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151-684: Germany invaded and occupied Denmark on 9 April 1940. In June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union and the Danish government subsequently arrested Danish communists and signed the Communist Law on 22 August 1941, forcing many communists to either flee or go underground. Willy Samsing (Codename: Frandsen) was the local leader of the Communist Party of Denmark in Trøjborg . With his three brothers he founded

302-636: A border and commercial agreement addressing several open issues in January 1941. According to historian Robert Service , Joseph Stalin was convinced that the overall military strength of the Soviet Union was such that he had nothing to fear and anticipated an easy victory should Germany attack; moreover, Stalin believed that since the Germans were still fighting the British in the west, Hitler would be unlikely to open up

453-649: A "war of annihilation" ( Vernichtungskrieg ) in the Eastern Front to implement the Generalplan Ost . The Wehrmacht implemented scorched-earth tactics throughout the region and forcibly expelled natives en masse to the east. Nazi officials then charted out buffer zones intended to serve as future Nordic settlements. Hunger Plan was Nazi Germany's strategy to forcibly starve around 31 to 45 million Eastern Europeans by capturing food stocks and redirecting them to German forces. Nazi Germany conducted its warfare in

604-597: A 12th-century Holy Roman Emperor and Crusader , put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goals of eradicating communism and conquering the western Soviet Union to repopulate it with Germans . The German Generalplan Ost aimed to use some of the conquered people as forced labour for the Axis war effort while acquiring the oil reserves of the Caucasus as well as the agricultural resources of various Soviet territories, including Ukraine and Byelorussia . Their ultimate goal

755-463: A German military attaché and sent word to Zhou Enlai . The Chinese maintain the tipoff helped Stalin make preparations, though little exists to confirm the Soviets made any real changes upon receiving the intelligence. In early 1941, Stalin's own intelligence services and American intelligence gave regular and repeated warnings of an impending German attack. Soviet spy Richard Sorge also gave Stalin

906-470: A Soviet counteroffensive along with the remaining forces of the first echelon. But on 22 June 1941 the first echelon contained 171 divisions, numbering 2.6–2.9 million; and the second strategic echelon contained 57 divisions that were still mobilising, most of which were still understrength. The second echelon was undetected by German intelligence until days after the invasion commenced, in most cases only when German ground forces encountered them. At

1057-549: A bulwark against attack  – however, it was not very far east of the "frontier" that the westernmost reaches within continental Asia of the Nazi Germany's major Axis partner, Imperial Japan 's own Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere would have existed, had a complete defeat of the Soviet Union occurred. Hitler envisioned the war in Eastern Europe as a campaign of annihilation , intending to culminate it with

1208-534: A figure greater than the number of Red Army soldiers killed in battle by then. German army commanders cast Jews as the major cause behind the " partisan struggle." The main guideline for German troops was "Where there's a partisan, there's a Jew, and where there's a Jew, there's a partisan" or "The partisan is where the Jew is." Many German troops viewed the war in Nazi terms and regarded their Soviet enemies as sub-human. After

1359-566: A front extending from the Arctic Ocean southward to the Black Sea , were all controlled by the OKH and organised into Army Norway , Army Group North , Army Group Centre and Army Group South , alongside three Luftflotten (air fleets, the air force equivalent of army groups) that supported the army groups: Luftflotte 1 for North, Luftflotte 2 for Centre and Luftflotte 4 for South. Army Norway

1510-608: A high official in the RSHA, Ehlich was the man responsible for the drafting of Generalplan Ost along with Konrad Meyer , Chief of the Planning Office of Himmler's RFKDV. It had been preceded by the Ostforschung . The preliminary versions were discussed by Heinrich Himmler and his most trusted colleagues even before the outbreak of war. This was mentioned by SS- Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski during his evidence as

1661-463: A key role in planning for Operation Barbarossa since both Jews and communists were considered equivalent enemies of the Nazi state. Nazi imperialist ambitions rejected the common humanity of both groups, declaring the supreme struggle for Lebensraum to be a Vernichtungskrieg ('war of annihilation'). On August 23, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact in Moscow known as

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1812-602: A major escalation of World War II, both geographically and with the Anglo-Soviet Agreement , which brought the USSR into the Allied coalition . The operation opened up the Eastern Front , in which more forces were committed than in any other theatre of war in human history. The area saw some of history's largest battles, most horrific atrocities , and highest casualties (for Soviet and Axis forces alike), all of which influenced

1963-728: A memorandum to Hitler on the dangers of an invasion of the Soviet Union. They argued that the eastern territories ( Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic , the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic , the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic , the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic , and the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic ) would only end up as a further economic burden for Germany. It was further argued that

2114-561: A million Soviet Jews as part of the Holocaust . The failure of Operation Barbarossa reversed the fortunes of Nazi Germany. Operationally, German forces achieved significant victories and occupied some of the most important economic areas of the Soviet Union (mainly in Ukraine) and inflicted, as well as sustained, heavy casualties. The German offensive came to an end during the Battle of Moscow near

2265-616: A number far greater than the Germans had at their disposal. The Soviet Union had around 23,000 tanks available of which 14,700 were combat-ready. Around 11,000 tanks were in the western military districts that faced the German invasion force. Hitler later declared to some of his generals, "If I had known about the Russian tank strength in 1941 I would not have attacked". However, maintenance and readiness standards were very poor; ammunition and radios were in short supply, and many armoured units lacked

2416-456: A potential Soviet entry into the pact . After two days of negotiations in Berlin from 12 to 14 November 1940, Ribbentrop presented a draft treaty for a Soviet entry into the Axis. However, Hitler had no intention of allowing the Soviet Union into the Axis and in an order stated, "Political conversations designed to clarify the attitude of Russia in the immediate future have been started. Regardless of

2567-413: A pro-Axis partisan warfare against Soviet Union, Nazi ruling elites sought outright suppression of what they regarded as Slavic " untermenschen ". Hardliners like Himmler were averse to initiating agreements with Slavic natives. Hitler was strongly opposed to the entry of Slavic volunteers into the German army and issued orders to disarm the natives. The initial assessment of Hitler and Wehrmacht generals

2718-542: A prosecution witness in the trial of officials of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA). According to Bach-Zelewski, Himmler stated openly: "It is a question of existence, thus it will be a racial struggle of pitiless severity, in the course of which 20 to 30 million Slavs and Jews will perish through military actions and crises of food supply." A fundamental change in the plan was introduced on June 24, 1941 – two days after

2869-521: A pure " German and Aryan " community in Eastern Europe, composed of individuals who would be loyal subjects of the Greater Germanic Reich . Full implementation of the Generalplan Ost aimed at the forced deportations of hundreds of millions of Eastern European natives beyond the Urals and in the slaughter of more than 60 million Slavs , Romanis and Jews . The extermination programme also involved

3020-653: A racial war between the disciplined Germans and the Jewish, Romani and Slavic Untermenschen . An 'order from the Führer' stated that the paramilitary SS Einsatzgruppen , which closely followed the Wehrmacht ' s advance, were to execute all Soviet functionaries who were "less valuable Asiatics, Gypsies and Jews." Six months into the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen had murdered more than 500,000 Soviet Jews,

3171-457: A single engagement, units were destroyed or rendered ineffective. The Soviet numerical advantage in heavy equipment was thoroughly offset by the superior training and organisation of the Wehrmacht . Generalplan Ost The Generalplan Ost ( German pronunciation: [ɡenəˈʁaːlˌplaːn ˈɔst] ; English: Master Plan for the East ), abbreviated GPO , was Nazi Germany's plan for

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3322-511: A small group of resistance fighters with communist leanings. The group conducted their first operation on 22 March 1943 and their last in May 1944. On 10–11 August 1943 the group conducted one their larger operations, spanning 9 locations across Aarhus, which may have contributed to the August Crisis . In May 1944 the Danish resistance was, through a radio broadcast from England, given orders to destroy

3473-616: A two-front war and subsequently delayed the reconstruction of defensive fortifications in the border regions. When German soldiers swam across the Bug River to warn the Red Army of an impending attack, they were shot as enemy agents. Some historians believe that Stalin, despite providing an amicable front to Hitler, did not wish to remain allies with Germany. Rather, Stalin might have had intentions to break off from Germany and proceed with his own campaign against Germany to be followed by one against

3624-467: A very narrow military view. Hillgruber argued that because these assumptions were shared by the entire military elite, Hitler was able to push through with a "war of annihilation" that would be waged in the most inhumane fashion possible with the complicity of "several military leaders," even though it was quite clear that this would be in violation of all accepted norms of warfare. Even so, in autumn 1940, some high-ranking German military officials drafted

3775-577: A war of Weltanschauungen ['worldviews']... totally a people's war, a racial war ". On 23 November, once World War II had already started, Hitler declared that "racial war has broken out and this war shall determine who shall govern Europe, and with it, the world". The racial policy of Nazi Germany portrayed the Soviet Union (and all of Eastern Europe) as populated by non-Aryan Untermenschen ('sub-humans'), ruled by Jewish Bolshevik conspirators. Hitler claimed in Mein Kampf that Germany's destiny

3926-539: A war of attrition and as German losses mounted, some Wehrmacht officers began proposing collaborationist policies with the natives, with the purpose of advancing German economic and geo-strategic interests. Even as deteriorating conditions in the front brought around a change in military strategy, speeches of various Wehrmacht generals continued to explicitly and implicitly designate German fighters as "the last bulwark of European civilisation against Slav hordes". Exploiting anti-semitic sentiments which had persisted since

4077-456: The Einsatzgruppen were assigned to the Wehrmacht ' s units, which provided them with supplies such as gasoline and food, they were controlled by the RSHA. The official plan for Barbarossa assumed that the army groups would be able to advance freely to their primary objectives simultaneously, without spreading thin, once they had won the border battles and destroyed the Red Army's forces in

4228-585: The Generalplan Ost was a memorandum released on April 27, 1943, by Erhard Wetzel  [ de ] , director of the NSDAP Office of Racial Policy , entitled "Opinion and thoughts on the master plan for the East of the Reichsführer SS". Wetzel's memorandum was a broad elaboration of the Generalplan Ost proposal. It came to light only in 1957. Wetzel's report has enabled attempts to re-construct

4379-578: The Lebensraum agenda. Child indoctrination institutions which hosted numerous Belarussian children forcibly were also opened, wherein kids categorised as "racially suitable" were prepared to be transferred to Germany. The first of these centres in Belarus was set up in Bobruysk . Nazi anti-insurgency warfare conducted across occupied Eastern Europe was also used as an opportunity by German authorities to advance

4530-522: The Donbas second, Moscow third;" but he consistently emphasized the destruction of the Red Army over the achievement of specific terrain objectives. Hitler believed Moscow to be of "no great importance" in the defeat of the Soviet Union and instead believed victory would come with the destruction of the Red Army west of the capital, especially west of the Western Dvina and Dnieper rivers, and this pervaded

4681-549: The German High Command began planning an invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1940 (under the code-name Operation Otto ). Over the course of the operation, over 3.8 million personnel of the Axis powers—the largest invasion force in the history of warfare —invaded the western Soviet Union, along a 2,900-kilometer (1,800 mi) front, with 600,000 motor vehicles and over 600,000 horses for non-combat operations. The offensive marked

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4832-722: The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa —who drowned in Asia Minor while leading the Third Crusade —was not dead but asleep, along with his knights, in a cave in the Kyffhäuser mountains in Thuringia , and would awaken in the hour of Germany's greatest need and restore the nation to its former glory. Originally, the invasion of the Soviet Union was codenamed Operation Otto (alluding to Holy Roman Emperor Otto

4983-506: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact . A secret protocol to the pact outlined an agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union on the division of the eastern European border states between their respective " spheres of influence ," Soviet Union and Germany would partition Poland in the event of an invasion by Germany, and the Soviets would be allowed to overrun Finland , Estonia , Latvia and the region of Bessarabia . On 23 August 1939

5134-821: The Reichskommissariat Ostland . Such concessions were non-existent in Poland , Ukraine and Belarussia , where the Germanic occupation policy was characterised by full-blown colonization , exploitation of resources, state-terrorism and forcing natives into slave labour . RSHA 's GPO program had categorised 75% of Belarussians as " Eindeutschungsunfähig" (trans: "ineligible for Germanization"); targeting them for ethnic cleansing or violent eradication. After forcibly expelling or exterminating an estimated 5-6 millions of its native inhabitants, these lands were then supposed to be handed over to Germanic settlers for implementing

5285-470: The SS , were involved in the planning of GPO. The programme delineated various settler-colonial policies to be undertaken by Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe over a period of 25 years; such as the establishment of new settlements, demographic engineering, construction of new centres, etc., after the planned liquidation of the native populations. As early as the initial phase of Operation Barbarossa , when Wehrmacht

5436-562: The Second World War . "... when we speak of new territory in Europe today we must principally think of Russia and the border states subject to her. Destiny itself seems to wish to point out the way for us here. In delivering Russia over to Bolshevism , fate robbed the Russian people of that intellectual class which had once created the Russian state and were the guarantee of its existence. For

5587-534: The Tsarist period in occupied territories, collaborationism was also incited amongst the native inhabitants to assist Nazi Germany in implementing the Holocaust . The collaborationist bodies were viewed with suspicion due to the hardline anti-Slavic policy of German occupiers, and their Nazi sponsors largely used these groups as cannon fodder for German war efforts. As a consequence of the ideological constraints of National Socialism and Wehrmacht 's rising casualties across

5738-538: The Wehrmacht were killed as part of the GPO. The plan intended for the genocide of the majority of Slavic inhabitants by various means – mass killings, forced starvations, slave labour and other occupation policies. The remaining populations were to be forcibly deported beyond the Urals , paving the way for German settlers. The plan was a work in progress. There are four known versions of it, developed as time went on. After

5889-678: The White Buses in 1945 but Willy Samsing had contracted typhoid and died in the epidemiological hospital in Helsingborg on 26 April 1945. Operation Barbarossa Frontline strength (22 June 1941) Frontline strength (22 June 1941) Total military casualties: 1,000,000+ According to German Army medical reports (including Army Norway ): Other involved country losses Total military casualties: 4,500,000 Based on Soviet archives: Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Air war Operation Barbarossa

6040-612: The Winter War against Finland in 1939–40 also convinced Hitler of a quick victory within a few months. Neither Hitler nor the General Staff anticipated a long campaign lasting into the winter and therefore, adequate preparations such as the distribution of warm clothing and winterisation of important military equipment like tanks and artillery, were not made. Further to Hitler's Directive, Göring's Green Folder , issued in March 1941, laid out

6191-584: The Yugoslavian territories were annexed by Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria. Despite the vast population of Slavs in Yugoslavia, Nazi Germany mainly focused on targeting the nation's Jewish and Roma population. Nearly all the wartime documentation on Generalplan Ost was deliberately destroyed shortly before Germany's defeat in May 1945, and the full proposal has never been found, though several documents refer to it or supplement it. Nonetheless, most of

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6342-543: The genocide , extermination and large-scale ethnic cleansing of Slavs , Eastern European Jews , and other indigenous peoples of Eastern Europe categorized as " Untermenschen " in Nazi ideology . The campaign was a precursor to Nazi Germany's planned colonisation of Central and Eastern Europe by Germanic settlers, and it was carried out through systematic massacres, mass starvations , chattel labour , mass rapes , child abductions , and sexual slavery . Generalplan Ost

6493-734: The invasion of Poland , the original blueprint for Generalplan Ost was discussed by the RKFDV in mid-1940 during the Nazi–Soviet population transfers . The second known version of the GPO was procured by the RSHA from Erhard Wetzel  [ de ] in April 1942. The third version was officially dated June 1942. The final version of the Master Plan for the East came from the RKFDV on October 29, 1942. However, after

6644-503: The myth of the "clean Wehrmacht, " upholding its honor in the face of Hitler's fanaticism, the historian Jürgen Förster notes that "In fact, the military commanders were caught up in the ideological character of the conflict, and involved in its implementation as willing participants". Before and during the invasion of the Soviet Union, German troops were indoctrinated with anti-Bolshevik , anti-Semitic and anti-Slavic ideology via movies, radio, lectures, books, and leaflets. Likening

6795-547: The war in the east progressed successfully. It was a confidential proposal whose content was known only to those at the top level of the Nazi hierarchy; it was circulated by RSHA to the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories ( Ostministerium ) in early 1942. Between 1940 and 1943, Himmler supervised the drafting of at least five variants of Generalplan Ost . Four of these drafts were produced by

6946-734: The 22 June start date was sufficient for the German offensive to reach Moscow by September. Antony Beevor wrote in 2012 about the delay caused by German attacks in the Balkans that "most [historians] accept that it made little difference" to the eventual outcome of Barbarossa. The Germans deployed one independent regiment, one separate motorised training brigade and 153 divisions for Barbarossa, which included 104 infantry, 19 panzer and 15 motorised infantry divisions in three army groups, nine security divisions to operate in conquered territories, four divisions in Finland and two divisions as reserve under

7097-518: The Eastern European territories occupied by Germany during World War II . It would have included the extermination and de-population of most Slavic people in Eastern Europe. The plan, prepared in the years 1939–1942, was part of Adolf Hitler 's and the Nazi movement 's Lebensraum policy and a fulfilment of the Drang nach Osten (English: Drive towards the East ) ideology of German expansion to

7248-562: The Eastern Front as a colonialist campaign of plunder and slaughter, involving the unhinged looting of resources and wholesale terrorism against native populations. German occupation policies in Eastern Europe were characterized by genocide through "war of annihilation", and were ideologically driven by the Nazi racist doctrines and settler-colonial policy of Lebensraum . Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were to be deprived of their statehood, while their territories were to be included in

7399-502: The Eastern Front, German units faced shortages of personnel in carrying out the " Final Solution ". As anti-fascist partisan warfare intensified across the German-occupied territories of Eastern Europe, Poland, and Yugoslavia, Hitler stated on 6 August 1942: “We shall absorb or eject a ridiculous hundred million Slavs . Whoever talks about caring for them should at once be put into a concentration camp ”. According to Nazi intentions, attempts at Germanization were to be undertaken only in

7550-463: The GPO. In addition to genocide , millions more were forced into slave labour to serve the German war economy . The program's operational guidelines were based on the policy of Lebensraum proposed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in fulfilment of the Drang nach Osten (drive to the East) ideology of German expansionism. As such, it was intended to be a part of the New Order in Europe. Approximately 3.3 million Soviet POWs captured by

7701-430: The German defeat at Stalingrad , resources allocated to colonization policies were diverted to Axis war efforts, and the program was gradually abandoned. Generalplan Ost was Nazi Germany 's plan for the colonization and Germanization of Central and Eastern Europe over a period of twenty-five years. Implementing it would have necessitated genocide and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale to be undertaken in

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7852-401: The German war effort by circumventing the British blockade of Germany . Despite the parties' ostensibly cordial relations, each side was highly suspicious of the other's intentions. For instance, the Soviet invasion of Bukovina in June 1940 went beyond their sphere of influence as agreed with Germany. After Germany entered the Axis Pact with Japan and Italy, it began negotiations about

8003-665: The German campaign in France, in late 1940 they began to reorganise most of their armoured assets back into mechanised corps with a target strength of 1,031 tanks each. But these large armoured formations were unwieldy, and moreover they were spread out in scattered garrisons, with their subordinate divisions up to 100 kilometres (62 miles) apart. The reorganisation was still in progress and incomplete when Barbarossa commenced. Soviet tank units were rarely well equipped, and they lacked training and logistical support. Units were sent into combat with no arrangements in place for refuelling, ammunition resupply, or personnel replacement. Often, after

8154-454: The Germans were fighting for "the defence of European culture against Moscovite–Asiatic inundation, and the repulse of Jewish Bolshevism ... No adherents of the present Russian-Bolshevik system are to be spared." Walther von Brauchitsch also told his subordinates that troops should view the war as a "struggle between two different races and [should] act with the necessary severity." Racial motivations were central to Nazi ideology and played

8305-496: The Germans were unprepared. Following the heavy losses and logistical strain of Barbarossa, the Wehrmacht ' s diminished forces could no longer attack along the entire Eastern Front, and subsequent operations to retake the initiative and drive deep into Soviet territory—such as Case Blue in 1942 and Operation Citadel in 1943—were weaker and eventually failed, which resulted in the Wehrmacht ' s defeat. These Soviet victories ended Germany's territorial expansion and presaged

8456-407: The Great 's expansive campaigns in Eastern Europe), but Hitler had the name changed to Operation Barbarossa in December 1940. Hitler had in July 1937 praised Barbarossa as the emperor who first expressed Germanic cultural ideas and carried them to the outside world through his imperial mission. For Hitler, the name Barbarossa signified his belief that the conquest of the Soviet Union would usher in

8607-403: The Mobilisation Plan 1941 (MP-41), called for the deployment of 186 divisions, as the first strategic echelon, in the four military districts of the western Soviet Union that faced the Axis territories; and the deployment of another 51 divisions along the Dvina and Dnieper Rivers as the second strategic echelon under Stavka control, which in the case of a German invasion was tasked to spearhead

8758-420: The Nazi " Thousand-Year Reich ". As early as 1925, Adolf Hitler vaguely declared in his political manifesto and autobiography Mein Kampf that he would invade the Soviet Union , asserting that the German people needed to secure Lebensraum ('living space') to ensure the survival of Germany for generations to come. On 10 February 1939, Hitler told his army commanders that the next war would be "purely

8909-443: The Nazi racial hierarchy. Therefore, German authorities implemented a deeper scale of collaborationist policy in the Baltic society. Nazi collaborationists amongst the Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian natives were given senior posts in the administrative bodies of the German occupation. In German-occupied Lithuania , a civilian administration which controlled its internal security was tolerated. This semi-autonomous entity existed within

9060-407: The Red Army was developed and promulgated in the 1936 Field Regulations in the form of the Deep Battle Concept . Defence expenditure also grew rapidly from just 12 percent of the gross national product in 1933 to 18 percent by 1940. During Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in the late 1930s, which had not ended by the time of the German invasion on 22 June 1941, much of the officer corps of the Red Army

9211-435: The Russian state was not organized by the constructive political talent of the Slav element in Russia, but was much more a marvellous exemplification of the capacity for state-building possessed by the Germanic element in a race of inferior worth. ... This colossal empire in the East is ripe for dissolution. And the end of the Jewish domination in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. We are chosen by destiny to be

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9362-455: The Soviet Union in Mein Kampf and Hitler's belief that the Red Army would need four years to ready itself. Stalin declared "we must be ready much earlier" and "we will try to delay the war for another two years". As early as August 1940, British intelligence had received hints of German plans to attack the Soviets a week after Hitler informally approved the plans for Barbarossa and warned the Soviet Union accordingly. Some of this intelligence

9513-410: The Soviet Union's "most important and strongest enemy," and as early as July 1940, the Red Army Chief of Staff, Boris Shaposhnikov , produced a preliminary three-pronged plan of attack for what a German invasion might look like, remarkably similar to the actual attack. Since April 1941, the Germans had begun setting up Operation Haifisch and Operation Harpune to substantiate their claims that Britain

9664-484: The Soviet border even before the campaign in the Balkans had finished. By the third week of February 1941, 680,000 German soldiers were gathered in assembly areas on the Romanian-Soviet border. In preparation for the attack, Hitler had secretly moved upwards of 3 million German troops and approximately 690,000 Axis soldiers to the Soviet border regions. Additional Luftwaffe operations included numerous aerial surveillance missions over Soviet territory many months before

9815-463: The Soviet regime's brutality when targeting the Slavs with propaganda. They also claimed that the Red Army was preparing to attack the Germans , and their own invasion was thus presented as a pre-emptive strike. Hitler also utilised the rising tension between the Soviet Union and Germany over territories in the Balkans as one of the pretexts for the invasion. While no concrete plans had yet been made, Hitler told one of his generals in June 1940 that

9966-495: The Soviets to the forces of Genghis Khan , Hitler told the Croatian military leader Slavko Kvaternik that the "Mongolian race" threatened Europe. Following the invasion, many Wehrmacht officers told their soldiers to target people who were described as "Jewish Bolshevik subhumans," the "Mongol hordes," the "Asiatic flood" and the "Red beast." Nazi propaganda portrayed the war against the Soviet Union as an ideological war between German National Socialism and Jewish Bolshevism and

10117-405: The Soviets, in their current bureaucratic form, were harmless and that the occupation would not benefit Germany politically either. Hitler, solely focused on his ultimate ideological goal of eliminating the Soviet Union and Communism, disagreed with economists about the risks and told his right-hand man Hermann Göring , the chief of the Luftwaffe , that he would no longer listen to misgivings about

10268-428: The agenda for the next step after the anticipated quick conquest of the Soviet Union. The Hunger Plan outlined how entire urban populations of conquered territories were to be starved to death, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and urban space for the German upper class. Nazi policy aimed to destroy the Soviet Union as a political entity in accordance with the geopolitical Lebensraum ideals for

10419-399: The annexation of the eastern part of the country. As a result of the pact, Germany and the Soviet Union maintained reasonably strong diplomatic relations for two years and fostered an important economic relationship . The countries entered a trade pact in 1940 by which the Soviets received German military equipment and trade goods in exchange for raw materials, such as oil and wheat, to help

10570-753: The area of German settlement. This meant that Latvia and especially Lithuania would be covered by the deportation plans, though in a somewhat milder form than the expulsion of Slavs to western Siberia. While the Estonians would be spared repressions and physical liquidation (that the Jews and the Poles were experiencing), in the long term the Nazi planners did not foresee their existence as independent entities and they would ultimately be deported as well, with eventual denationalisation; initial designs were for Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to be Germanised within 25 years; Heinrich Himmler revised them to 20 years. Despite German opposition to their attempts of state-formation, Baltic natives were classified as "superior" to Slavs in

10721-400: The attack. Although the Soviet High Command was alarmed by this, Stalin's belief that Nazi Germany was unlikely to attack only two years after signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact resulted in slow Soviet preparation. This fact aside, the Soviets did not entirely overlook the threat of their German neighbor. Well before the German invasion, Marshal Semyon Timoshenko referred to the Germans as

10872-528: The benefit of future generations of the " Nordic master race ". In 1941, Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg —later appointed Reich Minister of the Occupied Eastern Territories—suggested that conquered Soviet territory should be administered in the following Reichskommissariate ('Reich Commissionerships'): German military planners also researched Napoleon's failed invasion of Russia . In their calculations, they concluded that there

11023-462: The border area. In 1930, Mikhail Tukhachevsky , a prominent military theorist in tank warfare in the interwar period and later Marshal of the Soviet Union , forwarded a memo to the Kremlin that lobbied for colossal investment in the resources required for the mass production of weapons, pressing the case for "40,000 aircraft and 50,000 tanks." In the early 1930s, a modern operational doctrine for

11174-738: The capability to potentially win in the Eastern Front , before the Red Army could amass more strength. After the German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad and other Axis setbacks in the Eastern Front , Nazi planners were forced to practically abandon the extermination campaigns of the GPO by mid-1943. From spring 1943, SS adopted the " Vernichtung durch Arbeit " (trans: "Extermination through labour") policy, which focused on exploiting natives in occupied territories as forced labor to aid German economy and military industry. By late 1943, millions of captives were employed in slave labour camps across German-occupied territories. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany launched forced starvations and advanced

11325-554: The case of nations whose racial material ( rassische Substanz ) and level of cultural development made them more suitable than others for Germanization. The plan considered that there were a large number of such elements among the Baltic states. Erhard Wetzel felt that thought should be given to a possible Germanization of the whole of the Estonian nation and a sizable proportion of the Latvians. On

11476-544: The case of those foreign nationals in Central and Eastern Europe who could be considered a desirable element for the future Reich from the point of view of its racial theories. The plan stipulated that there were to be different methods of treating particular nations and even particular groups within them. Attempts were even made to establish the basic criteria to be used in determining whether a given group lent itself to Germanization. These criteria were to be applied more liberally in

11627-461: The civilian population and the methods of anti-partisan warfare in operational areas presented the highest political and military leaders with a welcome opportunity to carry out their plans, namely, the systematic extermination of Slavism and Jewry ." — Lt. General Adolf Heusinger , Operations chief of the General staff of OKH The Generalplan Ost proposal offered various percentages of

11778-399: The colonization policies and scorched earth tactics unleashed against native populations, Himmler dogmatically pursued the implementation of GPO programme and proposed the further expansion of Konrad Meyer 's plan. GPO policies hindered the German military from efficiently exploiting the resources from occupied territories during 1942, a decisive phase of the war during which Axis forces had

11929-407: The conquered or colonized people who were targeted for removal and physical destruction; the net effect of which would be to ensure that the conquered territories would become German. In ten years' time, the plan effectively called for the extermination, expulsion, Germanization or enslavement of most or all East and West Slavs living behind the front lines of East-Central Europe. The "Small Plan"

12080-566: The course of World War II and the subsequent history of the 20th century . The German armies eventually captured five million Soviet Red Army troops and deliberately starved to death or otherwise killed 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, and millions of civilians, as the " Hunger Plan " worked to solve German food shortages and exterminate the Slavic population through starvation. Mass shootings and gassing operations , carried out by German death squads or willing collaborators, murdered over

12231-433: The course of the war; and the "Big Plan" ( Grosse Planung ), which described steps to be taken gradually over a period of 25 to 30 years after the war was won. Both plans entailed the policy of ethnic cleansing. As of June 1941, the policy envisaged the deportation of 31 million Slavs to Siberia. 75% of Belorussians were regarded unfit for " Germanization " and targeted for extermination or expulsion. "The treatment of

12382-602: The creation of military units. Beginning in July 1940, the Red Army General Staff developed war plans that identified the Wehrmacht as the most dangerous threat to the Soviet Union, and that in the case of a war with Germany, the Wehrmacht ' s main attack would come through the region north of the Pripyat Marshes into Belorussia, which later proved to be correct. Stalin disagreed, and in October, he authorised

12533-421: The decimation of the Russian state, its cities, and symbols of Russian culture in the event of a Nazi victory. On 21 July 1940, Hitler ordered German army commander-in-chief Walther von Brauchitsch to prepare a war-plan to eliminate what he described as the "Russian problem". In a meeting before Wehrmacht military commanders on 31 July 1940, Hitler announced his "final decision" to "finish off" Russia through

12684-520: The development of new plans that assumed a German attack would focus on the region south of Pripyat Marshes towards the economically vital regions in Ukraine. This became the basis for all subsequent Soviet war plans and the deployment of their armed forces in preparation for the German invasion. In the Soviet Union, speaking to his generals in December 1940, Stalin mentioned Hitler's references to an attack on

12835-514: The different Slavic territories and ethnic groups. For example, by August–September 1939 ( Operation Tannenberg followed by the A-B Aktion in 1940), Einsatzgruppen death squads and concentration camps had been employed to deal with the Polish elite, while the small number of Czech intelligentsia were allowed to emigrate overseas. Parts of Poland were annexed by Germany early in the war (leaving aside

12986-542: The direct control of OKH . These were equipped with 6,867 armoured vehicles, of which 3,350–3,795 were tanks, 2,770–4,389 aircraft (that amounted to 65 percent of the Luftwaffe ), 7,200–23,435 artillery pieces, 17,081 mortars, about 600,000 motor vehicles and 625,000–700,000 horses. Finland slated 14 divisions for the invasion, and Romania offered 13 divisions and eight brigades over the course of Barbarossa. The entire Axis forces, 3.8 million personnel, deployed across

13137-457: The dissemination of the Nazi racial plan, as he informed the 4th Panzer Group that the war against the Soviet Union was "an essential part of the German people's struggle for existence" ( Daseinskampf ), also referring to the imminent battle as the "old struggle of Germans against Slavs" and even stated, "the struggle must aim at the annihilation of today's Russia and must, therefore, be waged with unparalleled harshness." Hoepner also added that

13288-506: The document on GPO prepared by RSHA's 3rd office. The extermination document for the Slavic people of Eastern Europe did survive the war and was quoted by Yale historian Timothy Snyder in 2010. It shows that ethnic Poles, Ukrainians and Czechs were primary targets of Generalplan Ost . Belorussians were also a major target. According to the book " Kalkulierte Morde " (" Calculated massacres ") published by Swiss historian Hans Christian Gerlach in 1999, Nazi Germany sought to exterminate

13439-610: The east, both of them part of the larger plan to establish the New Order . More than economic calculations, ideological fanaticism and racism played a central role in Nazi regime's implementation of extermination programs such as the GPO. Hitler's doctrine of Lebensraum envisaged the mass-killings, enslavement and ethnic cleansing of Slavic inhabitants of Eastern Europe, followed by the colonization of these lands with Germanic settlers. Although racist views against Slavs had precedent in German society before Hitler's rule, Nazi anti-Slavism

13590-464: The economic dangers of a war with the USSR. It is speculated that this was passed on to General Georg Thomas , who had produced reports that predicted a net economic drain for Germany in the event of an invasion of the Soviet Union unless its economy was captured intact and the Caucasus oilfields seized in the first blow; Thomas revised his future report to fit Hitler's wishes. The Red Army's ineptitude in

13741-586: The electricity plant in Aarhus. Vagn Bennike , who headed the resistance in Jutland at the time, assigned the Samsing Group to the task and gave the order to start planning. The director of the electricity plant happened to also be associated with the resistance and supplied schematics and advice but also pointed out the action could leave the city without power for up to 3–4 years. Willy Samsing subsequently decided against

13892-482: The end of 1941, and the subsequent Soviet winter counteroffensive pushed the Germans about 250 km (160 mi) back. German high command anticipated a quick collapse of Soviet resistance as in the invasion of Poland , analogous to the reaction Russia had during World War I, but instead the Red Army absorbed the German Wehrmacht ' s strongest blows and bogged it down in a war of attrition for which

14043-466: The eventual defeat and collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945. The theme of Barbarossa had long been used by the Nazi Party as part of their political imagery, though this was really a continuation of the glorification of the famous Crusader king by German nationalists since the 19th century. According to a Germanic medieval legend, revived in the 19th century by the nationalistic tropes of German Romanticism ,

14194-467: The exact German launch date, but Sorge and other informers had previously given different invasion dates that passed peacefully before the actual invasion. Stalin acknowledged the possibility of an attack in general and therefore made significant preparations, but decided not to run the risk of provoking Hitler. In early 1941, Stalin authorised the State Defence Plan 1941 (DP-41), which along with

14345-546: The existing ban on any medical help to Poles in Germany would be extended, and eventually Poles would cease to exist. Experiments in mass sterilization in concentration camps may also have been intended for use on the populations. The Wehrbauer , or soldier-peasants, would be settled in a fortified line to prevent civilization reanimating beyond the Ural Mountains and threatening Germany. " Tough peasant races " would serve as

14496-490: The implementation of the Generalplan Ost , the Nazi regime intended to organize the rounding up of approximately 80 million Russians and expel them beyond the Urals . Nazi bureaucrats estimated that nearly 30 million Russians would have died during the planned death marches to regions beyond the Urals, such as Siberia . Between 1941 and 1945, approximately three million Ukrainians and other non-Jews were mass-murdered as part of Nazi extermination policies implemented across

14647-429: The initiation of a large military invasion in the spring of 1941. During Operation Barbarossa , German soldiers ruthlessly perpetrated mass-slaughter of Russian captives as part of the GPO. Out of the 3.2 million Soviet prisoners captured by German forces by December 1941, approximately 2 million had been killed by February 1942, mostly through forced starvation, death marches and mass shootings . As part of

14798-498: The invasion. Buell adds that an unusually wet winter kept rivers at full flood until late spring. The floods may have discouraged an earlier attack, even if they occurred before the end of the Balkans Campaign. The importance of the delay is still debated. William Shirer argued that Hitler's Balkan Campaign had delayed the commencement of Barbarossa by several weeks and thereby jeopardised it. Many later historians argue that

14949-505: The negotiations differently and were willing to make huge economic concessions to secure a relationship under general terms acceptable to the Germans just a year before. On 25 November 1940, the Soviet Union offered a written counter-proposal to join the Axis if Germany would agree to refrain from interference in the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, but Germany did not respond. As both sides began colliding with each other in Eastern Europe, conflict appeared more likely, although they did sign

15100-510: The non-German populations in the East. Himmler believed the Germanisation process in Eastern Europe would be complete when "in the East dwell only men with truly German, Germanic blood." The Nazi secret plan Generalplan Ost , prepared in 1941 and confirmed in 1942, called for a "new order of ethnographical relations" in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe. It envisaged ethnic cleansing , executions and enslavement of

15251-463: The number of Germans appeared to be insufficient to populate the vast territories of Central and Eastern Europe, the peoples which the Nazi theorists regarded as being capable of Germanisation and as racially intermediate between the Germans and the Russians ( Mittelschicht ), namely, Latvians and even Czechs, were also considered to be resettled there. Several Nazi scientists, many of whom were members of

15402-467: The objectives of GPO and Lebensraum settler-colonial agenda. In Belarussia, divisions of Wehrmacht and SS committed numerous massacres and unleashed state-terror indiscriminately against the native populations, in operations labelled "anti-partisan undertakings". In 1941, the German leadership decided to destroy the Polish nation completely, and in 15–20 years the Polish state under German occupation

15553-546: The office of Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood (RKFDV) and one draft was produced by the RSHA. SS Race and Settlement Main Office and Ostministerium were also involved in the formulating the GPO plans. According to testimony of SS-Standartenführer Hans Ehlich (one of the witnesses before the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials ), the original version of the plan was drafted in 1940. As

15704-453: The officers dismissed during the Great Purge were reinstated by 1941. Also, between January 1939 and May 1941, 161 new divisions were activated. Therefore, although about 75 percent of all the officers had been in their position for less than one year at the start of the German invasion of 1941, many of the short tenures can be attributed not only to the purge but also to the rapid increase in

15855-532: The operation and it was never carried out. After the war documents have shown the order was given without consultation with the Freedom Council . In April 1944, 3 members of the group were sent to Højbjerg to intimidate and discourage a civilian that collaborated with the German occupation forces. The group entered the residence where they encountered the wife and 17-year-old son, but not the man they had come for. The group left without harming anyone but on May 8

16006-674: The operation was to be carried out. Hitler also renamed the operation to Barbarossa in honor of medieval Emperor Friedrich I of the Holy Roman Empire, a leader of the Third Crusade in the 12th century. The Barbarossa Decree , issued by Hitler on 30 March 1941, supplemented the Directive by decreeing that the war against the Soviet Union would be one of annihilation and legally sanctioned the eradication of all Communist political leaders and intellectual elites in Eastern Europe. The invasion

16157-562: The operational objective of any invasion of the Soviet Union. This assault would extend from the northern city of Arkhangelsk on the Arctic Sea through Gorky and Rostov to the port city of Astrakhan at the mouth of the Volga on the Caspian Sea . The report concluded that—once established—this military border would reduce the threat to Germany from attacks by enemy bombers . Although Hitler

16308-628: The other hand, the Lithuanians seemed less desirable since "they contained too great an admixture of Slav blood." Himmler's view was that "almost the whole of the Lithuanian nation would have to be deported to the East". Himmler is described as having had a positive attitude towards Germanising the populations of border areas of Slovenia ( Upper Carniola and Southern Styria ) and Bohemia - Moravia , but not Lithuania , claiming its population to be of "inferior race". Himmler's notorious policies included

16459-449: The outcome of these conversations, all preparations for the East previously ordered orally are to be continued. [Written] directives on that will follow as soon as the basic elements of the army's plan for the operation have been submitted to me and approved by me." There would be no "long-term agreement with Russia" given that the Nazis intended to go to war with them; but the Soviets approached

16610-509: The plan for Barbarossa. This belief later led to disputes between Hitler and several German senior officers, including Heinz Guderian , Gerhard Engel , Fedor von Bock and Franz Halder , who believed the decisive victory could only be delivered at Moscow. They were unable to sway Hitler, who had grown overconfident in his own military judgment as a result of the rapid successes in Western Europe. The Germans had begun massing troops near

16761-403: The plan's essential elements have been reconstructed from related memos , abstracts and other documents. Following the war, two out of the three primary records associated with the Generalplan Ost were lost. These included the document drafted by Konrad Meyer ; in addition to an investigative report of RSHA 's 3rd office. A major document which enabled historians to accurately reconstruct

16912-512: The plan, this would result in their assimilation by the local populations, which would cause the Poles to vanish as a nation. Approximately two million ethnic Poles were subjected to a forced Germanization campaign as part of the GPO. According to the plan, by 1952 only about 3–4 million 'non-Germanized' Poles (all of them peasants) were to be left residing in the former Poland. Those of them who would still not Germanize were to be forbidden to marry,

17063-480: The policy known as the " Hunger Plan ", which would have killed more than 30 million Slavic natives in forced starvations. GPO also envisaged the forced expulsion of around 80 million Russians beyond the Urals, with Nazi planners estimating the deaths of approximately 30 million Russians in the ensuing death marches . Widely varying policies were envisioned by the creators of Generalplan Ost , and some of them were actually implemented by Germany in regards to

17214-616: The populations of conquered countries, with very small percentages undergoing Germanisation, expulsion into the depths of Russia or other fates, while the conquered territories would be Germanised. The plan had two parts, the Kleine Planung ('small plan'), which covered actions to be taken during the war and the Große Planung ('large plan'), which covered policies after the war was won, to be implemented gradually over 25 to 30 years. A speech given by General Erich Hoepner demonstrates

17365-412: The rapid defeat of France at the hands of the "invincible" Wehrmacht and by traditional German stereotypes of Russia as a primitive, backward "Asiatic" country. Red Army soldiers were considered brave and tough, but the officer corps was held in contempt. The leadership of the Wehrmacht paid little attention to politics, culture, and the considerable industrial capacity of the Soviet Union, in favour of

17516-522: The regions of Ukraine . In addition, between 850,000 –1,600,000 Jews were killed by Nazi forces in Ukraine during this period, with the assistance of local collaborators. Original Nazi plans advocated the extermination of 65 percent of 23.2 million Ukrainians, with the survivors treated as chattel slaves. Over 2,300,000 Ukrainians were deported to Germany and forced into Nazi slave labor. Nazi seizure of food supplies in Ukraine just like Soviets did in 1932-33 brought about starvation, as it

17667-556: The rest of Europe. Other historians contend that Stalin did not plan for such an attack in June 1941, given the parlous state of the Red Army at the time of the invasion. Stalin's reputation as a brutal dictator contributed both to the Nazis' justification of their assault and to their expectations of success, as Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s had executed many competent and experienced military officers, leaving Red Army leadership weaker than their German adversary. The Nazis often emphasized

17818-505: The rest of the world learned of this pact but were unaware of the provisions to partition Poland. The pact stunned the world because of the parties' earlier mutual hostility and their conflicting ideologies . The conclusion of this pact was followed by the German invasion of Poland on 1 September that triggered the outbreak of World War II in Europe , then the Soviet invasion of Poland that led to

17969-505: The role of political commissars at the divisional level and below to oversee the political loyalty of the army to the regime. The commissars held a position equal to that of the commander of the unit they were overseeing. But in spite of efforts to ensure the political subservience of the armed forces, in the wake of Red Army's poor performance in Poland and in the Winter War, about 80 percent of

18120-554: The rump German-controlled General Government and the areas previously annexed by the Soviet Union ), while the other territories were officially occupied by or allied to Germany (for example, the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia became a theoretically independent puppet state , while the ethnic-Czech parts of the Czech lands (so excluding the Sudetenland ) became a " protectorate "). The plan

18271-557: The son identified Harry Samsing to the Danish police which promptly arrested him and then, on May 12, another 2 members. It was at this time Grethe Bartram begun her employ as an informant for the Gestapo and she informed on another member during this period. In September most members of the group were in custody. The group were eventually deported to Frøslev Prison Camp and later Neuengamme concentration camp . The survivors were repatriated by

18422-627: The southern section was in Romania. The German forces in the rear (mostly Waffen-SS and Einsatzgruppen units) were to operate in conquered territories to counter any partisan activity in areas they controlled, as well as to execute captured Soviet political commissars and Jews. On 17 June, Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) chief Reinhard Heydrich briefed around thirty to fifty Einsatzgruppen commanders on "the policy of eliminating Jews in Soviet territories, at least in general terms". While

18573-411: The spring 1942 version of the plan, in which more than half the expenditure was to be allocated to land remediation, agricultural development, and transport infrastructure. This aspect of the funding was to be provided directly from state sources and the remainder, for urban and industrial development projects, was to be raised on commercial terms. The main objective of Generalplan Ost was to establish

18724-451: The start of Operation Barbarossa – when the 'solution' to the Jewish question ceased to be part of that particular framework gaining a lethal, autonomous priority. The planning had included implementation cost estimates, which ranged from 40 to 67 billion Reichsmarks, the latter figure being close to Germany's entire GDP for 1941. A cost estimate of 45.7 billion Reichsmarks was included in

18875-553: The start of the invasion, the manpower of the Soviet military force that had been mobilised was 5.3–5.5 million, and it was still increasing as the Soviet reserve force of 14 million, with at least basic military training, continued to mobilise. The Red Army was dispersed and still preparing when the invasion commenced. Their units were often separated and lacked adequate transportation. While transportation remained insufficient for Red Army forces, when Operation Barbarossa kicked off, they possessed some 33,000 pieces of artillery,

19026-496: The trucks for supplies. The most advanced Soviet tank models—the KV-1 and T-34 —which were superior to all current German tanks, as well as all designs still in development as of the summer 1941, were not available in large numbers at the time the invasion commenced. Furthermore, in the autumn of 1939, the Soviets disbanded their mechanised corps and partly dispersed their tanks to infantry divisions; but following their observation of

19177-520: The use of forced labour to stimulate Germany's overall economy and the expansion of territory to improve Germany's efforts to isolate the United Kingdom. Hitler was further convinced that Britain would sue for peace once the Germans triumphed in the Soviet Union, and if they did not, he would use the resources gained in the East to defeat the British Empire . We only have to kick in the door and

19328-546: The victories in Western Europe finally freed his hands for a "final showdown" with Bolshevism. With the successful end to the campaign in France , General Erich Marcks was assigned the task of drawing up the initial invasion plans of the Soviet Union. The first battle plans were entitled Operation Draft East (colloquially known as the Marcks Plan ). His report advocated the A-A line as

19479-515: The war began, the Nazis issued a ban on sexual relations between Germans and foreign slaves . There were regulations enacted against the Ost-Arbeiter ('Eastern workers') that included the death penalty for sexual relations with a German. Heinrich Himmler , in his secret memorandum, Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East (dated 25 May 1940), outlined the Nazi plans for

19630-427: The weaponization of schooling system in occupied territories to Germanize kids and indoctrinate them with Nazi doctrines. Special institutes for children in occupied territories were operated to separate kids who were categorised by Nazi authorities as "racially suitable" from the local inhabitants, wherein they were indoctrinated to be transferred to families in Germany. Despite the obstruction of German war efforts by

19781-419: The whole rotten structure will come crashing down. Hitler received the final military plans for the invasion on 5 December 1940, which the German High Command had been working on since July 1940, under the codename "Operation Otto." Upon reviewing the plans, Hitler formally committed Germany to the invasion when he issued Führer Directive 21 on 18 December 1940, where he outlined the precise manner in which

19932-506: The witnesses of a catastrophe which will afford the strongest confirmation of the nationalist theory of race ." — Adolf Hitler , — (" Mein Kampf ", Volume 2, Chapter 14: "Germany's policy in Eastern Europe") The body responsible for the Generalplan Ost was the SS 's Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) under Heinrich Himmler , which commissioned the work. The document was revised several times between June 1941 and spring 1942 as

20083-441: Was advancing deep inside Soviet territories while facing little or no local insurrections, Adolf Hitler had contemplated the utility of anti-insurgency campaigns in advancing his Lebensraum program: a partisans’ war also has its advantage; it enables us to eradicate what is against us. While various Wehrmacht commanders wanted to portray Germans as "liberators" of Eastern Europe and incite anti-communist dissidents to foment

20234-410: Was also based on the doctrines of scientific racism . The " Master Race " doctrine of Nazi ideology condemned Slavs to permanent domination by Germanic peoples , since it viewed them as primitive people who lacked the ability to undertake autonomous activities. Generalplan Ost evolved from these racist, imperialist ideas and was formulated by the Nazi regime as its official policy during the course of

20385-405: Was based on Ultra information obtained from broken Enigma traffic. But Stalin's distrust of the British led him to ignore their warnings in the belief that they were a trick designed to bring the Soviet Union into the war on their side. Soviet intelligence also received word of an invasion around 20 June from Mao Zedong whose spy, Yan Baohang, had overheard talk of the plans at a dinner with

20536-585: Was executed or imprisoned. Many of their replacements, appointed by Stalin for political reasons, lacked military competence. Of the five Marshals of the Soviet Union appointed in 1935, only Kliment Voroshilov and Semyon Budyonny survived Stalin's purge. Tukhachevsky was killed in 1937. Fifteen of 16 army commanders, 50 of the 57 corps commanders, 154 of the 186 divisional commanders, and 401 of 456 colonels were killed, and many other officers were dismissed. In total, about 30,000 Red Army personnel were executed. Stalin further underscored his control by reasserting

20687-455: Was intended to do to depopulate that region for German settlement. Soldiers were told to steel their hearts against starving women and children, because every bit of food given to them was stolen from the German people, endangering their nourishment. After conquering Yugoslavia in April 1941, Nazi Germany partitioned the country and installed puppet dictatorships in Serbia and Croatia . Many of

20838-449: Was little danger of a large-scale retreat of the Red Army into the Russian interior, as it could not afford to give up the Baltic countries, Ukraine, or the Moscow and Leningrad regions, all of which were vital to the Red Army for supply reasons and would thus, have to be defended. Hitler and his generals disagreed on where Germany should focus its energy. Hitler, in many discussions with his generals, repeated his order of "Leningrad first,

20989-568: Was only partially implemented during the war in territories occupied by Germany on the Eastern Front during World War II , resulting indirectly and directly in the deaths of millions by shootings, starvation, disease, extermination through labour , and genocide . However, its full implementation was not considered practicable during major military operations, and never materialised due to Germany's defeat. Under direct orders from Nazi leadership , around 11 million Slavs were killed in systematic violence and state terrorism carried out as part of

21140-467: Was partially attempted during the war, resulting indirectly and directly in millions of deaths of ethnic Slavs by starvation, disease, or extermination through labor . The majority of Germany's 12 million forced laborers were abducted from Eastern Europe, mostly in the Soviet territories and Poland. The final version of the Generalplan Ost proposal was divided into two parts; the "Small Plan" ( Kleine Planung ), which covered actions carried out in

21291-467: Was tentatively set for May 1941, but it was delayed for over a month to allow for further preparations and possibly better weather. the purpose of the Russian campaign [is] the decimation of the Slavic population by thirty million. According to a 1978 essay by German historian Andreas Hillgruber , the invasion plans drawn up by the German military elite were substantially coloured by hubris, stemming from

21442-929: Was that Operation Barbarossa could be completed within months without any outside support. During a speech in 16 July 1941, Hitler proclaimed: "No one but the Germans should ever be allowed to bear arms ... Only a German should bear arms: not a Slav, a Czech , a Cossack or a Ukrainian ." German implementation of Nazi racial principles, combined with the severity of the war in the Eastern Front , resulted in German-occupation forces inflicting brutal measures during its anti-insurgency campaigns. The Schutzstaffel military apparatus, packed with militants ideologically indoctrinated to view Slavs as subhumans, fanatically implemented " Herrenvolk vs. Untermensch " racist criteria in their dealings with natives. Military leadership issued orders to inflict collective punishment against native inhabitants. However, as Axis advances gave way to

21593-399: Was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies , starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II . It was the largest and costliest land offensive in human history, with around 10 million combatants taking part, and over 8 million casualties by the end of the operation. The operation, code-named after Frederick I "Barbarossa" ("red beard"),

21744-759: Was the real target. These simulated preparations in Norway and the English Channel coast included activities such as ship concentrations, reconnaissance flights and training exercises. The reasons for the postponement of Barbarossa from the initially planned date of 15 May to the actual invasion date of 22 June 1941 (a 38-day delay) are debated. The reason most commonly cited is the unforeseen contingency of invading Yugoslavia and Greece on 6 April 1941 until June 1941. Historian Thomas B. Buell indicates that Finland and Romania, which weren't involved in initial German planning, needed additional time to prepare to participate in

21895-443: Was to be fully cleared of any ethnic Poles and settled by German colonists. A majority of them, now deprived of their leaders and most of their intelligentsia (through mass murder, destruction of culture , banning education above the absolutely basic level, and kidnapping of children for Germanization ), would have to be deported to regions in the East and scattered over as wide an area of Western Siberia as possible. According to

22046-494: Was to be put into practice as the Germans conquered the areas to the east of their pre-war borders. After the war, under the "Big Plan", more people in Eastern Europe were to be affected. In their place, settlements of up to 10 million Germans were planned to be established in an extended "living space" ( Lebensraum ), as part of the GPO plan. GPO envisaged the establishment of settlements and "village complexes", each capable of hosting around 300-400 Germanic settlers. Because

22197-424: Was to create more Lebensraum (living space) for Germany, and the eventual extermination of the native Slavic peoples by mass deportation to Siberia , Germanisation , enslavement, and genocide . In the two years leading up to the invasion, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed political and economic pacts for strategic purposes. Following the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina ,

22348-710: Was to follow the Drang nach Osten ('turn to the East') as it did "600 years ago" (see Ostsiedlung ). Accordingly, it was a partially secret but well-documented Nazi policy to kill, deport, or enslave the majority of Russian and other Slavic populations and repopulate the land west of the Urals with Germanic peoples, under Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East). The Nazis' belief in their ethnic superiority pervades official records and pseudoscientific articles in German periodicals, on topics such as "how to deal with alien populations." While older histories tended to emphasize

22499-480: Was to operate in far northern Scandinavia and bordering Soviet territories . Army Group North was to march through Latvia and Estonia into northern Russia, then either take or destroy the city of Leningrad , and link up with Finnish forces. Army Group Centre, the army group equipped with the most armour and air power, was to strike from Poland into Belorussia and the west-central regions of Russia proper, and advance to Smolensk and then Moscow. Army Group South

22650-489: Was to strike the heavily populated and agricultural heartland of Ukraine, taking Kiev before continuing eastward over the steppes of southern USSR to the Volga with the aim of controlling the oil-rich Caucasus . Army Group South was deployed in two sections separated by a 198-mile (319 km) gap. The northern section, which contained the army group's only panzer group, was in southern Poland right next to Army Group Centre, and

22801-421: Was warned by many high-ranking military officers, such as Friedrich Paulus , that occupying Western Russia would create "more of a drain than a relief for Germany's economic situation," he anticipated compensatory benefits such as the demobilisation of entire divisions to relieve the acute labour shortage in German industry, the exploitation of Ukraine as a reliable and immense source of agricultural products,

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