A popular claim you see bandied about is that the Third Reich wanted to turn ‘Slavs into helots’ and thus ‘slaves’ (1) as well as ‘physically exterminate’ them. (2)
A good summary of this thesis was provided by Vladimir Karic in a 2019 post on the ‘Holocaust Social Archive’ group on Facebook where he claimed that:
‘Hitler’s “Generalplan Ost” meant genocide and ethnic slaying of the Slavs on a huge scale to free up “living space” for the Germans in their “march to the East.”
According to the plan, millions of Slavs would be transported to Siberia, other millions would be sterilized and enslaved in German homes and the rest would simply be killed.
These sterilized slaves would survive the longest, just enough to make the Germans “living space” comfortable, and with their death due to the inability to reproduce, the Slavs would disappear.’ (3)
I have already begun the process of translating the ‘Generalplan Ost’ documentation into English with explanatory commentary/notes that shows that this ‘interpretation’ of ‘Generalplan Ost’ – remember the ‘orthodox’ version summarized by Karic is actually a post-war re-construction of ‘Generalplan Ost’ from the 1950s and 1960s onwards using a small number of source documents not an actual documented plan – is completely contrary to the source documents that it is supposed to be based on. (4)
In addition I have also begun the process to debunking various ‘anti-Slavic quotes’ allegedly made by members of the Third Reich that are routinely trotted out as ‘evidence’ when in fact they are usually ripped out of their context and misrepresented as we have seen with the fake ‘The Fertility of the Slavs is Undesirable’ quote of 23rd July 1942 that is attributed to Martin Bormann but is in fact one Dr. Markull of the Eastern Ministry sarcastically parodying a letter from Bormann’s from 23rd July 1942 to his boss at the Eastern Ministry Georg Leibrandt on 19th August 1942. (5)
The idea that the Germans wanted to turn the Slavs into ‘helots’ and thus ‘slaves’ is – like the Bormann quote – popular but also complete nonsense.
The claim itself comes from an extremely out-of-context reading of Erhard Wetzel’s letter to Otto Brautigam – Georg Leibbrandt’s deputy at the Eastern Ministry – of 7th February 1942, which summarises one of the first planning meetings regarding ‘Generalplan Ost’ where the oft-quoted phrase ‘the Russians the position of the helots’ occurs.
Put in its original context Wetzel actually states (my translation from the original German):
‘Party comrade Girgensohn from the Reich Security Main Office then elaborated at length; stating that while a forced evacuation of the undesirable population in the Baltic states was extremely problematic and therefore unacceptable [as] even during the Tsarist era, Estonians, Latvians, and others had shown a tendency to emigrate voluntarily to the Russian territories if offered secure employment. He was convinced that much could still be achieved today through such voluntary resettlement. Experience has shown that it is impossible to establish an administration of the territories using Russian forces alone. Therefore – especially since German forces are in no way sufficient – it is necessary to work with the help of foreign nations.
He therefore considered it highly appropriate to integrate the racially undesirable members of the Baltic peoples into this society as a middle class. Those concerned would have to be well paid for their circumstances. Russification was hardly to be expected. B. K. Schulz then explained that he, too, had developed serious reservations about the forced evacuation from these countries to Siberia. One should try to achieve voluntary resettlement. Schubert also concurred with these statements. He explained that the Germans should have the position of the Spartans, the middle class consisting of Latvians, Estonians, and the like the position of the perioikoi, and the Russians the position of the helots.’ (6)
Schubert is here (7) agreeing with Thomas Girgensohn (8) and Bruno Schulz (9) and uses the example of Sparta to illustrate what he means about the transitional state of the newly German East: with racially suitable people (be they currently Balts, Russians, Belarussians or Germans) who have accepted Germanization forming the social and military elite (the Spartiates), the racially unsuitable population of the Baltics forming a well-paid middle class (the Perioikoi) and the racially unsuitable population of Russians (and presumably Belarussians) forming the working class (the Helots).
We should also note that throughout Wetzel’s 7th February 1942 letter the Germans are not sure just how racially suitable or unsuitable people are in the Baltic States and Western Belarus (this comes out even more strongly Wetzel’s 27th April 1942 memorandum) so they are working on worst case estimates, but they are also not referring to Russians or Belarussians as necessarily being ‘future helots’ but rather pointing out that only racially unsuitable Russians or Belarussians would be part of the future working class of Reichskommissariat Ostland until they were voluntarily transferred over the course of some thirty years to new self-governing national states under German supervision in and around Moscow and west of the Urals which again is heavily clarified in Wetzel’s 27th April 1942 memorandum.
It is worth noting that the Germans – in both Wetzel’s 7th February 1942 letter and his 27th April 1942 memorandum – discuss how the Czechs and Poles are also to be subject to Germanization and non-suitable individuals – of which the estimates are unclear and Wetzel makes it very clear that a massive racial survey would be required for concrete data at the end of his 7th February 1942 letter – (10) are to be voluntarily re-settled primarily using financial incentives into new nation states in and around the Urals over the course of thirty years and that forced deportation is agreed to not be a viable option by both the Eastern Ministry and the SS.
The point being that Schubert’s example of Sparta – where he used the popularly conceived (although inaccurate) tripartite division of Spartan society into Spartiates, Perioikoi and Helots (this ignores other groups in Spartan society like the Mothakes)- is not meant to be taken literally but rather is a way of explaining the temporary race-based class system the Germans envisioned in Reichskommissariat Ostland [aka western Belarus, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania] (Spartiates = Upper Class = Germans and Germanized Balts/Slavs, Perioikoi = Middle Class = Non-Germanic Balts, Helots = Working Class = Non-Germanic Slavs) while non-Germanic Balts and non-Germanic Slavs were incentivized to move to new national homelands further East.
It does not mean that the Germans envisioned the non-Germanic Balts/Slavs to be ‘future slaves’ but rather that they would form the middle and working classes of the new German East and gradually emigrate to new homelands further east as Germans and Germanized Balts/Slavs arrived and took over their roles in society over the course of thirty years (with financial incentivizes used as the primary lever for non-suitable Balts/Slavs to emigrate) as well as the opportunity (discussed in Wetzel’s 27th April 1942 memorandum) to emigrate to other countries such as those in Latin America.
Thus we can see that the claim that the Germans wanted to the Slavs to be ‘future helots’ and thus ‘they wanted to enslave’ is based on misrepresenting Wetzel’s 7th February 1942 letter to Otto Brautigam to make it seem like the Germans were looking to ‘enslave the Slavs’ which was quite the opposite of what they were doing if you but simply read the original source document (there is a reason they rarely translate these sorts of documents into English).
So no the Third Reich did not want to turn the Slavs into literal ‘helots’ and thus ‘slaves’!
References
(1) For example: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/the-fate-of-hitlers-slavic-allies-and-collaborators-in-case-of-axis-victory-in-ww2.368839/
(2) For example: https://studenttheses.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/75106
(3) https://www.facebook.com/groups/HSA.Archive/posts/984620841917040/; similar summaries are also seen here: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/role-of-slavery-in-a-victorious-nazi-germany.527996/
(4) On this please see this article: https://karlradl14.su bstack.com/p/source-texts-on-generalplan-ost-1
(5) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/is-the-martin-bormann-the-fertility
(6) The original document is reproduced in: Helmut Krausnick, 1958, ‘Der Generalplan Ost’, Vierteljahreshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 3, p. 296; for my translation with explanatory notes and commentary please see: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/source-texts-on-generalplan-ost-1
(7) SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer (Captain): head of Section 3 (Race) of Department I (Race and Settlement) in the Office of Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Nationhood (RKFDV).
(8) SA-Brigadefuhrer: a Baltic German, a friend of Heinrich Himmler’s and a member of the SS-Ahnenerbe. Girgensohn also acted as a liaison between the SA and SS.
(9) Bruno Kurt Schultz: SS-Standartenfuhrer (Colonel) was an anthropologist who was a Professor of Racial Biology at the University of Berlin; he had been the head of Department I (the Racial Office).
(10) ‘At the end of the meeting, there was unanimous agreement that the settlement of Germans could only proceed by first settling the nearest areas – such as the Warthegau – and that, with regard to the eastern territories, a thorough examination of the population had to be carried out beforehand.’
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