The (; ), abbreviated GPO, was Nazi Germany's plan for the settlement and "Germanization" of captured territory in Eastern Europe, involving the genocide, extermination and large-scale ethnic cleansing of Slavs, Eastern European Jews, and other indigenous peoples of Eastern Europe categorized as "Untermenschen" in Nazi ideology. The campaign was a precursor to Nazi Germany's planned colonisation of Central and Eastern Europe by Germanic settlers, and it was carried out through systematic massacres, mass starvations, chattel labour, mass rapes, child abductions, and sexual slavery.
Generalplan Ost was only partially implemented during the war in territories occupied by Germany on the Eastern Front during World War II, resulting indirectly and directly in the deaths of millions by shootings, starvation, disease, extermination through labour, and genocide. However, its full implementation was not considered practicable during major military operations, and never materialised due to Germany's defeat.WISSENSCHAFT – PLANUNG – VERTREIBUNG. Der Generalplan Ost der Nationalsozialisten· Eine Ausstellung der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft © 2006 Under direct orders from Nazi leadership, around 11 million Slavs were killed in systematic violence and state terrorism carried out as part of the GPO. In addition to genocide, millions more were forced into slave labour to serve the German war economy.
The program's operational guidelines were based on the policy of Lebensraum proposed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in fulfilment of the Drang nach Osten (drive to the East) ideology of German expansionism. As such, it was intended to be a part of the New Order in Europe. Approximately 3.3 million Soviet POWs captured by the Wehrmacht were killed as part of the GPO. The plan intended for the genocide of the majority of Slavic inhabitants by various means – mass killings, forced starvations, slave labour and other occupation policies. The remaining populations were to be forcibly deported beyond the Urals, paving the way for German settlers.
The plan was a work in progress. There are four known versions of it, developed as time went on. After the invasion of Poland, the original blueprint for was discussed by the RKFDV in mid-1940 during the Nazi–Soviet population transfers. The second known version of the GPO was procured by the RSHA from in April 1942. The third version was officially dated June 1942. The final version of the Master Plan for the East came from the RKFDV on October 29, 1942. However, after the German defeat at Stalingrad, resources allocated to colonization policies were diverted to Axis war efforts, and the program was gradually abandoned. Had been fully implemented, it is estimated that more than 60 million people would have perished.
Background
Ideological motivations
was Nazi Germany's plan for the colonization and Germanization of Central and Eastern Europe over a period of twenty-five years. Implementing it would have necessitated genocide and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale to be undertaken in the Eastern European territories occupied by Germany during World War II. It would have included the extermination and de-population of most Slavic people in Eastern Europe.
The plan, prepared in the years 1939–1942, was part of Adolf Hitler's and the Nazi movement's Lebensraum policy and a fulfilment of the Drang nach Osten () ideology of German expansion to the east, both of them part of the larger plan to establish the New Order. More than economic calculations, ideological fanaticism and racism played a central role in Nazi regime's implementation of extermination programs such as the GPO. Hitler's doctrine of Lebensraum envisaged the mass-killings, enslavement and ethnic cleansing of Slavic inhabitants of Eastern Europe, followed by the colonization of these lands with Germanic settlers.
Although racist views against Slavs had precedent in German society before Hitler's rule, Nazi anti-Slavism was also based on the doctrines of scientific racism. The "Master Race" doctrine of Nazi ideology condemned Slavs to permanent domination by Germanic peoples, since it viewed them as primitive people who lacked the ability to undertake autonomous activities. evolved from these racist, imperialist ideas and was formulated by the Nazi regime as its official policy during the course of the Second World War.
Himmler's role
The body responsible for the was the SS's Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) under Heinrich Himmler, which commissioned the work. The document was revised several times between June 1941 and spring 1942 as the war in the east progressed successfully. It was a confidential proposal whose content was known only to those at the top level of the Nazi hierarchy; it was circulated by RSHA to the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (Ostministerium) in early 1942.
Between 1940 and 1943, Himmler supervised the drafting of at least five variants of . Four of these drafts were produced by the office of Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood (RKFDV) and one draft was produced by the RSHA. SS Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) and Ostministerium were also involved in the formulating the GPO plans. According to testimony of SS-Standartenführer Hans Ehlich (one of the witnesses before the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials), the original version of the plan was drafted in 1940. As a high official in the RSHA, Ehlich was the man responsible for the drafting of along with Konrad Meyer, Chief of the Planning Office of Himmler's RFKDV. It had been preceded by the Ostforschung.
The preliminary versions were discussed by Heinrich Himmler and his most trusted colleagues even before the outbreak of war. This was mentioned by SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski during his evidence as a prosecution witness in the trial of officials of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office. According to Bach-Zelewski, Himmler stated openly: "It is a question of existence, thus it will be a racial struggle of pitiless severity, in the course of which 20 to 30 million Slavs and Jews will perish through military actions and crises of food supply." A fundamental change in the plan was introduced on June 24, 1941 – two days after the start of Operation Barbarossa – when the 'solution' to the Jewish question ceased to be part of that particular framework, gaining a lethal, autonomous priority.
Cost The planning had included implementation cost estimates, which ranged from 40 to 67 billion Reichsmarks, the latter figure being close to Germany's entire GDP for 1941. A cost estimate of 45.7 billion Reichsmarks was included in the spring 1942 version of the plan, in which more than half the expenditure was to be allocated to land remediation, agricultural development, and transport infrastructure. This aspect of the funding was to be provided directly from state sources and the remainder, for urban and industrial development projects, was to be raised on commercial terms.
Scale of planned casualties The main objective of was to establish a community in Eastern Europe composed exclusively of individuals classified as German and Aryan, who would serve as loyal subjects of the Greater Germanic Reich. Full implementation of the plan called for the forced deportation of hundreds of millions of Eastern European inhabitants beyond the Ural Mountains, as well as the killing of more than 60 million Slavs, Romanis and Jews. The plan included the policy known as the Hunger Plan, which aimed to cause the deaths of more than 30 million Slavic inhabitants through deliberate starvation.
The plan also envisaged the removal of approximately 80 million Russians beyond the Urals, with estimates by Nazi planners suggesting that around 30 million would die during the process due to forced displacement and lack of resources. These measures formed part of a broader policy to reorganise the population structure of Eastern Europe by significantly reducing or eliminating existing populations and repopulating the territory with groups deemed suitable by Nazi ideological criteria.
Phases of the plan and its implementation
Ethnic group /Nationality targeted Percentage of ethnic group to be removedby Nazi Germany from future settlement areas RussiansThe Ashgate Research Companion to Imperial Germany edited by Matthew Jefferies Colonialism and Genocide by Jurgent Zimmerer page 437 Routledge 2015 discussions about the Generalplan Ost – which foresaw up to 70 million Russians being deported to Siberia and left to perish.70–80 million Estonians almost 50% Latvians 50% Czechs 50% UkrainiansThe Third Reich and Ukraine, Volodymyr Kosyk P. Lang, 1993 page 231 65% to be deported from Western Ukraine,35% to be Germanized Belarusians 75% Poles 20 million, or 80–85% Lithuanians 85%Latgalians 100%
Widely varying policies were envisioned by the creators of , and some of them were actually implemented by Germany in regards to the different Slavic territories and ethnic groups. For example, by August–September 1939 (Operation Tannenberg followed by the A-B Aktion in 1940), Einsatzgruppen death squads and concentration camps had been employed to deal with the Polish elite, while the small number of Czech intelligentsia were allowed to emigrate overseas. Parts of Poland were annexed by Germany early in the war (leaving aside the rump German-controlled General Government and the areas previously annexed by the Soviet Union), while the other territories were officially occupied by or allied to Germany (for example, the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia became a theoretically independent puppet state, while the ethnic-Czech parts of the Czech lands (so excluding the Sudetenland) became a "protectorate"). The plan was partially attempted during the war, resulting indirectly and directly in millions of deaths of ethnic Slavs by starvation, disease, or extermination through labor. The majority of Germany's 12 million forced laborers were abducted from Eastern Europe, mostly in the Soviet territories and Poland.
The final version of the proposal was divided into two parts; the "Small Plan" (Kleine Planung), which covered actions carried out in the course of the war; and the "Big Plan" (Grosse Planung), which described steps to be taken gradually over a period of 25 to 30 years after the war was won. Both plans entailed the policy of ethnic cleansing. As of June 1941, the policy envisaged the deportation of 31 million Slavs to Siberia. 75% of Belarusians were regarded unfit for "Germanization" and targeted for extermination or expulsion.
The proposal offered various percentages of the conquered or colonized people who were targeted for removal and physical destruction; the net effect of which would be to ensure that the conquered territories would become German. In ten years' time, the plan effectively called for the extermination, expulsion, Germanization or enslavement of most or all East and West Slavs living behind the front lines of East-Central Europe. The "Small Plan" was to be put into practice as the Germans conquered the areas to the east of their pre-war borders. After the war, under the "Big Plan", more people in Eastern Europe were to be affected.