The German Question, Part One Hundred Forty-Four

"Hitler Rules Germany" Part Two/C
"Germany In World War Two" Part Two/F 1
"Germany Versus the Soviet Union" Part One "Background"

Going back to his book "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle"), Hitler talked often about Germans needing "Lebensraum" ("living space"). In Europe (and elsewhere, for that matter), looking well back in history, as various peoples settled into areas, developing their respective homelands, they often lacked various resources to help with their existence or to keep up with the changes taking place over the centuries, or to keep up with their own population growth. This led to one of two things happening; either they developed some sort of commerce with other people to get the items or land they needed, or they tried to take what they needed by conquest. If you have followed this series, you have seen how rulers tried to gain lands or specific resources by a variety of methods, including "strategic marriages," trade deals, and certainly wars (indeed "ego" played a part, too). For centuries, the "ethnic" composition of a region did not much matter to the rulers. They wanted certain territories for waterways, raw materials or other resources, including later, factories these areas possessed, not necessarily for the people who lived there. Later, however, the people living in these various territories developed a much more cohesive sense of "belonging to particular groups," which brought on the development of "nationalism" and the desire of these groups of people to live together and be ruled by people with much their same background, especially language, and often other characteristics, like religion. With so many territorial changes over the centuries having been made with little or no regard to the "ethnic background" of the population, the new sense of nationalism was bound to bring conflict. With western and central Europe more densely populated, Hitler saw the more sparsely populated, but agriculturally, and even industrially productive, areas of the Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union as the target for German expansion.

The population of these areas would become slaves to Germans, or be "eliminated." In Poland, many Poles in the areas annexed to Germany were moved to other regions, and per the agreement with the Soviet Union, Germans were resettled from Soviet controlled areas to places like the former Polish Corridor. Further, again per the German-Soviet agreement, in 1940 the Soviets moved into the small Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and they then annexed them to the Soviet Union. There were German minority settlements* within both Latvia and Estonia, some of these German settlements dating back centuries. A process of resettlement of these "Baltic Germans" to former Polish territory started, but it was interrupted by Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

Further, also per the German-Soviet agreement, the Soviet Union pressured Rumania for a large region of its eastern boundary, called Bessarabia, and also a part of the Bukovina region, and these areas were annexed to the expanding Soviet empire. The turmoil caused the abdication of the Rumanian king, who was succeeded by King Michael, a great-great grandson of Britain's Queen Victoria. However, much of the real power lay with right wing general, Ion Antonescu, who became Prime Minister. Antonescu was pro-German, and Rumania became much closer with Hitler's Reich as a consequence. Rumania signed the Axis alliance within weeks of Antonescu's taking power. Rumania was very important to Hitler's plans, because of extensive oil reserves and oil refineries located there.** German troops and military advisers were permitted on Rumanian territory. Germany now had a common border with the Soviet Union from northern Europe to southern Europe; that is, with its own border in East Prussia and in occupied Poland, combined with the pro-German nations in eastern Europe, and Finland, in the far north, a nation anxious to get back the territory it ceded to the Soviets in 1940. Hitler now prepared to use that lengthy border to invade his "pact partner," the Soviet Union.

* These Germans were often referred to as "Baltic Germans."

** So, as you can see, the battle over oil was well under way long before our own era. It also demonstrates the point I made in the opening part above about nations and resources. Germany was technologically advanced in the automotive and aviation industries compared to many other nations, including the various military aspects of these industries, but it lacked extensive oil of its own as fuel for its vehicles, although this was not a situation limited to Germany, as other nations suffered similar low domestic oil production.

WORD HISTORY:
Soviet-This word came into use in English in the aftermath of the Bolshevik takeover in Russia. It is a compound formed from "su" and "vetu;" "su" meaning "with" and "vetu" meaning "counsel, advise." The history of both of these words is sketchy beyond about 900 A.D., but the compound goes back to Old Church Slavonic "suvetu," with a general meaning of "with agreement" (to something). Old Church Slavonic was the oldest form of written Slavic, developed back around 900 to translate religious texts into Slavic; thus the "church" terminology. The term passed into Old Russian, still with the same spelling, before altering to "sovet" ("совет" in the Cyrillic alphabet used by Russian, Serbian, and Bulgarian, for instance), which meant "council." The Bolsheviks used the term for a type of "governance council of workers." Once in power, the Bolsheviks "united" these various councils, giving the former Russian Empire the name "Soviet Union," a shortened form of "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."