Key Terms

 

A ‘Greater Germany’

  • The Germans called it grossdeutschland

  • All German-speaking people united in one Reich

  • Including Austrians, the Sudeten Germans and those “lost” to Poland

  • It would complete what Bismarck had started when Prussia defeated Austria in 1866

 

Lebensraum

  • More living space

  • Space that would be in eastern Europe: Poland and into the Soviet Union

  • Taking Slav land

  • Though Slavs could remain as peasant-farmers with German landlords in an empire that would establish Germans as the ‘Master Race’

 

Anschluss

  • Union between Germany and Austria

  • The annexation of Austria on March 12th, 1938

  • Thereby taking a first step to creating a Greater Germany

  • First mooted when Prussia defeated Austria in 1866 and Germany was created in 1871

 

Appeasement

  • A policy that made concessions to Hitler hoping that he would be satisfied

  • A policy to avoid war

  • A policy to reach an accommodation with Germany to settle its grievances regarding the Treaty of Versailles