Among Slavic and White nationalists, opinions on Hitler are often ambivalent. I intend to add to this ongoing discussion by assembling a selection of Hitler’s own words—from his speeches, Mein Kampf, the Table Talks (whose authenticity some dismiss out of hand, a claim too weak to merit serious refutation), and other sources—in order to present a clear picture of his attitudes and designs concerning the Slavic people.
I am not going to dwell on Nazi policies as a whole or quote-mine other Nazi leaders such as Himmler or Rosenberg. I will solely focus your attention on Hitler instead. His views, and vision of an ideal world of Germany and Slavdom.
I will first present Hitler’s overall assessment of Slavs and his plans for the East. Then I will be quote-mining Hitler—what he thought about each Slavic group individually starting with Russians and ending with Hungarians (who are not Slavic). Finally, out of curiosity and as a bonus content, I will provide you with his views on Stalin (whom he very much respected).
My own commentary here will be kept to a minimum. I will not attempt to dispute or ‘debunk’ Hitler’s words, but simply present the quotations themselves—roughly eighty-five percent drawn directly from Mein Kampf and the Table Talks.
I want you to make your own conclusions about what you will read. My mission is simply to improve your historical literacy rates.
Hitler’s Racial Ideology & Slavic Inferiority:
I think it will be interesting to start from Hitler’s analysis of the ethnic makeup of various Slavs. The following quote dates to May 12th of 1942:
It is not possible to generalize on the extent to which the Slav races are susceptible to the Germanic imprint. In point of fact, Tsarist Russia, within the framework of her pan-Slav policy, propagated the qualification Slav and imposed it on a large diversity of people, who had no connection with the Slavonic race. For example, to label the Bulgarians as Slavs is pure nonsense; originally they were Turkomans. The same applies to the Czechs. It is enough for a Czech to grow a moustache for anyone to see, from the way the thing droops, that his origin is Mongolian. Among the so-called Slavs of the South the Dinars are predominant. Turning to the Croats, I must say I think it is highly desirable, from the ethnical point of view, that they should be Germanised.
Generally views Slavs as inferior, undeserving and incapable of creating Civilization (this is more common in later quotes, particularly concerning the Poles):
If left to himself, the Slav would never have emerged from the narrowest of family communities. The Germanic race created the notion of the State. It in carnated this notion in reality, by compelling the individual to be a part of a whole. It's our duty continually to arouse the forces that slumber in our people's blood. The Slav peoples are not destined to live a cleanly life. They know it, and we would be wrong to persuade them of the contrary. It was we who, in 1918, created the Baltic countries and the Ukraine. But nowadays we have no interest in maintaining Baltic States, any more than in creating an independent Ukraine. We must likewise prevent them from returning to Christianity. That would be a grave fault, for it would be giving them a form of organization.
Discusses General Plan East and argues against the sympathy some Germans may feel towards the Slavs:
As for the ridiculous hundred million Slavs, we will mold the best of them to the shape that suits us, and we will isolate the rest of them in their own pig-styes; and anyone who talks about cherishing the local inhabitant and civilizing him, goes straight off into a concentration camp !
Views Slavs as a race of slaves and fantasizes about subjugating Russia just as the British have subjugated India:
When one contemplates this primitive world, one is convinced that nothing will drag it out of its indolence unless one compels the people to work. The Slavs are a mass of born slaves, who feel the need of a master. As far as we are concerned, we may think that the Bolsheviks did us a great service. They began by distributing the land to the peasants, and we know what a frightful famine resulted. So they were obliged, of course, to re-establish a sort of feudal régime, to the benefit of the State. But there was this difference, that, whereas the old-style landlord knew something about farming, the political commissar, on the other hand, was entirely ignorant of such matters. So the Russians were just beginning to give their commissars appropriate instruction. If the English were to be driven out of India, India would perish. Our role in Russia will be analogous to that of England in India.
While Russians are inferior overall, thanks to a little drop of Aryan (Germanic) blood sometimes they can be capable of something:
The Russian will never make up his mind to work except under compulsion from outside, for he is incapable of organizing himself. And if, despite everything, he is apt to have organization thrust upon him, that is thanks to the drop of Aryan blood in his veins. It's only because of this drop that the Russian people has created something and possesses an organized State, It takes energy to rule Russia.
Outlines his general policy towards Russia and the Slavs in general in Mein Kampf:
A coalition of cripples cannot attack a powerful State which is determined, if necessary, to shed the last drop of its blood to maintain its existence. To me, as a nationalist who appreciates the worth of the racial basis of humanity, I must recognize the racial inferiority of the so-called ‘Oppressed Nations’, and that is enough to prevent me from linking the destiny of my people with the destiny of those inferior races. To-day we must take up the same sort of attitude also towards Russia. The Russia of to-day, deprived of its Germanic ruling class, is not a possible ally in the struggle for German liberty, setting aside entirely the inner designs of its new rulers. From the purely military viewpoint a Russo-German coalition waging war against Western Europe, and probably against the whole world on that account, would be catastrophic for us.
Therefore we National Socialists have purposely drawn a line through the line of conduct followed by pre-War Germany in foreign policy. We put an end to the perpetual Germanic march towards the South and West of Europe and turn our eyes towards the lands of the East. We finally put a stop to the colonial and trade policy of pre-War times and pass over to the territorial policy of the future. But when we speak of new territory in Europe to-day we must principally think of Russia and the border States subject to her. Destiny itself seems to wish to point out the way for us here. In delivering Russia over to Bolshevism, Fate robbed the Russian people of that intellectual class which had once created the Russian State and were the guarantee of its existence. For the Russian State was not organized by the constructive political talent of the Slav element in Russia, but was much more a marvellous exemplification of the capacity for State-building possessed by the Germanic element in a race of inferior worth. Thus were many powerful Empires created all over the earth. More often than once inferior races with Germanic organizers and rulers as their leaders became formidable States and continued to exist as long as the racial nucleus remained which had originally created each respective State. For centuries Russia owed the source of its livelihood as a State to the Germanic nucleus of its governing class. But this nucleus is now almost wholly broken up and abolished. The Jew has taken its place. Just as it is impossible for the Russian to shake off the Jewish yoke by exerting his own powers, so, too, it is impossible for the Jew to keep this formidable State in existence for any long period of time. He himself is by no means an organizing element, but rather a 500 ferment of decomposition. This colossal Empire in the East is ripe for dissolution. And the end of the Jewish domination in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a State. We are chosen by Destiny to be the witnesses of a catastrophe which will afford the strongest confirmation of the nationalist theory of race.
Germany should have been alive to the fact that such a goal could have been reached only by war, and the prospect of war should have been faced with calm and collected determination. The whole system of alliances should have been envisaged and valued from that standpoint. If new territory were to be acquired in Europe it must have been mainly at Russia’s cost, and once again the new German Empire should have set out on its march along the same road as was formerly trodden by the Teutonic Knights, this time to acquire soil for the German plough by means of the German sword and thus provide the nation with its daily bread.
HITLER’S PLANS FOR THE EAST:
I see there the greatest possibilities for the creation of an empire of world-wide importance. My plan is that we should take profits on whatever comes our way. But I insist on the fact that it's on our own soil that we must organize the production of whatever is vitally essential. The countries that work in harmony with us will be associated with all the positive contributions they can make. All deliveries of machines, even if they're made abroad, will have to pass through a German middleman, in such a way that Russia will be supplied with no means of production whatsoever, except of absolute necessities
The basic policy is exploitation of the Slavic population in combination with their eventual replacement by ethnic Germans.
We must take care to prevent a military power from ever again establishing itself on this side of the Urals, for our neigh bours to the West would always be allied with our neighbors to the East. That's how the French once made common cause with the Turks, and now the English are behaving in the same fashion with the Soviets. When I say, on this side of the Urals, I mean a line running two or three hundred kilometers east of the Urals. It should be possible for us to control this region to the East with two hundred and fifty thousand men plus a cadre Of good administrators. Let's learn from the English, who, with two hundred and fifty thousand men in all, including fifty thousand soldiers, govern four hundred million Indians. This space in Russia must always be dominated by Germans.
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the under dogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to cover the entire occupied country. All Germans living in the eastern territories must remain in personal contact with these strong-points. The whole must be most carefully organized to conform with the long-term policy of German colonization, and our colonizing penetration must be constantly progressive, until it reaches the stage where our own colonists far outnumber the local inhabitants.
Continued:
It is not by taking over the miserable Russian hovels that we shall establish ourselves as masters in the East. The German colonies must be organized on an altogether higher plane. We have never before driven forward into empty spaces. The German people have absorbed both northern and southern Austria, and the original inhabitants are still there; but they were Sorb-Wends, members of basic European stock, with nothing in common with the Slavs.
The struggle for the hegemony of the world will be decided in favor of Europe by the possession of the Russian space. Thus Europe will be an impregnable fortress, safe from all threat of blockade.
Apparently he does it for the safety of Europe (altruistic much?)
Asia,, what a disquieting reservoir of men ! The safety of Europe will not be assured until we have driven Asia back behind the Urals. No organized Russian State must be allowed to exist west of that line. They are brutes, and neither Bolshevism nor Tsarism makes any difference—they are brutes in a state of nature. The danger would be still greater if this space were to be Mongolised. Suddenly a wave comes foaming down from Asia and surprises a Europe benumbed by civilization and deceived by the illusion of collective security! Since there is no natural protection against such a flood, we must meet it with a living wall. A permanent state of war on the Eastern front will help to form a sound race of men, and will prevent us from relapsing into the softness of a Europe thrown back upon itself.
Hitler On The Colonial Treatment of Slavs by Germans:
Total segregation between the Germans and the Slavs:
The German made himself detested everywhere in the world, because wherever he showed himself he began to play the teacher. It's not a good method of conquest. Every people has its customs, to which it clings, and nobody wants lessons from us. The sense of duty, as we understand it, is not known amongst the Russians. Why should we try to inculcate this notion into them? The German colonist ought to live on handsome, spacious farms. The German services will be lodged in marvelous buildings, the governors in palaces. Beneath the shelter of the administrative services, we shall gradually organize all that is indispensable to the maintenance of a certain standard of living. Around the city, to a depth of thirty to forty kilometers, we shall have a belt of handsome villages connected by the best roads. What exists beyond that will be another world, in which we mean to let the Russians live as they like. It is merely necessary that we should rule them. In the event of a revolution, we shall only have to drop a few bombs on their cities, and the affair will be liquidated. Once a year we shall lead a troop of Kirghizes through the capital of the Reich, in order to strike their imaginations with the size of our monuments. What India was for England, the territories of Russia will be for us. If only I could make the German people understand what this space means for our future!
Even these village communities must be organized in a manner which precludes any possibility of fusion with neighboring communities; for example, we must avoid having one solitary church to satisfy the religious needs of large districts, and each village must be made into an independent sect, worshipping God in its own fashion. If some villages as a result wish to practice black magic, after the fashion of negroes or Indians, we should do nothing to hinder them. In short, our policy in the wide Russian spaces should be to encourage any and every form of dissension and schism.
Advocates against being soft towards Slavs and improving their infrastructure.
The greatest possible mistake we could make would be to take the local population too much under the wing of the State ; and to avoid all danger of our own people becoming too soft-hearted and too humane towards them, we must keep the German colonies strictly separated from the local inhabitants. Germans will in no circumstances live in a Ukrainian town. If essential, it will be better to put Germans in barracks outside a town than to allow them to live inside it. Otherwise, sooner or later, the process of cleaning up and improving the town will inevitably start; and Russian and Ukrainian towns are not in any circumstances to be improved or made more habitable. It is not our mission to lead the local inhabitants to a higher standard of life; and our ultimate object must be to build towns and villages exclusively for Germans and absolutely separate from Russian or Ukrainian towns. The houses to be constructed for the Germans must in no respect resemble those of the Russians, and lime-plaster and thatched roofs will not be used.
Keeping the Slavs underdeveloped, disorganized and backwards must be the official colonial policy of Germany:
As far as we are concerned, we, too, must avoid over enthusiasm in our Eastern territories; we must not try too ardently to impose our own German ideas of personal cleanliness on the local inhabitants and attack them daily with curry comb and polish. It really does not matter to us whether they wash and sweep their houses daily; we are not their overseers, all we are there for is to promote our own interests. The life of the German colonists must therefore be kept as far separate from that of the local inhabitants as is possible. In the pubs in which the natives spit all over the shop no German must be allowed to enter. The Germans must have their own pubs, from which the natives will be excluded. Then the locals can spit away to their hearts' content. By leaving the local inhabitants to their own devices and by not interfering with their local customs, we create the most favorable atmosphere for the creation of purely and exclusively German settlements; and the easiest way of preventing any fusion between the German and the native population is to encourage the latter to adhere to their own ways and discourage them from apeing ours
The Russian space is our India. Like the English, we shall rule this empire with a handful of men. It would be a mistake to claim to educate the native. All that we could give him would be a half-knowledge—just what's needed to conduct a revolution!
It's not a mere chance that the inventor of anarchism was a Russian. Unless other peoples, beginning with the Vikings, had imported some rudiments of organization into Russian humanity, the Russians would still be living like rabbits. One cannot change rabbits into bees or ants. These insects have the faculty of living in a state of society—but rabbits haven't.
One thing which it is essential to organize in the Russian territories is an efficient system of communications, which is vital both to the rational economic exploitation of the country and to the maintenance of control and order. The local in habitants must therefore be taught our highway code, but beyond that I really do not see the need for any further instruction.
The Slavs should not be looked after even medically:
In the field of public health there is no need whatsoever to extend to the subject races the benefits of our own knowledge. This would result only in an enormous increase in local populations, and I absolutely forbid the organization of any sort of hygiene or cleanliness crusades in these territories. Compulsory vaccination will be confined to Germans alone, and the doctors in the German colonies will be there solely for the purpose of looking after the German colonists.
The Russians don't grow old. They scarcely get beyond fifty or sixty. What a ridiculous idea to vaccinate them. In this matter, we must resolutely push aside our lawyers and hygienic experts. No vaccination for the Russians, and no soap to get the dirt off them. But let them have all the spirits and tobacco they want. Anyway, some serious scientists are against vaccination.
Nice way to wrap this up:
We shan't settle in the Russian towns, and we'll let them fall to pieces without intervening. And, above all, no remorse on this subject! We're not going to play at children's nurses; we're absolutely without obligations as far as these people are concerned. To struggle against the hovels, chase away the fleas, provide German teachers, bring out newspapers—very little of that for us! We'll confine ourselves, perhaps, to setting up a radio transmitter, under our control. For the rest, let them know just enough to understand our highway signs, so that they won't get themselves run over by our vehicles!
Active Prevention of Education:
I am not a partisan, either, of a university at Kiev. It's better not to teach them to read. They won't love us for tormenting them with schools. Even to give them a loco motive to drive would be a mistake. And what stupidity it would be on our part to proceed to a distribution of land ! In spite of that, we'll see to it that the natives live better than they've lived hitherto. We'll find amongst them the human material that's indispensable for tilling the soil. We'll supply grain to all in Europe who. need it. The Crimea will give us its citrus fruits, cotton and rubber (100,000 acres of plantation would be enough to ensure our independence). The Pripet marshes will keep us supplied with reeds. We'll supply the Ukrainians with scarves, glass beads and everything that colonial peoples like. The Germans—this is essential—will have to constitute amongst themselves a closed society, like a fortress. The least of our stable-lads must be superior to any native.
Above all, nobody must let loose the German schoolmaster on the Eastern territories ! That would be a sure way to lose at once the pupils he'd be given, and the parents of these pupils. The ideal solution would be to teach this people an elementary kind of mimicry. One asks less of them than one does of the deaf and dumb. No special books for them ! The radio will be enough to give them the essential information. Of music, they can have as much as they want. They can practice listening to the tap running. I'm against entrusting them with any work that calls for the least mental effort. Just tell me how Russia has requited Europe for the European culture she has imported! They used it to invent anarchism. The more they're allowed to loll in peace, the happier these people are. Any other attitude will have the result of awakening ferocious enemies against us. The logic of our pedagogues would entail the building of a university at Kiev. That will be their first discovery. In any case, I don't believe there's any sense in teaching men anything, in a general way, beyond what they need to know. One overloads them without interesting either them or anybody else. It's better to awaken men's instinct for beauty. That was what the Greeks considered the essential thing. To-day people persist in cramming children with a host of unrelated ideas.
It will be the duty of our Commissars alone to supervise and direct the economy of the captured territories, and what I have just said applies equally to every form of organization. Above all, we don't want a horde of schoolmasters to descend suddenly on these territories and force education down the throats of subject races. To teach the Russians, the Ukrainians and the Kirghiz to read and write will eventually be to our own disadvantage; education will give the more intelligent among them an opportunity to study history, to acquire an historical sense and hence to develop political ideas which cannot but be harmful to our interests. A loud-speaker should be installed in each village, to provide them with odd items of news and, above all, to afford distraction. What possible use to them would a knowledge of politics or economics be? There is also no point in broadcasting any stories of their past history—all the villagers require is music, music and plenty of it. Cheerful music is a great incentive to hard work; give them plenty of opportunities to dance, and the villagers will be grateful to us. The soundness of these views is proved by our experience at home during the time of the Weimar Republic.
Finally, elementary instruction in reading and writing in German will complete the course. Mathematics and such like are quite unnecessary. In setting up the educational system, the same principles apply to both Eastern territories and any other colonies. We do not want any of this enlightenment nonsense propagated by an advance guard of parsons ! What is the use of talking about progress to people like that?
The Great Replacement of Slavs with Germans:
Here he outlines the basic logic for the Great Replacement against Slavs:
In old times Europe was confined to the southern part of the Greek peninsula. Then Europe became confused with the borders of the Roman Empire. If Russia goes under in this war, Europe will stretch eastwards to the limits of Germanic colonization. In the Eastern territories I shall replace the Slav geographical titles by German names. The Crimea, for example, might be called Gothenland. Here and there one meets amongst the Arabs men with fair hair and blue eyes. They're the descendants of the Vandals who occupied North Africa. The same phenomenon in Castille and Croatia. The blood doesn't disappear. We need titles that will establish our rights back over two thousand years.
The real frontier is the one that separates the Germanic world from the Slav world. It's our duty to place it where we want it to be. If anyone asks us where we obtain the right to extend the Germanic space to the East, we reply that, for a nation, her awareness of what she represents carries this right with it. It's success that justifies everything. The reply to such a question can only be of an empirical nature. It's inconceivable that a higher people should painfully exist on a soil too narrow for it, whilst amorphous masses, which contribute nothing to civilization, occupy infinite tracts of a soil that is one of the richest in the world. We painfully wrest a few meters from the sea, we torment ourselves cultivating marshes—and in the Ukraine an inexhaustibly fertile soil, with a thickness, in places, often meters of humus, lies waiting for us. We must create conditions for our people that favor its multiplication, and we must at the same time build a dike against the Russian flood. If this war had not taken place, the Reich would scarcely have increased its population during the next ten years, but the Russian population would have grown vigorously.
In comparison with the beauties accumulated in Central Germany, the new territories in the East seem to us like a desert. Flanders, too, is only a plain—but of what beauty! This Russian desert, we shall populate it. The immense spaces of the Eastern Front will have been the field of the greatest battles in history. We'll give this country a past. We'll take away its character of an Asiatic steppe, we'll Europeanize it. With this object, we have undertaken the construction of roads that will lead to the southernmost point of the Crimea and to the Caucasus. These roads will be studded along their whole length with German towns, and around these towns our colonists will settle.
As for the two or three million men whom we need to accomplish this task, we'll find them quicker than we think. They'll come from Germany, Scandinavia, the Western countries and America. I shall no longer be here to see all that, but in twenty years the Ukraine will already be a home for twenty million inhabitants besides the natives. In three hundred years, the country will be one of the loveliest gardens in the world. As for the natives, we'll have to screen them carefully. The Jew, that destroyer, we shall drive out. As far as the population is concerned, I get a better impression in White Russia than in the Ukraine.
Later on he admits that the Bolshevik Revolution was good for Germany because it gave him a perfect excuse to genocide, enslave and replace the indigenous Slavic populations which fell under Bolshevism:
The Bolshevik domination in European Russia was, when all is said, merely a preparation (which lasted twenty years) for the German domination. Prussia of the time of Frederick the Great resembled the Eastern territories that we are now in process of conquering.
The Jews must pack up, disappear from Europe. Let them go to Russia. Where the Jews are concerned, I'm devoid of all sense of pity. They'll always be the ferment that moves peoples one against the other. They sow discord everywhere, as much between individuals as between peoples.
Last passage reminded me of the Israeli Jews trying to send us the Palestinians.
Hitler’s Plan For The Destruction of Russian Cities and Geography:
The foundation of St. Petersburg by Peter the Great was a fatal event in the history of Europe; and St. Petersburg must therefore disappear utterly from the earth's surface. Moscow, too. Then the Russians will retire into Siberia.
The Finns have but one desire—to keep East Karelia, and to see St. Petersburg disappear from the face of the earth. Whoever occupies St. Petersburg controls the Baltic. The presence of a second Great Power in the Baltic would be intolerable for us, too, for it would enable it to swamp the whole sea with mines. In this case we must revert to the practice of ancient days, and St. Petersburg must be razed to the ground. I was furious when the Air Force were reluctant to attack the place from their bases in Kiev. One day, it has got to be done, otherwise the Russians will return and try to set up a Government there.
Since there is a question of the future of Leningrad, I reply that, for me, Leningrad is doomed to decay. As one of the officers to whom I awarded the Oak Leaves was saying recently, famine has already reduced the population of Leningrad to two millions. If one thinks that, according to the report of the Turkish Ambassador in Russia, the city of the diplomats itself no longer offers anything decent to eat; and if one knows, too, that the Russians are continuing to eat the meat of broken down horses, it's not difficult to imagine that the population of Leningrad will rapidly diminish. The bombs and artillery fire have contributed their share to the city's destruction. In future the Neva will have to serve as the frontier between Finland and ourselves. May the ports and naval dockyards of Leningrad decay in their turn ! As a matter of fact, there can be only one master in the Baltic, which must be an inland sea of Germany's. That's why we must see to it there's no room for an important port on the periphery of our Reich. The development of our own ports and those of the Baltic countries will amply suffice to cover our maritime needs, so that we shall be well able to dispense with the port of Leningrad, which in any case is blocked by ice for half the year.
The beauties of the Crimea, which we shall make accessible by means of an autobahn—for us Germans, that will be our Riviera. Crete is scorching and dry. Cyprus would be lovely, but we can reach the Crimea by road. Along that road lies Kiev! And Croatia, too, a tourists' paradise for us. I expect that after the war there will be a great upsurge of rejoicing. Better than the railway, which has something impersonal about it, it's the road that will bring peoples together. What progress in the direction of the New Europe! Just as the autobahn has caused the inner frontiers of Germany to disappear, so it will abolish the frontiers of the countries of Europe. To those who ask me whether it will be enough to reach the Urals as a frontier, I reply that for the present it is enough for the frontier to be drawn back as far as that. What matters is that Bolshevism must be exterminated. In case of necessity, we shall renew our advance wherever a new centre of resistance is formed. Moscow, as the centre of the doctrine, must disappear from the earth's surface, as soon as its riches have been brought to shelter. There's no question of our collaborating with the Muscovite proletariat. Anyhow, St. Petersburg, as a city, is incomparably more beautiful than Moscow.
In the following paid-section, I will present Hitler’s views on the Russians—his assessment of their psychology, his judgment of the quality of their state, and even the grievances he carried from childhood. Hitler’s fixation on Russia and Russians was profound, arguably rivaling his obsession with the Jews; accordingly, this section will be quite extensive (even after multiple cuts).
Following that I will present Hitler’s thoughts on Western Slavs like Poles and Czechs. It will also be relatively big (I browsed for extra sources specifically for that). Then there will be quotes on smaller Slavic groups. Finally I will end with multiple quotes of Hitler gushing over Stalin.
Anyway, here is a funny teaser:
and…
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