It needs to be understood that "Generalplan OST" really isn't too insane of an idea. Especially if we take it to mean the colonisation of the Soviet Union. After all, this alleged "plan" only came into existence in parts after the National Socialist Invasion in 1941, not having been drawn up beforehand. Nor was a plan for an administrative system for the Occupied Eastern Territories set up until just prior, and after the German invasion:
the manner of planning 'Barbarossa' shows again the absence of a relationship between blueprint and execution. Between July 1940 and March 1941 planning was entirely military. Economic planning did not really begin until 1941, civilian administration not before April, while it was only towards the end of August 1941 that the form and character of the civil government was decided. 'Far from acting on the basis of a long-term plan for colonization, Hitler approached the subject empirically, seeing present alternatives clearly but rarely perceiving anything beyond the successful achievement of the immediate objective.'
H.W. Koch, Hitler and the Origins of the Second World War. Second Thoughts on the Status of Some of the Documents, The Historical Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1968), Pp. 130-131
So, considering this, and that the Germans initially thought the Soviet Union would fall in 5 weeks - it makes sense that after such a destructive war that lasted years, that within the first year ideas would start springing up about taking advantage of the territory the Soviet Union had procured - because surely, after all that chaos, the Germans should not have to ever fight another destructive war like that again for the sake of securing Germany's borders and her sovereignty from the influence of nosey British statesmen and hostile Communist psychopaths.
It seems to have a practical side to it as well. After all Germany had been through, is it any wonder she would say "screw it" after having her attempts at peace shunned and offers of cooperation thrown back in her face, that she would decide to go for "all or nothing" and take exactly what she needed from her Soviet enemy? An enemy who was no more magnanimous from the beginning about her bid for territories in various parts of Europe and went about invading anything she could, just because it was in her interests. Why should Germany, at that point, still have had limited war aims when it came towards the Soviet Union and not just fought for the whole thing?
The Soviet Union at the end of the war was handsomely rewarded with the territorial conquest of half of Europe, including half of Germany itself. That the allies and their supporters would chastise Germany for not being willing to be more modest than themselves is patently ridiculous.
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Generalplan OST, if it's known at all, is just used as a quip against people sympathetic, or supportive of the German cause to fight for her own existence, by saying that she wanted to exterminate Slavs. None of this comes up in any of the documents, or quotes lifted from Germans at the time that I have read. This invention is purely the work of the "historians" who have interloped their interpretation of the documents and quotes as something to do with extermination.
They will quote some logistical estimate about food production and availability in the Soviet Union during the war by a German who comes to the conclusion that X amount of Soviet citizens (or Slavs) in X region will die because there's not enough food. The historian will interpret this as a cunning plan to kill Slavs. Clearly, this is a wilful exaggeration of what they would
like the Germans to have been saying, rather than what they were actually saying.
