German Ethnic Settlement, Spatial Planning and Colonization in the USSR (1941–44)

This chapter begins with Operation Barbarossa and the attack on the USSR in June 1941, followed by the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ in the Ukraine and Belorussia. Moscow and Leningrad did not fall, the war dragged on until 1942–3 when Germany was defeated at Stalingrad, and the westward retreat began. Nevertheless, the General Plan for the East became the basis for colonization: the setting up of quasi-colonies in Poland and the Ukraine; the elimination of the Jews; the movement of helot Slavs into subordinate colonial roles; and the settlement of ethnic Germans as the vanguard of SS colonization. Harried by Soviet and Jewish partisans, the colonial project was finally crushed by the Red Army.