CHAPTER 10

 

CONCLUSIONS

The evaluation and analysis of the findings of this study have been ongoing during its course. Simply repeating all the arguments raised and points made in the study and the conclusions reached is not the purpose of this final chapter. To do so would have little merit in itself and, furthermore, run the risk of being tiresome for the reader. The purpose of this chapter is rather to summarize the main arguments and draw such conclusions which relate directly to the aims of the study and the principal reasons for which the study was undertaken in the first place.

At the outset, this study set itself three central aims: (1) to trace the development of both the political and the economic planning by senior bodies within the state and Nazi Party apparatuses for the German occupation policy in the Soviet Union; (2) to examine the extent to which these two aspects of planning and the approaches and objectives contained therein were compatible with each other; and (3) to thoroughly consider the role of Alfred Rosenberg, not only in the political preparations for the occupation – for which he was responsible – but also with regard to his awareness of the economic plans, his involvement in their formulation and the extent of his support for them. In drawing conclusions from the work carried out in order to accomplish these three aims, the main arguments contained in the study will now be summarized and evaluated.

Neither the political nor the economic planning for German occupation policy in the conquered Soviet territories took place over the entire twelvemonth period which this study has examined. As has been demonstrated, the economic planning only started to take shape at the end of 1940, approximately halfway through the period in question. The concrete political planning was carried out over an even shorter period of time, beginning as it did essentially only three and a half months before the commencement of the German invasion and, hence, four and a half months prior to the official appointment of the civil (i.e., political) administrators in the occupied Soviet territories. However, Hitler took his ‘definite decision’ to invade the Soviet Union during the first half of 1941 at the end of July 1940, and reached what was for him effectively the point of no return some time during the first two weeks of November, confirming this resolution in writing in his ‘Directive No. 21: Case Barbarossa’, issued on 18 December 1940. Thus, as this study has dealt with the development of political and economic planning for the German occupation of the European USSR, it has been necessary to examine the period between July and December 1940, during which the decision to invade was taken.

The highly questionable prerequisite for ultimate victory in the German–Soviet war was a successful completion of the military campaign in the space of two or three months, which was in turn dependent on the ability of the German supply apparatus to provide the troops with sufficient fuel, ammunition and food. Although economic gain was the key motivation for waging war against the Soviet Union in mid-1941, the undertaking was in no way based on economic certainties. Subsequent to the frank but limited exchange of views between Reichsmarschall Göring's economic advisers in January 1941 as to the economic repercussions of waging war against the Soviet Union, at a time when the decision to invade had in any case already been taken by Hitler, there was no serious attempt within the corridors of power to engage in a critical analysis of the economic implications of an invasion and occupation of the European USSR or, crucially, the existence of potential alternative scenarios should the military campaign and, therefore, the programme of economic exploitation not go according to plan. In the case of the Soviet Union, where ideological motives combined with what were perceived as strategic and economic necessities, Hitler's mindset was such that potential difficulties were expected to be ‘worked around’. It was up to the economic planners to find a solution, whatever that might be, to the perceived problem. This insistence effectively dismissed any air of uncertainty which had existed within the ranks of the economic planners at the beginning of 1941 and assisted in paving the way for the acceptance and advancement of the concept of starving millions of Soviet citizens for agricultural gain. The assertion, present in recent literature on the subject,¹ that Herbert Backe was the instigator of the Hungerpolitik and the driving force behind its development and radicalization, has been reinforced in this study and the case for taking this line of argument has been strengthened.

Hitler's choice of Alfred Rosenberg, first of all to plan the future political structure of the occupied Soviet territories and then to act as chief administrator of the region indicates the deficiencies of any other potential candidate rather than the aptness of Rosenberg for the position, as Hitler's claim that he had ‘no better man than Rosenberg’ demonstrates. A separate but related decision on Hitler's part was the creation of a ministry for the territories in question. Although Hitler instructed that a Berlin-based territorial ministry be set up, he opted at the same time for limited regulation of the occupied Soviet territories from Berlin. These two aspects of Hitler's policy could be reconciled only if Hitler intended from the beginning to limit Rosenberg's power as East Minister. In accordance with this line of thinking, the East Ministry would not constitute in any way an independent power base but rather a deflecting mechanism: the central authorities in the ‘old Reich’ would deal directly with Rosenberg's ministry, whilst the true powers in the occupied Soviet territories – Göring's economic organization, the SS and the Reich Commissars – would be given a free hand to implement their more important ‘special tasks’. Detaching the occupied Soviet territories further from the bureaucratic bonds of the ‘old Reich’ was deemed necessary by the Nazi leadership in view of the far-reaching tasks to be carried out there.

These far-reaching occupation tasks included undertakings which can be classified neither as being of a specifically political-administrative nature nor as being directly related to economic policy. These tasks, which consisted of the murder of racial and political ‘undesirables’, the expulsion of substantial sections of the indigenous population from their homes and the resettlement of peoples of ‘Germanic’ racial stock in the occupied Soviet territories, can essentially be summed up as ‘population policy’ and have been dealt with in chapter 6 of this study. The responsibility for the preparation and implementation of these policies fell, above all, to Heinrich Himmler's SS. Though separate, there are clear links, both theoretical and practical, between this aspect of National Socialist eastern policy and the work of the political and economic planners. Examples dealt with in this study are the work of the Bureau Rosenberg for the resettlement of certain population groups, particularly the Soviet Jews, and the congruity of plans for mass murder, as the oft-cited figure of thirty million Soviet deaths indicates. With regard to National Socialist ‘population policy’ in the occupied Soviet territories, this study has confirmed the historiographical position that no pre-invasion order was given for the genocide of Soviet Jewry, but that rather a territorial solution – though not planned out in detail at the time of the launch of Operation Barbarossa – was initially envisaged and had been approved by Germany's supreme leadership.

In view of the substantial time discrepancy in the point at which concrete planning began for the economic aspects of the future occupation and for the political aspects, and the preference enjoyed by the economic objectives, it is clear – a point repeated throughout this study – that the economic objectives of the occupation were given precedence over the political objectives by Germany's supreme leadership. This can be seen, to name but a handful of examples, in the repeated and explicit approval given by Hitler to the plans formulated by the economic experts,² something which he failed to grant the political plans drawn up by the Bureau Rosenberg; in the report produced by the War Economy and Armaments Office at the end of June 1941, which gave the main reason for the decision to invade the Soviet Union as being the necessity ‘to broaden at all costs the economic basis of Germany’s prosecution of the war’;³ in Reinhard Heydrich's assertion, made at the beginning of July, that the political pacification of the Soviet territories was a prerequisite for the economic pacification, and not vice versa;⁴ and in Göring's declaration at the 16 July conference in FHQ – a conference hosted by Hitler, who did not contradict Göring's statement – that Germany must ‘first of all’ think about securing her sustenance, whereas everything else could be left until ‘much later’.⁵

That economic aims were of crucial importance within the strategy for the invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union cannot be doubted. A further context in which this importance can be seen is the way in which the economic objectives of the campaign and occupation affected – and to a large extent dictated – what initially appear to have been purely military issues. Two telling examples of this are the decision not to conquer large cities, but rather to lay siege to them in order to starve the population before razing the cities to the ground; and the disagreement between Hitler and his senior generals during July and August 1941 over whether Moscow – politically of primary concern – or the economically vital areas of the Ukraine and the Caucasus should be the military priority. Hitler, arguing for the latter, succeeded in carrying the day.

Although economic objectives occupied a position of pre-eminence from the beginning of 1941 onwards, it is important to make clear that the consensus between the different groups of planners regarding the content of the political and economic plans themselves was in fact more wide-ranging and extensive than has hitherto been thought. The Economic Staff East's economic-political guidelines of 23 May 1941 constitute the most detailed and explicit exposition of the economic proposals that exists. An attempt has been made here to emphasize the harmony between the Hungerpolitik described in its pages and the political considerations of the envisaged occupation policy. The economic policy contained in the guidelines had ‘received the approval of the highest authorities, as it is in accordance with the political tendencies (preservation of the little Russians, preservation of the Caucasus, of the Baltic provinces, [and] Belarus at the expense of the driving back of the greater Russians)’.⁶ This passage demonstrates the agreement that existed in the economic and political plans for the various territories whose occupation was foreseen: the Ukraine, the Caucasus, the Baltic States, Belarus and Russia. The extent of agreement on major issues among the economic planners, the political planners and those who ultimately made the final decisions on state policy, above all Hitler, was in fact substantial.

The most important issues where wide-ranging agreement was reached should be remarked on here. The fundamental decision to break the occupied territory up into administrative subdivisions under the jurisdiction of political, and not military, officials appears to have been made by Hitler in early March 1941. This decision was accepted as a matter of course by Rosenberg in his very first planning paper of 2 April and not only made more specific but also elaborated on by the proposal that the treatment of the different territories should vary.⁷ By the second half of May 1941 at the latest, with Rosenberg setting the pace, the different parties involved in planning the shape of the future political administration in the occupied Soviet territories had come to an agreement to limit the number of Reich Commissariats to four,⁸ a decision which subsequently found the agreement of Hitler.⁹ Thereafter, this whole approach was taken on board and repeatedly advocated from all sides.¹⁰

The specifics of these administrative units which were planned by Rosenberg, particularly their geographical layout, were undoubtedly convenient for the purposes of Hitler and the rest of the National Socialist leadership. Not only was it agreed that the four Reich Commissariats – ‘Ostland’, Ukraine, Caucasus and Russia – would all be treated differently, but in many cases the nature of the treatment itself was agreed upon. The Baltic States would be united with Belarus to form a protectorate in anticipation of later annexation to the Reich.¹¹ As the Soviet Union's most oil-rich area, the protection of the Caucasus from the worst effects of military hostilities was viewed by all concerned as being of vital importance and the maintenance of high oil production as being the number one priority in that region.¹² The Caucasus was to take the form of a federal state.¹³According to the instructions of the economic planners, even Belarus – despite being a so-called ‘deficit territory’ in terms of its grain production – was to be handled ‘carefully’, in part for political reasons.¹⁴

Agreement between Rosenberg's staff, the economic planners, the security forces of the SS and police and the senior political leadership regarding the treatment to be meted out to the fourth Reich Commissariat, Russia, and its people was near universal.¹⁵ In addition to preventing the Russian empire from rising again in the future, the planners intended to significantly weaken the Reich Commissariat Russia itself through an extremely harsh treatment of the territory. Its inhabitants should suffer more than those of any other region. It would not be going too far to describe the central Russia envisaged by the National Socialist leadership and planning staffs, particularly Moscow and the surrounding area, as a zone of death. As its administrative chief, this territory required ‘an absolutely ruthless personality’,¹⁶ who would completely annihilate ‘the Bolshevik-Jewish state administration’, carry out ‘a very extensive economic exploitation’ and allocate large swathes of Russian land to the neighbouring territories.¹⁷ Russia's major cities were to be razed to the ground. ‘No accumulation of Wehrmacht tasks’¹⁸ was intended in the Moscow area because the region was to be sealed off from the source of its food supplies and would, therefore, be unable to support German troops stationed there. The population of this territory would ‘face the most terrible famine’¹⁹ and thirty million people would starve in a ‘blazing strip’ between Moscow and the Ural Mountains as a result of the removal of all foodstuffs from the area.²⁰ In this matter, Rosenberg and his staff did not require any persuasion from the officials in the Reich Ministry for Food and Agriculture or the Office of the Four-Year Plan. The nature of the treatment foreseen by Rosenberg for this territory was highly compatible with the plans drawn up by the economic experts and was indeed recognized as such by the latter.²¹ If the division of the occupied territory into Reich Commissariats and the formulation of differing policies for each region are examples of the economic planners agreeing with proposals put forward and developed by Rosenberg, then the acknowledgement of the primary importance in German occupation policy of an extensive exploitation of Soviet agricultural produce and raw materials is an example of an aspect – or, rather, the aspect – of the proposed economic policy being approved of and indeed championed by Rosenberg. This will be returned to shortly.

When it came to the fundamental aspects of ‘population policy’, there was also consensus between the leading figures. This can be seen in the proposal to transport the Soviet Jews further eastwards,²² and, in the long term, to resettle people of ‘Germanic’ stock in the East.²³ Even when it came to the hotly disputed question of whether to maintain or abolish the Soviet Union's collective farms, agreement was eventually reached by most of the key players, if only in the short term.²⁴ Five weeks after the military campaign began, however, it was economics supremo Göring who indicated that the life of the collective farms would be limited,²⁵ a stance which was fully in accordance with the position held by the political planners around Rosenberg. Such was the extent of agreement on important aspects of policy that one can in fact talk of a wide-ranging consensus on the key short-term issues relating to the occupation of the conquered Soviet territories.

In addition to dealing with the aspects of proposed occupation policy over which agreement was reached by the planning groups, it is also necessary to deal with the issues regarding which wide-ranging agreement was not reached. The political aims of the planners around Rosenberg and the economic aims of Backe and his colleagues were not entirely in accordance with each other when it came to the Ukraine, and the treatment of this territory constituted the principal point of dispute amongst the political and economic planners. The Ukraine was not only the place where the economic and political objectives diverged most significantly but also the most important territory for both groups of planners, as well as for Hitler himself, as he explicitly stated during the conference at FHQ on 16 July 1941.²⁶

On the part of Rosenberg and his staff, the central political aim for the Ukraine was future independence, whatever this actually meant for them in concrete terms.²⁷ This, however, was later rejected out of hand by Hitler,²⁸ for whom nurturing an independent Ukraine as one of several buffer states against Greater Russia was not necessary – the job of keeping the rump of Russia at bay would be done by Germany alone. In any case, Hitler made no differentiation between the different Soviet peoples; for him, they were all ‘subhumans’. Although the establishment of ‘independence’ in the Ukraine was Rosenberg's long-term aim for the territory,²⁹ he nevertheless anticipated a period of preparation leading up to that. Hitler's appointment of Erich Koch as Reich Commissar in the Ukraine, however, thwarted from the outset Rosenberg's hopes of exerting any significant influence on the policy pursued there.

Although Rosenberg's ideas and his role in the planning in general have already been repeatedly referred to above whilst dealing with the extent to which the different plans were compatible, it is necessary to address Rosenberg's position directly. It is evident from the various papers he produced at the time that he was aware by early May 1941 at the latest of at least the general nature of the main proposals being put forward by the economic planners, though quite feasibly a great deal more, and was clearly in agreement with them regarding the harshness necessary in the occupied Soviet territories in order to provide the German people with additional foodstuffs. Although certain members of his staff expressed reservations when it came to the proposed policy of complete exploitation of the economic resources of the occupied Soviet territories,³⁰ Rosenberg ultimately made explicit his own approval of the Hungerpolitik.³¹

What marked Rosenberg out more than anything from the likes of Göring, Backe and Riecke was his awareness that the best way to maximize the amount of grain which Germany could obtain from the occupied Soviet territories whilst at the same time minimizing the destruction of agricultural produce and the dislocation of production was to win the bulk of the native population over to voluntary cooperation. His approach can be summed up in the following quote from his speech of 20 June 1941: ‘…there is a difference, as to whether after a few years I have won 40 million people to voluntary cooperation or whether I must place a soldier behind every peasant.’³² Rosenberg had no qualms about the nature of the policy developed by the economic planners; his conception differed regarding methods of approach and implementation. His belief in winning over the vast bulk of the indigenous population for cooperation with Germany, shared by members of his staff,³³ was one which he held throughout the entire planning period and is particularly apparent in his speech of 20 June 1941. Even combined with a more measured approach from the economic organization, however, this would not have been an easy task, given Rosenberg's own ostracism of Russians, the largest group within the Soviet population. Indeed, around half of the population were ethnic Russians.³⁴ Something else that Rosenberg apparently failed to recognize was the price that not only Russia but also the Ukraine and its inhabitants would pay if the Hungerpolitik was in fact implemented. All concerned foresaw a particularly ruthless treatment of Moscow and the surrounding area, but, although it was far from being a ‘deficit territory’, the Ukraine would also inevitably suffer a great deal, precisely because the supposed grain ‘surpluses’ which were to be obtained from the occupied Soviet territories could only be obtained, if indeed at all, by the employment of severe measures in this very territory, which was widely believed to be the Soviet Union's most grain-rich.

Significantly, Rosenberg perceived these two issues – the securing of foodstuffs and raw materials on the one hand and Ukrainian independence on the other – to be closely, indeed inextricably, linked. In order to secure Germany's foodstuffs and raw materials and make it free from the danger of any future naval blockade, Rosenberg believed it was necessary to set up a free Ukrainian state, which would act as a barricade against any future expansion of Greater Russia and hence remove the perceived ‘nightmare’ of the Russian empire from Germany's eastern border.³⁵ Either he was not aware of, or refused to take on board, the fact that the majority of his colleagues in the state and Party leadership anticipated that Germany itself, and not the Ukraine, would assume the task of removing the supposed Soviet threat from the European arena. From their point of view, allowing, let alone encouraging, the establishment of an independent Ukraine would only complicate matters.

Now that the three aims of this study have been dealt with separately, it is worth bringing the various conclusions together. Collaboration and cooperation between the economic and political planners were more systematic, sustained and extensive than has hitherto been thought. In a report on his preparatory work for the occupation of the Soviet territories compiled just under a week after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, Rosenberg confirmed that the ‘most extensive agreement’ had been reached regarding ‘eastern questions’ during talks concerning the objectives of the Economic Command Staff East which had taken place over the preceding two months with the leading figures in the realm of agricultural and economic planning – Backe, Thomas, Riecke, Körner, Schubert and Schlotterer – as well as others. Rosenberg's talks with Schlotterer, for example, had taken place ‘almost daily’.³⁶ Although political considerations remained of primary importance for him throughout, Rosenberg nevertheless showed a keen interest in the economic aspects of the forthcoming occupation and demonstrated a willingness both to involve himself in the preparations and to seek conformity between his own aims and those of the economic planners.

If the German military campaign against the Soviet Union had in fact gone to plan and been successfully brought to an end in the space of six to twelve weeks, would Rosenberg's long-term aims for a Neuordnung of the occupied Soviet territories have stood any chance of realization? Given the central role of an ‘independent’ Ukraine in Rosenberg's plans to establish a substantial buffer against the remains of Greater Russia in the form of three state structures on the one hand, and Hitler's declaration that he had a German protectorate of approximately twenty-five years’ duration in mind for the Ukraine on the other,³⁷ the answer would probably have to be ‘no’. Indeed, it was above all with regard to the long-term political future of the occupied Soviet territories where Hitler and Rosenberg's respective concepts most fundamentally diverged.³⁸ For the very reason that those issues on which the two men clearly did not see eye to eye related to the long-term and not to the immediate future, Hitler presumably deemed it unnecessary to clarify such issues with Rosenberg prior to a campaign which all concerned expected to be brought to a victorious conclusion within three months. Perhaps Rosenberg would have had to elaborate on exactly what he meant by Ukrainian ‘independence’, which was self-evidently not used in the same sense as non-Nazis might use the term, either then or now.

By the same token, however, it would have been necessary for the economic planners to expand on their own proposal that a Hungerpolitik be pursued in the occupied Soviet territories. The Hungerpolitik was merely a concept – there was no clear idea among the economic planners as to how this policy was in fact to be implemented. The whole idea was too insufficiently thought through to be described as a ‘plan’. Thus, in the absence of a detailed programme of action developed by Germany's economic planners, it is almost impossible to determine how realistic such a concept indeed was. A further problem is the fact that the German–Soviet war took a very different course to that which had been expected, indeed, taken for granted, by the German planning apparatus. Predictably, no contingency plans existed for such an eventuality. Given that German projections for grain hauls and economic gain in general were based on a scenario in which major hostilities were rapidly brought to an end and the European USSR was occupied and pacified, it is clear that the results did not correspond to the projections, but it is far more problematic to determine whether or not they would have done if the war had progressed as planned. Ultimately, however, even if the invasion had proceeded in accordance with German expectations, major transport difficulties and the dislocation and disruption caused by military hostilities, particularly in Soviet agriculture, would have been enough to ensure that economic gain, at least in the first year of the occupation and quite possibly in subsequent years, would have been significantly less than the economic planners had envisaged.

As an extension of the policy of sealing off the ‘deficit territories’ of the north and west of the European Soviet Union from the ‘surplus territories’ of the south and east, the Hungerpolitik envisaged that the resources of the latter would be incorporated in the long term into the economic system of German-occupied Europe. The aim of this incorporation was the substitution of overseas imports to the Continent by imports from the food-producing economy of the former Soviet territories, which would supplement agricultural production in German-occupied Europe and constitute a lasting and considerable addition to its productive capacity. The creation of such a Großraumwirtschaft, so National Socialist thinking went, would make German-occupied Europe safe from all threat of blockade and enable Germany to avoid the fate which had befallen it during the First World War twenty-five years earlier.

In theory, Rosenberg would almost certainly have welcomed such a development, given that he had repeatedly stressed during the months of April to June 1941 the importance of securing Germany's sustenance,³⁹ and referred in his diary entry of 16 July 1941 to the task he had received from Hitler as that of making Germany independent from overseas imports.⁴⁰ In practice, however, it would undoubtedly have involved massive economic and social upheaval in the Ukraine and, given traditional National Socialist methods, countless deaths. Thus, we return to the question of methods of approach and implementation and the evident discrepancy between those advocated by Rosenberg and the political planners and those proposed by the economic planners. In any case, it is quite likely that, once the victory against the Soviet Union had been won, Rosenberg would ultimately have demonstrated that he lacked the requisite pragmatism and ruthlessness in furthering his own interests to stay the course in the German-occupied Soviet territories and been replaced by someone judged more suitable for the tasks at hand.

In conclusion, it can be stated that German occupation policy in the Soviet Union was built from the beginning on shaky foundations due to a fundamental disagreement regarding the practical approach to policy implementation. Unlike most of the other key figures, Rosenberg differentiated between the different peoples in the Soviet Union and argued for the importance of winning over the bulk of the native population in most of the territories to voluntary cooperation in order to ease the implementation of both the political and the economic objectives. Moreover, a consensus on the Ukraine which satisfied both the economic and the political planners was, crucially, never reached. Whether it influenced his efforts to coordinate his plans with those of the economic experts or not, it is clear that Rosenberg recognized in advance of the invasion that he was not going to have the kind of power which he had originally expected at the time of his initiation into the proceedings by Hitler at the beginning of April 1941.⁴¹ Thus, it was inevitable that the failure prior to the invasion to reach agreement on all major policy areas and on the exact jurisdiction of each of the key figures in the German occupation regime resulted in an atmosphere of mistrust and competition when the time came for theory to be put into practice. Whilst the unexpected course of the German–Soviet war and the necessity to adapt policy to the ever-shifting military situation played a major role in bringing about the administrative chaos, power struggles and wide-ranging policy disputes witnessed during the German occupation, it is fair to say that the roots of this discord can be found in the planning phase for the occupation.

In the introduction to this study, it was argued that recent literature on the pre-invasion planning for German occupation policy in the Soviet Union has for the most part failed to provide a clear and structured picture of the gradual development of these plans, that an examination of the simultaneous development of plans by the economic planners on the one hand and the political planners on the other, the extent of agreement between those involved and the compatibility of their respective plans has not yet been systematically undertaken, and that, as a result, collaboration between different groups of planners and the extent to which this took place have been barely touched upon. The details and analysis provided in the main body of this study and the evaluation of the evidence supplied in this conclusion have hopefully gone some way towards remedying the existence of such gaps in the secondary literature. Furthermore, this study should not – and hopefully does not – occupy a place on its own in the existing secondary literature on Germany during the years 1933 to 1945. Both the research carried out for the study and the conclusions drawn here contribute to some of the major and ongoing debates in this field. These include the concept prevalent in nationalist circles of Germany's right to colonial land in ‘the East’; the dispute regarding the extent to which a polycratic form of rule existed in National Socialist Germany; the question as to how much importance was attached in the decision-making process at all levels of governance to argumentation on a perceived ‘rational’ basis on the one hand and to ideology on the other hand; and the issues surrounding the Nazi genocide in the occupied Soviet territories, not least its motivations and progressive radicalization, explored here in the planning rather than the practice.

As a result of the findings of this study, it is now clear that there was close and constant intercommunication between those responsible for preparing a workable administrative and political structure for the occupied Soviet territories, above all Rosenberg and his staff, and those charged with formulating the economic policy to be pursued there, with senior members of the RMEL and the VJPB at the forefront of preparations in this area. Furthermore, it has been established that there was explicit and enthusiastic agreement between both sets of planners and the supreme political and military leadership on a wide range of central aspects of policy. The involvement of planners in areas which were not their customary realms of expertise and the overlap between different spheres of jurisdiction have also been shown to have been more extensive than hitherto thought. Although this study has concentrated, above all, on those ‘specialists’ who were responsible for formulating German policy in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, it is clear that the coordination of all major strands of planning ultimately took place via the authoritative voice in National Socialist Germany, particularly in matters pertaining to the Soviet Union and its envisaged future as German colonial land, Hitler.

Further work is naturally required on individual aspects of the subject matter addressed by this study, as well as on cooperation in general between different state and Party agencies in National Socialist Germany. One such aspect relating directly to the work carried out here is the extent or lack of opposition in the various ministries and offices involved in the preparations for ‘Barbarossa’ and its aftermath to the plans being formulated, whilst another pertinent issue is how many – and which – officials were in fact initiated into the political and economic planning for the invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union and when. Whilst these and other such topics lie beyond the scope of this particular study and cannot, therefore, be addressed by it, it is to be hoped that the content and conclusions found here contribute to stimulating further research in the area.

Notes

1. See, above all, Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, pp. 46–76.

2. For examples see IMG, vol. 36, p. 140; BA, R 26 IV/33a, p. 3.

3. BA-MA, RW 19/473, fo. 174.

4. BA, R 70 Sowjetunion/32, fo. 5.

5. IMG, vol. 38, p. 39.

6. Ibid., vol. 36, p. 140.

7. Ibid., vol. 26, pp. 548 and 577.

8. For Thomas (5 May 1941): Müller, ‘Industrielle Interessenpolitik’, p. 118; for Rosenberg/Stuckart/the SD (20 May 1941): BA-MA, RW 4/v. 759, fo. 29; for Leibbrandt (29 May 1941): ADAP, Serie D: 1937–1941, vol. 12/2, p. 772.

9. See BA-MA, RW 4/v. 759, fo. 29 (20 May 1941); IMG, vol. 26, p. 587.

10. For Thomas (5 May 1941): Müller, ‘Industrielle Interessenpolitik’, p. 118; for Bräutigam (June 1941): Gibbons, ‘Allgemeine Richtlinien’, p. 261; for Himmler (24 June 1941): BA, NS 19/2803, fo. 2; for Stuckart (4 July 1941): BA, R 43 II/688, fo. 10; for Rosenberg (16 July 1941): IMG, vol. 38, p. 89.

11. See BA D-H, ZM 1683, Bd. 1, fos. 105–106; for Rosenberg (8 May 1941): IMG, vol. 26, pp. 574 and 577; for Hitler (16 July 1941): IMG, vol. 38, p. 89.

12. For Rosenberg (2 April 1941): IMG, vol. 26, p. 552; for Thomas (5 May 1941): Müller, ‘Industrielle Interessenpolitik’, p. 118.

13. For Rosenberg (8 May, 20 June 1941): IMG, vol. 26, pp. 578 and 624; for the Foreign Office (29 May 1941): ADAP, Serie D: 1937–1941, vol. 12/2, p. 772.

14. IMG, vol. 36, pp. 142–143.

15. For the Wi Stab Ost (23 May 1941): IMG, vol. 36, pp. 138, 141, 145 and 156; for Rosenberg (7 April, 20 June 1941): IMG, vol. 26, pp. 557 and 622; for Bräutigam (June 1941): Gibbons, ‘Allgemeine Richtlinien’, p. 260.

16. IMG, vol. 26, p. 557.

17. Ibid., p. 549.

18. Müller, ‘Industrielle Interessenpolitik’, p. 118.

19. IMG, vol. 36, p. 141.

20. Gersdorff, Soldat im Untergang, p. 93; Gerlach, ‘Deutsche Wirtschaftsinteressen’, pp. 270–271.

21. See IMG, vol. 36, p. 147.

22. For Rosenberg (7 April 1941): Nbg. Dok. PS 1018, fos. 15 and 20–21.

23. For Rosenberg (2 April, 8 May 1941): IMG, vol. 26, pp. 550 and 574.

24. For Thomas (20 February 1941): Thomas, Geschichte, p. 517; for Rosenberg (25 April, 8 May 1941): Nbg. Dok. PS 1020, p. 6; IMG, vol. 26, p. 578; for the Wi Stab Ost (23 May 1941): IMG, vol. 36, p. 146; for Bräutigam (June 1941): Gibbons, ‘Allgemeine Richtlinien’, p. 259; for Heydrich: BA, R 70 Sowjetunion/32, fo. 10; for Backe: Kehrl, Krisenmanager im Dritten Reich, p. 223.

25. BA, R 26 I/13, fo. 4.

26. IMG, vol. 38, p. 91.

27. For Rosenberg (2 & 7 April, 7 & 8 May 1941): IMG, vol. 26, p. 551; Nbg. Dok. PS 1018, fo. 30; IMG, vol. 26, pp. 567, 573 and 577–578; for Bräutigam: Gibbons, ‘Allgemeine Richtlinien’, p. 258.

28. See BA, R 6/34a, fo. 12 (18 September 1941); BA, R 43 II/688, fos. 126–127 (1 October 1941).

29. See IMG, vol. 26, pp. 567 (7 May 1941) and 619 (20 June 1941).

30. For Bräutigam (June 1941): Gibbons, ‘Allgemeine Richtlinien’, p. 259.

31. See BA-MA, RW 19/739, fos. 135–136 (26 May 1941); IMG, vol. 26, p. 622 (20 June 1941).

32. IMG, vol. 26, pp. 619–620.

33. For Rosenberg (29 April, 7 May 1941): IMG, vol. 26, pp. 562 and 567–568 (Ukraine); for Bräutigam (June 1941): Gibbons, ‘Allgemeine Richtlinien’, pp. 259 and 261. This approach was not to be taken with the Reich Commissariat Russia.

34. Burleigh, The Third Reich, p. 537.

35. IMG, vol. 26, p. 573.

36. Ibid., p. 586.

37. BA, R 43 II/688, fos. 126–127 (1 October 1941).

38. On this see Dallin, German Rule in Russia, p. 49.

39. See IMG, vol. 26, pp. 551 (2 April 1941), 562 (29 April 1941), 567, 573 (7 May 1941), 622 and 626 (20 June 1941).

40. ‘Der Kampf gegen die Kirche’, p. 36.

41. See BA, R 6/21, fos. 66–67 (14 June 1941).