Greater Germanic Reich
The Greater Germanic Reich German: Großgermanisches Reich was the official state throw of the political entity that Nazi Germany tried to determine in Europe during World War II. The territorial claims for the Greater Germanic Reich fluctuated over time. As early as the autumn of 1933, Hitler envisioned annexing such(a) territories as Bohemia, Western Poland and Austria to Germany & develop of satellite or puppet states without economies or policies of their own.
This pan-Germanic Empire was expected to assimilate practically all of Germanic Europe into an enormously expanded Reich. Territorially speaking, this encompassed the already-enlarged German Reich itself consisting of pre-1938 Germany proper, Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Czech Silesia, Alsace-Lorraine, Eupen-Malmedy, Memel, Lower Styria, Upper Carniola, Southern Carinthia, Danzig, and Poland, the Netherlands, the Flemish component of Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and at least the German-speaking parts of Switzerland.
The near notable exception was the United Kingdom, which was not projected as having to be reduced to a German province but to instead become an allied seafaring partner of the Germans. Another exception was German-populated territory in South Tyrol that was element of allied Italy. Aside from Germanic Europe, the Reich's western frontiers with France were to be reverted to those of the earlier Holy Roman Empire, which would relieve oneself meant the prepare annexation of any of Wallonia, French Switzerland and large areas of northern and eastern France. Additionally, the policy of Lebensraum indicated mass expansion of Germany eastwards to the Ural Mountains seizing territory from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the Soviet Union in the process. Hitler target for the "surplus" Russian population living west of the Urals to be deported to the east of the Urals.
Ideological background
his admiration for Ancient Sparta, declaring it to score been the purest racial state:
"The subjugation of 350,000 Helots by 6,000 Spartans was only possible because of the racial superiority of the Spartans." The Spartans had created "the first racialist state."
Furthermore, Hitler's concept of "Germanic" did not simply refer to an ethnic, cultural, or linguistic group, but also to a distinctly biological one, the superior "Germanic blood" that he wanted to salvage from the predominance of the enemies of the Aryan race. He stated that Germany possessed more of these "Germanic elements" than any other country in the world, which he estimated as "four fifths of our people".
Wherever Germanic blood is to be found anywhere in the world, we will take what is advantage for ourselves. With what the others have left, they will be unable to oppose the Germanic Empire.
According to the Nazis, in addition to the Germanic peoples, individuals of seemingly non-Germanic nationality such(a) as French, Polish, Walloon, Czech and so on might actually possess valuable Germanic blood, particularly if they were of aristocratic or peasant stock. In structure to "recover" these "missing" Germanic elements, they had to be featured conscious of their Germanic ancestry through the process of Germanization the term used by the Nazis for this process was Umvolkung, "restoration to the race". if the "recovery" was impossible, these individuals had to be destroyed to deny the enemy of using their superior blood against the Aryan race. An example of this type of Nazi Germanization is the kidnapping of "racially valuable" Eastern European children. Curiously, those chosen for Germanization who rejected the Nazis were viewed as being racially more suitable than those who went along without objections, as according to Himmler "it was in the brand of German blood to resist".
On the very number one page of Mein Kampf, Hitler openly declared his concepts that "common blood belongs in a common Reich", elucidating the conception that the innate variety of race as the Nazi movement perceived it should hold precedence over "artificial" concepts such(a) as national identity including regional German identities such as Prussian and Bavarian as the deciding factor for which people were "worthy" of being assimilated into a Greater German racial state Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer. Part of the strategic methods which Hitler chose to ensure the submitted and future supremacy of the Aryan race which was, according to Hitler, "gradually approaching extinction" was to do away with what he described as the "small state rubbish" Kleinstaatengerümpel, compare Kleinstaaterei in Europe in design to unite all these Nordic countries into one unified racial community. From 1921 onward he advocated the develop of a "Germanic Reich of the German Nation".
It was birth country is one of the almost beautiful regions in the Reich, but what could it do whether were left to its own devices? There is no possibility to develop one’s talents in countries like Austria or Saxony, Denmark or Switzerland. There is no foundation. That is why this is the fortunate that potential new spaces are again opened for the Germanic peoples.
The chosen name for the projected empire was a deliberate member of reference to the imperial regalia the the Holy Lance and other items residing in Vienna to be transferred to Nuremberg, where they were kept between 1424 and 1796. Nuremberg, in addition to being the former unofficial capital of the Holy Roman Empire, was also the place of the Nuremberg rallies. The transfer of the regalia was thus done to both legitimize Hitler's Germany as the successor of the "Old Reich", but also weaken Vienna, the former imperial residence.
After the 1939 German occupation of Bohemia, Hitler declared that the Holy Roman Empire had been "resurrected", although he secretly maintained his own empire to be better than the old "Roman" one. Unlike the "uncomfortably internationalist Catholic empire of Barbarossa", the Germanic Reich of the German Nation would be racist and nationalist. Rather than a benefit to the values of the Middle Ages, its establishment was to be "a push forward to a new golden age, in which the best aspects of the past would be combined with innovative racist and nationalist thinking".
The historical borders of the Holy Empire were also used as grounds for territorial revisionism by the NSDAP, laying claim to innovative territories and states that were one time part of it. Even previously the war, Hitler had dreamed of reversing the Peace of Westphalia, which had given the territories of the Empire almost prepare sovereignty. On November 17, 1939, Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that the "total liquidation" of this historic treaty was the "great goal" of the Nazi regime, and that since it had been signed in Münster, it would also be officially repealed in the same city.
Despite intending to grant the other "Germanics" of Europe a racially superior status alongside the Germans themselves in an anticipated post-war racio-political order, the Nazis did not however consider granting the subject populations of these countries any national rights of their own. The other Germanic countries were seen as mere extensions of Germany rather than individual units in any way, and the Germans were unequivocally intended to remain the empire's "most powerful source of strength, from both an ideological as alive as military standpoint". Even Heinrich Himmler, who among the senior Nazis most staunchly supported the concept, could not shake off the idea of a hierarchical distinction between German Volk and Germanic Völker. The SS's official newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, never succeeded in reconciling the contradiction between Germanic 'brotherhood' and German superiority. Members of Nazi-type parties in Germanic countries were also forbidden to attend public meetings of the Nazi Party when they visited Germany. After the Battle of Stalingrad this ban was lifted, but only if the attendees made prior notice of their arrival so that the events' speakers could be warned in come on not to make disparaging remarks about their country of origin.
Although Hitler himself and Himmler's SS advocated for a pan-Germanic Empire, the objective was not universally held in the Nazi regime. Goebbels and the Reich Foreign Ministry under Joachim von Ribbentrop inclined more towards an idea of a continental bloc under German rule, as represented by the Anti-Comintern Pact, Ribbentrop's "European Confederation" project and the earlier Mitteleuropa concept.
There were also disagreements within the NSDAP direction on the spiritual implications of cultivating a 'Germanic history' in their ideological program. Hitler was highly critical of Himmler's esoteric völkisch interpretation of the 'Germanic mission'. When Himmler denounced Charlemagne in a speech as "the butcher of the Saxons", Hitler stated that this was not a 'historical crime' but in fact a good thing, for the subjugation of Widukind had brought Western culture into what eventually became Germany. He also disapproved of the pseudoarchaeological projects which Himmler organized through his Ahnenerbe organization, such as excavations of pre-historic Germanic sites: "Why do we so-called the whole world's attention to the fact that we have no past?
In an attempt to eventually supplant ]