Drang nach Osten

Drang nach Osten (German: [ˈdʁaŋ nax ˈʔɔstn̩], "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 Central and Eastern Europe, medieval (12th-13th centuries) military expeditions like the ones of the Teutonic Knights (see Northern Crusades), and Germanisation policies and warfare of Modern Age German states like the Nazi Lebensraum concept. In Poland, the term "Drang nach Osten" was used in discourse when describing Germanization of Poland while on the German side the slogan was part of a wider nationalist discourse approving the medieval settlement in the east and the idea of the "superiority of German culture". The slogan Drang nach Westen ("thrust toward the West") derived from "Drang nach Osten" was used to depict an alleged Polish drive westward. It was one of the core elements of German nationalism and part of Nazi ideology; as Adolf Hitler said on 7 February 1945: 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.

The first known use of "Drang nach Osten" was by the Polish journalist Julian Klaczko in 1849, yet it is debatable whether he invented the term as he used it in form of a citation. Because the term is used almost exclusively in its German form in English, Polish, Russian, Czech and other languages, it has been concluded that the term is of German origin.

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