In their anti-Slavism against Russians the Nazis could actually refer back to several tropes and stereotypes that had been rather wide-spread in Germany from the 19th century on.

For this, it is important to understand that the German image of Russia in the 19th century and the Fin-de-Siecle had already been imbued with ambivalence. It is a bit of a simplification but the general narrative is that what for the French is civilization, for the German, it's Kultur (Culture), and in this matrix of Kultur, the popular imagination of Russia in Germany was that Russia was similar in this understanding (nekulturny – being uncultured – being one of the worst Russian pejoratives). At the same time, Russia in the German popular imagination also occupied a place of transition between Kultur Europe – white, civilized, an enlightened – and the Orient – foreign, despotic, and mysterious. While many a German noble married into Russia and while Russian literature and art was acknowledged in Germany as the expression of a sort of cultured soul of Russia, the country was also perceived as backward and "Asiatic" peoples. It's this juxtaposition, this place between Kultur and the East that captured German popular imagination in the late 19th and early 20th century.

What significantly changed this image into the more negative direction was World War One and its immediate aftermath. Despite being quite prosperous comparatively, it is important to remember that WWI was for many Germans and many other Europeans, the first time to travel somewhere outside of their country. Russia, or at least some of its territories did leave a deep impression on many German soldiers. While not so different from their country several decades before, the experience of the poverty and squalor many of the inhabitants of the Russian Empire lived in certainly skewered the German image of Russia.

But even more importantly was the Russian and subsequently Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Not only stoked by the fear of communism, German troops also experienced the Russian Civil War first hand, first in their occupation of Ukraine and the in the Baltics. The whole discourse that arose from these experiences was one that portrayed the Bolsheviks based on real and imagined cruelties as a horde of beasts, the striking force of Asian despotism, a faceless mass of Mongolians and other non-Europeans driven to brutality and cruelness by the Soviet Cheka and – in line with the imagination of many people in Tsarist Empire – the Jews.

Bolshevism was to become this discursive signifier of brutality and Asiatic cruelty, the destroyer of culture, civilization, and everything you me, and every good citizen holds dear. This was an idea that through real and imagined experiences of Soviet Republics in Munich and Budapest as well as the Freikorps – voluntary units fighting in the Baltics and Poland against Bolsheviks and others after the war had ended – spread incredibly fast. Bolshevism, seen as the product of an international Jewish conspiracy was regarded as using the Asiatic untermenschen of the Russian Empire to drive away any vestiges of Kultur Russia had ever had.

I can not emphasize enough how important this whole matrix of ideas was and how fast and throughout they penetrated German society and imagination when it came to Russia and the Bolsheviks. Even the German Social Democrats when arguing against what they saw as the "Bolshevization" of their revolution heavily relied on these specific tropes. This was how they and others portrayed Bolshevism: poster 1, poster 2

A aspect that the Nazis as part of the völkisch (racialist) movement brought new to the table and that is hugely important in further skewering the German image toward Russian Untermenschentum was the whole living space thing. They understood Russia as ruled by Jewish Bolshevists and using its primitive and brutal Slav population to spread their internationalist agenda. They further appealed to a mythical past and through it argued that history showed that the German was destined to rule the Slav. Starting with the Teutonic order, they saw it as their mission to gain living space in the East and to subjugate the Slavic population of the Soviet Union for they were historically destined to be the Germans' slaves and underlings.

While treating Slavs in essence as colonial peoples was a new element, the Nazis strongly relied on cultural tropes and stereotypes already present and amplified through the Bolschevism issue. This worked extremely well in certain segments of the German population. Johannes Hürter in his study of the Wehrmacht commanders of the attack of the Soviet Union conclusively demonstrates that they had previously already believed in these stereotypes and Hitler telling them to fight a war to destroy Bolshevism and fight a war of annihilation against the peoples of the Soviet Union, they too perceived this as a necessity in order to not fall prey to the "Asiatic" methods of the Bolshevists and to subjugate to Slavic people to their rightful place under the Germans' bootheel.

In terms of practical and murderous consequences this whole concept of "Slav-Bolshevik-Jew" and its association with stereotypes of the "Asiatic" – cruel, primitive, treacherous – resulted not only in the brutal treatment of all kinds of citizens of the Soviet Union, the wholesale murder of the Jews but also – and this tends to get overlooked – in the large scale murder of the Soviet Union's citizens from Central Asia. The Kommissarbefehl ordering the Einsatzgruppen and the Wehrmacht to shoot every political commissar, Bolschevik, and Jew they came across was also applied to Soviet citizens from the -stan countries, Mongolian etc. At least 100.000 Soviet soldiers from these places were killed by the Nazis immediately after they were captured. According to Wehrmachtgeneral Friedrich Paulus, this was done to "root out the Asiatic influences from European Kultur".

So, in short: While there always had been a certain ambivalence to how German popular imagination had viewed Russia, the First World War and especially the Bolshevik Revolution influenced this imaged negatively. Bolshevism perceived as the great destroyer of culture and civilization was seen as catapulting Russia back to its Asiatic roots. For the Nazis this as well as their idea that the Slavs natural place was under German domination was a main element in their narrative of the Russian Untermensch. And it worked, especially with people who had previously experienced fighting in Eastern Europe such as the Wehrmacht commanders.

Sources:

• Johannes Hürter: Hitlers Heerführer. Die Oberbefehlshaber der Wehrmacht im Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion.

• Robert Gerwarth: The Vanquished.

• Michael Kellogg: The Russian Roots of Nazism. White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945.

• Joachim Schröder: Der Erste Weltkrieg und der „jüdische Bolschewismus“. In: Gerd Krumeich (Hrsg.): Nationalsozialismus und Erster Weltkrieg.