The Legacy of WWI and Freikorps Ideology on Nazi Heim ins Reich and the Eastern Question
Abstract:
The relationship between Germany and the states of Eastern Europe has historically been one of German designs and imaginations, creating conflicting notions of attraction and repulsion to the historical legacy of primordial German Drang Nach Osten “Drive to the East.” These designs would for centuries be of settlement and the spread of German teaching and Kultur. However, during the First World War and Post War period, violent contact with the Slavic people of the East would create a dychometrich view of the relationship between Germany and its neighbors in the East amongst Nationalists and the Right. This would influence and encourage the later radical Nazi occupation of the same territories, with the precedent being laid previously informing the later occupation as to how it should behave.