Witness wrote:
Then what was this war for the millions of Russians ,Ukranians,Poles, Belorussians if the Nazi doctrine proclaimed them ''subhumans " who should get out of their lands to provide so much needed for the "Master race " "Living space "
( "Lebensraum " ?If I spell it right..)?
There is a common but mistaken view that the German Government intended to completely clear the lands in Eastern Europe inhabited by Slavic peoples and resettle them with Germans.
In part, that mistaken notion derives from a misunderstanding of the German geopolitical term "Lebensraum", which is best translated as "vital space". That is, it did not simply mean territory to be lived on by Germans only, but also the territory that would provide the German people with resources needed to establish economic independence. Thus, all of Eastern Europe, including Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia was intended to become Germany's "Lebensraum", even though it was never intended that the whole area would be settled by Germans (if only because there were nowhere enough Germans to fill such a large space).
That being said, it was planned to "germanise" certain defined areas, ie those areas would be inhabited by persons of German ethnicity only. Those areas included all of Poland, the Baltic States, the area near Leningrad (Ingermanland), parts of Belorussia and Ukraine (eg Zhitomir District), the Dnepr bend and the Crimea.
The germanisation was to be achieved by three factors:
1. Settlement of ethnic Germans from elsewhere;
2. Assimilation of part of the existing population; and
3. Expulsion of the rest of the existing population (the destination most often cited was Siberia).
The plan for this process of germanisation was called the Generalplan-Ost, and was developed by parts of Himmler's organisation, first by the RSHA and subsequently by the RKFdV (Reichskommissariat fuer die Festigung deutschen Volkstums).
Himmler's agencies estimated what proportion of the existing population of the above areas could be germanised, and what proportion would need to be expelled. They concluded that a total of 34 million persons would need to be transferred east of the Urals over a 20-year period, with a much smaller number of Germans being resettled in the vacated areas (about 12 million, as I recall). Thus the population in the affected areas would be greatly reduced, consisting of a minority of the original population in process of germanisation, plus a small number of German settlers.
The Generalplan-Ost was opposed by the Ostministerium (Roenberg's ministry) which saw it as unworkable and counter-productive. Its criticism was voiced in an analysis of April 1942, written by a senior official, Erhard Wetzel, the Ostministerium's main expert on "racial" matters.
Wetzel came up with three main criticisms:
1. Himmler's agencies had grossly underestimated the existing population of the affected areas, not having taken population growth into account. Therefore, either the number to be deported would have to be much greater, or else the number to be left in the affected areas and germanised would have to be greater.
2. The number of ethnic Germans available for settlement in the affected areas had been grossly over-estimated.
3. The proposal to deport millions of Balts, Poles, Belorussians and Ukrainians to Siberia would be counter-productive to Germany's interests. Forced deportation would turn them into sworn enemies of Germany, and their resettlement in Siberia would greatly strengthen the existing slavic element in that region outside German control, thereby creating a centre of future opposition to German hegemony in Eastern Europe.
Wetzel made some counter-proposals for the resettlement of those elements of the Baltic and Polish populations that were considered ungermanisable. With regard to the Balts, he proposed that they be resettled all over occupied Russia, where they would serve as the second level of administrators under the German rulers, a function that many Balts had carried out in Tsarist times. With regard to the Poles, he recommended fostering their emigration to Brazil, which was already a destination of much voluntary Polish emigration and which had vast areas of land available for settlement.
Since Germany lost the war, it is impossible to know whether the Generalplan-Ost would ever have been implemented in the form foreseen by Himmler's planners, or whether it would have proved to be largely unworkable, as Wetzel thought. It is just as likely that, if implemented at all, the germanisation of areas of Eastern Europe would have been carried out in a greatly modified form, along the lines preferred by Wetzel and the Ostministerium.
