Drang nach Osten (German:[ˈdʁaŋnaxˈʔɔstn̩];lit. 'Drive to the East',[1][2] or 'push eastward',[3] 'desire to push east')[4] was the name for a 19th-century German nationalist intent to expand Germany into Slavic territories of Central and Eastern Europe.[2][5] In some historical discourse,Drang nach Osten combines historical German settlement in Central and Eastern Europe, medieval (12th to 13th century)[6] military expeditions such as those of theTeutonic Knights (theNorthern Crusades), andGermanisation policies and warfare of modernGerman states such as those that implementedNazism's concept ofLebensraum.[3][7]
In Polish works the termDrang nach Osten could refer to programs for the Germanization of Poland,[8] while in 19th-century Germany the slogan was used variously of a wider nationalist approbation of medievalGerman settlement in the east and the idea of the "superiority of German culture".[1] In the years after World War I the idea of aDrang nach Westen ('drive to the west'), an alleged Polish drive westward—an analogy ofDrang nach Osten—circulated among German authors in reaction to the loss of eastern territories and thePolish Corridor.[1][9]
The concept ofDrang nach Osten became a core element ofNazi ideology. InMein Kampf (1925–1926),Adolf Hitler declares the idea to be an essential element of his reorganisation plans for Europe. He states: "It is eastwards, only and always eastwards, that the veins ofour race must expand. It is the direction which nature herself has decreed for the expansion of the German peoples."[10]
The first known use ofDrang nach Osten was by the Polish journalistJulian Klaczko in 1849, yet it is debatable whether he invented the term as he used it in form of a citation.[11] Because the term is used almost exclusively in its German form in English, Polish, Russian, Czech and other languages, it has been concluded that the term is of German origin.[11]
During the 19th and the early 20th centuryDrang nach Osten has been associated with the medieval GermanOstsiedlung, the High Medieval migration period of ethnic Germans to Eastern Europe, inhabited bySlavs,Balts, andFinno-Ugrics. This movement caused legal, cultural, linguistic, religious and economic changes, that had a profound influence on the history of Eastern Europe between the Baltic Sea and the Carpathians.[12]
Massive population increase during theHigh Middle Ages left increasing numbers of commoners like peasants, craftsmen and artisans displaced, who were joined by nobility not entitled to land inheritance, stimulating the movement of settlers from territories of theHoly Roman Empire, such as theRhineland,Flanders andSaxony into the sparsely-populated East. These movements were supported by the Slavic kings and dukes and the Church.[13][14][15]
The future state ofPrussia, named for the conqueredOld Prussians, had its roots largely in these movements. As the Middle Ages came to a close, theTeutonic Knights, who had been invited to northern Poland byKonrad of Masovia, had assimilated and forcibly converted much of the southern Baltic coastlands.
After thePartitions of Poland by theKingdom of Prussia,Austria, and theRussian Empire in the late 18th century, Prussia gained much of western Poland. The Prussians, and later the Germans, engaged in a policy ofGermanization in Polish territories. Russia andSweden eventually conquered the lands taken by theTeutonic Knights inEstonia andLivonia.
The term became a centerpiece of the program of the German nationalist movement in 1891, with the founding of theAlldeutscher Verband, in the words:"Der alte Drang nach dem Osten soll wiederbelebt werden" ('The oldDrang nach Osten must be revived').[16]Nazi Germany employed the slogan in calling theCzechs a "Slav bulwark against theDrang nach Osten" in the 1938Sudeten crisis.[2]
DespiteDrang nach Osten policies, population movement took place in the opposite direction also, as people from rural, less developed areas in the East were attracted by the prospering industrial areas of Western Germany. This phenomenon became known by the German termOstflucht, literally 'flight from the East'.
With the development ofromantic nationalism in the 19th century, Polish and Russian intellectuals began referring to the GermanOstsiedlung asDrang nach Osten. TheGerman Empire andAustria-Hungary attempted to expand their power eastward; Germany by gaining influence in the decliningOttoman Empire (theEastern Question) and Austria-Hungary through the acquisition of territory in theBalkans (such asBosnia and Herzegovina).
German nationalists called for a newDrang nach Osten to oppose what they conceived as a PolishDrang nach Westen ('thrust toward the West').[9]
The Polish paperWprost used bothDrang nach Osten andDrang nach Westen in August 2002 to title stories about the German companyRWE taking over the PolishSTOEN and Polish migration into eastern Germany, respectively.[17]
Drang nach Westen is also the ironic title of a chapter inEric Joseph Goldberg's bookStruggle for Empire, used to point out the "missing" eastward ambitions ofLouis the German who instead expanded his kingdom to the West.[18]
Adolf Hitler, dictator ofNazi Germany from 1933–1945, advocated for aDrang nach Osten to acquire territory for German colonists at the expense of central and eastern European nations (Lebensraum). The term, by then, had gained enough currency to appear in foreign newspapers without explanation.[19]Nazi propaganda depicted Eastern Europe as historically Germanic territories, promoting the myth that these regions were stolen fromAryan races byHunnic andAvar tribes.[20] Hitler viewed Slavs as primitive subhumans and for this reason detested the German empire'salliance with Austria-Hungary during World War I. In his works such asMein Kampf andZweites Buch, Hitler viewed the Slavs as lacking the capability to form a state.[21]
Anti-Slavism was also a core doctrine ofNazi ideology, which considered Slavs to be racially inferiorUntermensch. Through theGeneralplan Ost ("General Plan for the East"), Nazi Germany sought the total domination by Germanic peoples of Eastern Europe by conducting agenocide of Slavic inhabitants and forcibly deporting rest of the population beyond theUrals.[22][23][24] After Nazi Germany's initiation ofOperation Barbarossa, the propaganda ofAxis powers described the military campaign as a "European crusade against Bolshevism" to foreign powers. Meanwhile,Nazi Germany's domestic propaganda depicted the war as a racial struggle of Aryans against "Jewish and SlavicUntermenschen" to annihilate "Judeo-Bolshevism".[25] TheReich Security Main Office, underHeinrich Himmler, played an active role in distributing racist propaganda pamphlets on these topics across German-occupied territories.[26]
Nazi Germany's eastern campaigns duringWorld War II were initially successful with the conquests of Poland, the Baltic countries, Belarus, Ukraine and much ofEuropean Russia by theWehrmacht;Generalplan Ost was implemented by Nazi forces to eliminate the native Slavic peoples from these lands and replace them with Germans.[27] TheWehrbauer, or soldier-peasants, would settle ina fortified line to prevent civilization arising beyond and threatening Germany.[28]
This was greatly hindered by the lack of German people who desired to settle in the east, let alone act asTeutonic Knights there.[29] Settlements established during the war did not receive colonists from theAltreich, but in the main partEast European Germans resettled from Soviet "spheres of interest" according to theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact,[30] and such Poles as deemedGermanizable by Nazis.[31] However, theSoviet Union began to reverse the German conquests by 1943. Nazi Germany was defeated by theAllies in 1945.
Most of the demographic and cultural outcome of theOstsiedlung was terminated afterWorld War II. Theexpulsion of Germans after World War II east of theOder-Neisse line in 1945–48 on the basis of decisions of thePotsdam Conference were later justified by their beneficiaries as a rollback of theDrang nach Osten. "Historical Eastern Germany"—historically the land of the Baltic people calledOld Prussians who had been colonized and assimilated by GermanDrang Nach Osten—was split betweenPoland,Russia, andLithuania (a Baltic country) and repopulated with settlers of the respective ethnicities. The Old Prussians were conquered by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, and gradually assimilated over the following centuries; theOld Prussian language was extinct by the 17th or early 18th century.Henry Cord Meyer, in his book "Drang nach Osten: Fortunes of a Slogan-Concept in German–Slavic Relations, 1849–1990" claims that the sloganDrang nach Osten[32] originated in the Slavic world, and it also was more widely used than in Germany.[32]
In 1896, a Polish encyclopedia defined 'Drang nach Osten': 'the drive of the Germans eastward to de-nationalise the Polish people' [...]. [...] In Poland, the slogan ties in with nationalist discourse that put the Polish nation in the role of a suffering nation, in particular at the hands of the German enemy. [...] It also responded to the situation in the Prussian-administered part of Poland, where in the later part of the 19th century Bismarck's policy of Germanisation was applied.