Drang nach Osten

Drang nach Osten (ˈdʁaŋ nax ˈʔɔstn̩; 'Drive to the East', or 'push eastward', 'desire to push east') was the name for a 19th-century German nationalist intent to expand Germany into Slavic territories of Central and Eastern Europe. In some historical discourse, Drang nach Osten combines historical German settlement in Central and Eastern Europe, medieval (12th to 13th century) military expeditions such as those of the Teutonic Knights (the Northern Crusades), and Germanisation policies and warfare of modern German states such as those that implemented Nazism's concept of Lebensraum. In Polish works the term Drang nach Osten could refer to programs for the Germanization of Poland, while in 19th-century Germany the slogan was used variously of a wider nationalist approbation of medieval German settlement in the east and the idea of the "superiority of German culture". In the years after World War I the idea of a Drang nach Westen ('drive to the west'), an alleged Polish drive westward—an analogy of Drang nach Osten—circulated among German authors in reaction to the loss of eastern territories and the Polish Corridor. The concept of Drang nach Osten became a core element of Nazi ideology. In Mein 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 of our race must expand. It is the direction which nature herself has decreed for the expansion of the German peoples." The first known use of Drang nach Osten was by the Polish journalist Julian Klaczko in 1849, yet it is debatable whether he invented the term as he used it in form of a citation. 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. History of German settlement in Central and Eastern EuropeOstsiedlung and Prussia During the 19th and the early 20th century Drang nach Osten has been associated with the medieval German Ostsiedlung, the High Medieval migration period of ethnic Germans to Eastern Europe, inhabited by Slavs and Balts.