The Nazi government openly pursued and practiced aggressive territorial
expansionism, intending to further extend the already greatly increased territorial base of the German state. In anticipation of these expected future territorial enlargements, potential new districts were theorized upon at length by Nazi ideologists, government officials, and territorial planning departments. These expansions were intended to take place in two distinct ways:
Territorial expansion into Eastern Europe To expand the
Lebensraum of the German people, the
Slavic,
Baltic and other populations of
Eastern Europe were intended to be wiped out through a combined process of
extermination,
expulsion,
starvation, and
enslavement that would effectively
Germanize these territories in the long run. Nazi racial offices planned that the colonization with
Germanic peoples of these conquered eastern territories was to proceed most intensively in the three so-called
Siedlungsmarken (Settlement
marches) or
Reichsmarken of Ingermannland (
Ingria), the
Memel-
Narew area, and the Southern
Ukraine and the
Crimean peninsula. The latter of these was intended to be newly re-organized as a
Gau Gotenland (
Gau of
Gothland), in honour of the
Crimean Goths who had at one point dwelled there. In a conference on 16 July 1941, discussing the future organization of the conquered Soviet territories, Hitler stated his intention to turn not only the areas mentioned above but also the entire Baltic region (
Reichskommissariat Ostland), the
Volga German colony, and the
Baku district into future
Reichsgebieten (Reich territories). On 3 November 1941, he also elaborated on the
toponymic aspect of Germanizing the east: . The central and upper
Vistula valley within the
General Government were variously discussed as having to become either a single
Vandalengau (
Gau of the
Vandals) or 3-5 other new Reichsgaue. An earlier proposal from 1939 also advocated for the creation of a
Reichsgau Beskidenland, which was to stretch from the area to the west of
Kraków to the
San river in the east. In Axis-occupied Yugoslavia,
Sepp Janko, Nazi representative of
Danube Swabian interests, pushed for the establishment of a
Reichsgau Banat or
Prinz-Eugen-Gau, which would have encompassed the Yugoslavian territories of
Bačka,
Banat, parts of
Transylvania (
Siebenbürgen) and
Baranya.
Annexation of the Germanic countries The Nazi
racial categorization of the
ethnic groups of Europe classified the
Northern Europeans, especially those closely related to the
Germans (itself considered to be a single nationality of which
Swiss and
Austrians were nothing but sub-regional identities at best) such as the
Dutch, the
Flemings, the
Danish,
Norwegians,
Swedish, and
English as part of a superior
Aryan-
Nordic master race (
Herrenrasse). Following the
integration of
Austria into
Greater Germany (
Großdeutschland),
Hitler decided that he would follow the same policy in the future for all other countries that he regarded by virtue of their perceived racial qualifications as "belonging" to the Reich. This meant that the
Low Countries, at least the
German-speaking parts of
Switzerland,
Liechtenstein and the
Scandinavian states were eventually to be annexed into a much larger
Greater Germanic Reich (
Großgermanisches Reich) by being broken up into smaller state and party administrative units, such as Denmark into a
Gau Nordmark, and the Netherlands into a
Gau Westland. Afterwards the very notion of these countries ever having been independent or separate from the rest of the Reich was to be suppressed indefinitely. The objective called for the inauguration of a new period of rapidly enforced
Gleichschaltung, the end result of which would be that aside from their local "language dialects" these countries were to become perfect duplicates of
National Socialist Germany in all political and social respects. Himmler's never-realized
Project Burgund intended to revert the western borders of Germany with
France to those of the late-medieval
Holy Roman Empire. A strip of eastern France from the mouth of the
Somme to
Lake Geneva (the so-called
"closed" or "forbidden" zone of
German occupied France) was prepared to be annexed to the German Reich as
Reichsgau Burgund, with
Nancy (
Nanzig) as the capital. == See also ==