Tony Masiuk
HIST 3361-002
Dr Geoffrey Jackson
March 20, 2019
Image: Mein Kampf(German:[maɪn ˈkampf];My StruggleorMy Fight) is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler; volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926. The book was edited firstly by Emil Maurice, then by Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess.
INTRODUCTION
Throughout and preceding the Second World War, Eastern Europe was an inseparable place of focus for essentially every social realm for the Nazis. There are ideological, and therefore racial, military, economic, political, and other expansionist aims relative to this region. In particular, Poland and the Soviet Union (especially Soviet Ukraine) were to fulfill essential functions in the world of Nazism, and thus necessitates specific analysis. While Nazi imperialism was not limited to Eastern Europe, this region—including its peoples—play special roles in the unfolding of the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Nazi revolution and empire altogether.
As the Nazi worldview greatly fixes on ideologies of race, the indigenous populations of Eastern Europe, chiefly the Slavs, were to occupy a relevant (yet not always uniform) niche in the Nazi hierarchy. The ways in which the Slavs were classified, as an innately inferior race, ultimately determined the fate of many millions of Slavs and others. While complications arise in the Nazi plans to supplant the Slavs, ultimately failing, various attempts of anti-Slavic genocide are made, including massacres, the implementation of a manufactured famine, slave labour programs, and other forms of mass murder, ethnic cleansing, persecution, and exploitation which together were to make Nazi colonial realization in Eastern Europe possible.
The objective of this paper is to examine as a crucial ideological component of Nazism, these plans, implementations, and outcomes of anti-Slavic violence and genocide in the Nazi Reich, in particular Poland and the Soviet Union as colonized territories during the Second World War.
NAZI RACIAL IDEOLOGY
In order to understand how, what, and why anti-Slavic violence occurred in Eastern Europe on behalf of the Nazis, it is critical to analyze the complex and fundamental ideology underlying it. The Nazis had in their ideology, borrowed and modified from earlier scientific racists, a rather intricate hierarchy system into which all human beings of the world were classified. Their governing principle was that not all human beings were in fact seen as truly human on the basis that genetic, and hence racial makeup determined the capabilities and behaviours of supposed races. From this premise, Nazi racial ideology served to distinguish between who was deemed fully human; superior, or inferior.1 Those considered truly human, or at the top of hierarchy were ascribed the status of 'master race', or ‘Aryan race’.2 This Aryan master race is seen as the principal embodiment of humanity and progress which the Nazis asserted themselves to be and represent, and they pushed to rule the world as 'masters' of other races, by assumption of the will of nature.3
Most peoples of Europe were considered to belong to this Aryan or master race, exemplified by those of Germanic origin.4 Mediterranean peoples, such as Italians and French were held to be below, yet not beyond Germanic peoples, and thus tolerated as near-equals.5 However, a particular distinction was made for the Slavs. Treated as a mongrel race, the Slavs were regarded as decidedly non-Aryan and thus inferior (with few exceptions), relegated to a category which contrasts the Aryan or master race: the subhuman. The category of subhuman earmarked those races which were to be ruled over, enslaved, extirpated, or destroyed in the world. In this category, the majority of the world's population was included also—Roma, Africans, Asiatics, and many others. However, while Jews were certainly seen as inferior among the other aforementioned groups, special exception was made for exactly where they were to fit in the Nazi system of race.6
Nazi racial ideology saw superior and inferior races as in a fundamental war over power and survival in a twisted Darwinian light. The Aryan race was seen as contracting if they were not fulfilling a destiny of domination.7 It was held as a natural destiny of the Aryan race to overtake inferior races and destroy them, or if not, to have them enslaved or expelled when pragmatic to do so. In the process, the Nazis also harshly rejected any race mixing between Aryan Germans and the subhumans, or inferior races.8, 9 Brutal anti-miscegenation laws were enacted for Slavs, violations of which were punishable by death, such as those for forced labourers.10 Since the subhumans were seen as ever-expanding 'hordes', sometimes, as in the case of Slavs, they were supposedly controlled at the behest of powerful Jewish overlords, in particular through the schemes of Judeo-Bolshevism, to outnumber and drive the Aryan race out of existence, as was believed to be their nature.11
Moreover, it is of arguable contextual importance, that the Aryan versus Slavic versus Jewish niches in the hierarchy are understood as inter-relational concepts. It is key therefore, that we relate all ideological victims of Nazism not only by how inferior they are in a linear sense, but also by why they are inferior, and how this orients each in the system of Nazi power. The Nazi rationale of power and competition is such that, as Timothy Snyder eloquently states: “. . . the strong should starve the weak, but Jews could arrange matters so that the weak starve the strong”.12 It is that the strong is the master race, the weak are the Slavic and other subhuman races, and the Jews are the manipulators of the weak, a counter-race. Within this idea, the Slavs were not seen as inferior for reasons of being overtly powerful, manipulative, deceptive, or conspiratorial against the progress of the Aryan race, as were the Jews. Instead, they were nothing more than the weak and lowly to be exploited and destroyed.13
For the Nazis, this racial weakness determines Slavic worth in the struggle for power and survival. As the master race is supposed to represent all positive value and achievement of humanity, the subhuman is considered incapable of these virtues. Slavs viewed as primitives, mongrels, biologically inferior, unintelligent, and incapable of civilization are therefore obstacles in the way of the progress of the master race; the goal being to colonize the weak Slavic subhumans and their lands so that this ‘progress’ may be fulfilled.14, 15 According to Snyder, Hitler envied the United States' colonial foundation, and wanted to revolutionize and recapitulate the colonialism which Germany had lost in its African colonies beforehand. The not-so-distant Slavs to the East became the practical and desirable imperial option.16 To rationalize this desire, Nazi ideology drew comparisons of Slavs to Africans and Native Americans, and also describing them as Asiatics, Asiatic-like, or racially Asiatic-mixed;17, 18, 19 all of these groups were viewed on essentially the same racial plane, since their degrees of innate weakness and lack of accomplishment and development was seen to be equivalent. Any development of statehood in Eastern Europe was dismissed as the result of Aryan influences, reinforcing the Slavs as an incapable and inferior race.20
As with colonialism generally, indigenous peoples of colonized lands are frequently seen as an obstacle to accessing their land and resources. In particular, Hitler strongly desired Ukrainian territory, for its exceptionally fertile lands and natural resources could become the economic and agricultural powerhouse he needed to build his empire, together with the open spaces across all of Eastern Europe.21 This master plan was the chief underlying foundation of Lebensraum, or “living space”, an idea romanticized throughout Hitler's Mein Kampf.22 To access these desired resources, the people of those lands must be considered subhuman so their humanity may be ignored. Such an idea is not unlike the British concept of Terra Nullius, meaning essentially “empty land”, which was used in Australia and other colonized lands to presume the indigenous inhabitants devoid of any land rights.23 Hitler's vision was to recreate and remodel this kind of colonial process. In particular, he envisioned a colonization alike to America's Manifest Destiny, but instead occurring in Eastern Europe, whereby the Volga river would become the Mississippi, and the Slavs would become the Native Americans and “fight like Indians”. They would be decimated in population through force and supreme technologies, and their lands and resources would be overtaken, with the remaining population enslaved and replaced by German colonists.24
Like other colonialism, Lebensraum, while being a racial principle, also functioned as an economic principle. While on one hand, the colonization of Eastern Europe would fulfill a racial destiny by economically exploiting and destroying Slavs for the sake of a master race. On the other hand, this exploitation for economic gain, as well as for standard of living and comfort, is conversely justified by that very same ideology of race.25 When understood functionally in this sense, Nazi reasoning is indeed circular.
Despite a distinction of Slavs as inferiors, there is a notable degree of contradiction in Nazi treatment of Slavs. Noted by Connelly, some examples include the fact certain Slavic peoples were given unusual privileges, or that these privileges changed over time. For example: Slovakia, Croatia, and Bulgaria as three Slavic nations, were treated with exception in having their own puppet states; internal disagreement over enforcement of different anti-Ukrainian policies is indeed confusing; the Nazis' use of Soviet military defectors and collaborators seems counter-intuitive.26 All of these contradictions seem to evoke questions of whether or not the Nazis truly saw the Slavs as a racial group, or whether their racial quality depended on the group or region, or if they modified their policy to suit dire militaristic situations—the answers to these questions are not entirely clear. These issues continue throughout the war, without being clearly resolved, and as Connelly discusses, some cases appear to be motivated by stirring inter-ethnic conflicts amongst Slavs, taking advantage of them as pragmatic options.27 Nevertheless, the unfolding of Nazi racial policy exacted a still severely brutal level of anti-Slavic violence throughout the war. It remained firmly held that Slavs in general, though not always equally, were far below the Germans and subordinate to their will. Altogether, racial ideology about Slavs, coupled with the economic potentials of Eastern Europe sets the stage for its mass-scale invasions and the realization of anti-Slavic genocides, enslavement, and exploitation at inconceivable magnitudes.
POLAND
The invasion of Poland in 1939 marked both the major beginning of anti-Slavic genocide and colonization, as well as the beginning of the Second World War. Poland, while being in a fairly different position from the Soviet Union, was undoubtedly dealt the first major wave of violence brought upon the Slavic peoples. In addition, it also served as a stepping stone to the Soviet Union, putting Germany face-to-face with their constructed Judeo-Bolshevik enemy, and Poland became the site of major antisemitic operations and industrial killings, amounting to half of the six million Jewish deaths in the Holocaust. Though for Poles, a total of around 1.8 million non-Jewish Polish civilians were killed under Nazi operations throughout the course of the war.28
Under the false pretenses of planned Polish attacks, ethnic cleansing, and a staged attack on a German radio station, Germany invaded Poland and defeated its unprepared army in just weeks. Soon thereafter in October 1939, the Polish state is destroyed as a functional institution by both Germany and the Soviet Union, which simultaneously invaded from the east. Western Poland conquered by Germany was divided into two parts: the regions closest to Germany were directly annexed to Germany, while the central-east and southeastern regions were replaced with a Nazi colonial state called the Generalgouvernment, while eastern Poland had fallen under Soviet occupation.29 However, Hitler does not see his occupation as an occupation; he sees it as colonization, on the basis that Slavic land is already empty land.30 Though, beyond Hitler's point of view, there is indeed a difference, whereto colonization exceeds occupation when the very real indigenous population and society is subverted and/or destroyed.
The Nazi colonization of Poland unfolded with various despotic operations and policies over Poles. Once the Polish state is partially, and later fully annexed by Germany following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Nazis implement against Slavic Polish gentiles large-scale massacres, construction of and mass deportations to concentration camps, forced labour, and total deprivation of rights and dictatorial rule over what was once free Polish society.
One of the earliest and deadliest anti-Slavic operations was Operation Tannenberg. Occurring from autumn 1939 to spring 1940, the Einsatzgruppen, or killing squads, were mobilized by Hitler and Heydrich to commit genocide against the Poles by decapitating their elites and intelligentsia, killing around 61,000.31 The victims included priests, teachers, intellectuals, and others. One motive was that the Nazis aimed to destroy whatever value existed in Polish society, being the 'limited' Polish culture and nationhood, of which Hitler believed the few “bearers” were the Polish intelligentsia and elites. While obviously racist, perhaps more pragmatically, Hitler sought to prevent a Polish uprising and to instill fear, which functioned as a part of maintaining the Polish state as destroyed in place of German statehood. Finally, Heydrich saw this act of mass murder as a first step to establishing a slave-state.32
Beyond just terrible massacres, Poles were also forced from their homes in constitution of economic exploitation and ethnic cleansing. The idea of Lebensraum, while focusing on the Soviet Union, had sort of unofficial beginnings in Poland as a precursor to the true Lebensraum. In just months, Himmler deported over 128,000 Poles from the western regions annexed directly to Germany to the new Generalgouvernment. The appropriated farmland from these deportees was then transferred to 500,000 German settlers.33 Alongside this relocation, as another instance of contradiction to the racial inferiority of Slavs, 50,000 Polish babies and children were abducted and transferred to German families in Germany where they would be Germanized, selected for exhibiting 'racially-valuable' characteristics. In addition, hundreds of thousands of Poles were sent to newly-established concentration camps during the course of the war, in particular Auschwitz and Majdanek which were built on colonized Polish territory, as were other major camps,34 and 74,000 Poles died at Auschwitz alone.35 Furthermore, a minimum of 1.5 million Polish civilians were deported to Germany as forced labourers for the Nazi war machine, and a total of a near 2 million Polish civilians had died at the hands of the Germans throughout the war.36
THE SOVIET UNION
For multiple reasons, colonizing the Soviet Union was one of Hitler's prime objectives. The Soviet Union, more particularly what is now Ukraine, was to be the future site of Lebensraum; in combination with the total lands and resources available in the entire Soviet Union, it was a goal beyond the limited lands of western Poland, both geographically and functionally, and involved different operations. The unfolding of Nazi operations in the Soviet Union was encountered with many complications, perhaps the largest of which was major military losses, which altered the course of the war, and thus also the materialization of Nazi plans.
Throughout the war, one of the most targeted groups by the Nazis were Soviet citizens and prisoners of war, being once again, primarily racially-motivated.37 In fact, by absolute figures, non-Jewish Soviet citizens altogether suffered the most deaths out of any group targeted by the Nazis. Including prisoners of war, 8.65 million were killed throughout Nazi operations in the Soviet Union, according the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM).38 As the major goal of taking the Soviet Union was the racially-motivated ideology of Lebensraum, there was clearly a planned, and partly executed genocide of Soviet Slavs that took multiple forms. To accomplish this, the Germans required a massive invasion, mass executions, the implementation of a manufactured famine, mass-scale slave labour, and other forms of violence.
Devised between 1941 and 1942 was the mechanism through which to put Lebensraum into action—known as Generalplan Ost, or Masterplan East. In fulfillment of Lebensraum, Generalplan Ost aimed to appropriate native agricultural lands, implement collective farms, depopulate the land of Slavs through starvation, deportation, or enslavement, and have German settlers repopulate it as was started in Poland. The majority in most Slavic nations were slated for elimination.39 Again, the prized territory was fertile Ukraine, which Hitler saw as his “breadbasket”; Ukraine was to give the Reich the economic and territorial power it needed to rival the United States.40 One method of depopulation involved an artificial famine known as the Hunger Plan, which was devised at the Staatssekretäre conference in May 1941.41 The design was to simultaneously feed the German juggernaut both in Germany and its soldiers in the east, as well as to intentionally eradicate between 31 million and 45 million “superfluous” people, mostly Slavs, with the Nazis anticipating 30 million deaths in the winter of 1941 to 1942 alone.42 Though, the Hunger Plan managed to starve to death only about 3 million Soviet prisoners of war, around 1 million Soviet civilians in Leningrad, plus tens of thousands in Ukrainian cities, amounting to a total in excess of 4 million.43 Overall, Generalplan Ost and thus the Hunger Plan was unsuccessful, largely the result of failed Soviet conquest. However, during the process, the Nazis did realize the relative ease and thus advantage of which to take in shooting and gassing Jews, another racial target, compared to implementing a famine genocide designed to eradicate people in the much larger proportion of several tens of millions.44
As included in the Hunger Plan, prisoners of war comprised a major portion of all Nazi killings of Soviets. The total deaths of Soviet prisoners of war is as high as 3.3 million, making them one of the most victimized groups during the war.45 As the USHMM argues, the invasion of the Soviet Union was from the beginning an act of racial hatred. The Soviet prisoners of war captured by Germans were seen not only as Judeo-Bolshevik political enemies, but also as inherently racial enemies, making them doubly antagonized and deliberately murdered for these reasons. While some Soviet prisoners of war were later liberated, or were allowed to escape death by being employed to the auxiliaries of the German military, more than half of the total Soviet prisoners of war died deliberately at the hands of the Nazis. This discrimination is evidenced by the fact British and American prisoners of war were treated much differently; of the total 231,000 British and American prisoners of war, only a small fraction actually died at the hands of the Germans—8,300 or 3.6% since they were not generally considered racially inferior.46 In camps for Soviet prisoners of war, prisoners became slave labourers who were fed diets of around 700 calories per day, which even included bread made from sawdust; the result was obvious that deaths were occurring in just weeks. In addition, disease, inadequate clothing and shelter took a death toll. Some Soviet prisoners of war, especially those bearing "politically and racially intolerable elements" were subjected to death marches, and mass executions in concentration camps and extermination camps, including methods of gassing and being burned alive. It is important to keep in mind that the murder of prisoners of war, especially in this manner, is and was contrary to international law.47
Not limited only to prisoners of war, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe altogether was to become a seemingly endless source of disposable civilian slaves. Like other brutality forced upon the Slavs, this slavery was again couched in the racism of Lebensraum, as Hitler famously said: “the Slavs are born as a slavish mass crying out for their master”.48 Though, as Connelly and Mawdsley both suggest, opportunity and improvisation played its role, as this racist slavery also had economic and military purposes which were required for the functionality of the Reich and its war machine.49, 50 This civilian forced labour operation in fact began with Poles, though the deportations for forced labour of Soviet Slavs, called Ostarbeiter, intensified the slave labour program beginning in 1942 under the leadership of Fritz Sauckel.51, 52
In August 1944, foreign forced labour was at its peak. 6 million foreign civilians were performing forced labour in the Reich at this time, mostly comprised of Soviet Slavs and Poles.53 Some sources put the number of Soviet forced labourers at around 2.4 million.54 However, the numbers are disputed, especially between German estimates and those from former Soviet countries. Some estimates put the number of Soviet Ostarbeiters as high as between 4,128,796 and 4,978,000 (the number cited at the Nuremberg trial), with as many as between 2 million and 2.4 million of those being ethnic Ukrainians alone.55 Such numbers are noteworthy, as this would make Ukrainians potentially the most affected ethnic group, at around half of the total Soviet forced labourers. It is also worth mentioning that much of the research concerning forced labourers does not further delineate between groups within the broad Soviet category, such as Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorusians.56
These forced labourers worked in various industries such as armaments, agriculture, construction, and mining. They were usually interned under subhuman conditions in special improvised labour camps, were fed barely enough food to survive, and were often denied access to bomb shelters. Other times, forced labourers were interned in concentration camps, or in private households.57, 58 There were many cases and attempts of escape, and some attempts of sabotage and resistance. The Nazis repressed these ‘violations’ or even the suspicions thereof, sometimes as brutally as executing labourers or transferring them to concentration camps.59 Labourers were sent to special Work Education camps, with conditions that mirrored those of concentration camps, if they violated ‘labour discipline’, or in other words, had not met the Nazis’ incredible standards of hard labour.60 The Slavic, especially Polish and Soviet civilian forced labourers were subjected to particular discrimination by the SS and Gestapo, and were usually required to wear identifying “Ost” or “P” badges on their clothing.61 They also suffered mortality at a rate at least six times that of German labourers.62 The experience of Slavic women was worse yet,63 including the aspect that Slavic women were susceptible to rape, beatings, and sexual-slavery (both informally and in brothels), and sometimes resulting pregnancies. They were also prevented from birthing 'racially inferior offspring' in the labour camps, and as such, were forced to either undergo abortions, or birth children in improvised nurseries designed to lead to neglectful death of the infant(s).64 Adding insult to injury, those labourers repatriated to the Soviet Union post-war were treated with suspicion by the Stalinist government, with many being interned in Soviet forced labour camps.65 In fact, many Soviet displaced persons posed and recorded themselves as Poles to avoid repatriation.66 Overall, generally speaking, the German government and German corporations which profited from the slave labour program have yet to reconcile with the victims and their families.67
In the Soviet Union generally, it is important to remember why resisting these crimes was difficult. The German military was instructed, as well as ideologically-driven to repress any kind of non-compliance with lethal force. The Germans essentially had carte blanche to commit crimes ad infinitum, such as in response to partisan activity, by which German forces would burn entire villages and mass murder the inhabitants.68
Finally, it is also worth assessing the entanglement between Slavs and Jews as Nazi victims in the Soviet Union. While this was largely a campaign intrinsically against Slavs, it inevitably became also a process of violence and genocide against Jews, since both genocides mutually encouraged the other; destroying the Slavic world was a pathway to destroying the Jewish world, and vise-versa. The destruction of the Jews served a purpose in colonizing the Slavs, since Jews were seen, oddly, as colonizers of the Slavs, and thus as enemies.69 Also, most Jews killed in the Holocaust lived outside of Germany, in Eastern Europe.70 While in Poland the Nazi killing squads carried mass executions of Polish intelligentsia and elites, the same was done in the Soviet Union, except the targets were primarily Jews and Communists, who were seen as exchangeable. Communists were seen as the elites to be ‘decapitated’, therefore the Jewish population was to undergo mass murder, despite the ironic fact that some Communists collaborated in this murder.71 Moreover, Snyder rightly addresses the contribution of local collaborators in the killing of Jews in the Soviet Union, which is a blend of factors, one of which being that the Germans “used food shortages to motivate peoples under their control and to enforce their own racial hierarchies . . . [which] subdued resistance and generated collaboration” as a means of survival for local citizens.72 In essence, by coercing Slavs to become accomplices in killing Jews, the Nazis doubly benefit by both manipulating Slavs into their own subjugation and deaths, while simultaneously receiving virtually free help in eradicating Jews.
CONCLUSION
Taking all discussed crimes together, it does not take great calculation to realize the effects of Nazism on the Slavic peoples. While as a genocide, the Nazis were obviously unsuccessful in implementing their plans, being a result of losing the war. Likewise the Jewish Holocaust ends essentially for this reason. This fact of course evokes curiosity over the losses had the war ended later in time, if at all. In total, counting Soviet citizens and POW's, Polish citizens, and those not discussed in this paper such as Serbian and Czech victims, Slavs account for close to 11 million deaths, approximately.73 Therefore, from a certain perspective, Slavs together amount to the numerical majority of all Nazi victims.
While all of these crimes against Slavs are indeed hardly fathomable, the purpose of this analysis is not only to demonstrate sheer magnitudes. While the magnitude is indeed astonishing, there is greater purpose to conducting this research. The objective is ultimately to understand the role of anti-Slavism in Nazism, in ways relating to Nazism as a whole, as well as to its other components. This is the context which is everything in understanding both Nazism and why Slavs were specifically targeted. Thus, in understanding the Holocaust, it is not particularly relevant to debate whether Slavs are, or are not part of the Holocaust, depending on what that means. The fact of Slavs suffering a genocide comparable to the Jews is abundantly clear when the evidence is in front of us. Of greater relevance, is understanding how these different victims, Slavs and Jews as the largest victims of Nazism, are in fact related.
Ultimately, as analyzed by Snyder, the fate of Slavs and Jews are linked. In fact, this is because the life of Slavs and Jews are linked, in the Hitlerian view. The Holocaust of Jews could not be complete without Lebensraum, as Eastern Europe contained the Jews and space to kill them; Lebensraum could not be complete without the Holocaust of Jews, because Jews were ideologically seen to be holding Slavic societies together. These are two genocides comprising one genocide; they share a destiny, but different positions in the destiny. Slavs are the target of colonialism, Jews are the target of de-colonialism, yet they both function together to make Nazism complete.74 This is why it is meaningful to understand specifically the role of Slavs, while not forcing into its own separate field of vision. Therefore, studying Slavs in Nazism not only helps us understand a Slavic genocide, it helps us understand a Jewish genocide, and the whole of Nazism.
From this point of view, the Nazi revolution was not simply an anti-Slavic revolution, nor was it simply an anti-Semitic one. It was not even simply a racist one, nor simply a political one. It is reductionist to view Nazism in any simplistic form. Nazism was an imperialist and ideological revolution, a particularly unprecedentedly totalitarian, powerful one—one as mentioned by Connelly, that improvises and adapts, sometimes by modifying its ideology, other times by manipulating others.75 We must see Nazism in whole, as a revolution of imperialism which was rooted in and shaped by variables of racism, eugenics, power—across various forms, ideology. The role of Slavs, in this respect, is undoubtedly significant, perhaps one of the most significant as an inclusion in this system; the future and success of the Nazis in their endeavours of domination required successful subjugation of the Slavs first, hence their failure and defeat. Still, as a means to these ends in this case, the treatment of Slavs was to be the ideology; imperialism, the outcome; and power, the benefit.
Endnotes
1. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
2. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Nazi Racism. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
3. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
4. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Nazi Racism. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
5. Norman Davies. Europe at War: 1939-1945 : No Simple Victory. (Macmillan, 2006) 44
6. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
7. Timothy Snyder. Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning. (Tim Duggan Books, 2015) 1-10
8. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
9. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The German Army and the Racial Nature of the War against the Soviet Union. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
10. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Racism: In-Depth. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
11. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
12. Timothy Snyder. Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning. (Tim Duggan Books, 2015) 6
13. Ibid. 5-6
14. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
15. Timothy Snyder. Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning. (Tim Duggan Books, 2015) 19
16. Ibid. 16-17
17. Ibid.
18. Ian Kershaw. Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison. (Cambridge University Press, 1997) 150
19. John Connelly. Nazis and Slavs: From Racist Theory to Racist Practice. (Cambridge University Press, 1999) 14
20. Timothy Snyder. Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning. (Tim Duggan Books, 2015) 19
21. Ibid. 18
22. Ibid. 14
23. C.L. Ogleby. TERRA NULLIUS, THE HIGH COURT AND SURVEYORS. (University of Melbourne, 1993)
24. Timothy Snyder. Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning. (Tim Duggan Books, 2015) 15-21
25. Ibid. 17-21
26. John Connelly. Nazis and Slavs: From Racist Theory to Racist Practice. (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
27. Ibid. 8
28. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Polish Victims. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
29. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Invasion of Poland: Fall 1939. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
30. Timothy Snyder. Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning. (Tim Duggan Books, 2015) 109
31. Ibid. 106-107
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid. 113
34. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Polish Victims. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
35. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Auschwitz. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
36. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Polish Victims. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
37. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The German Army and the Racial Nature of the War against the Soviet Union. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
38. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
39. Timothy Snyder. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. (Basic Books, 2010) 160-162
40. Ibid. 161
41. Erin Blakemore. The Nazis Nightmarish Plan to Starve the Soviet Union. (Jstor, 2017)
42. Timothy Snyder. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. (Basic Books, 2010) 163
43. Timothy Snyder. Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning. (Tim Duggan Books, 2015) 194
44. Ibid. 192-194
45. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Nazi Persecution of Soviet Prisoners of War. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
46. Ibid.
47. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Treatment of Soviet POWs: Starvation, Disease, and Shootings, June 1941–January 1942. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
48. Timothy Snyder. Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning. (Tim Duggan Books, 2015) 18
49. John Connelly. Nazis and Slavs: From Racist Theory to Racist Practice. (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
50. Evan Mawdsley. World War II: A New History. (Cambridge University Press, 2009) 327
51. Ibid. 327-329
52. Forced Labour Memory and History. Forced Labour – Background. (Freie Universität Berlin, n.d.)
53. Ibid.
54. Evan Mawdsley. World War II: A New History. (Cambridge University Press, 2009) 329
55. Maria Melenchuk. Ukrainian Ostarbeiters in Canada: Individual and Collective Remembering. (University of Saskatchewan, 2012) 17
56. Ibid.
57. Evan Mawdsley. World War II: A New History. (Cambridge University Press, 2009) 329
58. Forced Labour Memory and History. Forced Labour – Background. (Freie Universität Berlin, n.d.)
59. Ibid.
60. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Forced Labor: In Depth. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
61. Forced Labour Memory and History. Forced Labour – Background. (Freie Universität Berlin, n.d.)
62. Maria Melenchuk. Ukrainian Ostarbeiters in Canada: Individual and Collective Remembering. (University of Saskatchewan, 2012) 15
63. Forced Labour Memory and History. Individual Experiences of Forced Labor. (Freie Universität Berlin, n.d.)
64. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Women During The Holocaust. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
65. Forced Labour Memory and History. Forced Labour – Background. (Freie Universität Berlin, n.d.)
66. Maria Melenchuk. Ukrainian Ostarbeiters in Canada: Individual and Collective Remembering. (University of Saskatchewan, 2012) 33
67. Forced Labour Memory and History. Forced Labour – Background. (Freie Universität Berlin, n.d.)
68. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The German Army and the Racial Nature of the War against the Soviet Union. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
69. Timothy Snyder. Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning. (Tim Duggan Books, 2015) 21
70. Ibid. xiv
71. Ibid. 147-149
72. Ibid. 194-195
73. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
74. Timothy Snyder. Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning. (Tim Duggan Books, 2015) 321-324
75. John Connelly. Nazis and Slavs: From Racist Theory to Racist Practice. (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
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