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Eastern Europe NAZI PLANS for EASTE RN EUR OPE A Study of Lebensraum Policies SECRET NAZI PLANS for EASTERN EUROPE A Study of Lebensraum Policies hy Ihor Kamenetsky ---- BOOKMAN ASSOCIATES :: New York Copyright © 1961 by Ihor Kamenetsky Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 61-9850 MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY UNITED PRINTING SERVICES, INC. NEW HAVEN, CONN. TO MY PARENTS Preface The dawn of the twentieth century witnessed the climax of imperialistic competition in Europe among the Great Pow­ ers. Entrenched in two opposing camps, they glared at each other over mountainous stockpiles of weapons gathered in feverish armament races. In the one camp was situated the Triple Entente, in the other the Triple Alliance of the Central Powers under Germany's leadership. The final and tragic re­ sult of this rivalry was World War I, during which Germany attempted to realize her imperialistic conception of M itteleuropa with the Berlin-Baghdad-Basra railway project to the Near East. Thus there would have been established a transcontinental highway for German industrial and commercial expansion through the Persian Gull to the Asian market. The security of this highway required that the pressure of Russian imperi­ alism on the Middle East be eliminated by the fragmentation of the Russian colonial empire into its ethnic components. Germany· planned the formation of a belt of buffer states ( asso­ ciated with the Central Powers and Turkey) from Finland, Beloruthenia ( Belorussia), Lithuania, Poland to Ukraine, the Caucasus, and even to Turkestan. The outbreak and nature of the Russian Revolution in 1917 offered an opportunity for Imperial Germany to realize this plan. The emergence of the buffer states on ethnically non­ Russian territories was becoming a reality. They were partly legalized by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which was inspired by the Central Powers. But the Imperial German Government was either unable or unwilling to grasp and utilize the issues and motives of the Revolution. Germany's new order in Eastern Europe completely lacked a social message, and her principle of national sell-determination was confused and inconsistent. Consequently, following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Germany's position in Eastern Europe was based mainly on her military strength, since her political and moral contributions were either negligible or nonexistent. When German armies left Eastern Europe after the defeat in the West, their plans for a new inter­ national system in Eastern Europe represented no more than a vacuum. There was still hope that the victorious Allies would succeed where Germany had failed. Wilson's Fourteen Points contained a potential promise, not only as an ideological challenge to Bolshevist slogans, but also as a basis for political, social, and national reconstruction in Eastern Europe, according to the Western pattern. Unfortunately, the Allies never treated Wil­ son's Fourteen Points very seriously, and the forces which they supported in the fight against Bolshevism had not very much to offer toward the solution of problems brought to the surface by the Revolution within the Tsarist Empire. The victory of Lenin, who proved to be more skillful in riding the waves of the Revolution, was a severe blow to the hope for democrati­ zation of Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, the effect of the Bolshevist seizure of power extended beyond the boundaries of Russia proper and later of the Soviet Union. Aggressive Soviet Russian imperialism under the banner of world revolution inaugurated the era of dictatorships in Europe which partly justified their existence by posing as a defense against this new international menace: Mussolini's Fascism and Hitler's Nazism were also imitated in Hungary, Bulgaria, Al­ bania, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Persia and China. How, we can ask, could this terrible anti-Christian ideology of Nazism arise in Germany among the "Volk der Dichter und Denker"? There are deep roots for this W eltanschauung in Fichte, Hegel and Treitschke, in Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Wagner. The traditions of militarism under Frederick II, the "blood and iron" Realpolitik of Bismarck, and the fear of Rus­ sia's Pan-Slavism were also important factors. But one must also take into consideration the Frenchman Gobineau, who proclaimed the Teutons a superior race among all men; the Englishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a fore­ runner of racism in Germany; the geopolitics of the Swede Kjellen; and the influences of the anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic Russian Dostoevsky, who strongly influenced the Russian-edu­ cated Rosenberg. Also to be considered here are Hitler's Vienna background; Lueger's anti-Semitism; and the contempt and hate of von Schoenerer's Pan-Germanism for all Slavs with the tra­ ditions of the First Pan-Slav Congress in Prague in 1848, for all the Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Slovenes, Croats, Slovaks and Serbs who endangered German supremacy in Austria-Hungary. All these factors also contributed to Hitler's emotional attitudes. Another fact which should not be overlooked is that soon after World War I the Germans felt they had been deprived by the West of the promised right to self-determination during the disintegration of the Hapsburg Empire. It should also be understood that the treatment of the Republic with its Socialist government, especially in economic matters, was not always wise. To complete the background, the League of Nations, as a protector of European minorities and as the new authority for peace, soon lost any power it might have had. On the rising wave of German national resentment of alleged discrimination, Hitler came to power. The inability of the Western democracies to grant German democracy equality and to organize the cooperation of demo­ cratic powers against Russian Communism and Italian Fascism became the springboard for Hitler's demagoguery. Let me say frankly, as one who had the opportunity as an accredited min­ ister and envoy of his country to observe Germany in the early postwar years, that if the W estem democracies had granted Ebert's Germany the same concessions they were forced to give Nazi Germany, then, in my opinion, Hitler never would have risen to power. The Hitler movement, in the decade preceding its full as­ cension to power in 1933, had time to elaborate fully its ide­ ology encouraged by the new aggressive imperialism of Soviet Russia (against the non-Russian peoples within her domain), of Italy (in Ethiopia), and Japan (in Manchukuo). Influenced by the previous great designs of World War I, the Nazi ideology now claimed a German Lebensraum in Eastern Europe up to the Urals. In this plan, the Jews would be liquidated, and the Slavic nations numerically reduced, partially resettled to the East, and partially converted to an ethnographic mass repre­ senting a manpower reservoir. The Third Reich had to rise on those territories .in order to realize Hitler's conception of the new German nation into which would be integrated .all the Teutonic nations: the Dutch, the Flemings, the Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, and the Swiss Germans. The realization of the Berlin-Baghdad-Basra plan would then be only a minor detail for the Third Reich-which as a world power, based on a totali­ tarian imperialism, would abolish all the traditional values of Christian · European culture and civilization. The crux of Hitler's reasoning was · contained in one sim­ ple observation. Since the Western democracies had for so long tolerated the abolition of all values of Christian European culture and civilization by Stalin in the Soviet Union, they would also tolerate Germany's attempt to do the same. After all, Hitler reasoned further, Stalin was the master of terror and genocide with his "resettlements" and concentration camps, therefore a German genocide policy of "resettlements," terror and concentration camps for Jews and Slavs would be viewed with the same tolerant Western eye. Hitler's conceptions challenged not only any balance of power in Europe but would also have upset it in the whole world. Thus, World War II was the consequence, and the Western democracies were forced to fight. The work of Dr. Ihor Kamenetsky on the German Lebens­ raum policy in Eastern Europe·. during World War II is a great contribution to .the history of that struggle, in which Hitler, through his conceptions, made an attempt on the very life of Germany's Slavic neighbors, in fact on all Slavdom. He thus gave Stalin the opportunity to start the Russian Communist neo-Pan-Slavism in defense of Slavdom during World War II. German-Slavic relations were and are of the utmost im­ portance for European politics. Therefore the Slavic Institute of Marquette University intended to include this well-docu­ mented study, based on primary sources, in its "Marquette Slavic Studies Series." Lack of funds made this impossible, and we cordially welcome its publication by Bookman As- sociates. ROMAN SMAL-STOCKI Slavic Institute Marquette University February, 1960 Acknowledgments In preparation of this work the writer received invaluable support and help from Dr. Hoyden Dangerfield, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute of Government of Public Affairs at the University of Illinois. For this friendly and efficient assistance the writer feels deeply obliged. The writer is also very grateful to the University of Illinois, Stanford University, the Hoover Institute and Library on War and Revolution, the Mid-West Inter-University Library, the United States Army's Departmental Records Center in Alex­ andria, Virginia, the National Archives in Washington, D. C., the Library of Congress, the publishing company "Prolog" Professor Lev Shankovski in Philadelphia for supplying him with the research materials without which this work could not have been accomplished. The author thanks the following publishers and authors for giving permission to quote from their publications: Ballantine Books, Inc.: The Road to Stalingrad, by Benno Zieser, translated by Alec Brown ( 1956).
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