Drang Nach Osten

Drang nach Osten (German for "yearning for the East", "thrust toward the East", "push eastward", "drive toward the East" or "desire to push East") was a term coined in the 19th century to designate German expansion into Slavic lands. The term became a motto of the German nationalist movement in the late nineteenth century. In some historical discourses, "Drang nach Osten" combines historical German settlement in Eastern Europe, medieval military expeditions like the ones of the Teutonic Knights, and Germanisation policies and warfare of Modern Age German states like the Nazi lebensraum concept. It was one of the core elements of German nationalism and part of Nazi ideology; as Adolf Hitler said on 7th February 1944: It is eastwards, only and always eastwards, that the veins of our race must expand. It is the direction which Nature herself has decreed for the expansion of the German peoples.