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Hitler's Need for Lebensraum for the Aryan People


Hitler explained in his book, Mein Kampf the process that he went through as a boy,
his upbringing and how he was driven to be a self-taught and read student of history, especially
that of his homeland of Austria and nearby Germany. He said that he found Germanys problem
to not be that of pure Aryan, a word he and contemporaries of his time used to mean those of
pure Nordic descent; also referred to as Germanic. He instead concluded that it was the problem
of the other races and countries around Germany that caused the problems leading to wars, and
that the Germanic people, or Aryan race needed their own space, their own country to dwell in;
that Lebensraum, (directly translated to an area for a nation or country) sufficient for Germany
would allow their nation to flourish and grow to provide a better economy, and land to raise
children (Lyons, 2000).
Further, Hitler did his best to build on others interpretations of the geopolitical
environment to try and scare the citizens of Germany to believe that the geographic location of
Germany put them at a disadvantage. That being set between a hostile neighbor France to the
West, and a much larger and more populated neighbor of the Soviet Union to the East made
Germany inherently susceptible to attack and required the annexation and occupation of their
Germanic neighbors around them to strengthen their country in resources and people (Lyons,
2000).

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