Frustration in Germany
by Josh

The natural state of things is a state of peace where people are getting along. This gets upset when aggression is added to the equation. War is a state created directly by showing aggression through being threatening towards or attacking another party. These aggressive acts are reflections of the group's want for self-preservation. When a group is faced by a situation which seems dangerous, the group reacts in a violent way to make sure the situation gets resolved. A country’s livelihood is based on its population of people and when its people’s livelihoods are threatened it is something which needs addressed. So when there is a shortage of food and its population is facing starvation the country’s government is hard pressed to find a solution. When a country has lost its food sources and its people are facing starvation, which would then lead to riots and civil violence, it looks to at the different ways to solve the problem. In this example, the quickest way to solve the food shortage would be to step over its boundaries and take from the food sources of other countries. The group in question will then do everything it can at that moment to ensure their continued survival (Ryan).

Hitler had declared in his book, Meinkapf that he would attempt to expand the country's borders to all the surrounding areas to incorporate all of the German people and to "save" the Aryan race (Ensor). He wanted to set up a state in Europe where Germany was the major power. These decisions were also facilitated by an idea that his country's population was growing too quickly and would very soon push the limits of the country’s ability to feed itself. So the idea to begin expanding was pushed forward because of this seemingly immanent danger to the survival of the country. Of course, this was followed by the invasion of the nearby countries. Germany’s economy was in a horrible state, having been devastated by the involvement in World War I. The economy was in a downward spiral due a combination of a large part of the economy being focused on the war effort and having yet to turn back to civilian production as well as Germany being forced to pay billions in war reparations to the other countries. This, along with a general depressed state of the population from the large number of killings and the sense of being cheated following the Treaty of Versailles, drove the leadership to act in a way which it normally may not have. Hitler and his top advisers decided that to keep their country from essentially imploding from the many different factors violent action needed to occur, which came in the form of military expansion.

The frustration-aggression theory states that motivation for aggression increases when current behavior is interrupted or prevents us from reaching a goal. Basically, the combination of Barker, Dembo and Lewin were stating that when a person is kept from having something they want they have a greater propensity for violence and aggression. In one study researchers placed a toy beyond the reach of children and kept them from having the toy for a period of time. After the children were eventually allowed to have the toy they tended to exhibit aggressive behavior and play with the toy violently (Barker). In the case of Nazi Germany, they were faced with a situation from which it seemed nearly impossible to recover. In order to get enough resources to sustain their projected population and not only keep their country from collapsing but once again become a world superpower, they would have to go to increased measures and responded aggressively. Bringing the economy back to life to begin supporting a population that was growing and accustomed to a good quality of life was too large a task to accomplish internally and they used their military to step into the neighboring countries to get the resources that would be required to save the country.

Barker, R., Dembo, T. and Lewin, K. (1941) Frustration and aggression: An experiment with young children, University of Iowa Studies in Child Welfare, 18, 1-314. Syque 2002-2008.
Ensor, R. C. K. "Mein Kampf" and Europe. International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1931-1939), Vol. 18, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug., 1939), pp. 478-496.
Ryan, Richard M.; Deci, Edward L. Avoiding Death or Engaging Life as Accounts of Meaning and Culture: Comment on Pyszczynski et al. (2004). PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA.