In terms of territory and partition (?), what was the plan (besides mass ethnic cleansing, etc.) for a hypothetically capitulated USSR? Everything I've read leaves the question somewhat open. I know Nazi Germany didn't have one plan for really anything at all - so I'm sure a lot of people had different ideas - but what was the consensus option?
What was the German plan for the USSR?
- Thread starter Urcea
- Start date
Max Sinister
Banned
As you said: There wasn't one. It'd depend who'd win the internal struggle after they win.
Eliminate the Russian cities. According to Hitler's Table Talk (his interminable ramblings and gibberish from his meals) he wanted to plant German citizen-soldiers in cities and towns/cities all over Russia West of the Urals. Moscow would be blown up and turned into a lake. The average Russian would be taught just enough to read the 'danger of being run over' signs on the huge roads that would go everywhere. In other words genocide writ large.
Expanding on this a bit, no, not without coercing settlers (good luck with that), even with the ‘string of pearls’ idea of limited settlements strung along major transportation routes. Germany was already well into a *westward* internal emigration. Encouraging millions into the East would’ve been all but impossible.
The consensus opinion on the ground was starve as many Slavs to death as you can get away with, hunt Jews for fun as relief from the inevitable partisan and front line actions, but if you can't get Jew hunts then partisans are safer than the front.
Grandiose plans by German state machinery won't modify these, only the forced death of all Slavs and Jews will. And the Germans' reach will exceed their grasp.
Sources:
Hilberg R _Destruction_
Browning C _Reserve police battalion 101_
Soviet Nuremberg evidence
General Plan Ost
There was a expectation good Deutche or Aryans would be convinced to reverse migrate from Rumania, Argentina, China, US, Brazil, Mexico, Africa, wherever. In the hope of a few million more joining the settlers. I expect few second or first generation German immigrants would want to trade Cinncinatti for a farm on the road to Gorki.
The Nazi called it "Generalplan Ost" or GPO in short
it's consider extermination 50-80% of Local population, keeping rest as slaves
Destroying biggest Cities and other unneeded infrastructure and testimonies of local culture
Settle Germans farmers under Protection of a network on Wehrmacht garrison and SS castles of orders...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
This is madness in it's purest form...
Generalplan Ost is literally the two words I give people when they say Stalin was worse than Hitler due to the numbers of people he killed.
Generalplan Ost, AKA "kill half of them, work the rest to death building an oversized Volkshalle to appease Hitler's ego".
Like most Hitler plans, it was objectively insane and never would've worked.
Like most Hitler plans, it was objectively insane and never would've worked.
I have to agree. The action groups and police battalions wouldn't have only starved half the population to death.
No, I mean that trying to occupy that much population while the USA gives the ass end of the USSR a blank check and the British choke off all the trade routes is an objectively futile venture.
The Nazis would've been lucky to survive into the '60s under the absolute very best of circumstances.
Probably more of the same. The Central Asians were never regarded as equals by the Germans. The Germans were just desperate enough to give a gun to anyone willing to fight for them when the Soviets didn't just refuse to roll over and die, but start shoving the Germans down hard to get them to do the same.