"Volk ohne Raum" (German pronunciation: [fɔlk ˈʔoːnə ˈʁaʊm]; "people without space") was a political slogan used in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany.
[1] The slogan was used in a political context to suggest that the Germans had become a people without living space (Lebensraum), struggling with poverty, misery, hunger and overpopulation as a result of to the Treaty of Versailles which served to deprive Germany of her colonial empire.
[2] Closely linked to this idea was the claim that the earth was divided unfairly among the Great Powers, leaving the Germans possessing little land compared to the less populous European nations.
In Nazi propaganda, the slogan was repeatedly used to justify or legitimize the German conquest of Poland and the Soviet Union.
"[3] In order to justify their Drang nach Osten ("desire to push East"), the Nazis amended the slogan of Volk ohne Raum by declaring the vast, sparsely populated lands of Russia a Raum ohne Volk (a "space without people") which had to be conquered by Germany, the "nation without space".