Lebensraum

Lebensraum, or “living space,” is the expansionist idea at the center of the foreign-policy argument in Hitler’s 5 November 1937 memorandum. Presented as a solution to Germany’s cramped territory and material vulnerability, it turns the supposed needs of a racial community into a claim for land—and ultimately into a justification for conquest. As Hugh Legat reads the document, its argument also becomes evidence that Hitler’s assurances about having no further territorial demands cannot be trusted.

Definition and Racial Premise

Hitler begins by describing German policy as the task of securing and preserving the racial community and enlarging it. The memorandum then presents the community as a population of more than 85 million people, concentrated within Europe’s limited habitable space. From that premise, it claims that Germans have a greater right to living space than other peoples. The wording makes the argument more than a practical discussion of borders or resources: it treats territorial expansion as the fulfilment of a collective racial entitlement.

This sequence matters to the concept’s function in the document. The policy starts with the preservation of a people, moves to the asserted inadequacy of the space it occupies, and arrives at an expansionist demand. By putting these steps together, Hitler presents the acquisition of territory not as one possible choice among several but as a requirement arising from the size and character he assigns to the German population. The memorandum’s claim is political and ideological, not a neutral description of demographic need.

From Economic Pressure to Territorial Expansion

As Legat reads on, the case for living space becomes closely tied to material pressures. Hitler’s analysis begins with Germany’s increasing need for food and acknowledges that the economy cannot sustain rearmament at its current pace. It also identifies vulnerability to international trade sanctions and interruptions in supply. These details place Lebensraum within an argument about economic security: dependence on external trade is represented as a danger, while territorial acquisition is offered as the remedy.

The document specifies what kind of land is sought. It insists that the object is not to acquire population but to gain space for agricultural use, and that the necessary space can be found only in Europe. That distinction gives the proposal a practical-sounding focus on farmland while preserving its larger territorial ambition. The text’s sequence moves from food needs and economic fragility to land as the answer, narrowing the apparent alternatives until expansion seems unavoidable within Hitler’s own reasoning.

That reasoning ends in an explicit commitment to force. The memorandum states that Germany’s problem can be solved only by force and gives 1943–45 as the latest point by which Hitler, if still alive, intends to resolve the question of space. The timeline makes Lebensraum more than a distant aspiration: it places the policy within a strategic horizon. Legat notices the document’s date—5 November 1937—and measures it against the present, less than eleven months later. The gap between the memorandum’s planning and the current diplomatic crisis makes its argument feel immediate rather than remote.

Austria and Czechoslovakia as Strategic Steps

The memorandum names the incorporation of Austria and Czechoslovakia as developments that would substantially improve Germany’s position from a political and military perspective. It claims that incorporating them would create shorter and better frontiers, free forces for other purposes, and permit the formation of as many as twelve new divisions, roughly one for each million inhabitants. In this account, territorial expansion serves both the stated need for living space and the strengthening of military capacity.

The document’s discussion therefore links the broad claim to specific countries and concrete strategic advantages. Austria and Czechoslovakia are not described merely as destinations for settlement or agricultural land; their incorporation is also presented as a way to improve borders and release military resources. Legat reads the memorandum’s second part as recording alarm among senior military commanders and the Foreign Minister about the practicability of Hitler’s strategy. Their concerns include the strength of the French Army, Czech border defences, and the weakness of Germany’s motorised divisions. The later replacement of those three men, Legat realizes, gives their objections added significance within the document’s account of the regime’s changing leadership.

The Memorandum as Warning

The novel frames Lebensraum not only through Hitler’s exposition but through the circumstances in which the memorandum is read and carried into diplomacy. Legat first encounters its argument while the negotiations are moving toward a deal. After learning that the talks may conclude, he returns to the document and reads more quickly, taking in its case for force, its deadline, and its plans for Austria and Czechoslovakia. The shift in pace gives the ideas an accumulating force: the memorandum’s economic rationale leads into a territorial programme, then a military timetable.

Paul von Hartmann presents the document to Neville Chamberlain as the minute of a meeting with Hitler’s senior military commanders in the previous November, saying it explicitly commits Hitler to war. He explains that a German diplomat has passed it to him in strict confidence. Hartmann argues that the memorandum contradicts Hitler’s claim that he has no further territorial demands in Europe: the acquisition of Austria and Czechoslovakia, he warns, is only the beginning of a war of conquest for living space. He also points to the removal of the commanders and Foreign Minister who had expressed reservations, and urges Chamberlain not to sign the agreement that night.

Chamberlain does not accept Hartmann’s warning as a reason to abandon the conference. He emphasizes the political difficulty of taking up arms to deny ethnic Germans the self-determination they seek, and says his immediate objective is to avert war while attempting to build a lasting peace. His response places the memorandum’s long-range claims against the urgent pressures of diplomacy. Lebensraum thus acquires a dramatic significance beyond its definition: it is the idea Hartmann believes exposes the danger hidden behind Hitler’s present claims, while Chamberlain weighs that warning against the immediate prospect of war and the case for self-determination. The document makes the two positions confront one another, but it does not resolve their disagreement.