Claim: Adolf Hitler was in support of German settlement in Eastern Europe.

The German concept of Lebensraum -LRB- -LSB- ˈleːbənsˌʁaʊm -RSB- , `` living space '' -RRB- refers to policies and practices of settler colonialism which proliferated in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s . First popularized around 1901 , Lebensraum became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in World War I -LRB- 1914 -- 1918 -RRB- originally , as the core element of the Septemberprogramm of territorial expansion . The most extreme form of this ideology was supported by the Nazi Party -LRB- NSDAP -RRB- and Nazi Germany until the end of World War II .   Following Adolf Hitler 's rise to power Lebensraum became an ideological principle of Nazism , and provided justification for the German territorial expansion into East-Central Europe . The Nazi Generalplan Ost policy -LRB- the Master Plan for the East -RRB- was based on its tenets . It stipulated that most of the indigenous populations of Eastern Europe would have to be removed permanently -LRB- either through mass deportation to Siberia , death , or enslavement -RRB- including Polish , Ukrainian , Russian , and other Slavic nations considered racially inferior and non-Aryan . The Nazi government aimed at repopulating these lands with Germanic colonists in the name of Lebensraum during World War II and thereafter . The entire populations were to be decimated by starvation , allowing for their own agricultural surplus to feed Germany .   Hitler 's strategic program for world domination was based on the belief in the power of Lebensraum , pursued by a racially superior society . People deemed to be part of inferior races , within the territory of Lebensraum expansion , were subjected to expulsion or destruction . The eugenics of Lebensraum assumed the right of the German Aryan master race -LRB- Herrenvolk -RRB- to remove indigenous people they considered to be of inferior racial stock -LRB- Untermenschen -RRB- in the name of their own living space . Nazi Germany also supported other ` Aryan ' nations ' pursuing their own Lebensraum , including Fascist Italy 's Spazio vitale .