F. L. Sinitsyn Plans of German Nazis with Respect to the Peoples of the USSR (1925–1941)

Abstract: The main foreign-policy objective of Hitler’s Germany – to conquer “life space” – was connected, first of all, with conquering the USSR which was supposed to become the “German India”. To substantiate its claims to the Soviet territory, the Nazi ideologists developed their “race theory” and propagated the myths about the “demographic threat” posed by the peoples of the Soviet Union and some military and political “Russian Bolshevik” and “Asian threat”. The development of the plan for determining the fate of the USSR peoples resulted in the program of their “germanization”, deportation and destruction, which was not implemented because of the victory of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War. This article is built on the research of numerous sources, including archive materials, and studying existing Russian and foreign historiography. During the Soviet era, the ideology of the German national socialism was considered, primarily, from the point of view of its “class bias”, i.e. economic objectives. It was considered that Hitler aimed at gaining world supremacy in the interest of the German bourgeoisie. Any matters related to the national policy of the Nazi leadership were pushed aside. However, it was the insufficient attention to the national aspect of the plans made by Hitler’s Germany which resulted in the remaining vagueness in the assessment of the future awaiting the peoples of the USSR if the Third Reich had won.

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