While scholars of World War II largely agree that the conflict as a whole embodied the

principles of total war, scholars also largely agree that combat on the Eastern Front was far more

brutal than combat on the Western Front. More combatants died on the Eastern Front than in all

other theaters combined, and an estimated fourteen percent of the Soviet population died over the

course of the war.1 If total war strategies were used on both Fronts, however, why was the

Eastern Front so much deadlier? The answer lies in the motivations of the Nazi high command

and its regular soldiers. Although Hitler viewed the West as his enemy and sought to expand

German territory westward, his plans for western Europe never involved the extermination or

subjugation of the entire population. In the East, however, Hitler had far more racist and

ideological motivations that trickled down through the ranks and ultimately impacted the

behavior of his soldiers. Widely-held racist beliefs regarding lebensraum, Slavic culture, and

Judeo-Bolshevism led ordinary Nazi soldiers to view war on the Eastern Front as a territorial and

ideological conquest that necessitated extreme violence.

I. Blood and Soil: The Violence of Lebensraum

Nazi propaganda regarding lebensraum and the struggle of the German people ultimately

led ordinary soldiers to view war on the Eastern Front as a territorial conquest that needed to

succeed at any cost, precipitating mass violence. Beginning in the 1930s when he assumed the

position of Reich Chancellor, Hitler began to advocate the mass resettlement of the German

people in the fertile lands east of Germany.2 In a meeting with commanders shortly after his

appointment, Hitler argued that Germany could only be saved from wide-spread unemployment

by a plan to expand the living space, or lebensraum, of the German people.3 During the

1
Edward Cohn, “Introduction to the Course,” Class lecture, The Nazi-Soviet Conflict on World War II’s Eastern
Front (January 23, 2019).
2
Richard Bessel, Nazism and War (London: Phoenix, 2013), 35.
3
Ibid.
 Millender 2

following years, Hitler’s plans to expand Eastward and “germanize the soil” took shape, and

gained traction with military and party leaders alike.4 The plans for lebensraum were not, as

historian Richard Bessel puts it, “a matter of Hitler’s ranting” or a “vague metaphor for Nazi war

aims”, but were rather a “central preoccupation” of the Nazi leadership.5 Nazi leaders believed

that Germany was over-populated and therefore needed to expand its territory in order to protect

the future of the Aryan race. Moreover, Hitler also perpetuated the idea that if Germans could not

be farmers, they would perish.6 In tying together the concepts of lebensraum and the survival of

the German people, Hitler and the military leadership laid the groundwork for Nazi soldiers to

view a war on the Eastern Front as a territorial conquest that would save the German people.

The importance of lebensraum and its connection to the survival of the German people

were not just ideals held by German military leadership; through the Nazi’s program of

ideological education prior to the war, the importance of pushing eastward in order to save the

German race became more widespread. During the 1930s, the Nazis created a large host of civic

and paramilitary groups that all ages of German men and women could join. German men could

join the SA, Labor Service or the German Labor Front.7 Women could join the National Socialist

Women’s Organization or the German Women’s Enterprise, and even children could join the

Hitler Youth or the League of German Girls.8 Through these organizations, the Nazis were able

to educate the German people and “school them in Nazi ideology” to “prepare them for the great

tasks ahead.”9 According to historian Ben Shepherd, the doctrines of Nazi military and

ideological thinking, hammered into them through both military training and participation in

4
Ibid., 40 – 59.
5
Ibid., 59.
6
Ibid., 61.
7
Ibid., 65, 67.
8
Ibid., 66.
9
Ibid., 67.
 Millender 3

Nazi programming, led to the brutality of Nazi soldiers.10 By the time Germany invaded the

USSR, Nazi leadership had prepared their soldiers to view the fighting as territorially critical to

the survival of the German race, making the fighting extremely brutal.

II. Anti-Russian Sentiment and Brutality on the Eastern Front

Nazi propaganda regarding Slavic culture further led Nazi soldiers to view war on the

Eastern Front as a conquest that necessitated violence to win. General hatred of communists and

Slavic peoples were long instilled within German troops, even before Hitler came to power.

After the first World War, prominent German generals spoke widely about the “bestial cruelty”

and general backwardness of Russian soldiers.11 Prior to the invasion of the USSR, the Nazis

built on these beliefs to paint Soviets as the direct enemy of the German people, racially

backwards, and barbaric.12 In pamphlets distributed to troops, the Wehrmacht’s propaganda

department described Soviet soldiers as “the embodiment of Satanic and insane hatred against

the whole of noble humanity” and wrote that comparing communists to beasts would be an insult

to animals.13 “The Guidelines for the Conduct of Troops in Russia” further underscored the idea

that troops needed to viciously attack the “animalistic and dangerous” Soviet troops. In these

secret guidelines, German troops were told to carry out “ruthless and energetic measures” against

the Bolshevik population, the “mortal enemy of the National Socialist German People.”14

Through subtle propaganda and direct orders, the Nazis were able to instill in the minds of troops

that war on the Eastern Front would entail a war to wipe out the ideological enemies of the

German state.

10
Benjamin V. Shepherd, War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Univ. Press, 2004), 28.
11
Ibid., 11 – 12.
12
Ibid., 20.
13
Ibid., 74.
14
Ibid., 53.
 Millender 4

The degree to which these propaganda campaigns were successful becomes clear when

one examines how soldiers actually viewed and treated Soviet citizens. Soldiers in the field,

including a Lieutenant Beck of the 221st Security Division, described Soviet fighters with

dehumanizing language; he described the Soviet prisoners he saw as a “tattered, ragged,

almighty mishmash of European and Asiatic races…two worlds are colliding, one of cleanliness

and order, the other filthy and chaotic in every respect.”15 Nazis even described Soviet civilians

in hateful language, writing that Russians exhibited a “primitiveness you can’t comprehend” and

that they were “beasts” with “animal-like expressions”.16 German troops thusly subjected Soviet

prisoners to completely inhumane treatment as prisoners of war. Over 300,000 Soviet prisoners

died in the first year of the war; many POWs were shot, starved, or pushed to exhaustion.17 It is

important to understand that the policy of allowing Soviet prisoners to die was not a practical

consideration. Rather, “Red Army prisoners in German hands perished as a direct consequence

of Nazi racial doctrines, shared by the majority of the German officer corps, which wrote off

‘Slavs’ as expendable sub-humans.”18 Once convinced that Russian troops and civilians posed a

major threat to German survival, it was the logical next step for German troops to enact horrible

brutalities on Russians that they encountered. The violence meted out by German troops on

Russians was inevitable, given the views instilled in them by Nazi propaganda.

III. Violence and the Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism

In addition to building up a deep hatred of Soviets in preparation for Operation

Barbarossa, the Nazis also built on anti-Semitism and fears regarding the Jewish-Bolshevik

threat in order to make soldiers see the war as an ideological conquest. In the years after the

15
Ibid., 70.
16
Ibid., 78.
17
Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich At War (London: Penguin Books, 2009), 183 - 184.
18
Ibid., 185.
 Millender 5

Russian Revolution of 1917, anti-democratic and racist regimes all over Europe developed the

theory that Communism was the product of a Jewish conspiracy and that Jews were therefore

responsible for the crimes committed by communist regimes.19 Hitler was one of the largest

proponents of the theory, arguing that Jewish-Bolsheviks posed a huge threat to the German

nation. By the time the Nazis invaded Russia, Hitler had come to see the USSR as an

“ideological enemy that represented both an implacably hostile Judeo-Bolshevik system and, at

the same time, a reservoir of brutal Asiatic sub-humanity”.20 He also had come to believe that it

was the duty of the German people to rid the world of the Judeo-Bolshevik threat.21 These ideas

were not simply the rantings of a racist dictator, but were actually accepted on a wide basis in

Germany. During the years leading up to the war, the Nazis used the threat of Judeo-Bolshevism

to mobilize party members and win over Germans who had “hitherto kept their distance” from

the Nazi party.22 These ideas proliferated deep into German society, and when the Nazis invaded

the USSR, they precipitated a murderous campaign against Soviet Jews carried out in the name

of German security.

The belief that Jewish communists posed a threat to German security led German troops

to massacre and attack Jewish civilians on a massive scale during the first year of the war. In

cities and towns captured by German forces, Nazi soldiers singled out, tortured, and killed Jews

in the name of security.23 When Bialystok fell and Germans took over the city, troops burned the

beards of Jewish men, rounded up and shot Orthodox Jews, and set fire to a Synagogue filled

with Jewish men, women, and children.24 The Nazi high command justified the torture and

19
Paul Hanebrink, A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism (Cambridge Massachusetts:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018), 4.
20
Ibid., 84.
21
Ibid., 85.
22
Ibid., 90.
23
Shepherd, War in the Wild East, 64
24
Ibid.
 Millender 6

murder by arguing that Jews were likely to be partisans, intent on subverting the Germans.25 In

Bialystok and other cities, German soldiers not only assented to the racist and violent beliefs

imposed on them by upper command, but they also took the lead in carrying out violence against

Jews in the name of security against the Judeo-Bolshevik threat.26 Racism led ordinary German

soldiers to view their actions as part of a larger ideological battle that necessitated violence

against a group of sub-human plotters. Violence was a forgone conclusion once Germans became

convinced that the Judeo-Bolshevik threat was genuine.

IV. Conclusion

A proper understanding of the violence that characterized the Eastern Front and its

wellspring has the potential to completely revolutionize understandings of total warfare.

Traditionally, understandings of total war have involved the commitment of massive armed

forces, the complete mobilization of a country’s industry to support the war effort, the blurring of

the line between civilians and combatants, the radicalization of warfare, and even the lifting of

restraints on combat.27 Such a definition of total war, however, is not sufficient because it fails to

address the motivations of those involved in total war. As this paper has shown, racist ideology

led Nazi soldiers on the Eastern Front to approach the war with a unique brutality that went

beyond escalating the conflict and blurring the lines between civilians and combatants; in no

theater other than the Eastern theater did Nazi soldiers aim to completely decimate and eradicate

their enemies on the basis of ideology. The brutality of the Eastern Front and its wellspring

therefore suggest that historians must develop a new theory of total war, one that examines the

motivations of those involved in combat.

25
Hanebrink, A Specter Haunting Europe, 64
26
Ibid., 70.
27
Roger Chickering, Stig Förster, and Bernd Greiner, A World at Total War Global Conflict and the Politics of
Destruction, 1937-1945 (Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institutes, 2005), 2.
 Works Cited

Bessel, Richard. Nazism and War. London: Phoenix, 2013.

Chickering, Roger, Stig Förster, and Bernd Greiner. A World at Total War Global Conflict and

the Politics of Destruction, 1937-1945. Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institutes,

2005.

Cohn, Edward. “Introduction to the Course.” Class lecture, The Nazi-Soviet Conflict on World

War II’s Eastern Front from Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA, January 23, 2019.

Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich At War. London: Penguin Books, 2009.

Hanebrink, Paul. A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism. Cambridge

Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018.

Shepherd, Benjamin V. War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2004.