Given these opinions, Hitler’s views on how to rule this newly conquered territory were appropriately barbaric. No military power, no ‘Bolshevist form of state must be allowed to exist on this side of the Urals, not even an urban power centre’.76 He kept describing in detail how the great Soviet cities were to be destroyed. In August, he announced that he did not even intend ‘to take Petersburg and Kiev by force of arms, but to starve them out’. He wanted to surround St Petersburg, in those days Leningrad, and then ‘smash’ it with the Luftwaffe and artillery.77 In fact, the total destruction of Leningrad became one of Hitler’s favourite topics.78 It was necessary, he told Goebbels, for this city ‘totally to disappear’.79 They could not feed the ‘mass of 5 million people squashed together there. Thus, it’s very much in our interest if Leningrad resists for a time. We can then destroy this city of millions street by street, quarter by quarter, and then, when we occupy it, the ruins that remain can be blown up until it has been razed to the ground. The most gruesome urban drama that history has ever known is developing here. Bolshevism, which began with hunger, blood, and tears will perish in hunger, blood, and tears. Though it is a cruel nemesis, historically it is a just one.’ The significance of the destruction of the city for the future should not be underestimated. ‘The plough must once again pass over this city. It was conceived by Asiatic Slavs as a gate of entry to Europe. This gate of entry must be closed.’80 In November, he committed himself to the destruction of the city in a speech broadcast by the media.81 He ignored the navy’s interest in using its docks and armaments facilities.82
Hitler’s comments clearly show that his determination to conquer the city had less to do with the economic motives with which he was always trying to justify it, such as protecting iron ore supplies from the Gulf of Finland from the Red Army, and more to do with his desire to destroy the city that bore the name of the founder of the Soviet Union. Prestige and visceral hatred determined his attitude. The same was true of Moscow, which also ‘had to disappear from the face of the earth’.83 In principle, he told his audience, there should be no fixed boundary to Germany’s living space in the east; even the Urals were not the final frontier with Asia, but rather ‘the place where settlements of Germanic-type people will cease and pure Slavdom begins. It is our task to push this frontier as far as possible to the east and, if necessary, beyond the Urals.’84 West of the Urals ‘no organized Russian state can be allowed to exist!’85 He was even prepared to make a peace treaty with the remnant of the Soviet Union that would be left in Asia, but only after the Red Army had been completely crushed.86
This ruthless colonial policy was justified by ‘nature’s eternal law of the stronger, which gives Germany the right before history to subjugate these racially inferior peoples, to rule them, and to force them to undertake productive labour. Although this is a long way from Christian ethics, the very fact that it corresponds to the older and more tried and tested laws of nature ensures its permanence.’87 ‘After all, the great migrations . . . came from the East and, with us begins the ebb tide flooding from the West back to the East. . . . The laws of nature require uninterrupted killing in order for the superior to survive.’88 Seen in a longer-term historical perspective, his aims were not ‘exorbitant’, for they only involved ‘territories where Germanic peoples had been settled in the past’.89
He developed practical ideas for settling the conquered territories,90 which he delighted in elaborating on to his audience. Priority was to be given to the construction of great transport networks: big canal projects,91 autobahns, as well as a broad-gauge railway of three metres, which he was particularly interested in.92 As centres of settlement, ‘German cities’ would be linked together along these arterial roads ‘as in a pearl necklace’. The ‘German agencies and authorities will be housed in splendid buildings, the governors in palaces. . . . Around the cities to a depth of thirty to forty kilometres we shall have a belt of attractive villages, linked together by high quality roads.’93 The ‘monotonous appearance of the Russian Steppe’ would be gradually transformed into a cultural landscape on the Central European model. In ten years’ time, four, in twenty years, at least ten, perhaps even twenty, million ‘Germans’ would settle there,94 not only from the Reich, but also from America, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and Flanders. The Swiss, however, could only be used as hotel managers.95
The main focus of the German settlement programme was to be the southern Ukraine; he wanted to turn the Crimea, whose attractive landscape he praised,96 into an Eastern Goths’ Gau, with the best ‘human material’ from all the ‘Nordic-type’ nations.97 In his fantasies he had pictured life in the new eastern territories down to the last detail. Thus he kept talking about installing retired NCOs, discharged after twelve years’ service, as peasant settlers. They would be given fully-equipped farms, but would have to commit to marrying ‘country girls not town girls’.98
The model for all these visions of the future, which he kept coming back to, was British rule in India, as he understood it. He remarked in admiration that 250,000 Englishmen ruled 400 million Indians without having to exercise a tight control over the lives of the inhabitants.99 He considered this way of ruling the ‘colonial territory’ in the East, in which there was no intention of introducing civilized Central European standards, absolutely ideal.100 The main aim, after all, was to keep the indigenous population in a primitive state. The ‘natives’ would be ‘screened’. ‘We shall get rid of all the dangerous Jews.’ He did not want to be bothered with the Russian cities; they ‘must all die out’. There was no need to have ‘pangs of conscience’ about it; they had ‘absolutely no responsibility for the people involved’. It was enough for them ‘to recognise the traffic signs, so that they don’t get in the way of our vehicles!’ The main task was ‘Germanization, by bringing in Germans and treating the natives like Red Indians’.101
Given the extensive ground their colonial rule would cover, their methods were bound to be draconian. ‘Of course the police there will have to be trigger-happy. Party officials will know what to do.’ ‘A new type of man will emerge, ruler-types, though we shan’t of course be able to use them in the West: Viceroys.’102 If the natives started a revolution ‘then we only need to drop a few bombs on their cities and that will be that. Once a year we shall take a group of Kyrgizes through the capital in order to impress them with the grandeur of its monuments.’103
He was approaching this matter with an ‘ice-cold attitude. I feel I am merely the executor of the will of history. I don’t care in the least what people think of me at the moment. Law is an invention of human beings. Nature can’t be contained by human planning or statutes. The heavens only acknowledge strength. The idea that everybody should love one another is a theory that has actually been most effectively refuted by those who believe it.’ ‘The German people [have] now secured . . . what they need to be of world importance’. He was very pleased ‘that, as a result of this development, we have been drawn away from the Mediterranean’ and in future would be living in a ‘Northland’. The Ukraine and then the Volga basin would one day be the ‘granaries of Europe’.104 The Crimea had citrus fruits and they would plant rubber plants and cotton on a large scale. They would get reeds from the Pripet marshes. ‘We’ll supply the Ukrainians with scarves, glass beads, and whatever else colonial peoples like.’ The Germans living in the east would have to ‘form a closed society, like a fortress; the least of our stable lads must be superior to any native’.105 On the railways Germans would have to travel in ‘the first or second class’ to distinguish themselves from the ‘natives’.106
Possession of the vast eastern space would enable Europe under German leadership to practise autarky, making it independent of world trade and secure against blockade. ‘When we’re the masters of Europe we shall dominate the world.’107 In future, in addition to the ‘130 million’ in the Reich there would be ninety million in the Ukraine, as well as the other states of the ‘new Europe’
, altogether 400 million people. With their characteristic mixture of megalomaniacal building projects, romantic ideas about colonial settlement, and brutal methods of rule, Hitler’s extravagant fantasies about future life in ‘Germany’s eastern area’ were not merely pipe dreams. Within a short time, he was taking steps to turn them into reality.
Occupation policy
On 16 July, three and a half weeks after the start of the war, at a meeting in his headquarters, Hitler took the vital decisions affecting the direction and structure of future occupation policy in the east; Göring, Keitel, Rosenberg, and Bormann were present. To begin with, Hitler explained that the occupation phase would enable them to carry out certain measures – he referred to ‘shootings, resettlement etc.’ – designed to prepare for the final domination of the territory, without revealing Germany’s long-term aims. It was, however, already clear that they would never give up the conquered territories. ‘Basically’, Hitler continued, ‘we now have 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.’ According to Hitler, Stalin’s call for partisan warfare had an advantage: ‘It enables us to exterminate everyone who opposes us’. He also declared: this ‘huge area’ could best be ‘pacified’ if ‘we shoot everybody who even looks askance’. ‘It must never again be possible to construct a military power west of the Urals, even if we have to wage war for a hundred years.’ They must never permit anybody but Germans to carry arms, as otherwise Germany would inevitably one day become the target.
The ‘newly-won eastern region [Ostraum]’ had to become a ‘Garden of Eden’. A considerable portion of the occupied territories would have to be incorporated into the Reich. This included the whole of the Baltic states, as well as the Crimea (which had to be completely cleared of its indigenous population), together with a substantial hinterland in the north of the peninsula, as well as the Volga colony, in other words the autonomous ‘Soviet Republic of the Volga Germans’ on Russian territory bordering Kazakhstan. The area round Baku was also to become Reich territory, as was the Kola Peninsula with its extensive reserves of nickel. Galicia would be subordinated to Governor General Frank. According to Rosenberg, Hitler even took the trouble to sketch in the new frontiers on a map.108
These plans for annexations were very different from the announcements Hitler had made to his generals on 30 March. At that time, he had still been talking about a protectorate over the ‘Baltic countries’ as well as the acquisition of the Ukraine and White Russia. Indeed, Hitler’s statement of 16 July even exceeded the settlement plans that Himmler as Reich Settlement Commissar had worked out in response to Germany’s rapid advances. Hitler’s new statement had made these plans obsolete and, during the following months, they had to be completely revised.109 These ‘spontaneous’ commitments by Hitler followed a familiar pattern. As with his earlier conquests (Austria, Poland, France, and the Balkans), the ‘Führer’ had decided on his plans for the new order only in the course of, or after, the occupation. Now, once again, in summer 1941, he allowed himself to be carried away by his euphoria at an (apparent) victory and to commit himself to much more ‘elaborate’ plans than he had originally envisaged.
In the middle of June, Hitler was determined to carry out his settlement plans in the ‘eastern region’ by embarking on huge mass expulsions while eliminating potential resistance in the most brutal way. As we have seen, he also wanted to destroy completely the main urban centres of the Soviet Union, to depopulate them, and then do nothing to feed their former populations. This resulted in a policy geared to the systematic starvation of the population of the Soviet cities. A meeting of state secretaries at the beginning of May 1941 had already agreed that the Soviet Union must feed the whole of the Wehrmacht, which would undoubtedly ‘result in the starvation of tens of millions of people’.110 In accordance with his pre-war instructions, the Jewish-Bolshevik leadership, as he envisaged it, was to be liquidated. In addition, at the end of the war he intended to deport Europe’s Jews to the ‘eastern territories’; he had repeatedly ‘prophesied’ their ‘annihilation’. By brutally purging this territory he would create an empty space that could be colonized with Germans and exploited economically. These principles established by Hitler for future occupation policy in the East help explain how those who were to carry out this policy during the coming months set about ‘ruling’ the ‘eastern region’.
On 17 July, the day after the notorious meeting with Göring, Bormann, Keitel, and Rosenberg, Hitler signed the Führer edict concerning the administration of the occupied territories, which contained further conclusions of the previous day’s conference. After the end of military operations, a civil administration was to be established, for which Rosenberg would be responsible as Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories. The occupied territories were to be divided into Reich commissariats subordinate to Rosenberg.111 A few days later, as had been decided at the meeting of 16 July, Gauleiters Hinrich Lohse (Schleswig-Holstein) and Erich Koch (East Prussia) were appointed Reich Commissars in the Ostland (Baltic states and White Russia) and the Ukraine respectively. By appointing the ‘masterful’ Koch, despite Rosenberg’s objections,112 Hitler ensured that Rosenberg’s idea of limited cooperation with local populations would not apply in the Ukraine.113 The edict also obliged Rosenberg to acknowledge that Göring and Himmler had been assigned special responsibilities for the Four-Year Plan and ‘police security operations’ respectively. The names Göring and Himmler stood for ruthless exploitation and brutal repression.
On the same day, Hitler issued a further edict defining Himmler’s powers.114 For the purpose of carrying out ‘police security operations’ in the Reich commissariats he was authorized to issue instructions to the Reich commissars, to each of whom he was also to assign a Higher SS and Police Leader. With the term ‘police security operations’ Hitler had defined Himmler’s assignment in the occupied East more narrowly than the latter had anticipated. A few weeks earlier, the Reichsführer SS had proposed to Lammers that he should take over ‘police and political security operations’ in the occupied territories, in order, in his role as Reich Settlement Commissar ‘to be able to ensure the pacification and consolidation of the political situation’.115
Himmler was evidently not prepared to put up with this setback. He responded by expanding his ‘police responsibilities’, combining them with those that he claimed in the East in his role as Settlement Commissar. For the assignment he had been given in October 1939 included not only the ‘establishment of new areas for German settlement through a resettlement programme’, but also the ‘elimination of the damaging influence of . . . alien populations’. Himmler now interpreted this assignment, and the edict of 17 July concerning ‘police security operations’,116 as making him responsible for ‘solving the Jewish question’ in the occupied eastern territories and thereby providing him with an important opportunity to extend his power.
During the first days of the ‘Eastern Campaign’, the Einsatzgruppen, operating directly behind the advancing troops, had already started shooting large numbers of Jewish civilians in the conquered territories. This was in response to clear instructions, issued by Hitler and Himmler, before the start of the campaign.117 On the one hand, they initiated pogroms with the aid of members of the local populations, in particular in Lithuania, Latvia, and western Ukraine; on the other, they carried out mass executions themselves. To begin with, the main victims were men belonging to an only vaguely defined Jewish upper class, in some places all men of military age. The justification put forward for the mass murder was the need forcibly to remove the most important support within the population for the Bolshevik system. During 1939/40, tens of thousands of members of the Polish elites had already been shot by special units.
Now, in July 1941, Himmler seized the initiative to expand this terrorist mass murder, accounted for by the need to get rid of the Soviet system and on the grounds of ‘security�
��, into genocide. At the end of July/beginning of August 1941, the Einsatzgruppen, police battalions, and two SS brigades (which were subordinated to a special Reichsführer SS command staff ) extended the shooting of Jewish civilians to include women and children; within a short time they started making villages, towns, and whole regions ‘free of Jews’, as they put it, in other words murdering the vast majority of the Jewish civilian population. Only a minority was left alive to be confined in specially established ghettos in order to undertake forced labour. By the end of the year, the murder units had already killed well over 500,000 people.118
These murders were undertaken less from ‘police motives’ and more from the belief in a racial hierarchy. The murder of the Jews during the war was intended to be the first step in a gigantic reordering of the new living space on a ‘racial’ basis, as Hitler had outlined in his instructions of 16 July; it was a topic he was to return to on several occasions during the first months of the ‘Eastern Campaign’.119 Himmler recommended himself to Hitler as the man, who, with his SS, possessed the requisite brutality to tackle this task; he clearly carried it out with Hitler’s approval and backing. A radio telegram from Heinrich Müller, the Gestapo chief, dated 1 August 1941, according to which ‘particularly interesting illustrative material’ was to be sent to Berlin, demonstrates the fact that Hitler was being kept continually informed: ‘The Führer is going to receive regular reports from here on the work of the Einsatzgruppen.’120
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