Die Volksdeutschen: An Analysis of the Role of Ethnic Germans in Adolf Hitler's Speeches from 1925 to 1939
Adolf Hilter, foreign policy, ethnic germans
Once analyzed Adolf Hitler's discourses about his foreign policy plans for Germany, even before his rise to power, we can realize the centrality of territorial expansion projects. These projects, which began to be implemented in 1938, had two main goals, the need to expand living space for population growth, and to (re) attach territories and populations that, according to the National Socialists logic, were racially German (Volksdeutechen), but due to international agreements were outside the Reich's borders. Our research will focus exactly on this population. However, we are not interested in the policy pursued by the National Socialists, but how this group appears in the Nazi leader's speech to justify his expansionist plans. To ask this, we propose to investigate the role played by the “ethnic Germans” in Hitler's speeches from the year his book Mein Kampf was published, in 1939, when the last territory was annexed by Germany before the War. In addition, we seek to answer whether foreign policy plans are the same for all “German” territories and populations, and whether or not these projects change over the years.