The Greater Germanic Reich (), fully styled the Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation (), was the official state name of the political entity that Nazi Germany tried to establish in Europe during World War II. The territorial claims for the Greater Germanic Reich fluctuated over time. As early as the autumn of 1933, Adolf Hitler envisioned annexing such territories as Bohemia, western Poland and Austria to Germany and the formation of satellite or puppet states without independent economies or policies of their own.
This pan-Germanic Empire was expected to assimilate practically all of Germanic Europe into an enormously expanded Reich. Territorially speaking, this encompassed the already-enlarged German Reich itself (consisting of pre-1938 Germany proper, Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Czech Silesia, Alsace-Lorraine, Eupen-Malmedy, Memel, Lower Styria, Upper Carniola, Southern Carinthia, Danzig, and Poland), the Netherlands, the Flemish part of Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and at least the German-speaking parts of Switzerland.
The most notable Germanic-speaking exception would have been the United Kingdom: the Nazis' New Order envisaged the role of Britain not as a German province but instead as a German-allied seafaring partner. Another exception was the German-populated territory in South Tyrol, an area which Germany assigned to its fellow-Axis power, Fascist Italy, in 1939. Aside from Germanic Europe, the Reich's western frontiers with France were to revert to those of the earlier Holy Roman Empire, which would have meant the complete German annexation of all of Wallonia, French Switzerland and large areas of northern and eastern France. Additionally, the policy of Lebensraum required mass expansion of Germany and the settlement of Germans eastwards as far as the Ural Mountains (seizing territory from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the Soviet Union in the process). Hitler originally planned for the deportation of any "surplus" Russian population living west of the Urals to resettlement east of the Urals in Siberia.
Ideological background
Racial theories
Nazi racial ideology regarded the Germanic peoples of Europe as belonging to a racially superior Nordic subset of the larger Aryan race, who were regarded as the only true culture-bearers of civilized society. These peoples were viewed as either "true Germanic peoples" that had "lost their sense of racial pride", or as close racial relatives of the Germans. German Chancellor Adolf Hitler also believed that the Ancient Greeks and Romans were the racial ancestors of the Germans, and the first torchbearers of "NordicGreek" art and culture. He particularly expressed his admiration for Ancient Sparta, declaring it to have been the purest racial state:
Furthermore, Hitler's concept of "Germanic" did not simply refer to an ethnic, cultural, or linguistic group, but also to a distinctly biological one, the superior "Germanic blood" that he wanted to salvage from the control of the enemies of the Aryan race. He stated that Germany possessed more of these "Germanic elements" than any other country in the world, which he estimated as "four fifths of our people".
According to the Nazis, in addition to the Germanic peoples, individuals of seemingly non-Germanic nationality such as French, Polish, Walloon, Czech and so on might actually possess valuable Germanic blood, especially if they were of aristocratic or peasant stock. In order to "recover" these "missing" Germanic elements, they had to be made conscious of their Germanic ancestry through the process of Germanization (the term used by the Nazis for this process was Umvolkung, "restoration to the race"). If the "recovery" was impossible, these individuals had to be destroyed to deny the enemy of using their superior blood against the Aryan race. An example of this type of Nazi Germanization is the kidnapping of "racially valuable" Eastern European children. Curiously, those chosen for Germanization who rejected the Nazis were viewed as being racially more suitable than those who went along without objections, as according to Himmler "it was in the nature of German blood to resist".