These are passages from the Goebbels diaries which show that Goebbels, who was repeating the general sentiments of Hitler and the top brass, perceived virtually no imminent threat from the USSR and in fact perceived them as being weak and vulnerable.

Entry November 1939

On the Führer. He again notes the disastrous condition of the Russian army. It is hardly usable as a fighting force.

Entry 15 March 1940

By the way, it is very good that the Russians no longer have a Germanic leadership; so they can never become dangerous for us. And if Stalin shoots his generals, we don’t even have to do that.

Entry 29 March 1941

The big operation comes later: against R. It is carefully camouflaged, only a few people know about it. It is initiated with extensive troop transports to the West. We divert suspicion in all directions, except to the East. A dummy enterprise is prepared against England, and then it’s back and forth in a flash. Ukraine is a good granary. If we sit there, we can last a long time.

That is a candid admission of their pre-meditated plan to attack Russia while deceiving the world about their plans to do so.

That passage is an entry dated 12 May 1941, in which Goebbels speaks about the tensions building with the USSR, saying “above all, we have nothing to fear from the Russians, either militarily or in terms of propaganda.” That’s a clear cut affirmation that the Germans were not fearful of a Russian attack.

Entry 22nd April 1941:

“Article in “Pravda”: Nothing against Germany, Moscow wants peace, etc. So Stalin has already smelt a rat and is waving the peace palm. So that’s how strong we are now. The Russian card no longer stings.“

So less than two months before the invasion Goebbels says Moscow wants PEACE and is WAVING THE PEACE PALM.

Entry 13 May 1941:

“A short walk through forest and meadow. The birch trees are green. How warm the sun shines. I have a great longing for peace, quiet, relaxation and a little happiness. But we only want to think about that when the war is over. Finished the newsreel in the evening. It turns out well after all, after being set to racy music. Watched some more English and Russian newsreels for comparison. This is no competition for us at all. Here you realise how far ahead we are of the others.“

Entry 12th June 1941:

“Report from Bessarabia and the Ukraine: the Russians are staring hypnotically at us and are afraid. They are not doing much. They will be overrun like no people before. And the Bolshevik spook will quickly come to an end. “

So just ten days before the invasion, the above passage suggests the Germans still perceived the Russians to be weak and AFRAID and would be a push over when invaded. It’s also an affirmation of their own pre-meditated invasion plans, “They will be overrun like no people before… the Bolshevik spook will quickly come to an end.”

Very clear.

Entry 14 June 1941:

“In East Prussia, everything is so massed that the Russians could inflict the most serious damage on us through pre-emptive air raids. But they won’t do that. They lack the courage to do so. You have to be bold if you want to win a war.“

So Goebbels muses about a possible Russian air raid, but affirms that “they won’t do that, they lack the courage”! Once again, no serious threat perceived eight days before the invasion.

Entry 15 June 1941:

“From intercepted radio messages, on the other hand, we can gather that Moscow is putting the Russian fleet on standby. So they are not quite as harmless over there as they pretend to be. But the preparations are extremely dilettante. Not to be taken seriously for a real action.“

Entry 16 June 1941:

“The Führer explains the situation to me in detail: the attack on Russia will begin as soon as our deployment is completed. That will be the case in the course of about a week. The campaign in Greece took a lot out of our equipment, so things are taking a little longer. It’s a good thing that the weather was a bit bad and the harvest in the Ukraine is not yet ripe. So we can hope to get most of it. It will be a mass attack on the largest scale. Probably the most massive that history has ever seen. The example of Napoleon will not be repeated. On the very first morning, the bombardment begins from 10,000 barrels. We’re deploying massive new artillery pieces that were intended for the Maginot Line but were no longer needed at the time. The Russians are massed right on the border, the best thing that can ever happen to us. While they spread widely across the country, they posed a greater threat. They have about 180-2 [00] divisions at their disposal, maybe a little less, at least about as many as we do. In terms of personal and material value, they cannot be compared with us at all. The breakthrough occurs at various points. They are rolled up smoothly. The Führer estimates the campaign to last about 4 months, I estimate a lot less. Bolshevism will collapse like a house of cards. We are on the verge of an unprecedented triumph.”

Entry 16 June 1941:

“We must act. Moscow wants to stay out of the war until Europe is tired and bled dry. Then Stalin wants to act, Bolshevise Europe and take up his regiment. He will be thwarted in this. Our action is as prepared as is humanly possible. So many reserves have been built in that failure is quite out of the question. There are no geographical limits to the action. We will fight until there is no Russian army left. Japan is in the alliance. The action is also necessary for this side. Tokyo would never get involved with the USA if Russia were still intact at its back. So Russia must fall for this reason too. England would like to keep Russia as a hope for the future in Europe. That was also Cripp’s mission in Moscow. It has not yet succeeded, the man bears his name wrongly. But Russia would attack us if we became weak, and then we would have the two-front war which we avoid by this preventive action. Only then will we have our backs. I rate the fighting strength of the Russians very low, even lower than the Führer. If an action was and is safe, then this one. We must also attack Russia to free people. An undefeated Russia is constantly forcing 150 divisions on us, whose men we urgently need for our war economy. This has to be intensified in order to carry out our weapons, submarine and aircraft programs in such a way that the USA can no longer harm us. Material, raw materials and machines are there for a 3-hour shift, but the people are missing. If Russia is defeated, then we can dismiss whole cohorts and build it, arm it, prepare it. Only then can the Luftwaffe attack England on a grand scale. An invasion is very unlikely anyway. So it means creating other guarantees for victory.”

Goebbels dabbles in a lot of the propagandistic messaging they were giving at the time of “freeing people” from Bolshevism, pre-emption, etcetera, but he muses again and again how the Russians are weak, they “want to stay out of the war until Europe is tired,” they won’t dare to act against Germany, etc. He even gives another reason for them to attack the USSR, to give Japan confidence to take on America: “Tokyo would never get involved with the USA if Russia were still intact at its back. So Russia must fall for this reason too.” Then he says they were going to take on England after Russia was defeated and its resources conquered: “If Russia is defeated, then we can dismiss whole cohorts and build it, arm it, prepare it. Only then can the Luftwaffe attack England on a grand scale.“

Entry 16 June 1941:

“The Führer says, right or wrong, we must win. This is the only way. And it is right, moral and necessary. And if we have won, who asks us about the method. We’ve got so much on our plate anyway that we have to win, because otherwise our whole people, we at the top with everything we hold dear, would be wiped out. So get to work! The Führer asks me what the people think. She thinks we are trading with Russia, but will be brave if we call her out. The Russian broadcasters are jammed by us to the greatest possible extent, and otherwise our soldiers now have the opportunity to get to know the homeland of the workers and peasants personally. They will all return as savage anti-Bolsheviks. This plague will be driven out of Europe. The time is ripe for that. In the Fuhrer’s view, the Taßdenmenti is just a product of fear. Stalin trembled at what was to come. His wrong game is put to an end. We will now organize the raw materials of this rich country. England’s hopes of wearing us down with a blockade are finally gone. And then the submarine war really starts. England will sink to the bottom.“

That last line again confirms the second motive, besides Lebensraum, for invading Russia: obtaining its vast natural resources which would help the German fight off the English in future battles.

Important to mention that Goebbels said “if we win, who will ask about the method?” What he’s saying is that if the Germans triumph in conquering Russia, the winner does not have to explain itself to the loser. Hitler himself said the same thing in an August 1939 speech:

“…on 22 August [1939] Hitler once again spoke to around fifty high-ranking officers he had summoned specially to the Berghof […] Hitler went on to describe his rapprochement with Russia, which excluded any risk from that quarter. All in all, there was only one final risk left, that some ‘chap’ would screw it up with an offer to mediate […] He told the generals he would ‘provide a propaganda pretext for starting the war, however implausible. The victor is never asked afterwards whether or not he told the truth. When starting and waging a war it’s not being in the right that matters, but victory.’ And he went on: ‘Close your hearts to pity. Act brutally. 80 million people must get what is their right. Their existence must be made secure. The stronger man is in the right. The greatest harshness.’ For the generals this meant: ‘The military goal is the total destruction of Poland. Speed is of the essence. Pursuit to the point of complete annihilation.’” – Source: Peter Longerich, Hitler: A Biography

So what Hitler is saying there is that he is going to invade Poland, invent a propaganda pretext for doing so, the truth doesn’t matter if you win and that “might makes right”. He and Goebbels applied the same logic to the invasion of Russia.

A Goebbels diary entry from 30, August 1939 confirms that Hitler intended to strike Poland all along:

“The situation at the moment is something like this: Henderson delivered England’s answer. London is prepared to persuade Poland to negotiate on the basis of the Führer’s Reichstag speech. Beck is then to come to Berlin. The Führer wants a vote in the corridor under international control. In doing so, he hopes to perhaps extricate London from Warsaw and find an occasion to strike. London’s position is no longer as rigid as before. But it wants guarantees and proofs of confidence.”

Hitler sent two letters to Stalin in 1941 in which he deceived Stalin about his intentions towards Russia. He tries to make Stalin believe that Germany intended to invade England and not Russia and that any troop movements near Russia’s border was merely “training” for the future invasion of England.

December 31, 1940

I am using the occasion of sending New Year’s greetings and my wishes for success and prosperity to you and the people of Soviet Russia to discuss a series of questions that were raised in my conversations with Mr. Molotov and Mr. Dekanozov.

The struggle with England has entered a decisive phase, and I intend not later than the summer of the coming year to put an end to this rather drawn-out question by seizing and occupying the heart of the British Empire—the British Isles. I am aware of the difficulty of this operation but believe that it can be carried out, for I see no other way of ending this war.

As I wrote to you earlier, the approximately seventy divisions that I must keep in the Government General are undergoing reorganization and training in an area inaccessible to English aviation and intelligence. I understood from my discussions with Messrs. Molotov and Dekanozov that this has aroused in you understandable anxiety. Beginning in approximately March, these troops will be moved to the Channel and the western coast of Norway, and in their place, new units will be assembled for accelerated training. I wanted to warn you of this in advance.

In addition, I intend to use these troops to force the English out of Greece, and for this, it will be necessary to move them through Romania and Bulgaria. Those troops that will carry out the invasion of England from Norwegian territory will continue to utilize transit rights through Finland. Germany has no interests in Finland or Bulgaria, and as soon as we achieve our goals in this war, I will immediately withdraw my troops. . . . 

I especially want to warn you of the following. The agony of England is accompanied by feverish efforts to save it from its inevitable fate. For this purpose, they are fabricating all possible foolish rumors, the most important of which can be crudely divided into two categories. These are rumors of planned invasions by the USSR into Germany and by Germany against the USSR. I do not wish to dwell on the absurdity of such nonsense. However, on the basis of information in my possession, I predict that as our invasion of the [British] Isles draws closer, the intensity of such rumors will increase and fabricated documents will perhaps be added to them. 

I will be completely open to you. Some of these rumors are being circulated by appropriate German offices. The success of our invasion of the Isles depends very much on the achievement of tactical surprise. Therefore, it is useful to keep Churchill and his circles in ignorance of our precise plans.

A worsening of the relations between our countries to include armed conflict is the only way for the English to save themselves, and I assure you that they will continue efforts in this direction with their characteristic slyness and craftiness. . . .

For a final solution of what to do with this bankrupt English legacy, and also for the consolidation of the union of socialist countries and the establishment of new world order, I would like very much to meet personally with you. I have spoken about this with Messrs. Molotov and Dekanozov.
Unfortunately, as you will well understand, an exceptional workload prevents me from arranging our meeting until the smashing of England.

That first letter was sent in response to a previous letter Stalin sent Hitler begging to know why Germany was amassing troops on the Soviet border:

Marshal Zhukov said that Stalin had told him in January 1941 that this letter from Hitler was in response to an earlier letter from Stalin (not yet disclosed) inquiring as to the reason for German troop transfers to Poland which seemed to be a hostile act directed at the USSR. This Hitler letter evidently was intended to allay those fears and explain their supposed purpose.

A third interesting aspect is Hitler’s deliberate lie that he had sent “approximately seventy divisions” to Poland for “reorganization and training” and to keep them away from “English aviation and intelligence.” While those reasons had a veneer of truthfulness, the real reason for the Germans’ continuing troop transfers to the East was to prepare for Operation Barbarossa.

In Hitler’s second letter to Stalin, he again deceives his socialist counterpart about Germany’s intention to invade the USSR, making it seem like the troop movements near the border were part of preparation to attack England:

May 14, 1941

I am writing this letter at the moment of having finally concluded that it will be impossible to achieve lasting peace in Europe, not for us, not for future generations, without the final shattering of England and her destruction as a state. As you well know, I long ago made the decision to carry out a series of military measures to achieve this goal. The closer the hour of a decisive battle, however, the larger the number of problems I face. For the mass of the German people, no war is popular, especially not a war against England, because the German people consider the English a fraternal people and war between them a tragic event.

… In this connection, a special warning is raised by the following circumstance. In order to organize troops for the invasion away from the eyes of the English opponent, and in connection with the recent operations in the Balkans, a large number of my troops, about eighty divisions, are located on the borders of the Soviet Union. This possibly gave rise to the rumors now circulating of a likely military conflict between us.

I assure you, on my honor as a chief of state that this is not the case. From my side, I also react with understanding to the fact that you cannot completely ignore these rumors and have also deployed a sufficient number of your troops on the border.

In this situation I cannot completely exclude the possibility of an accidental outbreak of armed conflict, which given the conditions created by such a concentration of troops might take on very large dimensions, making it difficult if not impossible to determine what caused it in the first place.

I want to be absolutely candid with you. I fear that some of my generals might deliberately embark on such a conflict in order to save England from its fate and spoil my plans. It is a question of no more than a month. By approximately June 15–20 I plan to begin a massive transfer of troops to the west from your borders. In connection with this, I ask you, as persuasively as possible, not to give in to any provocations that might emanate from those of my generals who might have forgotten their duty.

And, it goes without saying, try not to give them any cause. If it becomes impossible to avoid provocation by some of my generals, I ask you to show restraint, to not respond but to advise me immediately of what has happened through the channel known to you. Only in this way can we attain our mutual goals, on which, it seems to me, we are clearly in agreement.

So Hitler admits that he is the one who began amassing troops near the Soviet border and that Stalin only moved his troops in place in response to this:

In order to organize troops for the invasion away from the eyes of the English opponent, and in connection with the recent operations in the Balkans, a large number of my troops, about eighty divisions, are located on the borders of the Soviet Union. This possibly gave rise to the rumors now circulating of a likely military conflict between us. I assure you, on my honor as a chief of state that this is not the case. From my side, I also react with understanding to the fact that you cannot completely ignore these rumors and have also deployed a sufficient number of your troops on the border.

In a 1939 speech Hitler made it abundantly clear that his intention all along was starting another war:

Hitler wanted the war. It was the logical end to the path which he had taken since being appointed chancellor on 30 January 1933, and upon which conservative elites – generals, diplomats and industrial arms manufacturers – with few exceptions had willingly followed him. As the dictator himself emphasised in a speech to his commanders a few weeks after the conclusion of the Polish campaign in the autumn of 1939, he would never have undertaken to ‘educate the people, build up the Wehrmacht and rearm’ if he had not had the will to use force ‘right from the beginning’ [¹]. There was no room for the idea of lasting peace in Hitler’s social-Darwinist world view. Peace, Hitler often reiterated privately, would only ‘lead humanity into a quagmire’. Every generation, he believed, had to ‘steel itself anew and collect new experiences’.[²]

The only fault that can be attributed to the Western powers is that they failed to stay Hitler’s arm while that was still possible. They had tried everything they could, to the point of self-abnegation, to tame his drive for expansion in the interests of preserving peace in Europe. It was not until the policy of appeasement had definitively failed in the spring of 1939 that the Western powers decided to confront Germany’s Führer – too late to undermine Hitler’s determination to wage war, if indeed that drive could have been checked under any circumstances. By contrast, in order to buy time for a conflict it knew was coming, the Soviet Union temporarily allied itself with its mortal enemy and became complicit, in the short term, in Hitler’s policies of aggression.

— Vᴏʟᴋᴇʀ Uʟʟʀɪᴄʜ, Hɪᴛʟᴇʀ Dᴏᴡɴꜰᴀʟʟ: 1939-45
[1] Hɪᴛʟᴇʀ’s sᴘᴇᴇᴄʜ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴏᴍᴍᴀɴᴅᴇʀs, 23 Nᴏᴠᴇᴍʙᴇʀ 1939; Gʀᴏsᴄᴜʀᴛʜ, Tᴀɢᴇʙüᴄʜᴇʀ ᴇɪɴᴇs Aʙᴡᴇʜʀᴏꜰꜰɪᴢɪᴇʀs, ᴘ. 415. A ᴅɪꜰꜰᴇʀᴇɴᴛ ᴀᴄᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ ʜᴀᴅ Hɪᴛʟᴇʀ sᴀʏɪɴɢ, ‘Tʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴄɪsɪᴏɴ ᴛᴏ sᴛʀɪᴋᴇ ᴏᴜᴛ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏs ᴇxɪsᴛᴇᴅ ᴡɪᴛʜɪɴ ᴍᴇ.’ Dᴏᴍᴀʀᴜs, Hɪᴛʟᴇʀ, ᴠᴏʟ. 2, ᴘᴀʀᴛ 1, ᴘ. 1423.
[2] Gᴏᴇʙʙᴇʟs, Tᴀɢᴇʙüᴄʜᴇʀ, ᴘᴀʀᴛ I, ᴠᴏʟ. 8, ᴘᴘ. 332ꜰ. (ᴇɴᴛʀʏ ꜰᴏʀ 18 Sᴇᴘᴛ. 1940). Iɴ Mᴀʀᴄʜ 1939 ɪɴ Sᴀɴ Fʀᴀɴᴄɪsᴄᴏ, Hɪᴛʟᴇʀ’s ꜰᴏʀᴍᴇʀ ᴀᴅᴊᴜᴛᴀɴᴛ Fʀɪᴛᴢ Wɪᴇᴅᴇᴍᴀɴɴ ʀᴇᴄᴀʟʟᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅɪᴄᴛᴀᴛᴏʀ ꜰʀᴇǫᴜᴇɴᴛʟʏ sᴀʏɪɴɢ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ sᴜᴍᴍᴇʀ ᴏꜰ 1938: ‘Eᴠᴇʀʏ ɢᴇɴᴇʀᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ɴᴇᴇᴅs ᴛᴏ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ɢᴏɴᴇ ᴛʜʀᴏᴜɢʜ ᴀ ᴡᴀʀ.’ BA Kᴏʙʟᴇɴᴢ, N 1720/4.

Let’s not forget that in Chapter 14 of Mein Kampf Hitler outlines with vivid clarity his chief foreign policy goal was the invasion of Russia to expand Germany’s living space:

Therefore the only possibility that Germany had to conduct a sound territorial policy was to acquire new territory in Europe itself. Colonies cannot serve this purpose, since they aren’t suited for large-scale European settlement. From the 19th century on, it was no longer possible to peacefully acquire such colonies. Therefore any attempt at such a colonial expansion would have meant an enormous military struggle. Thus it was more practical to undertake that military struggle for new territory in Europe, rather than to wage war for foreign acquisition.

If new territory were to be acquired in Europe, it should have been mainly at Russia’s expense. Once again, the new German Reich should have set out on the same road as was formerly traveled by the Teutonic Knights-this time to acquire soil for the German plow by means of the German sword, and thus provide the nation with its daily bread. Such a policy, however, could have only one possible European ally: England. Only by alliance with England was it possible to safeguard the rear of the new German crusade. And the justification for undertaking such an expedition was stronger than that of our forefathers. Not one of our pacifists refuses to eat the bread made from grain grown in the East; and yet the first plow here was “the sword’!

Moreover, as National Socialists, we must lay down the following principle regarding the nature of the foreign policy of a folkish State: A folkish State’s foreign policy must first of all bear in mind the duty of securing the existence of the race on this planet, which is embodied in this State. And this is done by establishing a healthy and natural relation between the number and growth of the population on the one hand, and the quantity and quality of the soil on the other.

Only a sufficiently large space on this Earth can assure a peoples’ free existence. The necessary extent of territorial expansion for settlement must not be estimated by present requirements nor even by the magnitude of its agricultural productivity in relation to the population.

…In the first volume, under the heading “Germany’s Alliance Policy before the War,” I have already explained that a state’s land area is of importance, not only as the source of the nation’s food, but also militarily and politically. Once a people is assured of its sustenance by the amount of soil, it must consider how to defend it. …Thus the German nation can assure its own future only as a world power.

…Germany today is no world power. Even if our present military weakness could be overcome, we still would have no claim to this title. What importance does a State have on this planet in which the relation of population to area is so miserable as in the present German Reich? In an era in which the world is being gradually divided among states–many of whom almost embrace whole continents–one cannot speak of a world power in the case of a structure whose political Motherland is confined to the laughable area of barely 500,000 square kilometers.

Furthermore we must consider the American Union as foremost among the colossal states, also Russia and China. Some of these spatial areas are more than ten times greater than the present German Reich. …Today we find ourselves in a world of great power-states, in which our own Reich is constantly sinking into insignificance.

If the National Socialist movement wants to be recognized by history as having a great mission for our people, it will have to painfully recognize the real truth of our situation in the world. It must courageously fight against the aimlessness and incompetence that has hitherto guided our German nation in foreign policy. Then, without respect for ‘tradition’ or preconceptions, it must find the courage to organize our national forces and set them on a path that will lead them away from the present restricted living space and toward new land and soil. Thus will the movement save us from the danger of perishing from this Earth or of serving others as a slave nation.

 In contrast to the policy of those who represented that period, we must take our stand on the highest viewpoint regarding all foreign policy, namely: to bring the land into harmony with our population. Indeed, from the past we can only learn that the aim of our political conduct must lie in two directions: (1) land and soil as the objective of our foreign policy, and (2) a new, philosophically-established, uniform foundation as the goal of domestic political activity.

… I still want to briefly take a stand on the question of how far our territorial aims are ethically and morally justified. This is necessary because, unfortunately in our so-called folkish circles, there are all kinds of plausible big-mouths who try to persuade the German people that the aim of their foreign policy ought to be to right the wrongs of 1918, while at the same time they find it necessary to assure the whole world of folkish brotherhood and sympathy.

To demand the restoration of the 1914 borders is a political absurdity that’s fraught with such consequences as to appear criminal. The 1914 Reich borders were anything but logical. They were not really complete, in the sense of including all the members of the German nation, nor were they reasonable, in light of military-geographical effectiveness. …Even if it could be really carried out, the result would be so miserable that, by God, it wouldn’t be worthwhile to risk our people’s blood for it.

There can scarcely be any doubt whatsoever that only through bloodshed could we restore the 1914 borders.… Only an organized and concentrated national sentiment, turned into an effective force, can defy the international enslavement of peoples. This path is, and remains, a bloody one.

If we are convinced that the German future calls for the highest sacrifice, in one way or another, then we must set aside considerations of political expediency, establish a worthy goal, and fight for it. …… The 1914 borders are of no significance for the German future. They neither served to protect us in the past, nor do they offer any strength for the future. With these borders, the German people cannot attain an inner unity, nor can they assure their sustenance, nor, from a military viewpoint, are they advantageous, nor can they improve our relations with the other world powers–or better, with the real world powers. We won’t narrow the gap with England, and we won’t achieve the size of the American Union; indeed, not even France would be diminished in terms of world political importance.

State borders are made by man, and can be changed by man. The fact that a nation has acquired an enormous area is no reason why it should hold it forever. At most, it proves the strength of the conqueror and the weakness of the defeated. And in this strength alone lies the right. If the German people are imprisoned within an impossible area, and face a miserable future, this is not by the command of Fate, anymore than to oppose such affairs is to disobey it.

Just as no higher power has promised more territory to other nations than to the German, so it cannot be blamed for an unjust distribution of soil. Just as the soil on which we now live was not bestowed by Heaven on our forefathers–but had to be conquered by mortal risk–so too in the future our people will not obtain territory, and thus life, as a favor from above, but must win it by the power of a triumphant sword.

 It can and will have significance only if it serves as a rear cover in the struggle for an enlargement of our peoples’ living space in Europe. Colonial acquisitions won’t solve that problem. This will happen only by the winning of settlement territory for our people, such as will extend the area of the Motherland and thereby not only keep the new settlers in the closest communion with the land of their origin, but will guarantee to this region the advantages that arise from a unified expanse.

We National Socialists must go still further: The right to land and soil becomes a duty when a great nation seems destined to go under, unless its land is extended. And that’s particularly true when the nation at hand is not some little group of Negroes but the Germanic mother of all life, which has given cultural shape to the modem world. Germany will either be a world power, or not at all. But in order to become a world power, it needs that size which gives it the necessary importance today, and gives life to its citizens.

Therefore we National Socialists have purposely drawn a line through our pre-war conduct of foreign policy. We resume where we left off, six centuries ago. We put an end to the perpetual Germanic march towards the south and west of Europe, and tum our eyes towards the land of the East. We finally shut off the colonial–and trade-policy of pre-war times, and pass over to the land-policy of the future.

But when we speak of new land and soil in Europe today, we must principally think of Russia and its subject border states. Destiny itself seems to wish to point the way for us here. In delivering Russia over to Bolshevism, it robbed the Russian people of that intelligentsia that had once created and secured the Russian state. The organization of the Russian state-structure was not a result of Russian Slavic political ability, but rather was a marvelous example of the state-building capacity of the Germanic element amidst an inferior race.

Our task, and the mission of the National Socialist movement, is to develop the political insight in our people that will enable them to realize that their future aim is not the fulfillment of some new and wildly adventurous March of Alexander, but rather as the industrious labor of the German plow, for which the sword will provide the soil.

…It’s impossible for a coalition of cripples to attack a powerful state, if it’s determined to shed the last drop of its blood for its existence. As a folkish man who appraises the value of humanity by their race, I must recognize the racial inferiority of the so-called ‘oppressed nations,’ and this prevents me from linking my own peoples’ destiny with theirs. Today we must adopt the same position towards Russia. Present-day Russia, deprived of its Germanic ruling class, is not a possible ally in the struggle for German freedom, even setting aside the inner intentions of its new rulers. From a purely military viewpoint, a Russo-German coalition waging war against Western Europe, and probably against the whole world, would be catastrophic.

In Hitler’s last letter to General Keitel, he made it clear the war aim was winning new territory in the East:

The great victories had been due to him. The defeats and final failure had been due to others—to their “disloyalty and betrayal.” And then the parting valediction—the last recorded written words of this mad genius’s life: ‘The efforts and sacrifices of the German people in this war have been so great that I cannot believe that they have been in vain. The aim must still be to win territory in the East for the German people.’ – William Shirer, Rise & Fall of the Third Reich

Keitel in his post-war memoir, while trying to exonerate himself by employing the “pre-emptive strike” hoax, admits the German side didn’t have any clear information of an impending Russian invasion and decided to act first:

At that stage it was still not possible to determine whether the Russians were actually girding themselves for an attack or whether they were themselves only massing to ward one off… but the German invasion was soon to tear that veil of doubt aside.

Remember, that Hitler in his letters to Stalin admitted that Germany was amassing troops on the Soviet border and he even said that he understood Stalin’s anxiety about this and his decision to move his own troops to the border.

What all of this spells out is that the Germans are clearly the aggressors here and the Soviets were on the defensive.

More evidence from David Irving’s Hitler’s War:

Once more, on March 30 [1941], Hitler’s generals and admirals were summoned from all over Nazi-occupied Europe to hear a secret speech in Berlin. He explained at some length his decision to attack Russia, starting SIGNIFICANTLY with Britain’s refusal to make peace in June 1940. He spoke scathingly of Italy’s misfortunes, charitably distinguishing between the plucky but poorly led Italian soldiers and their bumbling and devious political and military commanders. ‘Why has Britain fought on?’ he asked. He identified two primary reasons – the influence of the Jews and of Britain’s international financial entanglements, and the dominant influence of the Churchill clique. The RAF’s night bombing of Germany boosted British domestic morale far more than it damaged German industry. Now Britain was hitching her fortunes to the United States and Russia, declared Hitler.

Of the United States he was not afraid. But Russia must be defeated now. ‘We have the chance to smash Russia while our own rear is free. That chance will not recur so soon. I would be betraying the future of the German people if I did not seize it now!’ Hitler urged his generals to have no compunctions about violating their treaty with Russia. Stalin had only cynically signed it; but he also urged them not to underestimate the Russian tanks or air force, or to rely too heavily on Germany’s allies in this fight. He drilled into his generals that this would be a war between great ideologies, and as such very different from the war in the west. ‘In the east cruelty now will be kindness for the future.’ The Russian commissars and GPU officials were criminals, and were to be treated as such. ‘It is not our job to see that these criminals survive.’

The Third Reich At War by Richard J. Evans confirms the view that Hitler planned to attack Russia all along:

Stalin personally vetoed proposals to disrupt the German military build-up by attacking across the Polish demarcation line. Reports from Soviet agents and even from members of the German embassy in Moscow that an invasion was imminent only convinced him that the Germans were playing hard-ball in their drive to extract economic concessions from him.

At the same time, Stalin realized that, as he told graduating military cadets in Moscow on 5 May 1941, ‘War with Germany is inevitable.’ Molotov might be able to postpone it for two or three months, but in the meantime it was vital to ‘re-teach our army and our commanders. Educate them in the spirit of attack.’ Delivered to young officers as a rhetorical message for the future, this was not a statement of intent. Stalin did not believe that the Red Army would be ready to deal with the Germans until 1942 or perhaps even 1943. Not only had the General Staff not drawn up any plans for an attack on the German forces, it had no plans for a defence against them either. Although the Germans mounted a large and sophisticated deception plan to conceal the true nature of their intentions, Soviet intelligence began to send in accurate reports that the invasion was planned for around 22 June 1941. BUT STALIN WOULD NOT LISTEN. Earlier reports that the invasion plans were to become operational on 15 May 1941, though correct at the time, proved wrong when the Germans delayed Barbarossa in order to mount the invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia.

Hitler later blamed Mussolini for the consequences, but in fact the weather in East-Central Europe in these weeks would have made an invasion of the Soviet Union inadvisable even had the German Leader not been obliged to step in to rescue his Italian ally from the imbroglio in Southern Europe. The Soviet agents who had made the prediction lost all credibility as a result. The capitalist forces in Britain, including the exiled Polish government, seemed to Stalin’s narrow and suspicious mind to be feeding false information to him about German intentions in order to lure him into a battle. Surely in any case the German Leader would not invade while the conflict with Britain was still unresolved. When an ex-Communist soldier deserted the German forces on 21 June 1941 and swam across a river to TELL THE RUSSIANS on the other side that HIS UNIT HAD BEEN GIVEN ORDERS TO INVADE the following morning, STALIN HAD HIM SHOT FOR SPREADING ‘DISINFORMATION’.

It’s true that Stalin had ignored dozens of detailed intelligence reports warning him that the German attack was imminent:

In an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, Russian military historian Arsen Martirosyan revealed that Soviet intelligence had named the exact, or almost exact, date of the invasion 47 times in the 10 days before Germany struck. Moscow knew of Nazi invasion plans from 1935, the historian argues, and was aware as early as 1936 of an attack plan called the Eastern Campaign.

It seems that Hitler himself all but let the cat out of the bag in May 1941, when he sent a letter to Stalin, who at the time was still a nominally friendly leader under the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact. According to Martirosyan, the Fuehrer notified the Vozhd of his plans to “redeploy his troops from the German-Soviet frontier to the west between 15 and 20 June approximately”. Substitute “east” for “west”, and you get the picture…

Ordinary Soviet border guards passed on most of the warnings of the coming invasion, Martirosyan said. Between 1 and 10 June, they captured 108 enemy spies and saboteurs, he told Komsomolskaya Pravda, and a further 200 or so in the final 12 days before the invasion. On 14 June, guards on the Belarusian section of the border relayed back to Moscow the correct date of the planned invasion, learnt from two captured saboteurs. The same date was revealed by saboteurs captured on 18 June. Border guard agents operating on the German-controlled side of the border also confirmed the date repeatedly, Martirosyan found, as did local civilians.

Most poignantly, perhaps, were the Polish women who gathered on the opposite bank of one frontier river on 15 June, cupping their hands around their mouths to shout warnings, in broken Russian, to the Soviet guards facing them. “Soviets, Soviets, the war is coming!” they were recorded as saying. “Soviets, the war will start in one week!”

One of the reasons Stalin kept ignoring the reports about Hitler’s inevitable betrayal of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, was that Stalin personally liked Hitler. Historian John Lukacs tells us this:

CONAN: And then there is Stalin. Universally described as shrewd and suspicious, canny, but who could not bring himself to accept overwhelming evidence that an invasion was about to happen.

Mr. LUKACS: Now added to this comes a very important element that some people have known, and that’s Stalin had a liking for Hitler. Stalin greatly admired Hitler. The odd thing is that his respect and admiration for Hitler appeared in drips and drabs even after the war started, even toward the end of the war, here and there he dropped some quite comfortable remarks about Hitler, or rather he had admired. And another element connected with this is that Stalin had a great liking and respect for Germans and for Germany. And that goes back to pretty early in his career.

All of this demonstrably proves that the Germans, from the day Hitler laid out his ideas in Mein Kampf, were going to invade “Russia and its borderlands” in order to secure an extended living space. Hitler said with explicit candor that the only way for Germany to become a great power again and to compete with other world powers like England and the United States, it must achieve the necessary space that would make it competitive with its rivals:

We National Socialists must go still further: The right to land and soil becomes a duty when a great nation seems destined to go under, unless its land is extended. Germany will either be a world power, or not at all. But in order to become a world power, it needs that size which gives it the necessary importance today, and gives life to its citizens.

Hitler cultists today refuse to accept this evidence and continue to promulgate silly lies that all Hitler wanted was to take back the land lost after World War I, which is plainly contradicted by Hitler himself in Chapter 14 of Mein Kampf where he says that the 1914 German borders were insufficient living space:

To demand the restoration of the 1914 borders is a political absurdity that’s fraught with such consequences as to appear criminal. The 1914 Reich borders were anything but logical. They were not really complete, in the sense of including all the members of the German nation, nor were they reasonable, in light of military-geographical effectiveness. …Even if it could be really carried out, the result would be so miserable that, by God, it wouldn’t be worthwhile to risk our people’s blood for it.

The 1914 borders are of no significance for the German future. They neither served to protect us in the past, nor do they offer any strength for the future. With these borders, the German people cannot attain an inner unity, nor can they assure their sustenance, nor, from a military viewpoint, are they advantageous, nor can they improve our relations with the other world powers–or better, with the real world powers. We won’t narrow the gap with England, and we won’t achieve the size of the American Union; indeed, not even France would be diminished in terms of world political importance.

So Hitler disagrees with his modern acolytes about his own goals. Have these people even read the book they claim is their bible and foundational text of their ideology? Are they stupid or maliciously lying? Clearly the latter. They’re lying to rehabilitate Hitler’s image and make him appear as if the good guy in a bloodbath that he provoked with his pre-meditated invasions of both Poland and Russia.

From Mein Kampf:

For the organization of a Russian state formation was not the result of the political abilities of the Slavs in Russia, but only a wonderful example of the state-forming efficacity of the German element in an inferior race. Numerous mighty empires on earth have been created in this way. Lower nations led by Germanic organizers and overlords have more than once grown to be mighty state formations and have endured as long as the racial nucleus of the creative state race maintained itself. For centuries Russia drew nourishment from this Germanic nucleus of its upper leading strata. Today it can be regarded as almost totally exterminated and extinguished.

It has been replaced by the Jew. Impossible as it is for the Russian by himself to shake off the yoke of the Jew by his own resources, it is equally impossible for the Jew to maintain the mighty empire forever. He himself is no element of organization, but a ferment of decomposition. The Persian empire in the east is ripe for collapse. And the end of Jewish rule in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state.

It doesn’t get clearer than that. He’s saying Slavs are incapable of statecraft or ruling themselves because they’re racially inferior, so they must be governed by Germans. This fits in perfectly with his plans for Lebensraum, stealing land from Slavs and awarding it to Germans.

Hitler also said the following in 1930:

“Your errors in the domain of foreign policy are explained by your ignorance of racial factors. For example, you are enthusiastic about the Hindu independence movement … you know the Anglo-Saxons have the mission to govern the people they have subdued, precisely in the name of their superiority. The Nordic race is called to dominate the world, and this right must guide our foreign policy. It’s why we cannot envision any rapprochement with Russia, which is a Slavic-Tatar body surmounted by a Jewish head. I knew Slavs from my home country. In the era where a Germanic head ruled the Slavic body, entente was possible, Bismarck outlined this rapprochement before. But today, it would be a crime.“

“Mister Hitler agreed with me on the primacy of Germany’s interests in the matter of foreign policy. In his eyes, an entente with England corresponded with this imperative, the goal was the Nordic domination of Europe, and through America Nordic-Germanic domination of the world.“

“National Socialism would mean little if it was limited to Germany alone and did not seal the domination of the world by the white race for 1000 or 2000 years. That doesn’t mean the exploitation of other races. To put it simply, the inferior races are called to realize other destinies than the superior races. We want to assure the domination of the world in concert with the Anglo-Saxons.“

Once again he declares the Slavs an inferior race and that entente with Russia was only desirable if a “Germanic head ruled the Slavic body”. He is laying out his desire for conquest there, quite clearly, not only of Slavic lands but of the whole world in the name of Nordic supremacy.

Hitler put Alfred Rosenberg, chief Nazi ideologist, in charge of Eastern policy. Rosenberg was a big proponent of Lebensraum too and pursued that end in the East:

On 8 May 1941, instructions were prepared for all Reich Commissars in the Occupied Eastern Territories (1030-PS). The last paragraph of these instructions reads as follows:

“From the point of view of cultural policy, the German Reich is in a position to promote and direct national culture and science in many fields. It will be necessary that in some territories an uprooting and resettlement of various racial stocks [Voelkerschaften] will have to be effected.” (1030-PS)

In his “Instructions for a Reich Commissar in the Baltic Countries and White Russia” (officially referred to together as the “Ostland”), Rosenberg directs that the Ostland be transformed into a part of the Greater German Reich by Germanizing racially possible elements, colonizing Germanic races, and banishing undesirable elements. (1029-PS)

In a speech delivered by Rosenberg on 20 June 1941 he stated that the job of feeding Germans was the top of Germany’s claim on the East; that there was no obligation to feed also the Russian peoples; that this was a harsh necessity bare of any feeling; that a very extensive evacuation would be necessary; and that the future would hold many hard years in store for the Russians. (1058-PS)

Rosenberg on Lebensraum:

In his journal, the “National Socialist Monatshefte” for May 1932, he wrote:

“The understanding that the German nation, if it is not to perish in the truest sense of the word, needs ground and soil for itself and its future generations, and the second sober perception that this soil can no more be conquered in Africa, but in Europe and first of all in the East-these organically determine the German foreign policy for centuries.” (2777-PS)

Here’s what Hitler said about Lebensraum:

“Struggle and more struggle. I see struggle as the lot of all living beings. No one can avoid struggle, if he does not want to be defeated. It is an eternal problem: how to bring the numbers of Germans into accordance with their territory. We need to secure necessary space. No sophisticated cleverness will help here. It can only be resolved with the sword. A people that cannot summon the strength to fight must abdicate [its place in the world].” – Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall 1939-45

Obtaining new land-space “can only be resolved with the sword.” He’s preaching violent conquest there.

More from Mein Kampf:

If the National Socialist movement wants to be recognized by history as having a great mission for our people, it will have to painfully recognize the real truth of our situation in the world. It must courageously fight against the aimlessness and incompetence that has hitherto guided our German nation in foreign policy. Then, without respect for ‘tradition’ or preconceptions, it must find the courage to organize our national forces and set them on a path that will lead them away from the present restricted living space and toward new land and soil. Thus will the movement save us from the danger of perishing from this Earth or of serving others as a slave nation. (Chapter 14)

He’s saying explicitly there that he will build up the German military and “set them on a path….away from the present restricted living space toward new soil”. That’s an appeal for violent conquest. He goes further, suggesting that this living space should not be conquered in Africa but in Europe itself (same thing Rosenberg said, quoted earlier):

Today we’re all convinced of the need to reckon with France, but this would be broadly ineffective if it were the sole aim of our foreign policy. It can and will have significance only if it serves as area cover in the struggle for an enlargement of our peoples’ living space in Europe. Colonial acquisitions won’t solve that problem. This will happen only by the winning of settlement territory for our people, such as will extend the area of the Motherland and thereby not only keep the new settlers in the closest communion with the land of their origin, but will guarantee to this region the advantages that arise from a unified expanse.

Thus he wanted a contiguous land-empire similar to the one Russia has erected in the past. He goes on to say that Germans shouldn’t concern themselves with the “smaller nations” and run them over as he pleased on Germany’s path towards becoming a “world power” again. He says increased land-space is essential to reestablishing Germany as a leading world power:

The folkish movement mustn’t be an advocate for other nations, but rather a protagonist for itself. Otherwise it would be superfluous and, above all, would have no right to clamor about the past. For then it would be acting the same as before. The old German policy was unjustly determined by dynastic considerations, and future policy mustn’t follow the sentimentality of cosmopolitan folkishness. We must especially not be security police for the well-known ‘poor, small nations,’ but rather soldiers of ourselves.

We National Socialists must go still further: The right to land and soil becomes a duty when a great nation seems destined to go under, unless its land is extended. And that’s particularly true when the nation at hand is not some little group of Negroes but the Germanic mother of all life, which has given cultural shape to the modern world. Germany will either be a world power, or not at all. But in order to become a world power, it needs that size which gives it the necessary importance today, and gives life to its citizens. (Chapter 14)

In Chapter Two of Mein Kampf, Hitler declares the Poles an inferior alien race and says it was a mistake to try to Germanize them:

Not only in Austria, however, but also in Germany, these so-called national circles were, and still are, influenced by similarly false ideas. A Polish policy, involving a Germanization of the East, was demanded by many and was unfortunately based on the same false reasoning. Here again it was believed that a Germanization of the Polish element could occur by a purely linguistic union. The result would have been catastrophic: A foreign people expressing their foreign thoughts in the German language, thus compromising the dignity and nobility of our own nation by their inferiority.

In “Hitler’s War and the War Path,” David Irving quotes Hitler at a meeting with generals stressing the same point:

A few days later, on May 23, Hitler delivered a four-hour speech to his Commanders in Chief in his cavernous study. He stood at a lectern and addressed altogether a dozen officers seated in three rows: Raeder, Milch, Brauchitsch, and Keitel formed the front row (Goring was away), and their chiefs of staff and adjutants the two other rows. Hitler stated once again that Danzig was not his ultimate objective — that would be to secure Lebensraum in the east to feed Germany’s eighty million inhabitants. ‘If fate forces us to fight in the west,’ Hitler told them, ‘it will be just as well if first we possess more in the east.’ This was why he had decided to ‘take on Poland at the first suitable opportunity.’

That refutes the usual pro-Nazi claim that Hitler’s war aims were limited to taking back “lost territories” from World War I: “Danzig was not his ultimate objective-that would be to secure Lebensraum in the east to feed Germany’s eighty million inhabitants.” Irving reveals another damning statement from Hitler that he wanted short, quick wars in the West to be followed by a larger one in the East:

Only the existing Reichswehr with its professional officers could satisfy his main need; according to another general, Maximilian von Weichs, who took shorthand notes of the speech, Hitler added: ‘The new army must be capable of all manner of defence within five years; and of all manner of attack within eight.’ Since the western powers would probably not permit Germany to win Lebensraum, short sharp wars might be necessary in the west, ‘and after them, wars in the east.’

Danzig, like the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, was merely a token issue he wielded tactically to kickstart the broader war aim of Eastern conquest. In the same book Irving says Hitler was planning a “United States of Europe” under German domination and planned to carve out territory in the East that would “last a hundred years”. He was readying the German economy for war during these years:

contemplating Germany’s economic position in 1936, Hitler chafed that so little had been accomplished to make the country self-sufficient – a basic prerequisite for war. In April he put Hermann Goring in charge of raw materials and foreign currency questions. Aboard his yacht Grille at Kiel he told Goebbels in May of his vision of a United States of Europe under German leadership.

‘The Fuhrer,’ wrote Goebbels, sees a conflict coming in the Far East. Japan will thrash Russia. And then our great hour will come. Then we shall have to carve off enough territory to last us a hundred years.’ Hitler announced that he had to resolve once and for all Germany’s economic problems by enlarging her Lebensraum and thus her sources of raw materials and food. In detail, Hitler stated these two demands: ‘First: in four years the German army must be ready for action; and second, in four years the German economy must be ready for war.’

All of that fits like a glove with Hitler’s own statements in Mein Kampf and elsewhere. Lebensraum was not Hitler’s invention, but a popular idea among the German intelligentsia and political circles going back decades:

Lebensraum (living space) is a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch nationalism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901,[2] Lebensraum became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in World War I (1914–1918), as the core element of the Septemberprogramm of territorial expansion.[3] The most extreme form of this ideology was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany. Lebensraum was a leading motivation of Nazi Germany to initiate World War II, and it would continue this policy until the end of World War II.[4]

Hans Grimm’s book Volk ohne Raum (“A People without Space”) was cited by the Nazis as inspiration.

Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, allegedly said this in a letter when justifying the Third Reich’s Eastern Policy:

The Slavs are to work for us [Germans]. Insofar as we do not need them, they may die. Therefore, compulsory vaccination and German health service are superfluous. THE FERTILITY OF THE SLAVS IS UNDESIRABLE. THEY MAY USE CONTRACEPTIVES OR PRACTICE… ABORTION, THE MORE THE BETTER. Education is dangerous. It is enough if they can count up to 100. At best an education which produces useful coolies for us is admissible. Every educated person is a future enemy. Religion we leave to them as a means of diversion. As for food, they will not get any more than is necessary. We are the masters; we come first.

Alfred Rosenberg testified at Nuremberg that he received this Bormann letter and wrote a letter back to Hitler agreeing with the spirit of it. Here it is:

Now, you remember this memorandum that you received through your assistant, Leibbrandt, from your subordinate, Markull? You can answer that “yes” or “no,” by the way; that is all I want to know right now-whether or not you remember it. Will you wait just a minute?

ROSENBERG: Yes, I received this report from Dr. Leibbrandt, and I would like to make the following explanation.

MR. DODD: Just before you do that-you will have an opportunity; I won’t shut you up on any explanations or even attempt to-I have one or two things I would like to ask you about it, and then if you feel the need to explain them or anything else I feel sure the Tribunal will permit you to do so.

You had written a letter in answer to the Bormann letter, hadn’t you?

ROSENBERG: Yes, that is correct.

MR. DODD: And you had agreed with these-if I may use the term-shocking suggestions of Bormann? In your letter you had agreed with these shocking suggestions of Bormann? “Yes” or “no”?

ROSENBERG: I wrote an appeasing letter so that I could bring about a pause in the constant pressure under which I was kept, and I would dike to anticipate and say that my activity, and the decrees which I issued after this letter, did not change in any way; but, on the contrary, decrees were issued setting up a school system and for the further continuation of health control. I will discuss it further in my reply.

MR. DODD: You wrote this letter to the Fuehrer; you did not write it to Bormann, did you? Your answer went to Hitler?

ROSENBERG: I wrote my reply to the Fuehrer, yes.

MR. DODD: And you were appeasing the Fuehrer as well, were you, when you mouthed back the phrases such as are repeated in this letter about the use of contraceptives and abortion?

ROSENBERG: No; besides…

MR. DODD: Wait until I finish. I was saying, in your letter to the Fuehrer you wrote back those horrid suggestions of Bormann, didn’t you-those nasty, horrid suggestions of Bormann, I might say? You wrote them to Hitler?

ROSENBERG: I wrote a letter to the Fuehrer, but did not use the wording of Bormann’s letter. I wrote appealingly to the Fuehrer that I was not doing any more than could and had to be done. I wanted to ward off an attack from headquarters for I knew it would come because I did more for the Eastern peoples than for the German people-that I was demanding more doctors than the German people had for their sick, that I was doing more in my capacity as Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories for the health problem and thereby for the Eastern people than German doctors could do for the German people. The attack had reached such proportions that Koch finally accused me of promoting a policy of immigration. That was the reason why the conflict arose shortly thereafter and was brought to the Fuehrer.

MR. DODD: Just so there will be no doubt about this-I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding and nobody else does-are you telling us that you did not write back almost word for word what Bormann wrote to you?

ROSENBERG: I do not have the letter here verbatim.

MR. DODD: But you have the Markull memorandum here, which says that the Minister not only raises no objections against Bormann’s principles or even his phraseology. Now surely one of your subordinates would not be impertinent enough to write you a memorandum like that unless it was perfectly true that you had done so?

ROSENBERG: I welcomed very much that my collaborators always had the courage to contradict me and give me their opinion, even concerning something I myself requested. Dr. Leibbrandt came and said to me, “Herr Reich Minister, that certainly is not in accord with what we are all doing here.” I said, “Dr. Leibbrandt, please calm yourself. I have written an appeasing explanation. Nothing will be changed. Later I will also speak to the Fuehrer personally about these matters.”

MR. DODD: Your subordinate was not afraid to tell you that you had written such a letter in which you agreed word for word with Bormann. I have no trouble with you on that score. That is all I am trying to get you to tell this Tribunal, because it is true that you did write back expressing these word-for-word sentences.

ROSENBERG: That is not correct. The author-I rather say Dr. Leibbrandt-when he gave me this memorandum, read it through in a hurry saying, “There seems to be a gentleman who believes that I cannot do anything else but what I consider right.” But in this case I am facing a serious conflict, and I will maintain my position as I consider it right. That may be seen in the documents covering a period of 3 years which I read yesterday. May I give my opinion now on this document?

MR. DODD: Answer this question: Who were you appeasing, Hitler or Bormann? Or both of them?

ROSENBERG: First, I concurred with my collaborator, Dr. Leibbrandt, in the idea that ministerial decrees in that sense would never be released by me. Second, I regulated by a decree the school system in the Ukraine including a 4 year elementary school, trade school, and professional colleges.

THE PRESIDENT: Wait a minute. That is not an answer to the question. You said that you wrote an appeasing answer. The question is whom were you trying to appease. Was it Hitler or was it Bormann or was it both?

ROSENBERG: Yes, both of them; yes.

MR. DODD: Mr. President, would this be a convenient time to break off?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Bormann was apparently relaying the actual opinions of Hitler on this matter. This page quotes Hitler saying more or less the same thing, citing Table Talks, that they had to encourage abortions among the Slavs so that Germans could triumph in their colonization process and they had to keep them dumb and poorly educated to discourage their births:

The chief [Hitler] said that in some paper he had recently found a proposal to ban the distribution and use of abortifacients in the occupied eastern territories. If some idiot should actually try to put such a ban into practice in the occupied eastern territories, he would shoot him up personally. With the abundance of children among the local population, it would only be good for us IF THE GIRLS AND WOMEN HERE HAD AS MANY ABORTIONS AS POSSIBLE. WE MUST THEREFORE NOT ONLY PERMIT, BUT DOWNRIGHT ENCOURAGE A BRISK TRADE IN CONTRACEPTIVES IN THE EASTERN TERRITORIES, since we could not have the slightest interest in an increase in the non-German population. But one would have to get the Jews to help in order to force such things into motion.

As far as the hygiene of the subjugated population was concerned, we could have have no interest in imparting our knowledge to them and thereby giving them a basis for a tremendous increase in population. For an enormous increase in population. He [Hitler] therefore forbade the carrying out of our kind of cleanliness campaigns for these areas. The compulsory vaccination in these areas should only apply to Germans. German doctors should only be used for the treatment of Germans in the German settlements. It would also be nonsense to provide the subjugated peoples with our knowledge in the field of dentistry.

Hitler even says there he would “have to get the Jews to help” in order to expedite the abortion of Slavic babies. It’s not clear what he meant by that.

David Irving also reports on these colonization plans in Hitler’s War:

By mid-October 1941, despite the foul weather, Hitler was still bred widi optimism. On the thirteenth he began laying the foundations for a Nazi version of a united Europe. Hewel wrote, ‘Reich foreign minister visits the Fuhrer; first thoughts on a European manifesto. Probably in the economic sphere first of all, and probably at the beginning of the winter. Fuhrer is in very best and relaxed mood.’ Over dinner he revealed that he had been thinking of calling together the economic experts of Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, and Finland. ‘All those who have a feeling for Europe can join in this work,’ he said, meaning the colonization of the east. When Todt and Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel dined with Hitler on October 17, they were brimming with everything they had just seen in the east.

Again Hitler dreamed aloud of the vast construction projects whereby he would open up the east. ‘Above all we must lay roads,’ Koeppen wrote that night, describing the dinner conversation: He told Dr. Todt he must expand his original projects considerably. For this purpose he will be able to make use of the three million prisoners for the next twenty years. The major roads — the Fuhrer spoke today not only of the highway to the Crimea but also of one to the Caucasus and of two or three through the more northern territories — must be laid across the areas of greatest scenic beauty. Where the big rivers are crossed, German cities must arise, as centers of the Wehrmacht, police, administration, and Party authorities.

Along these roads will lie the German farmsteads, and soon the monotonous steppe, with its Asiatic appearance, will look very different indeed. In ten years four million Germans will have settled there, and in twenty years at least ten million. They will come not only from the Reich but above all from America, and from Scandinavia, Holland, and Flanders too. And the rest of Europe shall play its part in this opening up of the Russian wastes as well. . . The Fuhrer then reverted to the theme that ‘contrary to what some people think’ no education or welfare is to be laid on for the native population. Knowledge of the road signs will suffice, there will be no call for German schoolmasters there.

By ‘freedom’ the Ukrainians understood that instead of twice they now had to wash only once a month — the Germans with their scrubbing brushes would soon make themselves unpopular there. He as Fuhrer would set up his new administration there after ice cool calculations: what the Slavs might think about it would not put him out one bit. Nobody who ate German bread today got worked up about the fact that in the twelfth century the granaries east of the Elbe were regained by the sword. Here in the east we were repeating a process for a second time not unlike the conquest of America. For climatic reasons alone we could not venture further south than the Crimea — he did not mention the Caucasus at this point — even now hundreds of our mountain troops on Crete had malaria! The Fuhrer kept repeating that he wished he was ten or fifteen years younger so he could live through the rest of this process.

A continuation of that discussion at Nuremberg in reference to Ukraine policy quotes another German official Kreisleiter Knuth:

Then, in the next paragraph, he says that every visitor and every member of the local civil administration can confirm this from his own observations, and they show particularly clearly how well the soil is prepared for the Bormann letter. Then he goes on to quote statements that have been made by saying, “To be exact, we are here among negroes; the population is just dirty and lazy,” and so on.

And then, passing on, he says:

“I may add that Kreisleiter Knuth, whom the Gauleiter still retains in spite of the gravest accusations against his professional integrity, declared, in conversations on the Kiev question, that Kiev ought to be depopulated through epidemics. Altogether it would be best if the superfluous part of the population starved to death.”

So that guy said Ukrainians are equivalent to negroes and should be killed via epidemics or starvation. Erich Koch, the party official in charge of Ukraine, vehemently despised the Ukrainians. David Irving reports in his book Hitler’s War the following:

«Throughout the spring of 1943 a squabble raged between Alfred Rosenberg, the endlessly verbose minister for the eastern territories, and Gauleiter Erich Koch, Reich Commissar in the Ukraine. Rosenberg – supported by Ribbentrop, Zeitzler, and Goebbels – wanted to win the subject peoples’ support in the fight against Stalin, and he complained that Koch’s brutal methods and pasha lifestyle were incompatible with this. At Christmas, he had sent a special plane to Rostov to collect two hundred pounds of caviar. Yet Hitler, Bormann, and – more circumspectly – Himmler, DEFENDED KOCH. Rosenberg might theorise about the future cultural life of the Ukraine, but Koch’s harsh duty was to squeeze every ton of grain and every slave labourer he could out of the region. The idea of harnessing Russians voluntarily to the war against Stalin WAS A CHIMERA, SAID HITLER. ‘I have always felt there are only a handful of men who can really keep their heads in a major crisis, without being waylaid by some phantom hope or other. The saying that drowning men clutch at straws is only too true.’ When Ribbentrop identified himself with General Vlasov’s idea for a Russian army of liberation, Hitler rapped his knuckles. ‘There will be no such political operations. They will only result in our people fraternising with the Russians.’ Field Marshals Kluge and Küchler were also rebuffed when they supported the Vlasov project. Millions of leaflets dropped over enemy lines announced that the Wehrmacht was fighting only Stalin and not the Russian people, and they spoke of a ‘National Committee’ in Smolensk as though it were the Russian government being groomed for the post-Stalin era. TO HITLER THIS IDEA WAS MADNESS; AS HE ANGRILY TOLD ZEITZLER, TO LET THE UKRAINIANS SET UP THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT WOULD BE TANTAMOUNT TO THROWING AWAY THE NAZIS’ ENTIRE WAR AIM. The Russians would start off as a satellite state such as Poland had been in World War I, and Germany would end up confronting an entirely independent state all over again. On May 19 Hitler brought Rosenberg and Koch face to face. Rosenberg firmly repeated that Koch’s policies were supplying the enemy with thousands of partisans. Koch justified his methods. Hitler adjudged that both were right, THOUGH KOCH WAS RIGHTER. As for the partisan argument, if Rosenberg were right, there would be fewest partisans where the ‘particularly crafty generals’ spoke in the most honeyed tones; this was not the case. Nor could slave labour be procured except by Koch’s methods. ‘Only feebleminded generals imagine we can win any manpower by blandishments.’ As for Koch’s executions in the Ukraine, challenged Hitler: ‘How many of our compatriots are losing their lives in air raids here at home?’»

«The German invaders had been driven out BY THE DISAPPOINTED, DECEIVED, AND ANGRY UKRAINIANS THEMSELVES. ‘If the rest of this war and its victorious conclusion should ever see these territories vouchsafed to us again,’ a gauleiter wrote, ‘then there must be a radical change in our attitude to and treatment of the native population. Erich Koch had achieved the seemingly impossible: he had converted the forty million Ukrainians who had greeted the German invaders as their liberators into a sullen, seething people, and driven them as partisans into the forests and swamplands of the north Ukraine. The same gauleiter – Alfred Frauenfeld, governor of the Crimea – pointed out that Hitler should have found the moral courage to replace Koch. Koch had proclaimed the inferiority of the Slavs with such raucous insistence that ‘even a disaster policy deliberately planned and paid for by the enemy could hardly have done more harm.’ Koch had stormed, for example: ‘If I find a Ukrainian fit to sit at my table, I must shoot him!’ He had dispensed with Ukrainian doctors – without reflecting that epidemics were no respecters of the German occupation forces – and had deported the able-bodied to Germany in a manner reminiscent of ‘Arab slave traders.’ When Hitler had instituted medals for bravery and hard work, Koch had waited nearly a year before unwillingly issuing any to the Ukrainians.» — «he [Hitler] admired such Party faithfuls as [Erich] Koch, Sauckel, and Ley – gauleiters who had in their time converted Communist Gaue into Nazi Party strongholds.»

In his diaries, Goebbels quotes Hitler saying Poles are less than animals:

“The Führer’s verdict on the Poles is scathing. More animals than men, completely dull and amorphous. Next to them a slaughtering class, which is at least the product of the lower classes mixed with an Aryan master class. The filth of the Poles is unimaginable. Their judgment is also nil. Even Lipski believed that a nervous crisis would break out in our country in 8 days during the war. Poor madman! The Führer does not want assimilation with the Poles. They are to be squeezed into their reduced state and left entirely to themselves.” – Joseph Goebbels Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, diary entry October 10, 1939

Goebbels said that Hitler viewed the Poles as “more animals than human” and his tone on them was “annihilatory”. Rosenberg recalled Hitler saying they were “dreadful material”.

Also in his diaries, Goebbels labels the Russians primitive and racially inferior animals:

The incidents that Sepp Dietrich related to me about the Russian people in the occupied areas are simply hair-raising. They are not a people, but a conglomeration of animals. The greatest danger threatening us in the East is the stolid dullness of this mass. That applies both to the civilian population and to the soldiers. The soldiers won’t surrender, as is the fashion in western Europe, when completely surrounded, but continue to fight until they are beaten to death. Bolshevism has merely accentuated this racial propensity of the Russian people. In other words, we are facing an adversary about whom we must be careful. The human mind cannot possibly imagine what it would mean if this opponent were to pour into western Europe like a flood.

… Stalin issued [a program of] thirty points to his army. These points are about as naive as ean be imagined. But I suppose he knows how to treat his Russian people. They are as primitive as the language he uses to talk to them.

Goebbels admits in his diaries that German troops devoured all the food in Ukraine:

As regards food, we are not to expect too much in the immediate future. German troops have devoured everything there. There are no cattle left and there is a dearth of horses and other draft animals, so that the plows must again be drawn by human beings. It is not hard to imagine what the results will be. As one can see here, it isn’t sufficient to possess land, one must also be in a position to work it.

This statement is also attributed to Bormann in relation to Polish policy:

‘Once again the Führer underlined that Poles could only have one master, and that was the German. There cannot and should not be two masters. For that reason, all members of the Polish intelligentsia were to be killed. That sounded harsh, but it was a law of life. The Führer has decided that Poland will be a huge reservoir of labour for us, from which he can draw the people we need for menial jobs. We have to get them from somewhere.’ – note of Martin Bormann from the meeting Dr. Hans Frank with Adolf Hitler, Berlin 2 October 1940 (quoted in Hitler: Volume II: Downfall 1939-45, Volker Ullrich)

More on Germany’s Polish policy of extermination: Education in Poland under German Occupation. – Imgur

Himmler allegedly said this in a speech:

From Himmler’s speech at a meeting of SS gruppenfuhrers in Poznan on October 4, 1943. the Nuremberg trials, a collection of documents. [Document PS-1919, USA-170]

Only one principle must surely exist for an SS member: we must be honest, decent, and loyal to members of our own race and to no one else.

I am not in the least interested in the fate of a Russian or a Czech. We will take from other Nations the blood of our type that they can give us. If necessary, we will take their children away from them and bring them up in our environment. Whether other peoples live in contentment or starve to death is of interest to me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise, it does not interest me.

If ten thousand Russian women fall from exhaustion while digging anti-tank ditches, it will only interest me to the extent that this anti-tank ditch is ready for Germany. It is clear that we will never be cruel or inhumane, because this is not necessary. We Germans are the only people in the world who treat animals decently, so we will treat these people-animals decently, but we will commit a crime against our own race if we take care of them and instill them with ideals so that our sons and grandchildren will find them even more difficult to cope with. When one of you comes to me and says:

“I can’t dig an anti-tank ditch with children or women. This is inhumane, they die from it” – I will have to answer: “You are a murderer in relation to your own race, because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our blood.”

This is exactly what I would like to impress on the SS, and I believe I have instilled as one of the most sacred laws of the future: our people and our race are the object of our care and our duties, we must care and think about them, we must work and fight for them, and for nothing else. We don’t care about anything else.

This coincides with a recorded speech from Himmler in which he alludes to kidnapping Slavic children who had “Aryan” features.

Himmler also hated Slavs and called them inferior. Statements from him suggest that he planned to settle Germans in Russian/Ukrainian and Baltic lands. He said he didn’t want to Germanize the Slavs but to remove and replace them with actual Germans.

This from Peter Longerich’s biography of Himmler:

In a speech on 16 September 1942 to the SS and police leaders from the Russia South area Himmler set out how he saw the settlement of the eastern territories. In the next twenty years the annexed Polish territories, the General Government, the Baltic States, White Ruthenia, Ingria (the area around Leningrad), and the Crimea WERE TO BE SETTLED BY ‘TEUTONS’. In the remaining occupied Soviet territories bases would be established on the main transport routes so that ‘settlement enclaves’ would arise—first of all ‘from the Don to the Volga’, but later ‘as far as the Urals’. ‘This Germanic east reaching to the Urals must’, according to Himmler’s vision, ‘be a seedbed for Germanic blood, so that in 400–500 years [ . . . ] instead of 120 millions there will be 500–600 million Teutons.’ The indigenous population would be sifted according to those of ‘inferior’ race and those ‘of good race’.

What lay at the heart of the settlement of the east he had summed up succinctly in the summer of 1942 as the maxim of the ‘ethnopolitical monthly’ Deutsche Arbeit (‘German Work’) in the words: ‘Our task does not consist in Germanizing the east in the traditional sense, that means by teaching the German language and German laws to the people who live there, BUT RATHER TO ENSURE THAT ONLY PEOPLE OF ACTUAL GERMAN AND GERMANIC BLOOD LIVE THERE.’

This from Table Talks:

SPECIAL GUESTS : REICH MINISTER DR. TODT AND GAULEITER SAUCKEL Expectations as regards the Eastern Territories—The Ukraine in twenty years’ time—Bread is won by the sword—God only recognises power. In comparison with the beauties accumulated in Central Germany, the new territories in the East seem to us like a desert. Flanders, too, is only a plain—but of what beauty! This Russian desert, we shall populate it. The immense spaces of the Eastern Front will have been the field of the greatest battles in history. We’ll give this country a past. We’ll take away its character of an Asiatic steppe, we’ll Européanise it. With this object, we have undertaken the construction of roads that will lead to the southernmost point of the Crimea and to the Caucasus. These roads will be studded along their whole length with German towns, and around these towns our colonists will settle. As for the two or three million men whom we need to accomplish this task, we’ll find them quicker than we think. They’ll come from Germany, Scandinavia, the Western countries and America. I shall no longer be here to see all that, but in twenty years the Ukraine will already be a home for twenty million inhabitants besides the natives. In three hundred years, the country will be one of the loveliest gardens in the world. As for the natives, we’ll have to screen them carefully. The Jew, that destroyer, we shall drive out.

As far as the population is concerned, I get a better impression in White Russia than in the Ukraine. We shan’t settle in the Russian towns, and we’ll let them fall to pieces without intervening. And, above all, no remorse on this subject! We’re not going to play at children’s nurses; we’re absolutely without obligations as far as these people are concerned. To struggle against the hovels, chase away the fleas, provide German teachers, bring out newspapers—very little of that for us! We’ll confine ourselves, perhaps, to setting up a radio transmitter, under our control. For the rest, let them know just enough to understand our highway signs, so that they won’t get themselves run over by our vehicles! For them the word “liberty” means the right to wash on feastdays. If we arrive bringing soft soap, we’ll obtain no sympathy. These are views that will have to be completely readjusted. There’s only one duty: to Germanise this country by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins. If these people had defeated us, Heaven have mercy! But we don’t hate them. That sentiment is unknown to us. We are guided only by reason. They, on the other hand, have an inferiority complex. They have a real hatred towards a conqueror whose crushing superiority they can feel. The intelligentsia? We have too many of them at home.

Mussolini also sought to carry out his own version of Lebensraum. He called it: Spacio Vitale.

Another element of Mussolini’s fascism was the idea of ‘spazio vitale’ which translates to ‘vital space’. It is the belief that Italy required more space to operate. It further related to fascism as, the territory that Mussolini identified was where the Roman Empire had previously controlled. This concept of ‘vital space’ relates to another important aspect of fascism – racism superiority. While Mussolini did not necessarily support the racial policies and practise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, he did assert that some people were superior over others. For instance, he argued that it was justified for superior people to rule over inferior people.

While he was pro-Semitic and had a Jewish mistress, he clearly didn’t feel the same love for Slavs stating:

“When dealing with such a race as Slavic—inferior and barbarian—we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy… We should not be afraid of new victims… The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps… I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians…”

So Mussolini too wanted to destroy Slavs and steal their land.

More details on this:

The idea behind Mussolini’s foreign policy was that of spazio vitale (vital space), a concept in Fascism that was analogous to Lebensraum in German National Socialism.^[70] The concept of spazio vitale was first announced in 1919, when the entire Mediterranean, especially so-called Julian March, was redefined to make it appear a unified region that had belonged to Italy from the times of the ancient Roman province of Italia,^[7][8] and was claimed as Italy’s exclusive sphere of influence. The right to colonize the neighboring Slovene ethnic areas and the Mediterranean, being inhabited by what were alleged to be less developed peoples, was justified on the grounds that Italy was allegedly suffering from overpopulation.^[9]

Borrowing the idea first developed by Enrico Corradini before 1914 of the natural conflict between “plutocratic” nations like Britain and “proletarian” nations like Italy, Mussolini claimed that Italy’s principal problem was that “plutocratic” countries like Britain were blocking Italy from achieving the necessary spazio vitale that would let the Italian economy grow.^[10 Mussolini equated a nation’s potential for economic growth with territorial size, thus in his view the problem of poverty in Italy could only be solved by winning the necessary spazio vitale.^[11]

Italian foreign minister under Mussolini, Galeazzo Ciano, quotes in his memoir another fascist politician Aldo Vidussoni calling for the annihilation of Slovenes:

“Mussolini today repeats his praise of my speech, but shows me a clipping from the Resto del Carlino [daily newspaper of Bologna], and criticizes my Fascist salute, which was not according to regulations. Is there nothing really better to think about? Vidussoni comes to see me. After having spoken about a few casual things, he makes some political allusions and announces savage plans against the Slovenes. He wants to kill them all. I take the liberty of observing that there are a million of them. “That does not matter,” he answers firmly; “we must imitate the Ascari [Negro soldiers from Italian colonies] and exterminate them!”“

Ciano was: “an Italian diplomat and politician who served as Foreign Minister in the government of his father-in-law, Benito Mussolini, from 1936 until 1943. During this period, he was widely seen as Mussolini’s most probable successor as head of government.”

So Mussolini, coveting Slavic and Balkan lands for his own “living space,” tactically declared the Slavs “inferior and barbarian” so he could usurp their land. Complete lunatic.

And it wasn’t all talk. Fascist Italy invaded Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece had a network of concentration camps where they herded prisoners of war in occupied Balkans countries:

The Province of Ljubljana saw the deportation of 25,000 people, which equaled 7.5% of its total population. The operation, one of the most drastic in Europe, filled up Italian concentration camps on the island of Rab, in Gonars, Monigo (Treviso), Renicci d’Anghiari, Chiesanuova, as well as other concentration camps that were located elsewhere.

On 25 February 1942, only two days after the Italian Fascist regime established the Gonars concentration camp the first transport of 5,343 internees (1,643 of whom were children) arrived at the Rab concentration camp which was already overpopulated at the time, from the Province of Ljubljana itself as well as another Italian concentration camp in Monigo (near Treviso).

The Italian violence against the Slovene civilian population easily matched the German violence against Serbs,[16] with frequent summary executions of Slovenes committed on the orders of Mussolini and other Fascist officials.[17] For every major military operation, General M. Roatta issued additional special instructions, including one that the orders must be “carried out most energetically and without any false compassion”.[18]

One of Roatta’s soldiers wrote home on 1 July 1942: “We have destroyed everything from top to bottom without sparing the innocent. We kill entire families every night, beating them to death or shooting them.”[19]

None of this sits particularly well with me. What about you? The homicidal contempt for and attempted exploitation and removal of Slavs to make way for German and Italian imperiums is a crime. How can Fascios/NatSocs claim to be “pro-White” while supporting policies that are distinctly anti-White? When these things are trotted out, the fascio brigade usually falls back on the cooked up fake narrative that Hitler was trying to save the Slavs from Communism, which is a load of rubbish. That was rhetorical spin to justify the real agenda: murderous Lebensraum.

Minutes from a July 1941 secret meeting involving Hitler and the rest of the German top brass (Bormann, Goering, Rosenberg, etc.) lays out clearly that the “liberator” narrative was little more than public-facing propaganda and that the real agenda was to occupy, dominate and exploit these territories for exclusive German racial and economic benefit:

Top Secret
Führer’s Headquarters, July 16, 1941

A conference attended by Reichsleiter Rosenberg, Reich Minister Lammers, Field Marshal Keitel, the Reichsmarschall [Göring], and me was held today by order of the Führer at 3:00 p.m. in his quarters. The conference began at 3.00 p.m. and, including a break for coffee, lasted until about 8.00 p.m.

By way of introduction the Führer emphasized that he wished first of all to make some basic statements. Various measures were now necessary; this was confirmed, among other events, by an assertion made in an impudent Vichy newspaper that the war against the Soviet Union was Europe’s war and that therefore it had to be conducted for Europe as a whole. Apparently the Vichy paper meant to say by these hints that it ought not to be the Germans alone who benefited from this war, but that all European states ought to benefit from it.

It was essential that we should not proclaim our aims before the whole world; also, this was not necessary, but the chief thing was that we ourselves should know what we wanted. In no case should our own way be made more difficult by superfluous declarations. Such declarations were superfluous because we could do everything wherever we had the power, and what was beyond our power we would not be able to do anyway.

What we told the world about the motives for our measures ought to be conditioned, therefore, by tactical reasons. We ought to proceed here in exactly the same way as we did in the cases of Norway, Denmark, Holland and Belgium. In these cases too we said nothing about our aims, and if we were clever we would continue in the same way.

We shall then emphasize again that we were forced to occupy, administer and secure a certain area; it was in the interest of the inhabitants that we should provide order, food, traffic, etc., hence our measures. It should not be recognizable that thereby a final settlement is being initiated! We can nevertheless take all necessary measures—shooting, resettling, etc.—and we shall take them.

But we do not want to make any people into enemies prematurely and unnecessarily. Therefore we shall act as though we wanted to exercise a mandate only. It must be clear to us, however, that we shall never withdraw from these areas.

Accordingly we should act:

1. To do nothing which may obstruct the final settlement, but to prepare for it only in secret;
2. To emphasize that we are liberators.

In particular:

The Crimea has to be evacuated by all foreigners and to be settled by Germans only.

In the same way the former Austrian part of Galicia will become Reich territory.

Our relations with Romania are presently good, but one does not know what our relations will be at any future time. This we have to consider and we have to draw our frontiers accordingly. One ought not to be dependent on the good will of other people; we have to arrange our relations with Romania in accordance with this principle.

In principle we have now to face the task of cutting up the giant cake according to our needs, in order to be able: first, to dominate it; second, to administer it; and third, to exploit it.

Hitler helped bring Communism to Poland and the Baltics by signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact, giving Stalin the green light to move into Poland and the Baltic states. Without that deal, it’s unlikely that Stalin makes those moves as soon as he did. The German and Soviet militaries held a joint victory parade in the Polish city of Brest.

During that pact, Hitler and Stalin ceased criticizing each other publicly, in fact there was mutual friendliness between the two:

Between 1939 and 1941, as the Soviet Union presented Nazi Germany in its own internal propaganda as a friendly state, Soviet society ceased to criticize German policies and began to publish Nazi speeches. People in public meetings occasionally misspoke, praising “Comrade Hitler” or calling for “the triumph of international fascism.” Swastikas began to appear on buildings or even on posters of Soviet leaders. A similar level of ideological confusion is evident in Russia today.

More on that:

Both Stalin and Hitler knew that their internal propaganda machines would have to work hard to change current public opinion within their nations and also to change the negative perceptions that each country had been cultivating about the other.

According to historian Roger Moorhouse: [T]he tone of public and cultural life in the Soviet Union shifted after the signing of the pact. From one day to the next, the newspapers stopped criticizing Nazi Germany and instead began lauding German achievements. As Kravencho (a factory director) noted . . . “The Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries instantly discovered the wonders of German Kultur. Visiting Moscow on business, I learned that several exhibits of Nazi art, Nazi economic achievements and Nazi military glory were on view or in the process of organization. In fact, everything Germanic was in vogue.”

In Germany, people were equally surprised. As in the Soviet Union, official propaganda reversed itself quickly after its years of attacks on Soviet communism. According to Moorhouse: Public discourse was uniformly positive about the pact, with German newspapers immediately altering the tone with which they reported Soviet current affairs or Russian culture. Where reporters and editors had once been unable to resist inserting—at the very least—a derogatory adjective or a critical aside, they now reported events with scrupulous evenhandedness. On the morning of the pact’s announcement, the newspapers seemed desperate to make the case for the new arrangement. Every title carried almost verbatim reports and commentaries, scripted under Goebbels’s supervision, rejoicing at the restoration of the “traditional friendship between the Russian and the German peoples.” In the Nazi Party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, [German Foreign Minister] Ribbentrop congratulated himself by lauding his achievement as “one of the most important turning points in the history of our two peoples.” Even the in-house newspaper of the SS, Das Schwarze Korps, toed the optimistic line, reminding its readers, in a gallop through Russian and Soviet history, that the empire of the tsars had originally been a Germanic state, that it had twice “saved” Prussia, and that it had “paid dearly” for its enmity with Germany in World War I. Echoing Ribbentrop, the newspaper concluded that the two countries had always flourished when they were friends and so looked forward to a new era of collaboration.

He did all that, then broke the pact with a sneak attack on Stalin, marching in as if the “saviour” of the East from the very Bolshevism he helped bring there. They weren’t saving the Slavs from Bolshevism (the same Slavs they repeatedly called subhumans), they were moving the Slavs out of the way for a German imperium, conscripting and duping other Europeans who didn’t like Communism to help them carve out the path for exclusively German living space.

Hitler himself had admiration for Stalin, calling him a genius:

Hitler’s view of the Soviet economic system apparently also changed from skepticism to admiration. In a table talk on July 22, 1942, Hitler vehemently defended the Soviet economic system and even the so-called “Stachanow System,” which it was “exceedingly stupid” to ridicule: “One has to have unqualified respect for Stalin. In his way, the guy is quite a genius! His ideals such as Genghis Khan and so forth he knows very well, and his economic planning is so all-encompassing that it is only exceeded by our own Four-Year Plan. I have no doubts whatsoever that there have been no unemployed in the USSR, as opposed to capitalist countries such as the USA.”

Hitler’s admiration for the Soviet system is also confirmed in the notes of Wilhelm Scheidt, who—as adjutant to Hitler’s “representative for military history” Walther Scherff and a member of the Führer Headquarters group—had close contact with Hitler and sometimes even took part in briefings. Scheidt writes that Hitler underwent a “conversion to Bolshevism.” From Hitler’s remarks, he says, the following reactions could be derived: “Firstly, Hitler was enough of a materialist to be the first to recognise the enormous armament achievements of the USSR in the context of her strong, generous and all-encompassing economic organisation.”

Scheidt writes that in view of such impressions Hitler had recognised and expressed “the inner relationship of his system with the so heatedly opposed Bolshevism,” whereby he had to admit that “this system of the enemy was developed far more completely and straightforwardly. His enemy became his secret example.”

David Irving reports on this too in Hitler’s War, quoting Hitler telling his aides that Stalin had “enormous achievements” and was the “greatest living statesman”:

The next day, Papen also raised Stalin’s future with Hitler, and the Fiihrer repeated what he had told Goebbels a month before — that once the Wehrmacht had occupied a certain forward line in Russia, it might be possible to find common ground with the Red dictator, who was after all a man of enormous achievements. As another diplomat — Hasso von Etzdorf — noted: ‘ [Hitler] sees two possibilities as to Stalin’s fate; either he gets bumped off by his own people, or he tries to make peace with us. Because, he says, Stalin as the greatest living statesman must realise that at sixty-six you can’t begin your life’s work all over again if it will take a lifetime to complete it; so he’ll try to salvage what he can, with our acquiescence. And in this we should meet him halfway. If Stalin could only decide to seek expansion for Russia toward the south, the Persian Gulf, as he [Hitler] recommended to him once [November 1940], then peaceful co-existence between Russia and Germany would be conceivable.’

Many more Hitler statements of admiration for Stalin are quoted here.

So much for “he hated Communism”. He secretly loved it and implemented his own variant of communist central planning in Germany. Mises explained the “German pattern of socialism” like this:

The German pattern of socialism (Zwangswirtschaft) [“compulsory economy”] is characterized by the fact that it maintains, although only nominally, some institutions of capitalism. Labor is, of course, no longer a “commodity”; the labor market has been solemnly abolished; the government fixes wage rates and assigns every worker the place where he must work. Private ownership has been nominally untouched. In fact, however, the former entrepreneurs have been reduced to the status of shop managers (Betriebsfuehrer). The government tells them what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and from whom to sell. Business may remonstrate against inconvenient injunctions, but the final decision rests with the authorities.

In Vampire Economy, a German businessman is quoted saying that he and others began studying Marxism to understand the National Socialist economic system:

You have no idea how far State control goes and how much power the Nazi representatives have over our work. The worst of it is that they are so ignorant. In this respect they certainly differ from the former Social-Democratic officials. These Nazi radicals think of nothing except “distributing the wealth.” Some businessmen have even started studying Marxist theories, so that they will have a better understanding of the present economic system. – Vampire Economy, Pg. 6

By 1936, the German economy was thrust into a fully planned system of centralized control:

In this confidential memorandum from August 1936, Hitler explains why he believed it was necessary from an ideological-military standpoint for the German economy to achieve autarky [self-sufficiency] within four years. His comments became the basis of the so-called Four-Year Plan, which began in October of that year. Under the direction of Hermann Göring, the new plan for economic management aimed, in particular, to centralize the mobilization of labor, restrict imports, impose wage and price controls, and allocate and synthesize raw materials.

Four year plans, price and wage controls, state direction of labour, state direction of resource allocation, etc. Does all that sound like an anti-communist system to you?

Hitler was an expert tactician and double-speaker, that which he denounced in public he admired in private. Is this an admirable trustworthy person or a ruthless schemer?

The idea that Hitler was an anti-communist crusader is a convenient propaganda myth that he crafted to win support for Barbarossa. He duped morons to sign up for this war to help him get Lebensraum, feeding them bullshit that he was going to eliminate Communism. How can an avowed socialist eliminate communism when it’s the same damn thing? How can someone who implemented a near-communist command and control war economy be a true “anti-communist”? According to a historian, at least 55% of Hitler’s SA recruits were former members of Germany’s communist party:

In relation to the passage of militants from the KPD to the NSDAP, historian Timothy Scott Brown collected very interesting data in his book “Weimar Radicals: Nazis and Communists between Authenticity and Performance” (Berghahn, 2009), noting on page 136 that in what as regards the SA, “it is known that a significant part of the new recruits previously belonged to the KPD.”

Scott exposes the estimates collected by Rudolf Diels, first head of the Gestapo -the political police of the Third Reich-, in his memoirs, “Lucifer Ante Portas: Von Severing bis Heydrich” (1950), pointing out that in Berlin 70% of the new recruits to the SA from January 1933 were former Communists. The most striking fact of those indicated by Diels is that in some cases, entire Rot Front units moved to the SA.

…the social democrat Albert Grzesinski, head of the Berlin Police between 1930 and 1932, pointed out that 30% of the members of the SA in Berlin were ex-communists as early as 1932.

According to the historian, the SA themselves calculated at 55% the number of their militants who came from the communist ranks. Brown also points out that both the Gestapo files and the reports from the KPD intelligence apparatus confirm the considerable presence of former communists in the SA. In some cases, former communist militants held relevant positions in the repressive apparatus of the nazi regime.

Hitler said:

“we National Socialists wish precisely to attract all socialists, even the Communists; we wish to win them over from their international camp to the national one.”

There it is in black and white. Hitler merely swapped out the “international” rhetoric of Marxist Socialism and made it “national,” then wrapped the swastika around it and affixed Germanic Nordicist racial ideas to it: Germanic Racial Marxism. Hitler himself said in Mein Kampf that if you take away the Nordicist racial stuff, the ideology goes back to being plain Marxism:

Goebbels said the difference between Communism and the Hitler faith “was very slight” and that he’d “rather go down with Bolshevism than capitalism“. Ribbentrop called Soviet Bolshevism “a form of National Socialism“. What’s going on here, big guy?

Mussolini was a fervent Marxist who cobbled together fascism as a slight revision of Marx:

“It was inevitable that I should become a Socialist ultra, a Blanquist, indeed a communist. I carried about a medallion with Marx’s head on it in my pocket. I think I regarded it as a sort of talisman… [Marx] had a profound critical intelligence and was in some sense even a prophet.” – Mussolini

His entire political history was that of a radical Marxist socialist revolutionary:

“By 1912, Mussolini was in the leadership circle of Italy’s Socialist Party and editing their newspaper Avanti! He was very effective at the job, doubling circulation and personally becoming a widely read radical socialist journalist. One is that he was caught up in the nationalist fervour surrounding the war. Another is that he was mindful of Marx’s aphorism that social revolution usually follows war and thus saw it as an enabler for what he wanted politically.”

“But speaking for himself at the time, Mussolini was clear on his ideology: “I am and shall remain a socialist and my convictions will never change! They are bred into my very bones.” And looking at the early fascist program, one can see massive overlaps with a socialist agenda circa early 20th century. Among other things, there was to be a minimum wage, an eight-hour workday, a progressive tax on capital, expropriation of uncultivated lands, and universal suffrage.”

Fascists are proud of this:

“Let me tell you this, none of them had sympathy for traditionalism, let alone cried about returning to the past, figures such as: Sergio Panunzio, who saw Fascism as the highest realization of Marxism; Nicola Bombacci, who believed that the actions of Mussolini were in line with the Marxist-Leninist dialectic. Bombacci would aid Fascist thought by bringing mainstream Communists into the fold, individuals such as Giovanni Bitelli, Federico Giannini, Dino Fiorelli, Mario Guarnieri, Bruno Ricci, Sigfrido Barghini and Alibrando Giovannetti. Oh, and let us not forget how Giovanni Gentile, the main philosopher of Fascism, believed that––not only did fascist doctrine achieve the only feasible form of Socialism––but Fascist Philosophy had become a form of Practical Marxism.” – fascist source

“Giovanni Gentile does not reject Marx, but rather builds upon Marx by pointing out that Marx was actually just a “confused idealist”, and that Fascism is in actuality just “a better Marxism”. In other words, Fascism is not “Anti-Marxism”, but more accurately “Post-Marxism”. It is a “superior Marxism” or “practical Marxism” in praxis because it’s built upon a coherent ontology unlike the vulgar materialism of Marxists that follow figures such as Engels and Lenin.” – fascist source

He implemented a command economy of total state control over private business:

Under fascism, the state, through official cartels, controlled all aspects of manufacturing, commerce, finance, and agriculture. Planning boards set product lines, production levels, prices, wages, working conditions, and the size of firms. Licensing was ubiquitous; no economic activity could be undertaken without government permission. – source

He never strayed far from his mission to socialize the entire economy, calling for even more strict nationalizations in his 1943 Verona Manifesto:

On February 12, 1944, Mussolini’s cabinet approved a bill of “socialization” that spoke about the “Mussolinian conception on subjects such as; much higher social justice, a more equitable distribution of wealth and the participation of labor in the state life.” Mussolini claimed that Italian capitalists had betrayed him after they had gained immensely from fascism, and that he now regretted his alliance with them and rediscovered his old socialist influences. He claimed that he had intended to carry out a large-scale nationalization of property in 1939–1940 but that the outbreak of war had forced him to postpone it, and promised that in the future, all industrial firms with over 100 employees would be nationalized. Mussolini even reached out to ex-communist Nicola Bombacci, a former student of Vladimir Lenin, to help him in spreading the image that Fascism was a progressive movement.

Fascist Italy was among the first Western states to recognize the brutal regime of Lenin in Soviet Russia. He signed a robust friendship and trade pact with the Soviets in 1933, the Italo-Soviet pact. Are these the beliefs and actions of an “anti-communist” or a crypto-communist larping as something else?

Fascists are therefore little more than Marxist socialists wrapped up in a flag and patriotic sentiment. Thus fascists can never truly be “anti-communists” because they’re just a variant of Communism. The Hitler-Stalin fight is an example of socialist infighting, like the Mensheviks vs Bolsheviks, Stalin vs Trotsky, etc. Moreover, Mussolini did not even like the fact that Hitler attacked Stalin and pleaded with him to make a peace deal:

Earlier in April 1943, Mussolini had begged Hitler to make a separate peace with Stalin and send German troops to the west to guard against an expected Allied invasion of Italy. Mussolini feared that with the losses in Tunisia and North Africa, the next logical step for Dwight Eisenhower’s armies would be to come across the Mediterranean and attack the Italian peninsula.

Mussolini did not view the Soviets as a big enemy for obvious reasons: they were fellow brother socialists. Rather he viewed the “Western plutocracies” as the great oppressors of his “proletarian nation” trying to make its way in the world. Mussolini was channeling Lenin with all that sentiment about Italy being an oppressed victim of the bigger powers, striving to break free from the chains of bondage by erecting its own empire and colonization of Slavic lands for Italian expansion. As I quoted earlier:

Borrowing the idea first developed by Enrico Corradini before 1914 of the natural conflict between “plutocratic” nations like Britain and “proletarian” nations like Italy, Mussolini claimed that Italy’s principal problem was that “plutocratic” countries like Britain were blocking Italy from achieving the necessary spazio vitale that would let the Italian economy grow.^[10 Mussolini equated a nation’s potential for economic growth with territorial size, thus in his view the problem of poverty in Italy could only be solved by winning the necessary spazio vitale.^[11]

Mussolini was first and foremost a radical economic socialist who hated capitalism and democracy above all. So Stalin’s socialist autocracy was much more to his liking. Stalin’s socialist autocracy was also more to Hitler’s liking, as he expressed privately.

My conclusion here is that German National Socialism is not congruent with a pan-European outlook or a pro-White worldview. It was Germanic ethnic imperialism with a strong anti-Slavic bent, not traditional nationalism. It can’t call itself a “pro-White” philosophy if a key component of it is hatred of fellow Europeans and a drive to conquer them. It’s impossible to reconcile the venomous and homicidal enmity towards Slavs with being pro-White. Furthermore, the fascist and natsoc claim to being “anti-Communism” crusaders was cynical and hollow self-serving propaganda born of an internecine brother war between fellow socialists over resources, territory and power, no different than the religious brother wars between Sunnis and Shias or Catholics and Protestants.

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Therefore the only possibility that Germany had to conduct a sound territorial policy was to acquire new territory in Europe itself. Colonies cannot serve this purpose, since they aren’t suited for large-scale European settlement. From the 19th century on, it was no longer possible to peacefully acquire such colonies. Therefore any attempt at such a colonial expansion would have meant an enormous military struggle. Thus it was more practical to undertake that military struggle for new territory in Europe, rather than to wage war for foreign acquisition.

Such a decision naturally demands the nation’s undivided attention. A policy like this requires all available energy on the part of everyone concerned, and cannot be carried out by half- measures or hesitatingly. The political leadership of the German Reich should have been exclusively devoted to this goal. No step should have been taken other than one that served as a means to this end. It should have been clear that such a goal could only be reached by war; and this prospect should have been faced with calm and collected determination.

All alliances should have been envisioned and judged only from this standpoint. If new territory were to be acquired in Europe, it should have been mainly at Russia’s expense. Once again, the new German Reich should have set out on the same road as was formerly traveled by the Teutonic Knights-this time to acquire soil for the German plow by means of the German sword, and thus provide the nation with its daily bread. Such a policy, however, could have only one possible European ally: England. Only by alliance with England was it possible to safeguard the rear of the new German crusade. And the justification for undertaking such an expedition was stronger than that of our forefathers. Not one of our pacifists refuses to eat the bread made from grain grown in the East; and yet the first plow here was “the sword’!

Hitler outlines the foreign policy

It is these very circles that are beginning today to divert our foreign policy toward most disastrous directions and tum it away from any real defense of the folkish interests of our people. Instead they serve their own fantastic ideologies, and I thus feel myself obliged to offer to my own colleagues a clear exposition of the most important problem in foreign policy, namely, our relation to Russia.

… Moreover, as National Socialists, we must lay down the following principle regarding the nature of the foreign policy of a folkish State: A folkish State’s foreign policy must first of all bear in mind the duty of securing the existence of the race on this planet, which is embodied in this State. And this is done by establishing a healthy and natural relation between the number and growth of the population on the one hand, and the quantity and quality of the soil on the other.

The only healthy condition is one that assures a people’s sustenance on their own soil. Any other situation is unhealthy even though it may endure for centuries or even thousands of years. Sooner or later, this will lead to the decline or even destruction of the people concerned. Only a sufficiently large space on this Earth can assure a peoples’ free existence. The necessary extent of territorial expansion for settlement must not be estimated by present requirements nor even by the magnitude of its agricultural productivity in relation to the population.

…In the first volume, under the heading “Germany’s Alliance Policy before the War,” I have already explained that a state’s land area is of importance, not only as the source of the nation’s food, but also militarily and politically. Once a people is assured of its sustenance by the amount of soil, it must consider how to defend it. …Thus the German nation can assure its own future only as a world power.

Hitler says Germany needs more land space to become a world power again

…Germany today is no world power. Even if our present military weakness could be overcome, we still would have no claim to this title. What importance does a State have on this planet in which the relation of population to area is so miserable as in the present German Reich? In an era in which the world is being gradually divided among states–many of whom almost embrace whole continents–one cannot speak of a world power in the case of a structure whose political Motherland is confined to the laughable area of barely 500,000 square kilometers.

From a purely territorial point of view, the area of the German Reich is vanishingly small compared with the other so-called world powers. England mustn’t be cited as a proof to the contrary, for the English Motherland is in reality the great capital of the British world empire, which owns almost a fourth of the Earth’s surface. Furthermore we must consider the American Union as foremost among the colossal states, also Russia and China. Some of these spatial areas are more than ten times greater than the present German Reich.

…Thus the world today has not only a number of states that are much greater than our German nation in population, but they also have a land area that is, above all, the basis of their political power. Never has the relation between area and population in the German Reich been as unfavorable relative to other world states as at the beginning of our history 2,000 years ago, and again today. Formerly we were a young people, storming into a world of crumbling great states, whose last giant, Rome, we helped to bring down. Today we find ourselves in a world of great power-states, in which our own Reich is constantly sinking into insignificance.

… If the National Socialist movement wants to be recognized by history as having a great mission for our people, it will have to painfully recognize the real truth of our situation in the world. It must courageously fight against the aimlessness and incompetence that has hitherto guided our German nation in foreign policy. Then, without respect for ‘tradition’ or preconceptions, it must find the courage to organize our national forces and set them on a path that will lead them away from the present restricted living space and toward new land and soil. Thus will the movement save us from the danger of perishing from this Earth or of serving others as a slave nation.

… In this connection, if we examine the political experiences of our people during more than a thousand years, recalling the innumerable wars and struggles, and scrutinizing it all in light of present results, we must confess that this sea of blood has produced only three phenomena that we may consider as lasting fruits of specific actions in foreign policy and overall politics: (1) The colonization of the Ostmark, mostly by the Bavarians; (2) The conquest and settlement of the territory east of the Elbe; and (3) The organization of the Brandenburg-Prussian state by the Hohenzollerns, which became the model for the crystallization of a new Reich. …These were the first, and unfortunately the only, successful attempts to establish a harmony between our increasing population and the quantity of land and soil.

… We National Socialists must never join in the common hurrahpatriotism of the contemporary bourgeois world. It would be a mortal danger for us to look upon immediate pre-war developments as constituting even the slightest obligation in our path forward. From the entire historical period of the 19th century, we do not accept a single obligation that was based in that period itself. In contrast to the policy of those who represented that period, we must take our stand on the highest viewpoint regarding all foreign policy, namely: to bring the land into harmony with our population. Indeed, from the past we can only learn that the aim of our political conduct must lie in two directions: (1) land and soil as the objective of our foreign policy, and (2) a new, philosophically-established, uniform foundation as the goal of domestic political activity.

Hitler says the 1914 borders are not sufficient

… I still want to briefly take a stand on the question of how far our territorial aims are ethically and morally justified. This is necessary because, unfortunately in our so-called folkish circles, there are all kinds of plausible big-mouths who try to persuade the German people that the aim of their foreign policy ought to be to right the wrongs of 1918, while at the same time they find it necessary to assure the whole world of folkish brotherhood and sympathy.

In regard to this point I want to make the following statement: To demand the restoration of the 1914 borders is a political absurdity that’s fraught with such consequences as to appear criminal. The 1914 Reich borders were anything but logical. They were not really complete, in the sense of including all the members of the German nation, nor were they reasonable, in light of military-geographical effectiveness. …By setting up the restoration of the 1914 borders as the aim of Germany’s political program, each member of the enemy coalition, who otherwise might be inclined to withdraw from the league, fears that he might be attacked by us if isolated, thus losing support of his allies. Each individual state feels itself targeted and threatened by this slogan. This is absurd, for the following two reasons: (1) The means of power are lacking to draw it from the evening air into reality, and (2) Even if it could be really carried out, the result would be so miserable that, by God, it wouldn’t be worthwhile to risk our people’s blood for it.

There can scarcely be any doubt whatsoever that only through bloodshed could we restore the 1914 borders. Only a child-like mind believes that the Versailles Treaty can be corrected by indirect means or begging. …Times have changed since the Congress of Vienna: It’s no longer princes or their courtesans who contend and bargain about state borders, but rather the inexorable world-Jew who fights for his dominion over nations. No nation can remove this fist from its throat except by the sword. Only an organized and concentrated national sentiment, turned into an effective force, can defy the international enslavement of peoples. This path is, and remains, a bloody one.

If we are convinced that the German future calls for the highest sacrifice, in one way or another, then we must set aside considerations of political expediency, establish a worthy goal, and fight for it.

… The 1914 borders are of no significance for the German future. They neither served to protect us in the past, nor do they offer any strength for the future. With these borders, the German people cannot attain an inner unity, nor can they assure their sustenance, nor, from a military viewpoint, are they advantageous, nor can they improve our relations with the other world powers–or better, with the real world powers. We won’t narrow the gap with England, and we won’t achieve the size of the American Union; indeed, not even France would be diminished in terms of worldpolitical importance.

Only one thing is certain: The attempt to restore the 1914 borders, even if successful, would demand so much of our people’s blood that no further sacrifice would be possible for such measures needed to really secure the life and future of the nation. On the contrary, intoxicated by such a superficial success, further aims would be renounced–all the more so because the ‘national honor’ would seem to be repaired and new doors would be opened, at least for the moment, to commercial development.

Hitler says the goal is to expand the living space East by force & war is necessary to accomplish this goal

… Against all this, we National Socialists must stick firmly to our foreign policy goal, namely, that the German people must be assured of the land and soil entitled to it on this Earth. And only this action, before God and our German posterity, would justify any sacrifice of blood: Before God, because we are sent into this world with the mission to struggle for our daily bread, as creatures to whom nothing is given, and who must be able to win and defend their position as lords of the Earth only through their own intelligence and courage; and before German posterity insofar as that, for each one who has shed his blood, a thousand others will be bequeathed to posterity. The land on which our German peasants will one day be able to bring forth their sturdy sons justifies the investment of our sons today. And even though the responsible statesmen may be persecuted by their contemporaries, posterity will absolve them from all blood-guilt for this sacrifice of their people.

…Here I must offer the sharpest protest against those folkish pencil-pushers who pretend that such territorial extension would be a ‘violation of sacred human rights,’ and attack it as such. One never knows who stands behind such persons. But it’s certain that the confusion they provoke is desirable and convenient for the enemies of our nation. By taking such an attitude, they help to internally weaken and destroy the will of our people to promote, in the only effective way, their own vital interests. No nation on Earth possesses even a square meter of land by decree of a higher Will or a higher Right. Just as Germany’s borders are the outcome of chance, and are only temporary ones that were established by political struggles at various times, so too are the borders of other nations’ living space. And just as only an imbecile could look upon the Earth’s geography as unchangeable as granite–which, in reality, represents a definite stage in a given development, created by the mighty forces of Nature, and which may be altered tomorrow by greater forces of destruction and change–so too the borders of living spaces in the lives of nations.

State borders are made by man, and can be changed by man. The fact that a nation has acquired an enormous area is no reason why it should hold it forever. At most, it proves the strength of the conqueror and the weakness of the defeated. And in this strength alone lies the right. If the German people are imprisoned within an impossible area, and face a miserable future, this is not by the command of Fate, anymore than to oppose such affairs is to disobey it. Just as no higher power has promised more territory to other nations than to the German, so it cannot be blamed for an unjust distribution of soil. Just as the soil on which we now live was not bestowed by Heaven on our forefathers–but had to be conquered by mortal risk–so too in the future our people will not obtain territory, and thus life, as a favor from above, but must win it by the power of a triumphant sword.

Today we’re all convinced of the need to reckon with France, but this would be broadly ineffective if it were the sole aim of our foreign policy. It can and will have significance only if it serves as a rear cover in the struggle for an enlargement of our peoples’ living space in Europe. Colonial acquisitions won’t solve that problem. This will happen only by the winning of settlement territory for our people, such as will extend the area of the Motherland and thereby not only keep the new settlers in the closest communion with the land of their origin, but will guarantee to this region the advantages that arise from a unified expanse.

The folkish movement mustn’t be an advocate for other nations, but rather a protagonist for itself. Otherwise it would be superfluous and, above all, would have no right to clamor about the past. For then it would be acting the same as before. The old German policy was unjustly determined by dynastic considerations, and future policy mustn’t follow the sentimentality of cosmopolitan folkishness. We must especially not be security police for the well-known ‘poor, small nations,’ but rather soldiers of ourselves.

We National Socialists must go still further: The right to land and soil becomes a duty when a great nation seems destined to go under, unless its land is extended. And that’s particularly true when the nation at hand is not some little group of Negroes but the Germanic mother of all life, which has given cultural shape to the modem world. Germany will either be a world power, or not at all. But in order to become a world power, it needs that size which gives it the necessary importance today, and gives life to its citizens.

Therefore we National Socialists have purposely drawn a line through our pre-war conduct of foreign policy. We resume where we left off, six centuries ago. We put an end to the perpetual Germanic march towards the south and west of Europe, and tum our eyes towards the land of the East. We finally shut off the colonial–and trade-policy of pre-war times, and pass over to the land-policy of the future.

But when we speak of new land and soil in Europe today, we must principally think of Russia and its subject border states. Destiny itself seems to wish to point the way for us here. In delivering Russia over to Bolshevism, it robbed the Russian people of that intelligentsia that had once created and secured the Russian state. The organization of the Russian state-structure was not a result of Russian Slavic political ability, but rather was a marvelous example of the state-building capacity of the Germanic element amidst an inferior race.

Many powerful empires were created on the Earth in this way. More than once, lesser peoples with Germanic organizers and leaders became formidable states, and endured as long as the racial nucleus of the state-creating race survived. For centuries, Russia owed its sustenance to the Germanic nucleus of its ruling upper class.

Today this class has been almost completely rooted out and extinguished. The Jew has taken its place. As impossible as it is for the Russian himself to shake off the Jewish yoke, so too is it impossible for the Jew to keep this mighty empire forever. He himself is no organizing element, but rather a ferment of decomposition.203 This colossal Eastern Empire is ripe for dissolution. And the end of Jewish rule in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. We are chosen by Fate to be witnesses of a catastrophe that will afford the strongest confirmation of the folkish race-theory.

Our task, and the mission of the National Socialist movement, is to develop the political insight in our people that will enable them to realize that their future aim is not the fulfillment of some new and wildly adventurous March of Alexander, but rather as the industrious labor of the German plow, for which the sword will provide the soil.

…It’s impossible for a coalition of cripples to attack a powerful state, if it’s determined to shed the last drop of its blood for its existence. As a folkish man who appraises the value of humanity by their race, I must recognize the racial inferiority of the so-called ‘oppressed nations,’ and this prevents me from linking my own peoples’ destiny with theirs.

Today we must adopt the same position towards Russia. Present-day Russia, deprived of its Germanic ruling class, is not a possible ally in the struggle for German freedom, even setting aside the inner intentions of its new rulers. From a purely military viewpoint, a Russo-German coalition waging war against Western Europe, and probably against the whole world, would be catastrophic.

… In its dealings with the outside world, the political testament of the German nation should, and must always be, the following:

…Never permit two continental powers to arise in Europe! Any attempt to organize a second military power on the German border by the creation of a state capable of military strength, will be viewed as an attack against Germany. Such a situation confers not only the right but the duty to use every means, including armed force, to prevent it from happening-and to crush such a state, if it has already arisen.

See to it that our nation’s strength is grounded not on colonial foundations but on the soil of our European homeland! Never consider the Reich secure unless, for centuries to come, it can give every descendant of our people his own piece of land and soil! Never forget that the most sacred right in the world is man’s right to the Earth that he tills himself; and that the holiest of all sacrifices is the blood that one sheds for the Earth!

Hitler made similar statements in a 1930 discussion with Otto Strasser:

“Your errors in the domain of foreign policy are explained by your ignorance of racial factors. For example, you are enthusiastic about the Hindu independence movement … you know the Anglo-Saxons have the mission to govern the people they have subdued, precisely in the name of their superiority. The Nordic race is called to dominate the world, and this right must guide our foreign policy. It’s why we cannot envision any rapprochement with Russia, which is a Slavic-Tatar body surmounted by a Jewish head. I knew Slavs from my home country. In the era where a Germanic head ruled the Slavic body, entente was possible, Bismarck outlined this rapprochement before. But today, it would be a crime.”

“Mister Hitler agreed with me on the primacy of Germany’s interests in the matter of foreign policy. In his eyes, an entente with England corresponded with this imperative, the goal was the Nordic domination of Europe, and through America Nordic-Germanic domination of the world.“

“National Socialism would mean little if it was limited to Germany alone and did not seal the domination of the world by the white race for 1000 or 2000 years. That doesn’t mean the exploitation of other races. To put it simply, the inferior races are called to realize other destinies than the superior races. We want to assure the domination of the world in concert with the Anglo-Saxons.“

Nazi settlement policy in Ukraine (from “Hitler’s Garden of Eden in Ukraine” by Wendy Lower):

The “New Order,” as the Nazis conceived it, entailed a racial classification and “cleansing” of Europe. Although Nazi population policies were aimed at all peoples who fell into German hands, Nazi leaders focused their resettlement and colonization programs on Eastern Europe, which was designated the ideal German “living space.” They were not only extremely exclusionary in their taxonomies of people but also narrowly selective in their view of “fertile” geographic spaces where Germans would thrive. As historian Gerhard Weinberg and others have stressed, the joining of race and space was central to the Nazi Weltanschauung.’ During World War II, the Germans implemented experimental colonial schemes in Poland and Ukraine. In Ukraine they concentrated their efforts in the central region of Zhytomyr at the Hegewald colony and in the south- ern regions of Dnepropetrovsk and Nikoleav at the Halbstadt and Nikopol colonies. The Hegewald colony was situated strategically in the “backyard” of Himmler and Hitler’s secret field headquarters at Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr.

The Halbstadt and Nikopol colonies stretched across German civilian- and military-administered territories in southeastern Ukraine; additional SS-controlled German colonies dotted the Romanian-occupied area of former Soviet Ukraine, which was named Transnistria. In the latter half of 1941 and early 1942 these colonies were “ethnically cleansed” of their Jewish populations. Nearly all of the Jews who resided there for generations were massacred; the Ukrainians who were not retained as forced laborers on the Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) and SS-police colonies were deported to labor camps in eastern Ukraine or to the Reich. Prima facie, the logic of this destruction seems quite clear and consistent with a European pattern of imperial conquest, mass migration, forced deportations, and a genocidal “displacement” of the “native” population. However, the ideological and causal links between Nazi resettlement programs and the Holocaust were more tenuous even in the colonial context of Ukraine.

… Thus one finds in the speeches and writings about Lebensraum by Hitler, the leader of the SS Heinrich Himmler, and Reich Minister for the Eastern Territories Alfred Rosenberg references to the North American frontier, the British Empire in India, and the European exploitation of Africa’s resources in the late nineteenth century. …Heinrich Himmler and his coterie of General Plan East planners described Eastern Europe as Germany’s Californian paradise. Alfred Rosenberg encouraged his regional commissars in Ukraine to read colonial travelogues such as Nazi supporter Kurt Freber’s With My Backpack to India (1927) and Schulz’s In the African Jungle alongside antisemitic tracts such as Esser’s The Jewish World Plague (1939). In 1942, children in Hitler’s Germany played a board game in which armed farmers competed for the fertile “black earth” of Ukraine.

… In 1942/43 Nazi economic developers established the Togo Ost Society in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, bringing state-controlled agricultural models from Africa to Eastern Europe. In addition to frontier fantasies, economic models, and ideas of race, the Nazis also transferred German Africans to Eastern Europe. In September 1943, as the Red Army advanced toward Poland, Nazi colonial enthusiasts “imported” German settlers from eastern Africa to the Warthegau. According to an account in the Litzmannstadter Zeitung, the German Africanists were happy to leave behind the monoculture farming of Africa and enjoy the rich soil and diverse crops of Polish farms. As model pioneers they were supposed to inspire European Germans who were reluctant to relocate to Poland.

In the coveted breadbasket of Ukraine the Nazis found territory ripe for German agricultural settlements. Already in the early 1920s, Hitler and his cohorts argued for a new German foreign policy, which they described as a “soil policy of the future” rooted in Germany’s medieval history of migration to the east. In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote,

“We National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy of our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze to the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.”

… Combining atavistic “blood and soil” notions of utopia with modern state structures and methods, Hitler, Darré, and other Nazi ideologues played down overseas colonialism and concentrated instead on contiguous German settlements in Eastern Europe and especially Ukraine where the Aryan “soldier-peasant” tilled the soil with a weapon at his side, ready to defend the farm from the “Asian hordes.” As for the Ukrainians whom the Nazis pejoratively branded “Negroes,” Hitler remarked that the Germans would supply them “with scarves, glass beads and everything that colonial peoples like.” After the Germans defeated Poland in autumn of 1939, the newly appointed Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of Germandom, Heinrich Himmler, was instructed “to give shape to the new German areas of colonization” by “eliminating harmful, alien elements from the German Volk and its living space,” and “to carry out the settlement of the Volksdeutsche on the designated lands.””*

The concept and process of Germanization as Himmler described it was “not in the old sense of bringing the German languages and German laws to the people dwelling in that area, but to ensure that in the east only people of genuinely German, Teutonic blood shall live.” As Germany and its allies unleashed the “war of destruction” against the Soviet Union, Hitler asserted in October 1941, “Ukraine will be a home for twenty million inhabitants besides the natives. In three hundred years, the country will be one of the loveliest gardens in the world. As for the natives, we’ll have to screen them carefully. The Jew, that destroyer, we shall drive out . . . our colonizing penetration must be constantly progressive, until it reaches the stage where our own colonists far outnumber the local inhabitants.”

… Ukraine has been largely left out of the postwar studies of SS-police resettlement plans for the East. The omission is odd because it was precisely in Ukraine where Himmler left his individual mark as a colonizer and where Europe’s largest Jewish population, after Poland, resided and was destroyed in the Holocaust. According to Himmler’s schemes, Ukraine was not to be 100 percent Germanized like the annexed territories of the Reich in the Polish Warthegau. Instead, Himmler’s planners conceived of Ukraine as a land of Siedlungsmarken und Stiitzpunkte, or patches of German settlements. They aimed to consolidate the scattered communities of Volhynian Germans located in west-central Ukraine and residing in the Zhytomyr Commissariat, and the so-called Black Sea Germans located in southern Ukraine, including in Crimea (which Hitler dreamed of as a Nazi Riviera). The ethnic German settlements and farms were to be placed along the new autobahns and railway lines running east-west and north-south. On the eve of the Nazi invasion most ethnic Germans who were left in Soviet Ukraine lived in the poorest rural areas and not in the major towns.”

They set up offices to oversee the expansion policies:

In addition to the now well-known Einsatzgruppen that invaded the Soviet territories under Reinhard Heydrich’s command in the summer of 1941, on 11 July Himmler activated secret task forces, also labeled Einsatzgruppen, as part of a special mission code-named “Sonderkommando Russ-land.” The “special commando Russia” was tasked with secret colonization activities that began with the registration of the Volksdeutsche. The commando carried out their work with the assistance of personnel from Einsatz- gruppe C and Einsatzgruppe D. According to historian Isabel Heinemann’s latest research, there were 277 SS-policemen assigned to Sonderkommando Russland, and they represented a conglomeration of SS and police agencies— the Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom (RKF), the Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA), the Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA), the Ethnic German Liaison Office (VoMi), and the Security Service (SD). Many had worked the previous two years in Poland on resettlement programs. They established headquarters first in Zhytomyr then Odessa, Nikoleav, Crimea, and Kiev. Thus, while the Sipo-SD Einsatzgruppen (C and D) focused on security and intelligence operations, above all anti-Jewish measures, these other SS colonization task forces concentrated on three activities: (1) determination of valuable German blood; (2) survey and registration of the land for later SS colonization; and (3) co-ordination of colonization work with other Himmler agencies in order to secure SS-police strongholds in Ukraine.

… Before Himmler announced his plans to form a Volksdeutsche colony at Hegewald in September 1942, the district German leaders in and around Zhytomyr had concentrated the region’s forty-five thousand ethnic Germans into small communities. They supplied the ethnic Germans with food, clothing, and housing, as well as German history and language books. While Rosenberg’s ethnographers and commissars went from village to village compiling population surveys and local histories, Himmler’s men tried to turn the Volksdeutsche men into productive, armed farmers who could defend the SS estates and collective farms.

… At his Zhytomyr headquarters Himmler convened his top SS officials (including Dr. Konrad Meyer) to introduce the scheme and initiate implementation plans. Under the direction of the RKF chief Ulrich Greifelt, Ukraine’s senior SS-police leader Hans Adolf Pruetzmann, and the SS regional chief of resettlement actions in Zhytomyr, Theo Henschel, local gendarme and VoMi officials rounded up eighteen thousand Ukrainians who lived in the designated space for resettlement. They crammed them onto freight cars and dumped them in labor camps in southern Russia and neighboring regions. Meanwhile, treks of ethnic Germans totaling more than ten thousand persons were moved under police guard by foot and in carriages to the designated colony. At the rest areas along the journey’s path, the SS-police forces had cleared the villages of their Ukrainian inhabitants and left many of them in transit camps destined to go to the Reich as forced laborers.*”

The ethnic Germans who arrived at Hegewald were organized into, as Hitler and Himmler described them, “settlement pearls,” which were stretched along the Zhytomyr-Vinnytsia autobahn like a Kette or string of pearls. To start, the Volksdeutsche who were assigned to the SS-run collective farms were given private plots of land, about one hectare per family. If they proved their diligence they could receive up to twenty-five hectares. The ethnic German farms were subjected to high SS quotas and random confiscations of milk and other produce. Ukrainian and Byelorussian prisoners and forced laborers tilled the reserve farmland not allotted to the German and SS farmers. The entire Hegewald district of two hundred square miles, consisting of twenty-eight villages and collective farms, was administered by ethnic German mayors, SS-policemen, agricultural specialists, and Nazi Party welfare workers and not by Rosenberg’s commissars. Thus, on paper Rosenberg’s administration provided the administrative framework for governing the eastern territories, yet in reality population policies and the future of colonization experiments lay in the hands of Himmler’s SS-police agencies and the Nazi Party.

Photo spreads and articles in the official newspaper of the RKU, the Deutsche Ukraine Zeitung, celebrated the Hegewald settlement, proclaim- ing it a success. However, the reality was quite different. When viewed from the ground, the entire campaign was, as one local official described it, “eine Schweinerei” (an awful mess). The Nazis could not fulfill the propagandized promises to the Volksdeutsche, who represented a dislocated population with few skills and resources. …

But these plundered goods, which the Nazis presented as Christmas gifts to the Volksdeutsche, were not enough to make Nazi colonization schemes successful. About six hundred “racially valuable” children, who had been kidnapped according to Himmler’s instructions, could not be adequately cared for in the crowded orphanages in and around Zhytomyr. For one community of 3,500 Volksdeutsche, SS-police officials established one produce shop. Rations were not available, and when items did arrive they were not distributed with the kind of efficiency that one normally attributes to the Nazi system of destruction. Nazi forced labor raiders swept through the villages and grabbed Volksdeutsche who were not supposed to be included among the deportees to the Reich. Soviet partisans targeted the settlements, ransacked the farms, and killed their inhabitants. In the wake of such attacks the ethnic German Selbstschutz units at Hegewald took revenge on neighboring Ukrainian villages.**

In Ukraine the military setbacks of 1943 compelled Nazi leaders to reduce Volksdeutsche programs to regional initiatives and then to abandon them altogether. The evacuation of the Hegewald settlement was hastily carried out a few weeks before the Red Army arrived in November 1943. The Ukrainians and ethnic Germans who were assigned to escort the treks of evacuees heading west were prone to, as the SS-police reported, “plundering and other offensive excesses.” Also, Soviet forces overtook and massacred hundreds of ethnic Germans who were trudging westward. By the end of November 1943, Volksdeutsche from the settlements in Ukraine were arriving in western Ukraine and Poland where they remained in camps run by the VoMi. When the Red Army uncovered these camps in early 1945, thousands of these Volksdeutsche were branded collaborators and deported to Soviet camps in the trans-Ural region.*’

The formation of Hegewald (as well as other resettlement actions in Dnepro- petrovsk and Nikoleav) did not go as smoothly as Nazi leaders had expected. The Nazis were unable to construct colonies based on the pseudo-scientific and mythic notions of race. Many of the contradictions and tensions that lay beneath Hitler and Himmler’s fantasies of an Aryan living space in the East revealed themselves at the local level of praxis.

The same regional commissars, SS-policemen who rarely questioned the morality or rationality of eradicating those deemed inferior, remained uncertain, skeptical, and less enthusiastic about their role and the general aim of creating utopian colonies out of ethnic German settlements. Nazi leaders tried to inspire their underlings with pep talks about the unlimited opportunities in the East and praised them as “pioneers of Germandom in the East.” They compared them to frontiersmen who settled the American West. However, in reality the German colonizer had no choice about where he settled, which farm he received, or what he could do with it. This was decided by Himmler’s proliferating agencies of race and space planning. The German pioneer in the East was racially selected by the state and placed into an artificial society that had been ethnically “cleansed” by Himmler’s SS-police killing units.

Besides demonstrating that Nazi racial policy was a devastating failure, the history of Himmler’s creation of an experimental colony at Hegewald shows that once under way, resettlement actions in Ukraine were not directly linked to the unfolding of anti-Jewish policy there. The Volksdeutsche actions caused the mass deportations of Ukrainian farmers and their families, not of Jews, because by the time these Volksdeutsche resettlement actions began, most Jews who resided on the designated colonial spaces were already dead or in camps. Moreover, the earlier anti-Jewish massacres do not seem to have been motivated by widespread empathy for the Volks-deutsche or committed as acts of revenge on behalf of the Volksdeutsche.

In Chapter Two of Mein Kampf Hitler declares the Poles an inferior alien race and says it was a mistake for past regimes to try to Germanize them. More confirmation he hated the Slavs.

“Not only in Austria, however, but also in Germany, these so-called national circles were, and still are, influenced by similarly false ideas. A Polish policy, involving a Germanization of the East, was demanded by many and was unfortunately based on the same false reasoning. Here again it was believed that a Germanization of the Polish element could occur by a purely linguistic union. The result would have been catastrophic: A foreign people expressing their foreign thoughts in the German language, thus compromising the dignity and nobility of our own nation by their inferiority.“

In “Hitler’s War and the War Path,” David Irving quotes Hitler at a meeting with generals stressing the same point:

A few days later, on May 23, Hitler delivered a four-hour speech to his Commanders in Chief in his cavernous study. He stood at a lectern and addressed altogether a dozen officers seated in three rows: Raeder, Milch, Brauchitsch, and Keitel formed the front row (Goring was away), and their chiefs of staff and adjutants the two other rows. Hitler stated once again that Danzig was not his ultimate objective — that would be to secure Lebensraum in the east to feed Germany’s eighty million inhabitants. ‘If fate forces us to fight in the west,’ Hitler told them, ‘it will be just as well if first we possess more in the east.’ This was why he had decided to ‘take on Poland at the first suitable opportunity.’

That refutes the usual pro-Nazi claim that Hitler’s war aims were limited to taking back “lost territories” from World War I: “Danzig was not his ultimate objective-that would be to secure Lebensraum in the east to feed Germany’s eighty million inhabitants.” Hitler also says explicitly in Chapter 14 of Mein Kampf that Germany’s 1914 borders were not sufficient living space, that fighting to reclaim those borders alone was not worth the blood and effort, and that expansion towards Russia was required to make Germany a “great power” once again. Irving reveals another damning statement from Hitler that he wanted short, quick wars in the West to be followed by a larger one in the East:

Only the existing Reichswehr with its professional officers could satisfy his main need; according to another general, Maximilian von Weichs, who took shorthand notes of the speech, Hitler added: ‘The new army must be capable of all manner of defence within five years; and of all manner of attack within eight.’ Since the western powers would probably not permit Germany to win Lebensraum, short sharp wars might be necessary in the west, ‘and after them, wars in the east.’

Danzig, like the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, was merely a token issue he wielded tactically to kickstart the broader war aim of Eastern conquest. In the same book Irving says Hitler was planning a “United States of Europe” under German domination and planned to carve out territory in the East that would “last a hundred years”. He was readying the German economy for war during these years:

contemplating Germany’s economic position in 1936, Hitler chafed that so little had been accomplished to make the country self-sufficient – a basic prerequisite for war. In April he put Hermann Goring in charge of raw materials and foreign currency questions. Aboard his yacht Grille at Kiel he told Goebbels in May of his vision of a United States of Europe under German leadership.

‘The Fuhrer,’ wrote Goebbels, sees a conflict coming in the Far East. Japan will thrash Russia. And then our great hour will come. Then we shall have to carve off enough territory to last us a hundred years.’ Hitler announced that he had to resolve once and for all Germany’s economic problems by enlarging her Lebensraum and thus her sources of raw materials and food. In detail, Hitler stated these two demands: ‘First: in four years the German army must be ready for action; and second, in four years the German economy must be ready for war.’

David Irving reports on Hitler’s plans for colonizing the East:

“By mid-October 1941, despite the foul weather, Hitler was still bred widi optimism. On the thirteenth he began laying the foundations for a Nazi version of a united Europe. Hewel wrote, ‘Reich foreign minister visits the Fuhrer; first thoughts on a European manifesto. Probably in the economic sphere first of all, and probably at the beginning of the winter. Fuhrer is in very best and relaxed mood.’ Over dinner he revealed that he had been thinking of calling together the economic experts of Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, and Finland. ‘All those who have a feeling for Europe can join in this work,’ he said, meaning the colonization of the east. When Todt and Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel dined with Hitler on October 17, they were brimming with everything they had just seen in the east.”

“Again Hitler dreamed aloud of the vast construction projects whereby he would open up the east. ‘Above all we must lay roads,’ Koeppen wrote that night, describing the dinner conversation: He told Dr. Todt he must expand his original projects considerably. For this purpose he will be able to make use of the three million prisoners for the next twenty years. The major roads — the Fuhrer spoke today not only of the highway to the Crimea but also of one to the Caucasus and of two or three through the more northern territories — must be laid across the areas of greatest scenic beauty. Where the big rivers are crossed, German cities must arise, as centers of the Wehrmacht, police, administration, and Party authorities.”

“Along these roads will lie the German farmsteads, and soon the monotonous steppe, with its Asiatic appearance, will look very different indeed. In ten years four million Germans will have settled there, and in twenty years at least ten million. They will come not only from the Reich but above all from America, and from Scandinavia, Holland, and Flanders too. And the rest of Europe shall play its part in this opening up of the Russian wastes as well. . . The Fuhrer then reverted to the theme that ‘contrary to what some people think’ no education or welfare is to be laid on for the native population. Knowledge of the road signs will suffice, there will be no call for German schoolmasters there.“

“By ‘freedom’ the Ukrainians understood that instead of twice they now had to wash only once a month — the Germans with their scrubbing brushes would soon make themselves unpopular there. He as Fuhrer would set up his new administration there after ice cool calculations: what the Slavs might think about it would not put him out one bit. Nobody who ate German bread today got worked up about the fact that in the twelfth century the granaries east of the Elbe were regained by the sword. Here in the east we were repeating a process for a second time not unlike the conquest of America. For climatic reasons alone we could not venture further south than the Crimea — he did not mention the Caucasus at this point — even now hundreds of our mountain troops on Crete had malaria! The Fuhrer kept repeating that he wished he was ten or fifteen years younger so he could live through the rest of this process.”

The Nazis merely used the Ukrainian nationalists as cannon fodder to help them fight the Soviets and then discarded them in the trash when their usefulness expired. Hitler intended to colonize Ukrainian land for Lebensraum:

“Bandera was in occupied Poland when on June 30, 1941, his comrades proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state in Nazi-occupied Lviv — and the Germans banned him from traveling to Ukraine. Adolf Hitler rejected the idea of Ukrainian independence, and Bandera was arrested and imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp until 1944. The OUN-B continued to fight for independence in Ukraine with the help of its military arm, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The Nazis and the Soviets persecuted and killed OUN-B fighters. After the war, Bandera lived in Munich until he was killed in 1959 by a KGB agent using cyanide.” – Source

“Eight days after Germany’s invasion of the USSR, on 30 June 1941, the OUN-B proclaimed the establishment of Ukrainian State in Lviv, with Yaroslav Stetsko as premier. In response to the declaration, OUN-B leaders and associates were arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo (ca.1500 persons).[79] Many OUN-B members were killed outright or perished in jails and concentration camps (both of Bandera’s brothers were eventually murdered at Auschwitz). On 18 September 1941 Bandera and Stetsko were sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in “Zellenbau Bunker”, where they were kept until September 1944.” – Source

Volker Ullrich reported in his book Hitler’s Downfall that Hitler planned to invade Russia all along:

In a 1936 memorandum, he again talks about the expansion of the living space as the solution to all the problems. In 1939 August while talking to Carl Jacob Burckhardt he again says the same: “Within his inner circle, however, Hitler made it clear that the pact with Stalin was but a temporary tactical measure and that he had by no means given up his goal of conquering ‘living space’ in the east. ‘Everything I undertake is directed against Russia,’ he is supposed to have told Carl Jacob Burckhardt on 11 August. ‘If the West is too stupid and blind to realise this, I will be compelled to reach an understanding with the Russians to defeat the West, in order to turn, after it has been beaten, all my strength against the Soviet Union.’ And a few days after the signing of the pact, he explicitly spoke out against those critics who had mistaken his manoeuvres for a fundamental ideological volte-face. In reality, Hitler explained, the deal was ‘a pact with Satan to drive out the devil’.

From the book The Law of Blood by Johann Chapoutot:

The Nazis focused all their longing on the dark, fertile, fecund soil of the East, colonized so long ago by the Varingians. Produce, nourish, procreate, Goebbels noted in his Journals, for The Führer sees the East as our future India. This is the colonial territory we must occupy. This is where farms for our farmers and the veterans of the Wehrmacht must be created…. The goal of our war is the expansion of our Lebensraum in the broadest sense. We have set ourselves a goal that will require several centuries. This goal will require great sacrifice for some time, but it is worthwhile for the generations to come. Only for this can we justify such a bloodletting to ourselves and to history: it will give life to millions of German children…. The East is our space.

We must pierce through to it, it is there we must invest everything to develop the Lebensraum we will need in COLONIZATION OF THE EUROPEAN EAST the future. There we shall find everything we need to give life to our people, starting with the marvelous dark earth, whose fertility is unmatched. It is there that we must build, organize, and mobilize everything for the life of our nation. The reference to India and the British Empire was no accident. In the past, Germanic migrations had left behind nothing but biological isolates, haphazardly planted only to be overwhelmed and swept away. The Reich now wished to create something solid and enduring…

In Hitler: Ascent, Volker Ullrich explains:

Still, Hitler clung to his preferred foreign-policy constellation. After Joachim von Ribbentrop became German ambassador in August 1936 following the death of Leopold von Hoesch, Hitler told him: “Ribbentrop, bring me an alliance with England!” The problem was that there was hardly anyone less suitable to achieving this aim than the vain diplomatic amateur, who was soon nicknamed “von Brickendrop.” In October 1936, having barely arrived in London, Ribbentrop made a most undiplomatic speech in which he laid his cards on the table. “How about…just giving Germany a free hand in the east?” he said. “Bolshevism is a global plague that must be eradicated anyway, and Germany’s eye is trained on Russia. In return for a free hand in the east, Hitler would be prepared to conclude every sort of alliance with England.” No British government would have been willing to give Hitler a free hand in eastern Europe, which would have essentially meant German hegemony over the entire Continent.

Hitler planned the Soviet invasion as early as 1936:

On 24 October [1936] Hitler received Ciano at the Berghof, where, if Ciano’s record is to be believed, Hitler opened up to his guest much broader possibilities of German–Italian cooperation. Their future alliance was to be at the heart of a European front against Bolshevism. In addition, Hitler told Ciano, Germany would be ready for war in three to five years’ time and he sketched out the two powers’ spheres of interest: GERMANY WAS TO EXPAND INTO EASTERN EUROPE and Italy in the Mediterranean. The invitation to join forces in a large-scale war of aggression could hardly have been framed more clearly. – Peter Longerich, Hitler: A Biography

Peter Longerich in Hitler: A Biography tells us as early as 1936 Hitler had been dreaming up a future conflict with Russia:

During the autumn of 1936 he spoke on numerous occasions to Goebbels of the ‘fight against Bolshevism’ as the regime’s coming great challenge, reprising in other words the topic that he had emphasized so strongly at the Party Rally and which since then had been used heavily in propaganda.

In 1937 Germany, Italy and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact:

The Anti-Comintern Pact, officially the Agreement against the Communist International was an anti-Communist pact concluded between Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan on 25 November 1936 and was directed against the Communist International (Comintern). It was signed by German ambassador-at-large Joachim von Ribbentrop and Japanese ambassador to Germany Kintomo Mushanokōji. Italy joined in 1937, but it was legally recognised as an original signatory by the terms of its entry. Spain and Hungary joined in 1939. Other countries joined during World War II. The Japanese signatories had hoped that the Anti-Comintern Pact would effectively be an alliance against the Soviet Union, which is certainly how the Soviets perceived it.  There was also a secret additional protocol which specified a joint German-Japanese policy specifically aimed against the Soviet Union. However, after the accession of Fascist Italy to the pact and especially the German-Soviet rapprochement after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, it gained an increasingly anti-Western and anti-British identity as well.

Alexander Dallin, in German Rule In Russia 1941-1945, tells us this:

‘The initial outlook on the Soviet ‘Asiatics’ was decisively influenced by the insistent Untermensch campaign which sought to inculcate in the German soldier and civilian the conviction that the Russians were degenerate because they had been heavily permeated with Tatar and Mongol blood. . . The sequences of pictures of Soviet prisoners with ‘Mongol’ features; the prompt liquidation of all ‘Asiatic’ civilians apprehended in the occupied areas; and frequent articles in the German press stressing the ‘Mongol bestiality’ of the Russians — all created an unmistakable climate of opinion in which the Reich was portrayed as the Western defender against the ‘Asiatic menace’. Indeed, Hitler himself viewed the future German settlement in Russia as a form of break water against the Oriental tide.’

German propaganda found in the masses of Soviet captives a welcome illustration of Eastern inferiority. Almost immediately after the invasion, German newspapers began publishing photographs of Red Army men, pointing out the ‘degenerate-looking orientals.’ ‘This is how the Soviet soldier looks’, a typical caption read: ‘Asiatic, Mongol physiognomies from the prisoner of war camps’. It is in connection with these photographs that the term, Untermensch [The Subhuman], appeared for the first time. The prisoners — and by implication all Soviet men — were ‘a mixture of low and lowest humanity, truly subhumans.’ ‘He fights when all struggle is senseless. He fails to fight, or fights quite wrongly, where there is still a chance of success.’ The theme was easy and rewarding. Hitler had called the Easterners Mongolensturm ; the SS echoed, Untermensch. ‘Whether under the Tatars, or Peter, or Stalin, this people is born for the yoke.’

This view is confirmed by Goebbels’ diaries. In his diaries, Goebbels quotes Hitler saying Poles are less than animals:

“The Führer’s verdict on the Poles is scathing. More animals than men, completely dull and amorphous. Next to them a slaughtering class, which is at least the product of the lower classes mixed with an Aryan master class. The filth of the Poles is unimaginable. Their judgment is also nil. Even Lipski believed that a nervous crisis would break out in our country in 8 days during the war. Poor madman! The Führer does not want assimilation with the Poles. They are to be squeezed into their reduced state and left entirely to themselves.” – Joseph Goebbels Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, diary entry October 10, 1939

Also in his diaries, Goebbels labels the Russians primitive and racially inferior animals:

The incidents that Sepp Dietrich related to me about the Russian people in the occupied areas are simply hair-raising. They are not a people, but a conglomeration of animals. The greatest danger threatening us in the East is the stolid dullness of this mass. That applies both to the civilian population and to the soldiers. The soldiers won’t surrender, as is the fashion in western Europe, when completely surrounded, but continue to fight until they are beaten to death. Bolshevism has merely accentuated this racial propensity of the Russian people. In other words, we are facing an adversary about whom we must be careful. The human mind cannot possibly imagine what it would mean if this opponent were to pour into western Europe like a flood. … Stalin issued [a program of] thirty points to his army. These points are about as naive as ean be imagined. But I suppose he knows how to treat his Russian people. They are as primitive as the language he uses to talk to them.

David Irving reports in his book Hitler’s War the following:

Throughout the spring of 1943 a squabble raged between Alfred Rosenberg, the endlessly verbose minister for the eastern territories, and Gauleiter Erich Koch, Reich Commissar in the Ukraine. Rosenberg – supported by Ribbentrop, Zeitzler, and Goebbels – wanted to win the subject peoples’ support in the fight against Stalin, and he complained that Koch’s brutal methods and pasha lifestyle were incompatible with this. At Christmas, he had sent a special plane to Rostov to collect two hundred pounds of caviar. Yet Hitler, Bormann, and – more circumspectly – Himmler, DEFENDED KOCH. Rosenberg might theorise about the future cultural life of the Ukraine, but Koch’s harsh duty was to squeeze every ton of grain and every slave labourer he could out of the region. The idea of harnessing Russians voluntarily to the war against Stalin WAS A CHIMERA, SAID HITLER. ‘I have always felt there are only a handful of men who can really keep their heads in a major crisis, without being waylaid by some phantom hope or other. The saying that drowning men clutch at straws is only too true.’ When Ribbentrop identified himself with General Vlasov’s idea for a Russian army of liberation, Hitler rapped his knuckles. ‘There will be no such political operations. They will only result in our people fraternising with the Russians.’ Field Marshals Kluge and Küchler were also rebuffed when they supported the Vlasov project. Millions of leaflets dropped over enemy lines announced that the Wehrmacht was fighting only Stalin and not the Russian people, and they spoke of a ‘National Committee’ in Smolensk as though it were the Russian government being groomed for the post-Stalin era. TO HITLER THIS IDEA WAS MADNESS; AS HE ANGRILY TOLD ZEITZLER, TO LET THE UKRAINIANS SET UP THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT WOULD BE TANTAMOUNT TO THROWING AWAY THE NAZIS’ ENTIRE WAR AIM. The Russians would start off as a satellite state such as Poland had been in World War I, and Germany would end up confronting an entirely independent state all over again. On May 19 Hitler brought Rosenberg and Koch face to face. Rosenberg firmly repeated that Koch’s policies were supplying the enemy with thousands of partisans. Koch justified his methods. Hitler adjudged that both were right, THOUGH KOCH WAS RIGHTER. As for the partisan argument, if Rosenberg were right, there would be fewest partisans where the ‘particularly crafty generals’ spoke in the most honeyed tones; this was not the case. Nor could slave labour be procured except by Koch’s methods. ‘Only feebleminded generals imagine we can win any manpower by blandishments.’ As for Koch’s executions in the Ukraine, challenged Hitler: ‘How many of our compatriots are losing their lives in air raids here at home?’

The German invaders had been driven out BY THE DISAPPOINTED, DECEIVED, AND ANGRY UKRAINIANS THEMSELVES. ‘If the rest of this war and its victorious conclusion should ever see these territories vouchsafed to us again,’ a gauleiter wrote, ‘then there must be a radical change in our attitude to and treatment of the native population. Erich Koch had achieved the seemingly impossible: he had converted the forty million Ukrainians who had greeted the German invaders as their liberators into a sullen, seething people, and driven them as partisans into the forests and swamplands of the north Ukraine. The same gauleiter – Alfred Frauenfeld, governor of the Crimea – pointed out that Hitler should have found the moral courage to replace Koch. Koch had proclaimed the inferiority of the Slavs with such raucous insistence that ‘even a disaster policy deliberately planned and paid for by the enemy could hardly have done more harm.’ Koch had stormed, for example: ‘If I find a Ukrainian fit to sit at my table, I must shoot him!’ He had dispensed with Ukrainian doctors – without reflecting that epidemics were no respecters of the German occupation forces – and had deported the able-bodied to Germany in a manner reminiscent of ‘Arab slave traders.’ When Hitler had instituted medals for bravery and hard work, Koch had waited nearly a year before unwillingly issuing any to the Ukrainians.» — «he [Hitler] admired such Party faithfuls as [Erich] Koch, Sauckel, and Ley – gauleiters who had in their time converted Communist Gaue into Nazi Party strongholds.

So the clear “war aim” was the colonization of the East, especially Ukraine, for German resettlement…. not “liberating” Slavs from Communism, which the Nazis kept in place with the collective farms in Ukraine.

Foreign Affairs:

Thus far the Germans have introduced only minor changes, for the sake of efficiency, in the agricultural system. Contrary to expectations, the collective farms have not been abolished, but their managers have been replaced with German commissars or former Ukrainian émigrés. In practice, however, many collectives have ceased to function because of the lack of essential machinery and of able-bodied men. Requisitioning of a large part of the current harvest was announced by the Deutsche Ukraine Zeitung late last August. All collectives and individual farms were obliged to deliver to the authorities fixed quantities of grain, the amount being determined by locality, size of farm and other factors. It was announced that stern punishment would be meted out, individually and collectively, to persons, farms and even whole villages that failed to fill their quotas.

Nazis kept the Soviet collective farm system in place in Ukraine and merely replaced the managers with imported Germans. From Hitler’s Garden of Eden:

Before Himmler announced his plans to form a Volksdeutsche colony at Hegewald in September 1942, the district German leaders in and around Zhytomyr had concentrated the region’s forty-five thousand ethnic Germans into small communities. They supplied the ethnic Germans with food, clothing, and housing, as well as German history and language books.** While Rosenberg’s ethnographers and commissars went from village to village com- piling population surveys and local histories, Himmler’s men tried to turn the Volksdeutsche men into productive, armed farmers who could defend the SS estates and collective farms. …

The ethnic Germans who arrived at Hegewald were organized into, as Hitler and Himmler described them, “settlement pearls,” which were stretched along the Zhytomyr-Vinnytsia autobahn like a Kette or string of pearls. To start, the Volksdeutsche who were assigned to the SS-run collective farms were given private plots of land, about one hectare per family. If they proved their diligence they could receive up to twenty-five hectares. The ethnic German farms were subjected to high SS quotas and random confiscations of milk and other produce. Ukrainian and Byelorussian prisoners and forced laborers tilled the reserve farmland not allotted to the German and SS farmers. The entire Hegewald district of two hundred square miles, consisting of twenty-eight villages and collective farms, was administered by ethnic German mayors, SS-policemen, agricultural specialists, and Nazi Party welfare workers and not by Rosenberg’s commissars. Thus, on paper Rosenberg’s administration provided the administrative framework for governing the eastern territories, yet in reality population policies and the future of colonization experiments lay in the hands of Himmler’s SS-police agencies and the Nazi Party.

From William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:

The day after the signing of the Pact of Steel, on May 23, Hitler summoned his military chiefs to the study in the Chancellery in Berlin and told them bluntly that further successes could not be won without the shedding of blood and that war therefore was inevitable.

This was a somewhat larger gathering than a similar one on November 5, 1937, when the Fuehrer had first imparted his decision to go to war to the commanders in chief of the three armed services.∗ Altogether fourteen officers were present, including Field Marshal Goering, Grand Admiral Raeder (as he now was), General von Brauchitsch, General Haider, General Keitel, General Erhard Milch, Inspector General of the Luftwaffe, and Rear Admiral Otto Schniewind, naval Chief of Staff. The Fuehrer’s adjutant, Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Schmundt, was also present and, luckily for history, took notes. His minutes of the meeting are among the captured German documents.

Apparently Hitler’s words on this occasion were regarded as such a top secret that no copies of the minutes were made; the one we have is in Schmundt’s own handwriting. It is one of the most revealing and important of the secret papers which depict Hitler’s road to war. Here, before the handful of men who will have to direct the military forces in an armed conflict, Hitler cuts through his own propaganda and diplomatic deceit and utters the truth about why he must attack Poland and, if necessary, take on Great Britain and France as well.

He predicts with uncanny accuracy the course the war will take – at least in its first year. And yet for all its bluntness his discourse – for the dictator did all the talking – discloses more uncertainty and confusion of mind than he has shown up to this point. Above all, Britain and the British continue to baffle him, as they did to the end of his life.

But about the coming of war and his aims in launching it he is clear and precise, and no general or admiral could have left the Chancellery on May 23 without knowing exactly what was coming at the summer’s end. Germany’s economic problems, he began, could only be solved by obtaining more Lebensraum in Europe, and ”this is impossible without invading other countries or attacking other people’s possessions.”

“Further successes can no longer be attained without the shedding of blood . . . Danzig is not the subject of the dispute at all. It is a question of expanding our living space in the East, of securing our food supplies and also of solving the problem of the Baltic States. . . . There is no other possibility in Europe . . . If fate forces us into a showdown with the West it is invaluable to possess a large area in the East, In wartime we shall be even less able to rely on record harvests than in peacetime.”

Besides, Hitler adds, the population of non-German territories in the East will be available as a source of labor – an early hint of the slave labor program he was later to put into effect. The choice of the first victim was obvious.

“There is no question of sparing Poland and we are left with the decision: To attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity. We cannot expect a repetition of the Czech affair. There will be war. Our task is to isolate Poland. Success in isolating her will be decisive.”

So there will be war. With an ”isolated” Poland alone? Here the Fuehrer is not so clear. In fact, he becomes confused and contradictory. He must reserve to himself, he says, the final order to strike.

“It must not come to a simultaneous showdown with the West – France and England. If it is not certain that a German-Polish conflict will not lead to war with the West, then the fight must be primarily against England and France. Fundamentally therefore: Conflict with Poland – beginning with an attack on Poland – will only be successful if the West keeps out of it. If that is not possible it is better to fall upon the West and to finish off Poland at the same time.”

In the face of such rapid-fire contradictions the generals must have winced, perhaps prying their monocles loose, though there is no evidence in the Schmundt minutes that this happened or that anyone in the select audience even dared to ask a question to straighten matters out.

Hitler next turned to Russia. ”It is not ruled out,” he said, ”that Russia might disinterest herself in the destruction of Poland.” On the other hand, if the Soviet Union allied herself to Britain and France, that ”would lead me to attack England and France with a few devastating blows.” That would mean committing the same mistake Wilhelm II made in 1914, but though in this lecture Hitler drew several lessons from the World War he did not draw this one. His thoughts now turned toward Great Britain.

“The Fuehrer doubts the possibility of a peaceful settlement with England. It is necessary to be prepared for the showdown. England sees in our development the establishment of a hegemony which would weaken England. Therefore England is our enemy, and the conflict with England is a matter of life and death. What will this conflict be like? England cannot finish off Germany with a few powerful blows and force us down. It is of decisive importance for England to carry the war as near as possible to the Ruhr. French blood will not be spared. (West Wall!) The duration of our existence is dependent on possession of the Ruhr.”

Having decided to follow the Kaiser in one mistake – attacking France and England if they lined up with Russia – Hitler now announced that he would follow the Emperor in another matter which eventually had proved disastrous to Germany.

“The Dutch and Belgian air bases must be militarily occupied. Declarations of neutrality can be ignored. If England wants to intervene in the Polish war, we must make a lightning attack on Holland. We must aim at establishing a new line of defense on Dutch territory as far as the Zuyder Zee. The war with England and France will be a war of life and death. The idea that we can get off cheaply is dangerous; there is no such possibility. We must then burn our boats and it will no longer be a question of right or wrong but of to be or not to be for eighty million people.”

Though he had just announced that Germany would attack Poland ”at the first suitable opportunity” and though his listeners knew that almost all of Germany’s military strength was being concentrated on that objective, Hitler, as he rambled on, could not keep his thoughts off Great Britain.

Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, allegedly said this in a letter when justifying the Third Reich’s Eastern Policy:

The Slavs are to work for us [Germans]. Insofar as we do not need them, they may die. Therefore, compulsory vaccination and German health service are superfluous. THE FERTILITY OF THE SLAVS IS UNDESIRABLE. THEY MAY USE CONTRACEPTIVES OR PRACTICE… ABORTION, THE MORE THE BETTER. Education is dangerous. It is enough if they can count up to 100. At best an education which produces useful coolies for us is admissible. Every educated person is a future enemy. Religion we leave to them as a means of diversion. As for food, they will not get any more than is necessary. We are the masters; we come first.

Alfred Rosenberg testified at Nuremberg that he received this Bormann letter and wrote a letter back to Hitler agreeing with the spirit of it. Here it is:

Now, you remember this memorandum that you received through your assistant, Leibbrandt, from your subordinate, Markull? You can answer that “yes” or “no,” by the way; that is all I want to know right now-whether or not you remember it. Will you wait just a minute?

ROSENBERG: Yes, I received this report from Dr. Leibbrandt, and I would like to make the following explanation.

MR. DODD: Just before you do that-you will have an opportunity; I won’t shut you up on any explanations or even attempt to-I have one or two things I would like to ask you about it, and then if you feel the need to explain them or anything else I feel sure the Tribunal will permit you to do so.

You had written a letter in answer to the Bormann letter, hadn’t you?

ROSENBERG: Yes, that is correct.

A continuation of that discussion at Nuremberg in reference to Ukraine policy quotes another German official Kreisleiter Knuth:

Then, in the next paragraph, he says that every visitor and every member of the local civil administration can confirm this from his own observations, and they show particularly clearly how well the soil is prepared for the Bormann letter. Then he goes on to quote statements that have been made by saying, “To be exact, we are here among negroes; the population is just dirty and lazy,” and so on.

And then, passing on, he says:

“I may add that Kreisleiter Knuth, whom the Gauleiter still retains in spite of the gravest accusations against his professional integrity, declared, in conversations on the Kiev question, that Kiev ought to be depopulated through epidemics. Altogether it would be best if the superfluous part of the population starved to death.”

Himmler allegedly said this in a speech:

From Himmler’s speech at a meeting of SS gruppenfuhrers in Poznan on October 4, 1943. the Nuremberg trials, a collection of documents. [Document PS-1919, USA-170]

Only one principle must surely exist for an SS member: we must be honest, decent, and loyal to members of our own race and to no one else.

I am not in the least interested in the fate of a Russian or a Czech. We will take from other Nations the blood of our type that they can give us. If necessary, we will take their children away from them and bring them up in our environment. Whether other peoples live in contentment or starve to death is of interest to me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise, it does not interest me.

If ten thousand Russian women fall from exhaustion while digging anti-tank ditches, it will only interest me to the extent that this anti-tank ditch is ready for Germany.

Himmler’s policy of kidnapping Ukrainian children deemed racially superior to other Ukrainians was confirmed in a recorded speech:

From Hitler’s Garden of Eden:

But these plundered goods, which the Nazis presented as Christmas gifts to the Volksdeutsche, were not enough to make Nazi colonization schemes successful. About six hundred “racially valuable” children, who had been kidnapped according to Himmler’s instructions, could not be adequately cared for in the crowded orphanages in and around Zhytomyr.

At the Nuremberg trials, American prosecutor Dodd questions Rosenberg about a memorandum he authored in which he affirms the need for a “clever German policy” of not agitating the conquered peoples with public declarations of their inferiority but that the aim was ultimately the acquisition of their land for German resettlement and exploitation of their labour.

MR. DODD: All right, I accept your interpretation; we won’t have any trouble about that. Now, will you please look at this document? This is a memorandum found in your files, for your information.

ROSENBERG: Yes.

MR. DODD: You set out there, in the second paragraph, what you call the aim of German politics, notably in the Ukraine, as having been laid down by the Fuehrer. They are, you say, exploitation and mobilization of raw materials, a German settlement in certain regions, no artificial education of the population towards intellectualism, but the preservation of their labor strength; apart from that, an extensive unconcern with the interior affairs.

Then, moving down a little bit-because I don’t think it is necessary to read all of it, much of it has been referred to in another document-we come down to the 12th line from the bottom of that paragraph. Beginning at the 14th line:

“After continuous observation of the state of affairs in the Occupied Eastern Territories, I am convinced that German politics may have their own, possibly contemptuous opinion of the qualities of the conquered peoples, but that it is not the mission of German political representatives to proclaim measures and opinions which could eventually reduce the conquered peoples to dull despair instead of promoting the desired utilization of manpower to capacity.”

Then, in the next paragraph, you say:

“If at home we had to announce our aims to the whole nation most openly and aggressively, in contrast to the others, the political leaders in the East must remain silent where German policy calls for necessary harshness. They must remain silent as to any derogatory opinions which they may form about the conquered peoples. Yes, a clever German policy may in certain circumstances do more in the German interest through alleviations which do not affect policy and certain humane concessions, than through open, inconsiderate brutality.”

Were you honestly expressing your views when you wrote that memorandum on the 16th of March 1942?

ROSENBERG: This document is correct.

Rosenberg had held to these ideas for a long time.

Hitler put Alfred Rosenberg, chief Nazi ideologist, in charge of Eastern policy. Rosenberg was a big proponent of Lebensraum too and pursued that end in the East:

On 8 May 1941, instructions were prepared for all Reich Commissars in the Occupied Eastern Territories (1030-PS). The last paragraph of these instructions reads as follows:

“From the point of view of cultural policy, the German Reich is in a position to promote and direct national culture and science in many fields. It will be necessary that in some territories an uprooting and resettlement of various racial stocks [Voelkerschaften] will have to be effected.” (1030-PS)

In his “Instructions for a Reich Commissar in the Baltic Countries and White Russia” (officially referred to together as the “Ostland”), Rosenberg directs that the Ostland be transformed into a part of the Greater German Reich by Germanizing racially possible elements, colonizing Germanic races, and banishing undesirable elements. (1029-PS)

In a speech delivered by Rosenberg on 20 June 1941 he stated that the job of feeding Germans was the top of Germany’s claim on the East; that there was no obligation to feed also the Russian peoples; that this was a harsh necessity bare of any feeling; that a very extensive evacuation would be necessary; and that the future would hold many hard years in store for the Russians. (1058-PS)

Rosenberg on Lebensraum:

In his journal, the “National Socialist Monatshefte” for May 1932, he wrote:

“The understanding that the German nation, if it is not to perish in the truest sense of the word, needs ground and soil for itself and its future generations, and the second sober perception that this soil can no more be conquered in Africa, but in Europe and first of all in the East-these organically determine the German foreign policy for centuries.” (2777-PS)

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact:

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union with secret protocol that partitioned Central and Eastern Europe between them. The pact was signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov[1] and was officially known as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.[2][3] Unofficially, it has also been referred to as the Hitler–Stalin Pact,[4][5] Nazi–Soviet Pact[6] or Nazi–Soviet Alliance.[7]

From “How Adolf Hitler Began to Admire Josef Stalin“:

Adolf Hitler’s assessment of the Soviet Union and Josef Stalin demonstrates the contradiction between National Socialist propaganda and Hitler’s actual opinions. While he never tired of attacking the “Jewish-Bolshevist conspiracy” in his speeches, from no later than 1940 onwards he changed his opinion: Stalin was, in Hitler’s eyes, no longer the representative of “Jewish interests” but was now pursuing a nationalistic Russian policy in the tradition of Peter the Great.

Hitler first alluded to the possibility of such a development in his “Second Book,” which he wrote in 1928, but was never published: However, it is conceivable that in Russia itself an inner change within the Bolshevist world could take place insofar as the Jewish element could perhaps be forced aside by a more or less Russian national one. Then it could also not be excluded that the present real Jewish-capitalist-Bolshevist Russia could be driven to national-anti-capitalist tendencies.

What Hitler later stated as a fact, namely Russia’s change from a “Jewish dictatorship” into a national Russian anti-capitalist state, he described in 1928 as being a possibility and a tendency. It is difficult to determine when Hitler finally revised his assessment of the conflict between Stalin and Leo Trotsky and came to the view he later constantly advocated, that Stalin had emancipated himself from the Jews and was pursuing a national and anti-Jewish policy.

Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, reported in his diary on January 25, 1937, that Hitler had not yet completely made up his mind about the events in Russia and his assessment of Stalin:

In Moscow another show trial. This time solely against Jews again. Radek etc. Führer still doubtful whether not with hidden anti-Semitic tendency after all. Perhaps Stalin wants to drive the Jews out after all. The military is also supposed to be strongly anti-Semitic. Therefore keep eyes open. For the time being remain in wait and see position.

From early 1940 onwards, however, there were an increasing number of statements made by Hitler in which his admiration for Stalin and the Bolshevist regime become clear. These, no doubt, also served the purpose of defending the pact he had concluded with Stalin in 1939. But even after the attack on the USSR, when Hitler no longer had an alliance to justify, he clung to his positive assessment of Stalin. On September 23, 1941, Sturmabteilung (SA) Standartenführer Werner Koeppen noted the following statement by Hitler:

Stalin was one of the greatest of living men because he succeeded in forging a state out of this Slavic family of rabbits, albeit only with the harshest of compulsion. For this he naturally had to avail himself of the Jews, because the thin Europeanized class which had formerly carried the state had been exterminated, and these forces would never again grow up out of the actual Russianhood.

Of course, this assessment did not prevent Hitler from continuing to spread the thesis of “Jewish Bolshevism” in his speeches for propaganda purposes. But in contrast to these public propaganda statements, Hitler said in a table talk in early January 1942 that:

Stalin is seen as the man who had intended to help the Bolshevist idea to victory. In reality he is only Russia, the continuation of Tsarist pan-Slavism! For him Bolshevism is only a means to an end. It serves as a camouflage vis-à-vis the Germanic and Romanic nations.

On July 24, 1942, he claimed that “in front of Ribbentrop Stalin had made no bones at all about the fact that he was only waiting for the moment of maturity of their own intelligentsia in the USSR in order to make an end of the Jewry he still needed today as a leadership.”

Henry Picker, who recorded Hitler’s table talks, reports on numerous further talks in which Hitler expressed his admiration for Stalin or defended him against critical remarks. Hitler had always, for example, become angry when someone called Stalin a former “bank robber.” Hitler would then immediately defend Stalin with the declaration that Stalin had not carried out his bank robberies as a private person nor for the benefit of his own pocket, “but as a revolutionary and in order to finance the Communist movement.” For Stalin, Hitler said on July 22, 1942, “one has to have respect in any case. In his way he is quite a brilliant chap!”

Heinrich Heim, another witness who recorded Hitler’s table talks, also noted many positive statements by Hitler about Stalin. On August 26, 1942, Hitler said:

If Stalin had continued to work for another ten to fifteen years Soviet Russia would have become the most powerful nation on earth, 150, 200, 300 years may go by, that is such a unique phenomenon! That the general standard of living rose, there can be no doubt. The people did not suffer from hunger. Taking everything together we have to say: They built factories here where two years ago there was nothing but forgotten villages, factories which are as big as the Hermann Göring Works. They have railways that are not even marked on the maps. Here with us we argue about the tariffs before the railway is even built. I have a book about Stalin; one has to say: That is an enormous personality, a real ascetic, who has brought that huge empire together with an iron fist. Only when someone says that is a social state, then that is a gigantic swindle! It is a national capital state: 200 million people, iron, manganese, nickel, oil, petroleum and what you like – unlimited. At the head a man who said: Do you think the loss of 13 million people is too much for a great idea?

The things Hitler admired in Stalin become particularly clear in this statement: the consistency, even brutality (“iron fist”), with which Stalin—even with the sacrifice of millions of people—implemented the “great idea” and created a powerful industrial state impressed Hitler. In Stalin, he saw his own reflection, namely the executor of the dictatorship of modernization who did not shrink from the employment of even the most brutal methods.

Scheidt, who, as adjutant to Hitler’s “representative for military history” Walther Scherff and a member of the Führer Headquarters group, had close contact with Hitler and sometimes even took part in the “briefings.” Scheidt writes in his notes:

Hitler began secretly to admire Stalin. From then on his hatred was determined by envy … He clung to the hope that he could defeat Bolshevism with its own weapons if he copied it in Germany and the occupied regions … He increasingly held the Russian methods up to his associates as being exemplary. We cannot fight this battle for existence without their hardness and ruthlessness, he was wont to say. He rejected any objections as being bourgeois.

After July 20, 1944, for example, Hitler bemoaned the fact that he had not purged the Wehrmacht like Stalin had and converted it into a National Socialist revolutionary army. Hitler’s architect Albert Speer reports on a meeting of ministers on July 21, 1944:

Today he [Hitler] realized that in his case against Tuchatshevsky Stalin had taken the decisive step for a successful waging of the war. By having liquidated the General Staff he had made room for fresh forces, who no longer stemmed from the age of the Tsars. He had formerly always held the accusations at the Moscow trials of 1937 to be trumped up. Now, after the experience of 20 July he was wondering whether there had not been something to them after all. While he did not have any evidence for it, Hitler continued, he could still no longer exclude a treasonable co-operation between the two general staffs.

Two months before the assassination attempt, in a presentation to generals and officers, Hitler had said:

This problem has been completely solved in Bolshevist Russia. Completely unequivocal situations, clear unequivocal statements by the officer to these points of view, which concern the state, to the whole of expert opinion and with this, naturally, an unequivocal relationship to allegiance, a completely clear relationship. In Germany this whole process was unfortunately interrupted much too quickly by the war, because you can be sure that these courses which take place today would perhaps never have become necessary if the war had not come about.

What Hitler, therefore, primarily admired in Stalin was his revolutionary consistency in the elimination of the former élites. Hitler’s admiration for Stalin was not only an expression of the respect he felt for him personally; his relationship with Stalin also reflected his ambivalent position on Marxism/Communism, which was always characterized by simultaneous fear and admiration. Hitler admired Stalin’s revolutionary consistency above all, but exactly this consistency, which went far further than his own, also made him afraid, and made Bolshevism appear as the only serious opponent.

The fact that Hitler privately said that Stalin had eliminated the Jewish members of his regime and thus “Russified” Bolshevism itself undermines Hitler’s own war propaganda that he invaded Russia to “liberate” it from “Judeo-Bolshevism”. According to Hitler, Stalin had already done that job for him by the early 30s.

From Ian Kershaw’s “Hitler: Nemesis”:

‘Alluding to Mussolini’s letter in January, and to his own reply a few days before the meeting, Hitler emphasized how British intransigence had forced him to conclude an alliance with Russia. But, although Stalin had deprived Bolshevism of its Jewish and international character and turned it into a ‘slavic Moscowitism’, Russia remained for Germany an ‘absolutely foreign world’. ‘For Germany only one partner came into question: Italy. Russia was only insurance cover.’

From “How Hitler Became a Believer in the State-Planned Economy”:

to a certain extent we can only speculate on Hitler’s true position before 1933 because Hitler kept his plans strictly secret, primarily in order not to offend the businessmen. In his talks with Otto Wagener, the chief of the economic policy section of the NSDAP, Hitler underlined the importance of keeping his economic plans secret time and again. In September 1931, for example, he said:

“The conclusion from this is what I have said all along, that this idea is not to become a subject for propaganda, or even for any sort of discussion, except within the innermost study group. It can only be implemented in any case when we hold political power in our hands. And even then we will have as opponents, besides the Jews, all of private industry, particularly heavy industry, as well as the medium and large landholders, and naturally the banks.”

In speeches to industrialists before 1933, Hitler presented himself as a supporter of private ownership; in other speeches, he sharply attacked capitalism. Often tactical considerations played a role, and sometimes he was only saying what he knew his audience wanted to hear. One thing is certain, however: Hitler’s main intention was obviously to reconcile the advantages of the principles of competition and selection (in the socio-Darwinistic sense) with the “advantages” of a state-controlled economy.

So we can see here that before getting into power, Hitler’s Machiavellian tactic was to feign different positions to different audiences on this question. In front of lower class workers, he’d preach anti-capitalism; in front of a room of business owners, he preach anti-communism. But he was really fooling the business owners not the workers as we shall see.

More from previous source:

While the state was to direct the economy according to the principle “common interest before self-interest” and to set the objectives, within this framework the principle of competition was not to be abolished, because in Hitler’s view it was an important mainspring for economic development and technical progress. What was important, however, was that Hitler did not share the beliefs of economic liberalism, according to which the common good would come about as a result of the play of the various self-interests.

This is made clear in a speech Hitler delivered on November, 13 1930:

“In all of business, in all of life in fact, we will have to do away with the concept that the benefit to the individual is what is most important, and that from the self-interest of the individual the benefit to the whole is built up, therefore that it is the benefit to the individual which only makes up the benefit to the community at all. The opposite is true. The benefit to the community determines the benefit to the individual. The profit of the individual is only weighed out from the profit of the community…. If this principle is not accepted, then an egoism must necessarily develop which will destroy the community.”

In view of the successes then achieved by the economic policies of the government, Hitler’s reservations against state planning of the economy gradually diminished. How important Hitler considered the question of state-controlled planning of the economy to be can be seen from the fact that in August 1936 he personally wrote a “Memorandum on the Four-Year Plan 1936.” In this memorandum his admiration and fear of the Soviet system of planned economy were expressed: “The German economy, however, will learn to understand the new economic tasks, or it will prove itself to be incapable of continuing to survive in these modern times in which the Soviet state sets up a gigantic plan.”

Hitler was convinced of the superiority of the Soviet planned economy system over the capitalist economic system. This must be regarded as an essential reason why he so vehemently demanded and enforced the extension of state control of the economy in Germany as well.

Hitler attributed the success of National Socialist economic policy primarily to state control of the economy. From 1940 at the latest, Hitler increasingly became a proponent of the state planned economy – partly because he was convinced of the superiority of the Soviet Union and its economic system. In his monologs to his inner circle (known as “table talks”) on July 27-28, 1941 Hitler said that “A sensible employment of the powers of a nation can only be achieved with a planned economy from above.”

About two weeks later he said: “As far as the planning of the economy is concerned, we are still very much at the beginning and I imagine it will be something wonderfully nice to build up an encompassing German and European economic order.” The statement that as far as the planning of the economy was concerned one was still at the very beginning is important because it shows that Hitler was not thinking at all of a reduction of state intervention – not even for the time after the war – but, on the contrary, intended to expand the instruments of state control of the economy even further.

So here we see that by 1936, Hitler had thrust the economy into a mode of full-scale economic planning from above and that he modeled all of this on the Soviet Union. He later said that this state control of the economy was “only the beginning,” meaning that he was not planning to let off these controls after the war, he intended to keep them in place. That coincides nicely with two statements Hitler makes in 1934 and 1943 in which he calls outright for the elimination of “castes and classes” to equalize all Germans onto a level playing field:

“And we want that you, German boys and girls, to absorb everything that we wish for Germany. We want to be one people and through you, to become this people. We want a society with neither castes nor ranks and you must not allow these ideas to grow within you.” – Triumph of the Will (1934)

“All the more so after the war, the German National Socialist state, which pursued this goal from the beginning, will tirelessly work for the realization of a program that will ultimately lead to a complete elimination of class differences and to the creation of a true socialist community.” – Speech for the Heroes’ Memorial Day (1943)

More from Zitelmann:

On July 5, 1942 Hitler expressed the opinion that if the German economy had been able so far to deal with innumerable problems “… this was also due in the end to the fact that the direction of the economy had gradually become more controlled by the state. Only thus had it been possible to enforce the overall national objective against the interests of individual groups. Even after the war we would not be able to renounce state control of the economy, because then every interest group would think exclusively of the fulfillment of its wishes.”

Hitler’s view of the Soviet economic system apparently also changed from skepticism to admiration. In a table talk on July 22, 1942, Hitler vehemently defended the Soviet economic system and even the so-called “Stachanow System,” which it was “exceedingly stupid” to ridicule: “One has to have unqualified respect for Stalin. In his way, the guy is quite a genius! His ideals such as Genghis Khan and so forth he knows very well, and his economic planning is so all-encompassing that it is only exceeded by our own Four-Year Plan. I have no doubts whatsoever that there have been no unemployed in the USSR, as opposed to capitalist countries such as the USA.”

Hitler’s admiration for the Soviet system is also confirmed in the notes of Wilhelm Scheidt, who—as adjutant to Hitler’s “representative for military history” Walther Scherff and a member of the Führer Headquarters group—had close contact with Hitler and sometimes even took part in briefings. Scheidt writes that Hitler underwent a “conversion to Bolshevism.” From Hitler’s remarks, he says, the following reactions could be derived: “Firstly, Hitler was enough of a materialist to be the first to recognise the enormous armament achievements of the USSR in the context of her strong, generous and all-encompassing economic organisation.”

Scheidt writes that in view of such impressions Hitler had recognised and expressed “the inner relationship of his system with the so heatedly opposed Bolshevism,” whereby he had to admit that “this system of the enemy was developed far more completely and straightforwardly. His enemy became his secret example.” The “experience of Communist Russia,” particularly the impression of the alleged superiority of the Soviet economic system, had produced a strong reaction in Hitler and the circle of his faithful: “The other economic systems appeared not to be competitive in comparison.” About the impression of the rational organisation of farming in the USSR and the “gigantic industrial plants which gave eloquent testimony despite their destruction,” Hitler, says Scheidt, had been “enthusiastic”.

The German dictator admitted during a conversation with Benito Mussolini on April 22, 1944, he had become convinced: “Capitalism too had run its course, the nations were no longer willing to stand for it. The victors to survive would be Fascism, and National Socialism – maybe Bolshevism in the East.”

Hitler himself was convinced, as he emphasized in his last radio address on January, 30, 1945, “that the age of unrestricted economic liberalism had outlived itself.” These statements of Hitler’s in 1935 to 1945, but particularly from the beginning of the 1940s on, show that he had become a vehement critic of the system of free enterprise and a confirmed adherent of the system of a planned, state-controlled economy.

Operation Pike shows the extent of Soviet-Nazi collaboration worried the Anglo-French alliance:

Operation Pike was the code-name for a strategic bombing plan overseen by UK Air Commodore John Slessor against the USSR by the Anglo-French alliance.[2] British military planning against the Soviet Union occurred during the first two years of the Second World War, when, despite Soviet neutrality, the British and French concluded that the German–Soviet pact made Stalin an accomplice of Hitler.[3] The plan was designed to destroy the Soviet oil industry to cause the collapse of the Soviet economy and deprive Germany of Soviet resources, which, if successful, would have enabled Germany’s victory on the Eastern front. After the conclusion of the German-Soviet Pact, Britain and France became concerned that the Soviets supplied oil to the Germans.[4]

Volker Ullrich confirms Hitler’s private admiration for Stalin in “Hitler’s Downfall“:

“In the days that followed, much to the surprise of his lunch guests, Hitler continued to express his regard for Stalin. The Soviet dictator’s life resembled his own, he told them: the Georgian, too, had worked his way up from ‘an unknown man to the leader of a state’.”

From “When Stalin Was Hitler’s Ally”:

Between 1939 and 1941, as the Soviet Union presented Nazi Germany in its own internal propaganda as a friendly state, Soviet society ceased to criticize German policies and began to publish Nazi speeches. People in public meetings occasionally misspoke, praising “Comrade Hitler” or calling for “the triumph of international fascism.” Swastikas began to appear on buildings or even on posters of Soviet leaders.

David Irving reports the following in “Hitler’s War”:

“The next day, Papen also raised Stalin’s future with Hitler, and the Fiihrer repeated what he had told Goebbels a month before — that once the Wehrmacht had occupied a certain forward line in Russia, it might be possible to find common ground with the Red dictator, who was after all a man of enormous achievements. As another diplomat — Hasso von Etzdorf — noted: ‘ [Hitler] sees two possibilities as to Stalin’s fate; either he gets bumped off by his own people, or he tries to make peace with us. Because, he says, Stalin as the greatest living statesman must realise that at sixty-six you can’t begin your life’s work all over again if it will take a lifetime to complete it; so he’ll try to salvage what he can, with our acquiescence. And in this we should meet him halfway. If Stalin could only decide to seek expansion for Russia toward the south, the Persian Gulf, as he [Hitler] recommended to him once [November 1940], then peaceful co-existence between Russia and Germany would be conceivable.“

So Hitler was absolutely considering a world in which he could live in co-existence with Stalin if the Red Dictator had directed his own expansionism south and not west into lands Hitler wanted for German living space.

Hitler sent birthday wishes to Stalin in 1939:

New York Times:

Of the many books that deal with these two world-changing figures, “Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives,” by the British historian Alan Bullock, published in 1992, is the best — and certainly, at more than 1,000 pages, the most comprehensive. Bullock’s thesis is persuasive. Despite their differences in age, background and temperament — and despite their mortal enmity in World War II — there was a symbiosis, even an affinity, between the two: in their careers, their ideologies, their methods and their psyches.

They were both outsiders: the master of the Kremlin was a Georgian, not a Russian; the German Führer was an Austrian. Both, Bullock says, were narcissists. Both insisted on cults of personality and made themselves into high priests of warped versions of 19th-century social theories (Stalin’s Marxism, Hitler’s toxic combination of social Darwinism and the zanier ideas of Nietzsche). Both were homicidal paranoiacs, determined to deport, enslave and exterminate entire categories of human beings: in Stalin’s case, the kulaks during the collectivization campaign; in Hitler’s, not just Jews but Slavs, Romani and numerous others. Crucially, neither of these malevolent geniuses would have emerged from obscurity were it not for the first great cataclysm of the 20th century, then known as the Great War.

… As Bullock shuttles between his two subjects, he continues to refute commentators who have treated Stalinism and Nazism as diametrically opposed ideologies by labeling the first internationalist and the second nationalist. In fact, those terms were, in this pairing, a distinction without a difference. Both regimes were chauvinistic and expansionist, and both were police states with one-man rule and a reliance on terror, concentration camps and the Big Lie.

Hitler believed that the Third Reich would endure a thousand years. It lasted a dozen. For the first eight, he and Stalin, while geopolitical rivals, sometimes found common ground. Hitler’s minions admired and copied some of Stalin’s techniques of spying and liquidating enemies.

In 1939, much as Lenin and Kaiser Wilhelm had done, Stalin and Hitler made peace — though pre-emptively. They had their foreign ministers sign a pact guaranteeing that neither side would attack the other, while divvying up Poland and smaller countries. Late that year and into the next, the German Gestapo and the Soviet secret police, the N.K.V.D., held a series of conferences to coordinate their occupations.

Had Hitler held to that agreement, it is possible he might have won the war. Stalin might have sat out the conflict as it raged in the West, biding his time, then possibly consolidating with Hitler a condominium of totalitarian superstates.

What did happen was the Wehrmacht’s blitzkrieg into the Soviet Union in 1941, which caught Stalin by surprise. Why Hitler delivered this deadly but also dangerous blow, bringing new hope to Winston Churchill and the Allies, is still debated.

Bullock’s answer to that question came in his earlier biography of Hitler, who “invaded Russia for the simple but sufficient reason that he had always meant to establish the foundations of his thousand-year Reich by the annexation of the territory between the Vistula and the Urals.”

Wall Street Journal:

Known officially as the Treaty of Non-Aggression Between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Hitler-Stalin pact—signed 80 years ago Friday—stunned the world. Some said that by uniting implacable ideological foes it had turned isms into wasms.

That wasn’t quite right. As German negotiator Karl Schnurre had observed the month before, “despite all the differences in their respective worldviews, there is one common element in the ideologies of Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies. Neither we nor Italy have anything in common with the capitalist West. Therefore it seems to us rather unnatural that a socialist state would stand on the side of the Western democracies.” Since capitalist democracy was their common enemy, why not pool resources?

Hitler and Stalin had demonized each other over several years, but they also had interlocking interests. Hitler wanted to invade Poland without fear of war on two fronts, so he had to neutralize the Soviets. He also needed access to Russia’s natural resources. Stalin coveted German industrial and weapons technology. To his cadre, he explained that he could destroy Germany later, after Hitler had assisted him in destroying the most “reactionary” imperialist capitalist countries, England and France. Though some balked, most communists world-wide acquiesced. Even the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm later acknowledged he’d had “no reservations” about it at the time.

Hitler invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Sixteen days later, so did Stalin, allegedly to “protect” the newly occupied “brothers of the same blood.” As revealed only after the war’s end, the dual move had been effectively sanctioned by a Secret Protocol accompanying the pact, which defined the borders of Soviet and German “spheres of interest” in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and parts of Romania.

Joseph Maiolo, a historian at King’s College London, wrote in 2014 that the arrangement “enabled the two regimes to experiment in brutal imposition of their ideological visions on the peoples of Eastern Europe.” British historian Roger Moorhouse, whose 2014 book, “The Devils’ Alliance,” incorporates recently released Soviet-era documents, amply demonstrates that “a remarkable symmetry emerged between the occupation policies adopted by the Nazis and the Soviets. . . . The two sides even employed similar tactics: deportation, hard labor, and execution.”

The devils’ alliance seemed cordial. In December 1939, Hitler wished Stalin on his birthday “a happy future with the peoples of a friendly Soviet Union.” Stalin responded with a toast to “the friendship between the peoples of the Soviet Union and Germany, cemented in blood.” But when Stalin occupied part Northern Bukovina, part of Romania, in the summer of 1940, Hitler is said to have flown into a rage. Hitler worried about the proximity of Soviet forces to the Romanian oil fields, which were indispensable to Germany. Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary in early July 1940: “Maybe we will have to move against the Soviets after all.”

On June 22, 1941, they did. Stalin didn’t believe the intelligence warning of a German invasion. But he soon came up with a rationalization for his oversight: The pact had secured his country months of peace and provided “the opportunity” to rearm. That became the official line. The Secret Protocol, which revealed Stalin’s real strategy, was never mentioned. Rumors of its existence circulated, and an English translation was published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Only in 1948 did the U.S. State Department release an official copy, alongside thousands of other documents seized from the Germans. Moscow issued a communiqué declaring it a forgery and itself “offended” at the “falsification of history.”

The second and third paragraphs stating that the Nazis had nothing in common with the “capitalist West” and thus were more tailored to break bread with the Soviet communists fits like a glove with what Zitelmann quoted from Hitler in 1944:

The German dictator admitted during a conversation with Benito Mussolini on April 22, 1944, he had become convinced: “Capitalism too had run its course, the nations were no longer willing to stand for it. The victors to survive would be Fascism, and National Socialism – maybe Bolshevism in the East.”

Historian John Lukacs informs us that Stalin liked and admired Hitler too and ignored dozens of clear intelligence warnings of a German attack believing his friend Hitler would never do so:

CONAN: And then there is Stalin. Universally described as shrewd and suspicious, canny, but who could not bring himself to accept overwhelming evidence that an invasion was about to happen.

Mr. LUKACS: He didn’t–there was more than one reason in his mind. One of them was obvious. He knew that, particularly Churchill would like to see a war between Germany and Russia. He believed it was in the British interest for that to happen. So he was with his usual suspicion–and also to some extent lack of profound knowledge of the western world–believed that much of this was machination, because Hitler, and this comes as a second element, would be foolish. It would be very unlikely for Hitler to start a war, a two-front war, when the one-front war is not at all concluded.

Now added to this comes a very important element that some people have known, and that’s Stalin had a liking for Hitler. Stalin greatly admired Hitler. The odd thing is that his respect and admiration for Hitler appeared in drips and drabs even after the war started, even toward the end of the war, here and there he dropped some quite comfortable remarks about Hitler, or rather he had admired.

And another element connected with this is that Stalin had a great liking and respect for Germans and for Germany. And that goes back to pretty early in his career.

Mussolini made a similar statement to Hitler that the fascists had more in common with the Soviet communists than the “demo-plutocratic capitalism of the Western powers”. From “Killing History”:

Time and again the National Socialists and Fascists tell us of their affinities for and similarities with communists. Here’s another from Mussolini, in which he told the son of a US Republican Senator, that “fascism is the same thing as Communism”:

Mussolini said Stalin was a “fellow fascist”:

Both Fascism and Marxist Communism created welfare-warfare states:

The infighting between fascists and communists was a brother war between ideological kin fighting for power:

By 1943 Mussolini was once again pronouncing his desire to eliminate what was left of free enterprise in Italy:

In 1933 speech Mussolini declared the “end of laissez-faire” and a march towards socialism:

In a Jan 30, 1945 address Hitler too proclaimed that he was done with free enterprise entirely and would move sharply towards Communism:

Hitler himself was convinced, as he emphasized in his last radio address on January, 30, 1945, “that the age of unrestricted economic liberalism had outlived itself.” These statements of Hitler’s in 1935 to 1945, but particularly from the beginning of the 1940s on, show that he had become a vehement critic of the system of free enterprise and a confirmed adherent of the system of a planned, state-controlled economy.

In the 1940s as his rule was coming to an end, Mussolini wrote anonymous articles calling for another bloody socialist revolution against capitalism (which he had already eliminated in Italy) and that his government was the only truly socialist one next to Soviet Russia:

Adolf Eichmann explained in his memoirs that he was just as much a radical socialist as a nationalist:

L. K. Samuels in “Killing History” describes Mussolini as a closeted Marxist who hated the monarchy and the Church:

Hitler and Mussolini praised FDR for his interventionist economic policies only to later decry him as a “capitalist” when they went to war:

Former Italian politician Nitti said that fascists are “revolutionary socialists”:

The Reich leadership referring to Gauleiter Eric Koch as a “second Stalin” as a compliment for his brutality in Ukraine:

“Opposing Rosenberg’s wishes, Hitler had yielded in the conference of 16 July to the suggestion of Göring, backed by Bormann, that the – even by Nazi standards – extraordinarily brutal and independent-minded Erich Koch, Gauleiter of East Prussia, should be made Reich Commissar of the key territory of the Ukraine. Koch, like Hitler, but in contrast to Rosenberg, rejected any idea of a Ukrainian buffer-state. His view was that from the very beginning it was necessary ‘to be hard and brutal’. He was held in favour in Führer Headquarters. Everyone there thought he was the most suitable person to carry out the requirements in the Ukraine. It was seen as a compliment when they called him the ‘second Stalin’.” (Source: Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis)

“The mood at the Führer’s headquarters is very favorable for Erich Koch. Everyone considers him the right man for the job and a “second Stalin” who will fulfill his appointed tasks. ” (Source: Werner Koeppen, pp. 24f. (entry for 19 Sept. 1941))

Götz Aly in “Hitler’s Beneficiaries” tells us of the “liberal borrowing” the Nazis employed from socialist rhetoric:

“Another source of the Nazi Party’s popularity was its LIBERAL BORROWING FROM THE INTELLECTUAL TRADITION OF THE SOCIALIST LEFT. Many of the men who would become the movement’s leaders had been INVOLVED IN COMMUNIST AND SOCIALIST CIRCLES in the waning years of the Weimar Republic. In his memoirs, Adolf Eichmann repeatedly asserted: “My political sentiments inclined toward the left and emphasized socialist aspects every bit as much as nationalist ones.” In the days when the movement was still doing battle in the streets, Eichmann added, HE AND HIS COMRADES HAD VIEWED NAZISM AND COMMUNISM AS “QUASI-SIBLINGS.”

Scholar of fascism A. James Gregor gives us these gems:

What should be recognized at this point is the fact that Mussolini, whatever else he was, was a collectivist, who conceived human beings as social animals. He had learned that man was a communal being from Marx.

By 1938, Mussolini could confidently assert that ‘in the face of the total collapse of the system [bequeathed] by Lenin, Stalin has covertly transformed himself into a Fascist.’

All totalitarianism of the twentieth century were predicated on a systematic, anti-individualistic collectivism. In the case of Marxist-Leninism, the source was classical Marxism. [Giovanni] Gentile had carefully dissected the neo-Hegelian roots of that collectivism. What he found missing in the collectivism of Marx was ethical concern. He sought to provide that concern to the collectivism of Fascism—a collectivism that shared a common intellectual origin with Marxism and Marxism-Leninism.

What some of the revolutionary syndicalists proceed to do was to identify the ‘communality’ of man not will class, but with the nation. The first intimations of a ‘revolutionary nationalism’ made their appearance among the most radical Marxists.

Whether their ideological commitment was to proletarian communism, or the Nordic race, or the restoration of Italy to its proper place in the community of nations, they all chose the hierarchically structured, charismatically led single party state to pursue their ends—a state first fixed in the political doctrine by Fascism.

Gentile’s rationale was neo-Hegelian in origin, the same source out of which Marxism and Marxism-Leninism were to emerge. In fact, Gentile understood Marxism so well that his essay on the thought of the young Marx has not only withstood the test of time, but was, on the occasion of its publication, recommended as particularly insightful by V.I. Lenin.

By the time of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Marxist theoreticians had begun to evaluate fascism in a totally unanticipated fashion… More than that, as Marxist theorists were compelled to reinterpret fascism in the light of empirical evidence and political circumstances, the fundamental affinities shared by Marxist and fascist regimes became apparent.

The first Fascists were almost all Marxists—serious theorists who had long been identified with Italy’s intelligentsia of the Left.

Fascism… was the socialism of ‘proletarian nations.’

Fascist social welfare legislation compared favorably with the more advanced European nations and in some respect was more progressive.

Fascism’s most direct ideological inspiration came from the collateral influence of Italy’s most radical ‘subversives’ — the Marxists of revolutionary syndicalism.

[Italian] Fascism was a variant of classical Marxism, a believe system that pressed some themes argued by both Marx and Engels until they found expression in the form of ‘national syndicalism’ that was to animate the first Fascism.

Thus, by 1925, both Leninism and Fascism, variants of Marxism, had created political and economic systems that shared singular properties… Both sought order and disciple of entire populations in the service of an exclusivistic party and an ideology that found its origins in classical Marxism… Both created a kind of ‘state capitalism,’ informed by a unitary party, and responsible to a ‘charismatics’ leader.

It can be said, in a qualified sense, that Gentile entertained considerable sympathy for the neo-Hegelian Marxist intellectual tradition.

Fascism never served the interests of Italian business… there is no credible evidence that Fascism controlled the nation’s economy for the benefit of the ‘possessing classes.’

Neither Stalinism nor Fascist totalitarianism would have been possible without the transmogrified Marxism, that infilled both.

In what bizarre universe are these two sister ideologies of radical socialist progressivism opposites?

Hitler and Stalin saw themselves in the other.

Topic: In this episode, I look at Hitler’s #1 foreign policy goal: Lebensraum, expanding Germany’s living space to the East. I demolish the natsoc myth that Hitler only wanted to reclaim territories lost after World War I. Extensive quotes from Mein Kampf, Hitler’s speeches to generals, and other sources unequivocally prove that Hitler was not satisfied with the pre-WWI (1914) German borders and sought to expand them eastward “by the sword” to create a contiguous land empire in Europe. In MK, Hitler identifies “Russia and its borderlands” as the fertile soil he wished to conquer, space he claimed was required to make Germany a world power once again, and that this would only be possible through war. Hitler declared Poles, Russians and all Slavs to be an “inferior race” who Germans had the right to rule and exploit. I also delve into German colonial policy in Ukraine in which Himmler led resettlement/colonization projects, moving tens of thousands of Ukrainians off their land and Germans in. After their land was usurped by German occupation authorities, tens of thousands of Ukrainians were shipped off to slave labour camps while some of their children were kidnapped for Himmler’s breeding programs. Nazi Germany used Ukrainian nationalists as cannon fodder to help them fight the Soviets only to betray them later when their usefulness expired.

SUB RUMBLE

TIPS

Topic: In this episode of Martinez Politix Investigates, I look at the common wisdom that Adolf Hitler was an “anti-communist” crusader and break down a series of reasons why Hitler’s anti-Communism was a fraud. I look at Hitler’s own anti-capitalist economic views and policies which were highly similar to that of Soviet communists; Hitler’s private admiration for Stalin and his socialist system; Hitler’s Molotov-Ribbentrop pact which saw the two countries become allies engaged in trade & a joint conquest of Poland; Hitler’s real reason for attacking the USSR (Lebensraum, conquering new living space for German exploitation and not an ideological crusade against Stalinism); and more.

10:30 – 30:00 – Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; Italo-Soviet Pact; Hitler’s private admiration for Stalin; invasion of USSR was about Lebensraum not defeating Communism;

30:00 – 01:09:00 – Fascist/National Socialist economics as a near replica of Soviet economics; high levels of cross-over between Germany’s communist parties to the NSDAP; Goebbels’ writings are full of Marxist language and sentiment; Goebbels’ criticism of communism was disingeunous & misleading; had nothing at all to do with its economics, rather he fully affirmed his support for the economic side of it & only disavowed its perceived lack of ethno-centric focus;

01:09:00 – 01:23:00 – Recapping the six major reasons that Hitler’s and Mussolini’s anti-communism was a fraud; a run through of some fascist philosophy (“states have rights over individuals”) and how this would shackle you into subservience to any evil government (like the ones ruling over us now)

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