Was Hitler anti colonial ??

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TheAllseeingeye620
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Was Hitler anti colonial ??

Postby TheAllseeingeye620 » 1 year 2 weeks ago (Mon May 23, 2022 10:49 am)

Many of his volunteer units where non white and he supported Indian and Iraqi Independence from Great Britian
Though the Peace terms of 1940 asked for the Empire back after Versailles
so I'm just curious , did Germany oppose anti imperial efforts on people like in the Soviet Union and during the Invasion would it have helped people like central asians after years of the Bachmazi fighting the Soviets
Again , just another question..
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Otium
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Re: Was Hitler anti colonial ??

Postby Otium » 1 year 2 weeks ago (Tue May 24, 2022 1:23 am)

Indian and Iraqi independence weren't his causes to fight. He wouldn't have gone out of his way to help those people whom, by natural law, would have to take care of themselves. This was the policy under which Hitler governed German foreign policy, if something couldn't be done in a way which was beneficial to the life of the German people, then they would need to fight for it.

Hitler was opposed to colonialism, in the sense that he was completely disinterested in ruling foreign peoples, but wanted to secure for his people a space which they could inhabit and filter out foreign elements which couldn't be integrated. This was less based on race per se because the foreign people the German leadership had to deal with were of 'related' but not 'tribal' blood (a distinction made in December 1942 by SS-Standartenführer Dr. Hans Ehlich), i.e. Slavic groups which were still European but ethnically dissimilar from Germans. Like I said, they were considered related (kindred - non-tribal blood) but of a more questionable quality. So the decision was to discriminate based on who was of a higher racial and individual quality which could be integrated into the German sphere. The rest would have to find a life outside the Reich in settlements. Although there's no question that non-Europeans would never be accepted into the German Reich as inhabitants.

This however, was a later decision. Initially Hitler desired, as he specified to the OKW in the spring of 1941, that in the case of a conflict with Russia and upon her defeat he sought to create nominally independent state governments formed from the ashes of the Soviet Union which were still dependant on Germany and thus neutralized as a threat. According to the OKW war diary:

Chief WFSt returns a draft of "Guidelines in Special Areas for Directive No. 21 (Case "Barbarossa")" submitted to him by Dept. L on 18 Dec. 40 and reworked by him, with the remark that the draft had been submitted to the Fuehrer, who then gave the following guidelines for the final version.

KTB-OKW, Vol. 1, p. 340.


In these corrections of March 3, 1941, Hitler makes statements that do not align with the alleged "programmatic" will for lebensraum, but instead a limited settlement which would culminate in the destruction of the Bolshevik state. Hitler emphasises that the goal of Barbarossa is the elimination of the Soviet threat to Germany as a practical realisation of Russia as a geopolitical and ideological threat, not as ground zero for "living-space":

"This coming campaign is more than just a clash of arms; it also leads to the confrontation of two world views. To end this war, given the vastness of the area, it is not enough to defeat the enemy Wehrmacht. The whole area must be broken up into states with their own governments with which we can make peace.

The formation of these governments requires a great deal of political skill and general well-considered principles.

[...]

Our task is to build up as soon as possible, with a minimum of military forces, socialist state structures which depend on us."

KTB-OKW, Vol. 1, p. 341.


Hitler makes no statements about an alleged desire to incorporate the defeated Russian territory into the Greater German Reich. It was only after the commencement of Barbarossa for some months that the German leadership developed the second Generalplan OST in the Summer of 1941 which was would extend settlements further towards the Bug river. But even then, according to the map produced below, the "transformation zone" was still to the West of Lublin, Zamosc and Lviv.

Map.PNG

Of course the decision for this was obvious. In a life and death struggle, you take what you can get for the benefit of your own people. These "imperial" aspirations were seized during an opportune moment.

As for colonies, yes, Hitler did seem to express the desire for the return of German colonies, but I very much doubt this would've meant ruling over foreign races, most likely they'd have been repatriated.

It's a widespread misconception that just because Germany had foreign volunteers that it meant Germany's foreign policy was influenced by this. In many cases Hitler had no idea about some of the volunteer units which popped up. He wasn't even particularly interested in a Pan-German solution. According to Volker Ullrich (by no means an honest historian) Hitler rejected Anton Mussert's concept for a "League of Germanic Nations", saying that he was striving for a “secure, completely solid structure to withstand the future storms from the east."


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