Germany was far more densely populated than France and lacked the colonial outlets available to Britain. For readers today, living as we do in post-agricultural societies, this rhetoric has a somewhat empty ring. It is hard to believe that by Lebensraum Hitler really meant mere land, rather than something more valuable such as industrial raw materials. But in making such assumptions we are in danger of ignoring the fact that ‘land shortage’ was in the 1930s still one of the chief afflictions of German society.
