Nazi Occupation Policies in the East, 1939–1944

When Adolf Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland in 1939, he was following a plan which he had outlined many years earlier in Mein Kampf. Hitler’s dream of creating Lebensraum—living space—for the German people required the conquest of the East: Poland. In 1941, the Führer expanded that goal further with the invasion of the Soviet Union. By the fall of 1941, almost 85 million Soviet citizens—nearly half the population—were living under German occupation, while in Poland, the Germans ruled about 34 million Poles.

The people who lived in these eastern regions of Europe were considered Untermensch, subhuman, by the Nazi racial theorists. The policies which the Third Reich imposed on these mostly Slavic peoples in the East therefore, were meant to terrorize and subjugate about 119 million human beings. The eventual goal was to exterminate the Jewish population, but also to wipe out a large portion of the larger population, either directly by killing them, or indirectly by starving and working them to death. In this way, the Nazis would create the available land for German colonization that Hitler decreed was necessary.

This comprehensive study covers German rule in Poland, the Baltic States, Belorussia, Ukraine, and Russia, looking at the formations and locations of the German occupation forces, as well as describing the rise of resistance to that occupation. It includes a full analysis of the policies that the Nazis employed in their attempt at empire building in the East, and the causes for its failure.