Blut und Boden
While German dominance from the Atlantic to the Volga was completely secure, Nazi leadership was increasingly uneasy as the Thousand Year Reich entered its third decade. For many Nazi leaders, it seemed as if the entire grand project for the East was on the verge of failing – and there didn’t seem to be way out.
The German occupied territory west of the Volga had seen its “racially inferior” populations reduced by half, or even as much as 80% of the prewar population in some places, through a combination of massacres, starvation, and deadly forced labor. However, while the Nazis had successfully orchestrated a genocide intended to create
Lebensraum (living space) for German settlers, Nazi planners watched birthrate trends was increasing alarm. While there had been a baby boom when the victorious soldiers of the Wehrmacht returned home, these births had merely made up for the deficit incurred during the war, and the birth rate quickly began to decline. The outlawing of Abortion and contraceptives had only a marginal impact on this trend. Despite all of the Nazi regime’s best propaganda efforts to convince Germans to have large families, by 1953 the German birthrate was only somewhat higher than replacement rate, and demographers predicted the birthrate would only stagnate or decline from then on out. Nazi Germany had
Lebensraum, but almost no excess Germans to fill it.
Desperate for any way to reverse the birth trends, Nazi leaders ordered demographers to come up a solution to the “German birth crisis” – no matter how radical or extreme. While many ideas were proposed, the contracted demographers agreed on two main things. First, the demographers concluded that having more Germans take up agriculture would be the best way to increase birthrates. Compared to other settings, agriculture enabled parents to make the greatest use of children as supplemental labor – and thus raises the incentive to have children the most (the demographers did caution that using Slavs as serf labor would reduce much of this effect). Second, they warned that unless something could compel Germans into agriculture, there would probably never be enough incentives to prevent a large percentage of Germans from abandoning agriculture and moving to the city, where there were better employment opportunities.
Armed with this information, Nazi planners developed a solution: the creation of
Wehrbauern (defensive peasants). German orphans, Lebensborn, and abducted infants from “racially valuable” Slavs would be made wards of the SS and trained to be
Wehrbauern. In order to prevent
Wehrbauern from moving to German cities, they were to be denied a formal education – that would render them unable to be hired for any urban employment. With the exception of being taught the tenants of Nazi ideology (which was mandatory for all German children),
Wehrbauer men were only to be taught farming and how to be a soldier, and
Wehrbauer women were only to be taught how to run a household and be midwives. Aside from a handful of individuals handpicked by the SS to be
Leiter (leader) of their village, the
Wehrbauern were all illiterate. Additionally, while the Nazis made sure that modern medicine, clean drinking water, and gas heating was to be available to the
Wehrbauern, mechanical farming equipment was to be banned in the territory settled by the
Wehrbauern in order to make farming as labor intensive as possible (to further incentivize child rearing). Furthermore, all of those deemed “racially inferior” were to be expelled from any territory settled by the
Wehrbauern. Eager to reverse the “German birth crisis” as soon as possible, the Nazi regime immediately began to put the “
Wehrbauer scheme” into action
.
The Institute of Agricultural Sciences and Agricultural Policy of the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Berlin was tasked with finding territory in the occupied East that was suitable for subsistence farming. After four years of field research, three territories, one in Northern Russia, one in the Baltics, and one in Southern Ukraine (Ingermanland, Memelland, and Gotenland, respectively), were identified by the institute. These areas were detached from the
Reichskommissariats, and each was established as a
Siedlungsmark (Settlement March) governed by the SS. This separation prompted a reorganization of the existing
Reichskommissariats, with R.K. Ukraine being divided into R.K. Dnepr and R.K. Don-Wolga, while R.K. Ostland saw its Belarussian territory transferred to the new R.K. Dnepr, and the remainder of the territory was renamed as R.K. Baltenland – bringing the total number of
Reichskommissariats to five. In the
Siedlungsmarken, forced labor of the Slavic underclass was used to clear land and build houses and infrastructure for the first generation of
Wehrbauern (due to arrive in a few years), before being expelled from the territory. Those deemed “racially valuable” within the
Siedlungsmarken were also removed from the territory, but unlike their “racially inferior” counterparts, they were resettled with government assistance in urban centers located in the annexed areas of France (where, detached from their homeland, it was hoped they could be fully Germanized). Apart from a few
Siedlungsstützpunkt (settlement point) hubs on critical transportation arteries, the
Siedlungsmarken were to be completely rural in character (and the
Siedlungsstützpunkt were not allowed to grow above 20,000 people in population).
Nearly a decade after the
Wehrbauer plan was put into action, the first
Wehrbauern were settled in the
Siedlungsmarken. Within 9 months, the first of a second generation of
Wehrbauern had been born. Within a few years, it was clear that the
Wehrbauern were having families much larger than their counterparts in Germany proper. The Nazis had found their solution to the “German birth crisis”.
The rest is history.
In 2019, over 450,000 births were recorded in the
Siedlungsmarken, nearly 25% of all German births, despite the
Siedlungsmarken collectively comprising a population only 1/13th that of the German Reich proper. While the Germany proper only had a total fertility rate of 2.2 children per mother in 2019, Gotenland averaged 7.5 children per mother, Memelland averaged 7.8 children per mother, and Ingermanland averaged astonishing 8.3 children per mother. Nazi Germany has finally attained demographic momentum – and it seems this growth of the German population would continue in exponential fashion. While the
Siedlungsmarken are not limitless, there are still large amounts of unclaimed land for settlement, and Nazi Germany has discussed creating additional
Siedlungsmarken in its occupied territory.
With this newfound demographic security, many believe the Nazi leadership has begun making plans for a second great
Drang nach Osten (drive to the east). While the former Soviet Union had long ago descended into warlordism, Nazi Germany has currently not occupied much territory beyond the Volga River. Now, confident that the
Reichskommissariats west of the Volga would be Germanized in a few generations, experts believe the Nazi leadership is looking further afield. There appears to be a consensus among Nazi leadership that Germany should extend to at least the Urals, while many argue the Wehrmacht should conquer all lands up to the Jenissei River, and a few hardliners advocate seizing all of the former Soviet Union. Those living in the conquered territories would be subject to enslavement at best, and annihilation at worst. Such an expansion will no doubt trigger a response from the Democratic powers.
80 years after the start of the Second World War, mankind appears on the precipice of a third – all because of subsistence farmers in Eastern Europe.
