Lebensraum

Hitler called for "Lebensraum" in Eastern Europe.

The title of this article evokes memories of the beginning of World War II and reveals one method dictators use to increase their power. In China’s case, Xi Jinping’s Anschluss of Hong Kong in June 2020 fits nicely with the way Hitler began his initial European expansion strategy, called Lebensraum (living space). In Zweites Buch, Hitler said that to dominate the world, Germany must expand its borders and areas it controls. The first way to start achieving Lebensraum would be through Anschluss — the unification of Austria and Germany. Further, he envisioned an expansion that would include Poland, Czechoslovakia, the rest of Europe and Russia.

Geographers accepted this enlarged meaning of the term and spoke readily of geographical Räume and Lebensräume of peoples, even in cases where no real three-dimensional distribution was implied.

Even when there aren’t any explosions going on, when you’re scanning a distant compound with your sniper rifle, trying to decide which soldier would be the best one to kill first, before every enemy in a two-mile radius deduces your exact position like a vodka-drinking sextant, everything from a certain distance disappears into this weird glowing haze, like the Russians are occupying the surface of Mercury — which is beyond even the most liberal interpretation of lebensraum.