Word: lebensraum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...need an extra plate, please ask” is hardly the stuff of tyranny. In at least one strongly-worded exhortation, however, there does lie an ominous hint, as Murray demands more Lebensraum: “Do not lean on the crêpe counter!” The owner, who often rolls the crêpes himself (and no, he has not considered importing Dominicans to help, à la “Seinfeld”), explains simply that he treats his customers with respect, and he expects the same. Has he ever banned a troublemaker...
...fact, he wanted to swallow up Russia, Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic countries to augment lebensraum: Germany's vital space. But then why did he launch his destructive war against London? Why did he declare war against the U.S.? Solely to please his Japanese ally? Why did he mandate a policy of cruelty in the Soviet territories occupied by his armies, when certain segments of the population there were ready to greet them with flowers? And finally, why did he invest so much energy in his hatred of Jews? Why did the night trains that took them to their death...
...economic problems can be negotiated among the Germans themselves, but among their neighbors, unification has aroused quite different concerns. Will a united Germany mean the rebirth of dreaded words like Lebensraum and Drang nach Osten? In short, will a united Germany turn nationalistic, threaten its neighbors and try to dominate Europe? "Today the Germans want to think of the future," says Fritz Stern, Seth Low professor of history at Columbia University, "but their neighbors are thinking of the past...
...error, the error that was to destroy him. He decided to invade Soviet Russia. Exactly why he made this catastrophic miscalculation will never be known for sure. In part it was ideology. He had begun his political career by attacking the Bolsheviks, and he dreamed of Germany's finding Lebensraum by colonizing the vast lands to the east. He had written in Mein Kampf: "When we speak of new territory in Europe today, we must think principally of Russia and her border vassal states. Destiny itself seems to wish to point out the way to us here...
...shows no sign of collapse from within. Moreover, its prospects of being punctured from without are slim. Since crazy states tend to be destroyed from the outside, their fate is often a function of their geography. Hitler had the misfortune of being located in Central Europe; his pursuit of Lebensraum ran up against the greatest powers of the day. The Khmer Rouge's bad luck was to be living next door to an equally warlike Viet Nam. Otherwise it would be killing to this day, assuming there were any Cambodians left to kill. Gaddafi had the misfortune of being hard...