The term New Order () refers to the political and social concepts Nazi Germany sought to impose on German-occupied Europe and beyond.
Planning for the began before World War II, but Adolf Hitler first proclaimed a "European New Order" in a speech on 30 January 1941.
The New Order embodied the Nazi vision of a pan-German racial state structured to benefit an alleged Aryan-Nordic master race. It outlined the German colonization of Central and Eastern Europe, alongside the Holocaust against Jews and wider destruction of Romani people and others deemed "unworthy of life". The plan also entailed the extermination, expulsion, or enslavement of most Slavic peoples and others classified as Untermenschen (subhumans).Gumkowski, Janusz; Leszczyński, Kazimierz (1961). Poland Under Nazi Occupation. Polonia Pub. House. Nazi Germany's aggressive pursuit of this territorial expansion (Lebensraum) was a primary cause of World War II.
Historians debate the ultimate scope of the New Order: whether it was exclusively a continental project limited to Europe, or a roadmap for an eventual Germanocentric world government.Lee, Stephen J. (1987). The European Dictatorships, 1918–1945, p. 196. Cambridge University Press.
Origin of the term The term Neuordnung—an abbreviation of die Neuordnung Europas ("the New Order of Europe")—was used by the Nazi establishment to denote a planned reorganization of the geopolitical landscape.
The Nazi government claimed Neuordnung aimed to rearrange territory for the benefit of an economically integrated Europe, deliberately excluding the Soviet Union.Spielvogel, Jackson J. (2006). Western Civilization Since 1789, Volume 3. Clark Baxter, p. 855. Nazi ideology characterized the "Judeo-Bolshevist" Soviet state as a criminal, so called "Asiatic" institution slated for destruction, viewing it as culturally devoid of Germanic-European character and intolerable to the Third Reich.Rich, Norman (1972). Hitler's War Aims: Ideology, the Nazi State and the Course of Expansion, p. 212.
The phrase gained resonance in Western media through Nazi propaganda. In English-language academia, it refers to the civic policies and war aims of the Third Reich, drawing parallels to Imperial Japan's "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere".
Ideological background Nazi bio-politics
The Nazis implemented a strict racial hierarchy founded upon pseudo-scientific beliefs and practices. At its apex was the "master race", composed of the purest stock of the Aryan race. The Nazis idealized the Nordic race as its strongest manifestation, relegating all other racial types to an "inferior" status.Hitler, Adolf Mein Kampf Believing that Nordic peoples predominantly created and maintained Western civilization, the Nazis claimed this qualitative superiority entitled them to global domination—a concept known as Nordicism.
Geopolitical strategy
Hitler's ideas about eastward expansion, outlined in Mein Kampf, were heavily influenced by Karl Haushofer during Hitler's 1924 imprisonment. Haushofer argued that Germany had to control the Eurasian heartland to permanently secure its role as a global power. Italy and Japan were viewed as ideally situated to complement this German control, geopolitically shielding Germany's insular position with their regional naval power.Walsh, p. 9.
Anticipated territorial extent of Nazi imperialism
The need for a dominant global power was central to Hitler's worldview. In a 1930 speech at Erlangen University, Hitler proclaimed that no people held a greater right to seize "control" of the globe (Weltherrschaft, i.e., "world leadership") than the Germans.Weinberg, Gerhard L (2005). Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders. Cambridge, England Cambridge University Press, pp. 8–9. This echoed a 1927 letter by Rudolf Hess paraphrasing Hitler's belief that world peace required the "racially best" power to attain uncontested supremacy. This power would act as a world police force, guaranteeing living space for the master race while restricting lower races.Weinberg, G.L. (1996), Germany, Hitler, and World War II: essays in modern German and world history, p. 28,
Implementation in Europe
Preceding the War The 1938 Anschluss of Austria advanced the Pan-Germanist cause and strategically encircled Czechoslovakia. This facilitated the partition of Czechoslovakia, with Germany annexing the Sudetenland and establishing the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Slovakia became a German puppet state. The First Vienna Award subsequently offered territorial concessions to Hungary and Poland, drawing them into the German sphere of influence.
Germany then planned its Ostpolitik, proposing a barrier of client states from Finland to Romania to contain Soviet expansionism. This strategy aimed to economically subordinate Germany's eastern neighbors, utilizing existing German settlements to balkanize them, reverse territorial losses, and prepare for the conquest of Lebensraum. The Reich advanced this agenda through the German–Romanian Treaty, the 1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania, and the expansion of the Anti-Comintern Pact.
The Reich's failure to subordinate Poland during the Danzig crisis shifted Hitler's strategy. Following the formation of the Anglo-Polish alliance, which threatened Germany with a two-front war, Nazi leadership determined that an independent Poland was no longer geopolitically viable. Viewed as an Anglo-French buffer state, Polish territories were partially conceded to the Soviet Union to prevent a Soviet alignment with the Western Powers. This secured Germany's eastern flank, postponing the pursuit of Lebensraum until France and Britain were defeated.
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact allowed Germany and the Soviet Union to partition Eastern Europe, temporarily aligning Soviet territorial interests with Germany's agenda. A significant step toward Hitler's New Order, the agreement tacitly sought to restore the former spheres of influence of the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian empires from the Baltic Sea to the Balkans. This vision included the partition of Poland, recognizing Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and Lithuania as projected German puppet states. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Bessarabia were ceded to the Soviet sphere. The treaty was subsequently amended; most of Lithuania was transferred to the Soviets in exchange for Germany gaining Lublin and Lesser Poland. Furthermore, Stalin's opposition to a residual Polish state led to the establishment of the General Government under direct German administration.
Despite these concessions, the Nazis remained unsatisfied and engaged with anti-Soviet agents regarding Eastern Poland. Prior to the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland, Germany made overtures to Lithuania, promising the Vilnius Region in exchange for assistance during the Invasion of Poland. Similar offers were made to Hungary regarding Turka and Sambir. Germany also approached the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists with plans for a pro-Nazi Ukrainian puppet state,... and explored potential collaboration with Polish fascists to establish Central Poland as a German protectorate.
Military campaigns in Poland and Western Europe The initial phases of the New Order included the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Blitzkrieg campaigns in Northern and Western Europe. The signing of the Molotov Pact on 23 August 1939, prior to the invasion of Poland, secured Germany's eastern border with the Soviet Union, prevented a two-front war, and circumvented expected raw material shortages from a British naval blockade. The campaigns in Northern and Western Europe (Operation Weserübung and the Battle of France), neutralizing western opposition. By early summer 1940, Germany had conquered Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France. Following a projected British defeat, Germany intended to avoid a general peace conference (like the 1919 Paris Peace Conference), instead finalizing the political reordering of Western Europe exclusively through bilateral negotiations.Weinberg, A world at arms (2005), p. 175
Plans for Great Britain
Throughout the 1930s, a primary German foreign policy objective was a military alliance with the United Kingdom. Despite adopting anti-British policies in 1939, German leadership maintained hope that the UK would eventually become a reliable ally. Hitler admired the British Empire and preferred its preservation as a world power, fearing its collapse would disproportionately benefit the United States and the Japanese Empire. German planners envisioned a defeated Britain fulfilling a role similar to the Austrian Empire after the 1866 Austro-Prussian War: excluded from continental affairs, but maintaining its colonies as a seafaring partner.Strobl 2000, pp. 202–208.Rich 1974, p. 396.
Historian William L. Shirer notes that German occupation plans included transferring British men aged 17 to 45 to the continent for slave labor. The UK was to be stripped of its financial, industrial, and cultural assets, with its manufacturing output redirected to support the Eastern Front. The Einsatzgruppen, led by Franz Six, were tasked with executing political, intellectual, and public figures who opposed Nazism. Furthermore, Otto Bräutigam of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories later claimed that Heinrich Himmler intended for the Sicherheitsdienst to exterminate roughly 80% of the French and British populations following a German victory.
Contingent upon the invasion of Great Britain (Operation Sea Lion), Germany planned to invade neutral Ireland (Operation Green). By occupying northeastern France, Hitler intended to marginalize Britain and prevent future continental challenges. While evidence suggests the monarchy would have survived, Germany explored fragmenting the UK. Proposals included uniting Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland to secure support from the Irish Republican Army (which drafted Plan Kathleen), and establishing an independent, republican Scotland as a socialist-nationalist counterweight to capitalist England. Ultimately, neither Britain nor Ireland was invaded.
Plans for France
Nazi Germany viewed historical French belligerence—from the Thirty Years' War to the Treaty of Versailles—as a permanent threat. Anticipating a rapid conclusion to the western campaign, Hitler sought to turn France into a long-term vassal state so he could focus on his Ostpolitik. In May 1940, Hitler instructed Interior Ministry State Secretary Wilhelm Stuckart to draft proposals for a new western border. Stuckart's June 1940 memorandum proposed annexing territories in Eastern France that were historically part of the Holy Roman Empire, establishing a "Westraum" for the Reich. Short-term plans involved integrating Inner Rhineland border areas and the Ruhr with Alsace–Lorraine, Eupen-Malmedy, the Saarland, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and northeastern France. Longer-term ambitions included annexing Switzerland, Burgundy, and Savoy (stretching to the Mediterranean Sea, akin to historical Lotharingia) into the Gau Westmark.
To accomplish this, Germany occupied the Low Countries to strip France of its buffer states and natural borders along the Rhine. Germany then planned to annex Northern France (Nord and Pas-de-Calais) alongside the formal re-annexation of Alsace and Moselle. German strategists also prepared to colonize the Zone interdite in the Somme, Aisne, and Ardennes to establish a Germanic Thiois buffer zone (Project Burgund). The Armistice of 22 June 1940 formalized French economic subordination, established the collaborationist Vichy France regime, and created a military occupation zone to construct the Atlantic Wall. Germany also considered rewarding Italy with the occupation of Corsica, Nice, and Savoy. Broadly, the Latin nations (Portugal, Spain, and Italy) were to be reduced to total German dependency.