Much
of the European Union's green sustainable development plans are largely
based on government controlled land use planning theories rooted in the
lebensraum tradition. Literally, lebensraum means "living space."
Lebensraum was originally developed by German geographer Friedrich
Ratzel (1844-1904) and then greatly expanded under the banner of
National Socialism (1933-1945).
Ratzel is the father of modern
political geography which is commonly called geopolitics. He believed
history was largely a natural evolutionary development of peoples
looking for geographical living space. Ratzel also held that expanding
borders reflected the biological health of a nation. The National
Socialists adopted Ratzel's mixing of evolutionary theory, biology, and
geopolitics in their own version of lebensraum.
Karl Haushofer
(1869-1946), who was an early advisor to Hitler, was the link between
Ratzel and National Socialism. Karl Haushofer's father was a friend of
Ratzel. Karl was a member of the Thule Society before it was converted
into the Nazi Party in 1920. Haushofer was also the mentor of Rudolf
Hess, who was a green vegetarian mystic. Hess was Hitler's personal
secretary up until 1941. Haushofer and Hess helped Hitler write Mein
Kampf.
There was also a strong connection between lebensraum and
the growing political empire of the Nazi SS under the leadership of
Heinrich Himmler and Walther Darre. Himmler and Darre promoted a "back
to the land" movement under the SS slogan of "blood and soil." In
Darre's racist ideology, the economic catastrophe of the 1920's
confirmed the decadence of the modern cosmopolitan city life. Darre
believed that greedy foreign capitalism coupled with international
Marxist class warfare divided the German race so that it was not allowed
to sustain itself in the soil of its own homeland. ...........To Read More....
My Take - I recommend reading the author's book, Nazi Oaks.
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