A Study on the Application of Central Place Theory to National Land Planning of Nazi Germany

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1. The main motivation of Nazi Germany to apply central place theory to national land planning is due to Konrad Meyer's attention to the theory, who was a professor of agriculture in Berlin University and also the chief of the Reich Association for Area Research. In addition to it, after having finished his Ph. D. dissertation, Christaller got to be connected with volkisch geographers like Friedrich Metz in Freiburg University, and through this channel he was also gradually involved in area planning.2. In Nazi Germany, national land planners pursued a hierarchically structured country not only to solve an imbalance of population distribution, but also to acquire raw materials and to supply food efficiently. Christaller's extended thesis on settlement system which had been presented at the 1938 IGC in Amsterdam met their needs in that his thesis took into account as that system element reclaimed settlement and industrial settlement as well as central place.3. Although after Nazi German occupation of Poland in September, 1939, central place theory was going to be applied to spatial planning to reorganize settlements in the eastern occupied areas, the literature in Polish suggests that in advance of it, by the request of the Reich Association for Area Research geographers in Breslau University made a plan in 1937 to construct a central place network in terms of border defenses in Silesia bordered by Poland.4. Because only citation analysis of relevant literature could not closely capture influences of central place theory upon plans on settlement arrangement proposed by other disciplines, a literature reading work in detail is indispensable in other disciplinary fields.5. An investigation of Christaller's papers written in 1940s will reveal the process that after 1939 Nazi Germany had actually applied central place theory in occupied Poland.