exclusively in its German form in English, Polish, Russian, Czech and other languages, it has been concluded that the term is of German origin.<ref name="Lawaty_2003"/>
Background
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During the 19th and the early 20th century Template:Lang has been associated with the medieval German Template:Lang, the High Medieval migration period of ethnic Germans to Eastern Europe, inhabited by Slavs, Balts, and Finno-Ugrics. This movement caused legal, cultural, linguistic, religious and economic changes, that had a profound influence on the history of Eastern Europe between the Baltic Sea and the Carpathians.<ref name=sze>Template:Cite web</ref>
Massive population increase during the High Middle Ages left increasing numbers of commoners like peasants, craftsmen and artisans displaced, who were joined by nobility not entitled to land inheritance, stimulating the movement of settlers from territories of the Holy Roman Empire, such as the Rhineland, Flanders and Saxony into the sparsely populated East. These movements were supported by the Slavic kings and dukes and the Church.<ref name="Rösener1992">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Brzechczyn2009">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="FulbrookFulbrook2004">Template:Cite book</ref>
The future state of Prussia, named for the conquered Old Prussians, had its roots largely in these movements. As the Middle Ages came to a close, the Teutonic Knights, who had been invited to northern Poland by Konrad of Masovia, had assimilated and forcibly converted much of the southern Baltic coastlands.
After the Partitions of Poland by the Kingdom of Prussia, Austria, and the Russian Empire in the late 18th century, Prussia gained much of western Poland. The Prussians, and later the Germans, engaged in a policy of Germanization in Polish territories. Russia and Sweden eventually conquered the lands taken by the Teutonic Knights in Estonia and Livonia.
Template:Lang in German discourse
The term became a centerpiece of the program of the German nationalist movement in 1891, with the founding of the Alldeutscher Verband, in the words: Template:Lang ('The old Template:Lang must be revived').<ref>Wippermann, 1981, p. 87</ref> Nazi Germany employed the slogan in calling the Czechs a "Slav bulwark against the Template:Lang" in the 1938 Template:Lang.<ref name="Osmańczyk_2003"/>
Despite Template:Lang policies, population movement took place in the opposite direction also, as people from rural, less developed areas in the East were attracted by the prospering industrial areas of Western Germany. This phenomenon became known by the German term Template:Lang, literally 'flight from the East'.
With the development of romantic nationalism in the 19th century, Polish and Russian intellectuals began referring to the German Template:Lang as Template:Lang. The German Empire and Austria-Hungary attempted to expand their power eastward; Germany by gaining influence in the declining Ottoman Empire (the Eastern Question) and Austria-Hungary through the acquisition of territory in the Balkans (such as Bosnia and Herzegovina).
German nationalists called for a new Template:Lang to oppose what they conceived as a Polish Template:Lang ('thrust toward the West').<ref name="Hayes_1994" />
The Polish paper Template:Lang used both Template:Lang and Template:Lang in August 2002 to title stories about the German company RWE taking over the Polish STOEN and Polish migration into eastern Germany, respectively.<ref>Paul Reuber, Anke Strüver, Günter Wolkersdorfer, Template:Lang, 2005, Template:ISBN</ref>
Template:Lang is also the ironic title of a chapter in Eric Joseph Goldberg's book Struggle for Empire, used to point out the "missing" eastward ambitions of Louis the German who instead expanded his kingdom to the West.<ref>Eric Joseph Goldberg, Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict Under Louis the German, 817–876, pp. 233ff, 2006, Template:ISBN</ref>
Lebensraum concept of Nazi Germany
Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933–1945, advocated for a Template:Lang to acquire territory for German colonists at the expense of central and eastern European nations (Template:Lang). The term, by then, had gained enough currency to appear in foreign newspapers without explanation.<ref>Carlson, p. 233.</ref> Nazi propaganda depicted Eastern Europe as historically Germanic territories, promoting the myth that these regions were stolen from Aryan races by Hunnic and Avar tribes.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Hitler viewed Slavs as primitive subhumans and for this reason detested the German empire's alliance with Austria-Hungary during World War I. In his works such as Mein Kampf and Zweites Buch, Hitler viewed the Slavs as lacking the capability to form a state.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Anti-Slavism was also a core doctrine of Nazi ideology, which considered Slavs to be racially inferior Untermensch. Through the Generalplan Ost ("General Plan for the East"), Nazi Germany sought the total domination by Germanic peoples of Eastern Europe by conducting a genocide of Slavic inhabitants and forcibly deporting rest of the population beyond the Urals.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> After Nazi Germany's initiation of Operation Barbarossa, the propaganda of Axis powers described the military campaign as a "European crusade against Bolshevism" to foreign powers. Meanwhile, Nazi Germany's domestic propaganda depicted the war as a racial struggle of Aryans against "Jewish and Slavic Untermenschen" to annihilate "Judeo-Bolshevism".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The Reich Security Main Office, under Heinrich Himmler, played an active role in distributing racist propaganda pamphlets on these topics across German-occupied territories.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
In 1938, Adolf Hitler was given a report on 175 German eastern campaigns conducted during 789–1157, a third of which were successful, quarter were semi-successful, and the rest were a failure. Twenty of these eastern campaigns ended in military disaster for Germany.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Nazi Germany's eastern campaigns during World War II were initially successful with the conquests of Poland, the Baltic countries, Belarus, Ukraine and much of European Russia by the Template:Lang; Template:Lang was implemented by Nazi forces to eliminate the native Slavic peoples from these lands and replace them with Germans.<ref>"Hitler's plans for Eastern Europe"</ref> The Template:Lang, or soldier-peasants, would settle in a fortified line to prevent civilization arising beyond and threatening Germany.<ref>Robert Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology p. 190. Template:ISBN</ref>
This was greatly hindered by the lack of German people who desired to settle in the east, let alone act as Teutonic Knights there.<ref>Robert Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology p. 191. Template:ISBN</ref> Settlements established during the war did not receive colonists from the Template:Lang, but in the main part East European Germans resettled from Soviet "spheres of interest" according to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact,<ref>Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web pp. 206–209, Template:ISBN</ref> and such Poles as deemed Germanizable by Nazis.<ref>Richard Overy, The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, p. 543. Template:ISBN</ref> However, the Soviet Union began to reverse the German conquests by 1943. Nazi Germany was defeated by the Allies in 1945.
Expulsion of Germans from the East after World War II
Template:Main Most of the demographic and cultural outcome of the Template:Lang was terminated after World War II. The expulsion of Germans after World War II east of the [[Oder-Neisse line|Template:Lang line]] in 1945–48 on the basis of decisions of the Potsdam Conference were later justified by their beneficiaries as a rollback of the Template:Lang. "Historical Eastern Germany"—historically the land of the Baltic people called Old Prussians who had been colonized and assimilated by German Template:Lang—was split between Poland, Russia, and Lithuania (a Baltic country) and repopulated with settlers of the respective ethnicities. The Old Prussians were conquered by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, and gradually assimilated over the following centuries; the Old Prussian language was extinct by the 17th or early 18th century. Henry Cord Meyer, in his book "Template:Lang: Fortunes of a Slogan-Concept in German–Slavic Relations, 1849–1990" claims that the slogan Template:Lang<ref name="Meyer_1996">Hnet Review of Template:Webarchive Henry Cord Meyer. Template:Lang: Fortunes of a Slogan-Concept in German–Slavic Relations, 1849–1990. Bern: Peter Lang, 1996. 142 pp. Notes and index. (paper), Template:ISBN. Reviewed by Douglas Selvage , Yale University.</ref> originated in the Slavic world, and it also was more widely used than in Germany.<ref name="Meyer_1996"/>
See also
- Template:Lang
- Template:Lang
- Template:Lang
- Template:Lang
- Ober Ost
- Expulsion of Poles by Germany
- Template:Lang
- Germanization
- Template:Lang
- Manifest destiny
- Westernization
- Berlin Conference (March 31, 1917)
- Extermination camp
- Slavophobia
References
Bibliography
- Pages with ignored display titles
- Anti-Slavic sentiment
- Anti-Russian sentiment
- German words and phrases
- Political quotes
- Quotations from religion
- Slogans
- 1840s neologisms
- 1840s quotations
- 19th century in Germany
- History of Germany–Poland relations
- Nazi terminology
- Former eastern territories of Germany
- Proto-Nazism
- Germanization