Eastern Europe’s Post WWII Fate
German and Russian Plans for Eastern Europe early in World War II
Both assuming eventual victory, early in the war the Nazi German and Communist Russian governments analyzed and began to implement plans for Eastern Europe
During World War II, Eastern Europe’s post-war fate was sealed even before the German onslaught had been stymied by the Russian military’s manpower of the Red Army. Both countries had very different visions for the final disposition of the Eastern European nations. The Germans saw the area as land and resources for the German people, and the Russians saw the area as a ‘zone of satellites’ for the expansion of communism and as a buffer against future western aggression. Both combatants looked toward Eastern Europe for the economic advantages it could offer in oil and agriculture. In any case, either side winning meant the lives of the Eastern Europeans would be much different from anything they had planned for themselves.
German Nazi Policy
Before the war had begun, German policy called for the east to become Lebensraum, or ‘living space’ for the German people. Eastern Europe was to be absorbed into the German Third Reich. Nations that were currently allied with the Nazis would eventually have their sovereignty disbanded. Nazi policies concerning ‘the final solution’ of the Jewish populations, elderly, and mentally ill meant death. The populations that survived a forced German starvation and ‘the final solution’ were to become workers for the German people or, as in most, relocated further east. These populations were to also become subjects for medical testing, and sterilization was to become standard practice for the prevention of reproduction once the war was over. The Nazis would use the people until they were not needed, slowly committing genocide. In Nazi eyes, the world would start to evolve into the master Aryan race with the elimination of the Slav and Jewish peoples. There would be a new world order, a German order.
Early Russian Intentions
For the Russians, history was in repeat mode and they were again at war with the Germanic peoples. After recovering from the initial shock of the German invasion, the Russian government began to plan for their world after the victory over the invaders. In Gerhard L. Weinberg’s grand work, A World at Arms (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), Weinberg offered a presumption about the Russian intentions, in that the Eastern Europeans would ‘be organized and controlled’ as buffer states against future invasion from the west, also stating the Stalin may have been unclear in these early stages of the war as to the subject of Eastern Europe. The Russians did know, however, that bases would be established in Romania. Allowing for only minimizing changes with the Polish border, Stalin expected to keep those parts of Poland granted by treaty with Hitler in 1939.
With the Russian Army bearing the brunt of Nazi Germany’s military might, the Allies, Britain and the United States, did not place political pressure upon the Russian government to allow for democracy within Eastern Europe. The Allied main objective was the defeat of Germany, and if that goal meant keeping the Russians from a concluding a separate peace with Germany, Roosevelt and Churchill were willing to make concessions to Stalin. The results caused by this would be the establishment of communist nations in Eastern Europe.
