Between Giants (9 page)

Alfred Rosenberg was born in 1893 in Tallinn, which was then part of the Czar’s empire. His parents were Baltic Germans, descendants of settlers who had come to the area during preceding centuries; his father was a businessman from Latvia, and his mother was from the Estonian community of Baltic Germans. He studied in Riga and Moscow, and left for Germany when the Bolsheviks seized power, having chosen to support the White Russian cause. He was an early adherent of the National Socialists, and together with his mentor, Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, he was one of those who planned the failed ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ of 1923. Scheubner-Richter was killed during the attempted putsch – he was shot while walking arm in arm with Hitler, and as he fell he dislocated Hitler’s shoulder – and Rosenberg became leader of the National Socialists while Hitler was in prison. It was not a particularly successful appointment, and Hitler later suggested that he had deliberately chosen someone who would not be able to supplant him in the long term.
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Given that there was no reason at the time to doubt that Rosenberg would do a competent job, and that Hitler cannot have known how long he would be incarcerated, this comment may well have been made with the benefit of hindsight.

As the Nazis rose to power, Rosenberg became increasingly interested in racial theory, particularly where it concerned Jews. He was strongly anti-Bolshevik, following his family’s flight from Russia, and also an implacable anti-Semite. Indeed, he was one of the first to formulate the concept of ‘Jewish Bolshevism’, which came to dominate so much of German thinking about the Soviet Union, and it is likely that he was influential in Hitler’s adoption of this term. It was inevitable that in the chaotic world of Nazi ideology, his views would have a major impact upon the development of German plans.

The historic desire to expand German culture to the east pre-dated the unification of Germany itself, with the settlement of large numbers of Germans in the Baltic States and beyond as part of the
Drang nach Osten
(‘drive to the east’), a recurrent theme for centuries. Friedrich Ratzel coined the phrase
Lebensraum
at the beginning of the 20th century, and the concept was then developed by others, almost always with the view that the logical place for Germany to seek its new ‘living space’ was in Eastern Europe. Whilst almost all of these proposals were hostile to Poland and identified this as the first and easiest area for Germany to seize, there was a clear intention to proceed further east, even beyond the historic lands of the Teutonic and Livonian Knights. Despite the failure to establish
Mitteleuropa
in and after the First World War, German theorists continued to talk about possible future expansion eastward, and Hitler made clear in
Mein Kampf
that he regarded such a policy as an essential part of securing
Lebensraum
for Germany:

Germany must find the courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation.
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This was in keeping with a widely held view in Germany that it was ‘natural’ in terms of social Darwinism for strong nations and civilisations to expand, while weaker ones faded away. Hitler was determined that Germany should be in the former group. It was typical of the selective and muddled thinking of the National Socialists that while they accepted the concept of social Darwinism, they – like Stalin – believed that their own society represented the ultimate peak of social evolution, and would not in turn be replaced by other societies.

It seems that several studies were undertaken during the 1930s about possible rearrangements of territory in Eastern Europe; during the Nuremberg Trials, Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski testified that Heinrich Himmler had overseen these discussions. In 1940, more detailed planning began, resulting in the creation of a set of documents that made up
Generalplan Ost
. It is difficult to determine the exact chain of events that led to the creation of
Generalplan Ost
, because many documents relating to the plan were deliberately destroyed in the final days of the war. Standartenführer Hans Ehlich stated at Nuremberg that he was responsible for drawing up the plan, and using his testimony and fragmentary documentation and letters, it has been possible to recreate most of the plan, though no copies of it survived the war.
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In particular, a document entitled
Stellungnahme und Gedanken zum Generalplan Ost des Reichsführers-SS
(‘Opinion and Ideas Regarding the General Plan for the East of the Reichsführer-SS’) by Dr Erich Wetzel has proved vital. This critique of
Generalplan Ost
includes a great deal of information about the contents of the plan.

Rosenberg’s personal thoughts played a large part in the development of the plan. He proposed that the former Czarist Empire be broken into several components, each of which would form a
Reichskommissariat
: Ostland, consisting of the Baltic States; Moskowien, stretching from Moscow to the Urals and the Barents Sea; Ukraine; and Caucasus. He also wished to create a fifth region, broadly stretching along the southern Soviet Union close to the borders with Iran and Afghanistan, but Hitler ordered him to abandon this in order to concentrate on the four regions in the western part of the Soviet Union. In many respects, Rosenberg was significantly past the peak of his influence by this stage. He had written a book in the early 1930s entitled
Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts
(The Myth of the 20th Century), a lengthy exposition on racial theory, particularly with regard to the ‘Jewish Question’, but although the book sold well, few senior National Socialists could say that they had read the entire work, or regarded it as a useful contribution to their beliefs; Hitler dismissed it as ‘stuff nobody can understand’.
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In 1941, as plans for the German invasion of the Soviet Union reached a detailed level, Rosenberg was appointed chief of the newly created
Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete
(‘Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories’, often abbreviated to
Ostministerium
). The quality of its personnel was varied, to say the least:

When ministries were summoned to supply their quotas of civil servants for the new
Führerkorps Ost
… [they saw] in this call a welcome opportunity to rid themselves of personal enemies, obnoxious meddlers and incompetent chair-warmers … [resulting in] a colourful and accidental conglomeration of Gauleiters, Kreisleiters, Labour Front officials, and a great number of SA [
Sturmabteilung
or ‘Storm Detachment’, the para-military wing of the Nazi Party before the war] leaders of all ranks, who assumed high positions in the civil administration after listening to a few introductory lectures delivered by Rosenberg’s staff.
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Rosenberg’s authority over this body was further weakened by the fact that many members of the
Ostministerium
remained loyal to their former patrons, and sought to undermine Rosenberg so that other senior members of the National Socialist movement – particularly Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering, Martin Bormann (Party Minister of the National Socialist Party, Chief of the Party Chancellery, and later Hitler’s personal secretary), and Erich Koch (Gauleiter of East Prussia) – could develop their own empires. Rosenberg protested to Hitler about being obstructed by these and other figures on several occasions, but was unable to prevent what he regarded as interference in his jurisdiction. This was a recurring theme in German administration during the war, as Hitler actively encouraged his subordinates to compete for power, believing that this would allow the strongest and best to rise to the top. The chaos and dislocation this policy caused was far greater than any benefits.

In April 1940, Rosenberg described in detail his vision of the development of the new territories of the east:

The aim of our policy, therefore, appears to lie in this direction: to resume in an intelligent manner and sure of our aim, the aspirations to liberation of all these peoples and to give them shape in certain forms of states … and to build them up against Moscow, so as to free the German Reich of the eastern nightmare for centuries to come.
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In other words, it was Rosenberg’s intention to create a series of buffer states between Germany and the ‘barbaric east’. This was at odds with Hitler’s own vision of a German
Herrenvolk
supported by the remnants of the local population who had been reduced to slave status. Opposed to the creation of any form of buffer state, Hitler argued that any attempt to introduce self-government would inevitably start a nation down the road to full independence.
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Rosenberg found himself in a very small minority with his views. Ironically, the only major National Socialist figure to think along similar lines – Joachim von Ribbentrop in the Foreign Ministry – was often at loggerheads with Rosenberg on other issues, as he perceived the latter as developing a sphere of influence that overlapped too much with his own, preventing them from making common cause. The input of the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt
(‘Reich Main Security Administration’ or RSHA, a section of the SS) into
Generalplan Ost
took a very different approach from Rosenberg to the four regions. There would be no room for any semi-independent states in the former Soviet Union, and all of the regions would remain tightly under Berlin’s control. As has been discussed, German policy towards colonies was very different from that of Britain and France, and the whole concept of
Lebensraum
was to create areas populated mainly by Germans. Hitler consciously modelled his approach on the settlement of North America. As he told his followers, ‘We eat Canadian wheat and don’t think about the Indians.’
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In keeping with this attitude, the plan called for the removal of all elements of the population who could not be ‘Germanised’.

With so much of German manpower mobilised for war, there was a pressing need for agricultural imports into Germany to keep the nation fed. With memories of near-starvation as a result of the British naval blockade of the First World War, it was inevitable that Hitler would turn to the east as a source of these food supplies. In particular, the Ukraine, with its historically fertile land, was seen as the source of both industrial and agricultural resources that would allow Germany to avoid forever the threat of blockade.
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During the years since the First World War, the Soviet urban population had grown by about 25 million. The elimination of these Soviet citizens would allow for the Ukrainian ‘surplus’ to be sent west.
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The alteration in the population of the four new territories was to be achieved by a variety of means, depending on the people involved. There was a clear intention from the start that Jewish communities would not be tolerated, and would simply be exterminated. German plans relating to the Jews went through several distinct phases. Initially, the intention was to establish a Jewish ‘colony’ in the conquered parts of Poland, but this proved to be impractical for several reasons. Firstly, there was a feeling that the proposed colony in and around Lublin was still too close to Germany. Secondly, after the conquest of Poland, it proved almost impossible to transfer Jews from Germany and the west to Poland, because the authorities in occupied Poland simply couldn’t cope with the numbers involved. A second proposed solution to the ‘Jewish Question’ was to establish a Jewish colony on a distant island such as Madagascar. Although France, the European power that currently controlled Madagascar, had fallen to Germany, British domination of the oceans made any such plan impossible to execute. Instead, Germany attempted to persuade Stalin to accept several million Jews into the Soviet Union, where they could be settled in some remote part of Siberia or Soviet Central Asia; Stalin refused. Now, with planning for a German conquest of the Soviet Union at an advanced stage, a new solution arose, namely that the Jews would simply be worked to death, building new roads across the conquered territories of Russia. The Final Solution of mass extermination only became a formal policy when the rapid conquest of Russia failed to occur.

Other populations in the territories that would be conquered, such as Roma, would also have been treated the same way. Slavs were to be deprived of access to medical care, and their food supplies would be reduced, resulting in deaths through starvation. There were also proposals for mass sterilisation, to ensure that the current generation of ‘undesirables’ would be the last in the occupied territories. Others, including the bulk of the Soviet urban populations, would be driven east out of the new territories, into Western Siberia. Although the plans were not explicit about what would happen to them, it must have been clear that pushing so many people into an undeveloped wilderness would result in the swift deaths of most. Indeed, although the decollectivisation of Ukrainian agriculture might have had political advantages, by addressing one of the greatest resentments of the rural Ukrainian population, the Germans intended to preserve the collectivised system, as it would be easier for them to ensure that agricultural output went to their chosen destinations, thus ensuring the starvation of tens of millions of Soviet city dwellers. This was made explicit in a document known as the Hunger Plan, which was finalised during March 1941.
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Hitler made his views on the measures to be used abundantly clear in a conference in July 1940: ‘While German goals and methods must be concealed from the world at large, all the necessary measures – shooting, exiling, etc. – we shall take and we can take anyway. The order of the day is: first, conquer; second, rule; third, exploit.’
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