Drang nach Osten
- "Drang nach Osten" is also a game in the "Europa" wargame series.
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Drang nach Osten (German for "Drive towards the East") was a term used by 19th century intellectuals and Nazi propaganda to explain Germany's desire of land and influence in Eastern Europe (see Lebensraum). After World War II, the term was used by Polish propaganda to corroborate anti-German sentiments. In some instances, Drang nach Osten refers to the medieval German eastern colonization itself.
Background
Drang nach Osten is connected with the medieval German Ostsiedlung. This "east colonization" referred to the expansion of German culture, language, states, and settlement eastern European regions inhabited by Slavs and Balts.
Population growth during the High Middle Ages stimulated movement of peoples from the Rhenish, Flemish, and Saxon territories of the Holy Roman Empire eastwards into the less-populated Baltic region and Poland. These movements were supported by the German nobility, the Slavic kings and dukes, and the medieval Church. The majority of this settlement was peaceful, although it sometimes took place at the expense of Slavs and pagan Balts (see Northern Crusades).
The future state of Prussia, named for the conquered Old Prussians, had its roots largely in these movements. As the Middle Ages came to a close, the Teutonic Knights, who had been invited to northern Poland by Konrad of Masovia, had assimilated and forcibly converted much of the southern Baltic coastlands. The Teutonic Knights became a Polish vassal in 1466.
After the Partitions of Poland by the Kingdom of Prussia, Austria, and the Russian Empire in the late 18th century, Prussia gained much of western Poland. Russia and Sweden eventually conquered the lands taken by the Livonian Order in Estonia and Livonia.
Drang nach Osten
With the development of romantic nationalism in the 19th century, Polish and Russian intellectuals began referring to the German Ostsiedlung as a Drang nach Osten, or drive to the east. The German Empire and Austria-Hungary attempted to expand their power eastward; Germany by gaining influence in the declining Ottoman Empire (the Eastern Question) and Austria-Hungary through the acquisition of territory in the Balkans (such as Bosnia and Herzegovina). Alongside the Kulturkampf policies directed against Catholics, Imperial Germany tried to recolonize its eastern (mostly-Catholic) Polish-inhabitated territories with Germans.
Halford John Mackinder's The Geographical Pivot of History pointed out the strategic position of Eastern Europe. German nationalists pointed to the historic and contemporary movements towards Eastern Europe as proof of German "vitality", while critics claimed it was another example of German imperialistic tendencies which contributed to the outbreak of World War I (see also Geopolitik).
The war ended with the Treaty of Versailles, by which most or parts of the Imperial German provinces of Posen, West Prussia, and Upper Silesia were given to reconstituted Poland; the West Prussian city of Danzig became the Free City of Danzig. Poland at this stage was in an expansionist nationalist phase under Marshal Józef Piłsudski, and, according to some writers, used the opportunity for a first wave of assimilation and expulsion of German populations, thus reversing the trend of German eastward expansionism.[1]
Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933-1945, called for a Drang nach Osten to acquire territory for German colonists at the expense of eastern European nations (Lebensraum). His eastern campaigns during World War II were initially successful with the conquests of Poland and much of European Russia by the Wehrmacht; Generalplan Ost was designed to remove the native Slavs from these lands and replace them with Germans. However, the Soviet Union began to reverse the German conquests by 1943, and Nazi Germany was defeated by the Allies in 1945.
Not only was the Drang nach Osten reversed, but the Ostsiedlung was as well. The massive expulsion of German populations east of the Oder-Neisse line in 1945-48 on the basis of decisions of the Potsdam Conference were later justified by their beneficiaries as a rollback of the Drang nach Osten. Historical Eastern Germany was split between Poland, Russia, and Lithuania and the boundaries of the German states (East Germany and West Germany) generally became that of before the Ostsiedlung began.