Generalplan Ost (GPO) was the political/strategic plan for the occupation and governance of Eastern Europe. It is notable for its brutality, but also as an example of how the ideal Nazi state was supposed to operate after the war. The entire concept is grotesque and I ought to emphasise that much of the terminology comes from Nazi doctrine - for example their classification of what constitutes racial identity.

GPO was born out of the notion of Liebensraum “Living Space’, a nationalistic doctrine which had existed in Germany since the 1890s, but which was fundamental to Nazi doctrine. The idea was that Germany should expand to the East in order to seize resources and improve Germany’s industrial and agricultural base. Under the Nazis this was combined with the notion of the German peoples’ natural superiority to produce a doctrine which stated that Germany was entitled to occupy Eastern Europe and demanded the extermination, or enslavement, of inferior peoples in those lands.

GPO provided for the near eradication of the people of Eastern Europe with the establishment of garrison towns populated by Germans and served by an underclass of the remaining indigenous population. The intent was to remove at least 75% of the population, but some races were singled out for special treatment as they were considered to be especially inferior. Extermination was to be achieved through war, starvation, deliberate neglect and organised killings. Vast numbers of people were to be deported East of the Urals, virtually a death sentence in its own right. It was expected that over 20 million people would be killed as part of the plan, but upwards of 40 million people would be removed either by extermination or displacement as they were not considered suitable for Germanisation. Around 14 million people would remain to make up the slave class to be dominated by 8 to 10 million Germans.

GPO specifically laid out actions over the next 20 to 30 years, but its early stages were enacted in Poland during the war. Poles were quickly established as second class citizens and subjected to execution, deportation or humiliation. They were denied medical care, had education limited to an absolute minimum and had their children kidnapped for Germanisation so that the Polish nation, culture and race could be destroyed entirely and the land settled by German colonists. It was this doctrine that led to the war against Russia being declared a war of extermination: the Wehrmacht were exempted from any war crimes committed on the Eastern Front and no thought was to be given to protecting the civilian population from the worst excesses of warfare.