Lit. “Living space” a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch nationalism {see blog post herein] and a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in WW1 (1914–1918) whose ultimate goal of was to establish a Greater German Reich. The Nazi policy Generalplan Ost (Master Plan for the East) was based on its tenets - Slavic populations were to be removed permanently either through mass deportation to Siberia extermination, or enslavement. Jews were to be killed for being “parasitic”.

Hitler told General Wilhelm Keitel [(1882–1946), Chief of Staff of the German Armed Forces High Command from 1938 to 1945: “that the war would be a difficult racial struggle and that the General Gouvernement was set-up to “purify the Reich territory from Jews and Polacks” [At Nuremberg trials Keitel was guilty of the shooting of hostages, the massacre of prisoners of war & civilians in German occupied territories.]

In the words of Norman Naimark, historian : “If the awful counterfactual of a Nazi victory had come to pass… (Slavs) Russians, Belarusians & Ukrainians would surely have shared the fate of the Poles and been eliminated culturally and ethnically as distinct peoples and nations.”

Vejas Liulevicius wrote: “While the Soviets retreated, “trading space for time,” the Nazis gave up time to gain space — seeking an everlasting, timeless present of destructive expansion in their vision of the Ostland. As the tide of events turned in the East, Hitler refused to give up the spaces conquered and forbade withdrawal again and again, producing military disasters.”

See: Wochenspruch der NSDAP series, 17 December 1939 Hitler’s quote reads “we are fighting for the Security of our people & for our living space”

See: Stylised map _Das Grossdeutschland in der Zukunft _ “Greater Germany in the future” (1943) Nazi Occupied Eastern Europe depicted as as a settler-colonial territory of Nazis