Behind these proposals for “broadening the blood base” there once again cropped up that old fear of the extinction of the Aryan, of the second “expulsion from paradise” that Hitler had conjured up in Mein Kampf.82 But if it should prove possible, he ranted, to keep the Reich “racially high and pure, it would gain a crystalline hardness and be unassailable.” Then the Germans’ greater force, boldness, and barbaric vitality would once again come into their own, all false religions of reason and humanity would go down to destruction, and natural order would triumph. As the “most gluttonous predator in world history” National Socialism had Nature and her promises on its side. And with that strangely distorted sense of reality he had, so that his own visions always seemed already within his grasp, he saw growing up in a few years, within those Eastern “nurseries of Germanic blood,” the longed-for type of human being, “regular master personalities,” as he enthusiastically described them, “viceroys.”
Simultaneously, he backed the efforts sponsored chiefly by Himmler and Bormann to establish new legislation concerning marriage. Their argument ran that the population shortage after the war would tend to get more serious, since 3 or 4 million women would necessarily have to remain unmarried. As Hitler remarked, such losses translated into divisions “are intolerable for our people.” In order to make it possible for these women to have children, and at the same time to provide “decent, physically and psychically healthy men of strong character” with the opportunity for increased reproduction, special arrangements would have to be made. A procedure for application and selection would enable such men “to enter a firm marital relationship not only with one woman, but with an additional one.”
These ideas were set forth in a memorandum by Bormann. Himmler supplemented them, suggesting, for example, that the privileged position of the first wife be secured by conferring upon her the title Domina, and that the right to enter a second marriage be reserved for the time being “as a high distinction for the heroes of the war, the bearers of the German Cross in gold, and the bearers of the Knight’s Cross.” Later, he explained, “it could be extended to the bearers of the Iron Cross First Class and to those who wear the silver and gold bar for close-quarters combat.” For, as Hitler was wont to say, “The greatest fighter deserves the most beautiful woman…. If the German man is to be unreservedly ready to die as a soldier, he must have the freedom to love unreservedly. For struggle and love belong together. The philistine should be glad if he gets whatever is left.”83
Such speculations were carried even further within the top leadership of the SS. There was strong sentiment, for instance, in favor of mandatory divorce for marriages that remained childless for five years. Moreover, “all single and married women who do not yet have four children shall be obliged up to the age of thirty-five years to have four children begotten upon them by racially unexceptionable German men. Whether these men are married is of no consequence. Every family which already has four children must release the husband for this operation.”84
The Eastern settlement program was, however, also intended to provide a solution for Europe’s national and ethnic disputes. The Crimea, for example, which was the favorite target of the settlement plans, was to be “completely cleansed,” as Hitler put it, and under the ancient Greek name of Tauria, or even Gotenland (Gothland), was to be incorporated directly into the Reich. Simferopol would be renamed Gotenburg and Sevastopol Theoderichhafen.85 According to one of the projects, that attractive peninsula, which over the millennia had attracted Scythians and Huns, Goths and Tatars, was to be transformed into a “great German spa.” Others envisioned a “German Gibraltar” to dominate the Black Sea. As prospective settlers, the 140,000 persons of German blood living in Rumanian Transnistria were considered, and for a while some 2,000 Palestine Germans also haunted memoranda and files. But above all it was the population of South Tyrol on whom the new-order fanatics who were doing the planning for the Crimea lighted. Gauleiter Frauenfeld, who had been appointed commissioner general for the Crimea, suggested transporting the South Tyrolese to the peninsula in a body. Hitler termed that idea “extraordinarily good.” He thought “the Crimea extremely well suited in respect to climate and landscape to South Tyrolean nationals.” Besides, it was “a land of milk and honey compared with the present region settled by the South Tyrolese.” Transportation of the South Tyrolese to the Crimea would not impose any special difficulties physically or psychologically. “They need only sail down a German river, the Danube, and they’re already there.” Frauenfeld also had the idea of building a new metropolis for the peninsula in the Yaila Mountains.
Although a Führer’s directive had been issued as early as the beginning of July, 1942, to evacuate the Russian populace from the Crimea, all the resettlement plans became entangled in the confusion of authorities and the additional chaos produced by the events of the war. Extensive resettlement took place only in Ingria (Ingermanland), the country between Lake Peipus and Lake Onega, which had been designated as the first resettlement area because, according to the Lebensraum specialists, it had preserved a comparatively strong component of Germanic blood in the population. Early in 1942 the Finnish government was informed that it could have “its” Ingers back. And in fact up to the spring of 1944, when the area was lost again, some 65,000 persons were moved to Finland. From this single example we can see in what manner the regime would have carried out its vision of a new order. For it solved a nonexistent minorities problem and created a new one in Finland.86
Hitler’s lust for expansion, however, was not directed solely toward the East. He had repeatedly averred, even after the war broke out, that he desired no conquests in the West. But this highmindedness soon came into collision with his inability to give back anything he had once obtained. No one could blame him, he observed during the period when victory seemed very near, if he took the position: he who has, keeps! “For anyone who gives away what he has is committing a sin, since he is alienating that part of this earth that he as the stronger has conquered with effort. For the earth is like a trophy cup and therefore tends always to fall into the hands of the strongest. For tens of thousands of years there has been a tugging back and forth on this earth.”87
Soon his ambitions went far beyond all the war aims conceived by völkisch and Pan-German circles. His “Great Germanic Empire of the German Nation” embraced nearly the entire continent of Europe in one unitary, totalitarian, and economically independent imperium. The individual members were to be reduced to vassals whose one purpose was to serve his aspirations for world power. “Old Europe has outlived its usefulness,” Hitler is reported to have said in a conversation with Slovak President Tiso. He saw Germany in the position of Rome poised for the overpowering of the other city-states of Latium. Occasionally he spoke of Europe’s “rubbish heap of small countries” that he intended to clean out. Alongside America, the British Empire, and the Greater East Asian bloc to be formed by Japan, Europe—under the leadership of Germany—would constitute the fourth of those economic empires into which he envisioned the world of the future as divided. For centuries, in his view, the old Continent had been able to solve its overpopulation problems, or at least to cover them up, with the aid of overseas possessions. But with the colonial age coming to its end, only the thinly populated East could offer a way out. “If the Ukraine were administered by European methods,” he declared, “it would be possible to get three times its present production out of it. We could supply Europe without limit with what can be produced there. The East has everything in unlimited quantities: iron, coal, oil, and a soil that can grow everything Europe needs: grain, linseed, rubber, cotton, and so on.”