"THE NEW ORDER" HITLER"

" The year 1941 will be, I am convinced, the historical year of a great European New Order. ”

—Adolf Hitler-

The term Neuordnung originally had a different and more limited meaning than in its present usage. It is typically translated as New Order, but a more correct translation would actually be more akin to re-structurization. When it was used in Germany during the Third Reich-era it namely referred specifically to the Nazis’ desire to essentially redraw the contemporary state borders within Europe, thereby changing the then-existing geopolitical structures which were in place at the time. In the same sense it is also still used to denote similar periods of geographic re-orderings of the international political order such as the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the Vienna Congress in 1815, and the Allied victory in 1945. The complete phrase which was used by the Nazi establishment was actually die Neuordnung Europas (the New Order of Europe), for which Neuordnung was merely a shorthand.

According to the Nazi government this goal was pursued by Germany to secure a fair rearrangement of territory for the common benefit of a new, economically integrated Europe[5], which in Nazi terminology meant the continent of Europe with the exclusion of the "Asiatic" Soviet Union. Nazi racist views regarded the "Judeo-Bolshevist" Soviet state both as a criminal institution which needed to be destroyed as well as a barbarian place as yet lacking any actual culture that would give it a “European” character. Neuordnung was therefore hardly ever used in reference to Soviet Russia since theoretically there weren’t even any actual structures that could be re-organized along German designs.

The actual objective was however to ensure a state of total post-war continental hegemony for Nazi Germany.[3] This was to be achieved by the expansion of the territorial base of the German state itself, combined with the political and economic subjugation of the rest of Europe to Germany. Eventual extensions of the project to areas beyond Europe as well as on an ultimately global scale were anticipated for the future period in which Germany would have secured unchallenged control over her own continent first, but Neuordnung did not carry this extra-European meaning at the time.

Through its wide use in Nazi propaganda it quickly gained coinage in Western media. In English-language academic circles especially it eventually carried a much more inclusive definition, and became increasingly known as a term used to refer to all the foreign and domestic politics and war aims of the Nazi German state as well as its dictatorial leader Adolf Hitler. It therefore holds approximately the same connotations as the term co-prosperity sphere did in Japanese circles in reference to their planned imperial domain. Nowadays it is most commonly used to refer to all the post-war planning and policies both in and outside of Europe that the Nazi government expected to implement after an anticipated victory for Germany and the other Axis powers in World War II.
Ideological Background
Racialist doctrine
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Geopolitical influence

Hitler’s ideas about eastward expansion that he promulgated in Mein Kampf were greatly influenced by his contact during his 1924 imprisonment with his geopolitical mentor Karl Haushofer. [6] One of Haushofer’s primary geopolitical concepts was that Germany get control of the Eurasian heartland so Germany could attain eventual world domination. [7] Haushofer himself saw this in the forging of an alliance with Russia and Japan to counter the political power of the naval powers of Europe and the United States. Hitler rejected this idea out of hand, believing that Russia could not be trusted on to serve German interests, particularly in view of its communist manifesto, and that control over the core area of Russia should therefore directly be attained by force.
Implementation
Initial phase of the establishment of the New Order

In a subsequently published speech given at Erlangen University in November 1930 Hitler explained to his listeners that no other people had more of a right to fight for and attain control of the globe (Weltherrschaft) than did the Germans. He realized fully that this ambitious goal could never be achieved without an enormous amount of fighting. A series of wars was therefore anticipated that would ultimately result in total German hegemony. It is in the context of this Stufenplan or step-by-step plan that Hitler conducted his foreign policy from the moment he came to power. Each of these steps would serve as a springboard for the following one, starting with the incorporation of Austria into the German sphere of influence. The war that it started with the Invasion of Poland in September 1939 was therefore merely seen as the next in a series. It would pave the way for a war against the Soviet Union, thereafter one against the United States, and so forth. [8]

The initial phase of the establishment of the New Order was:

* First, the signing of the German-Soviet Pact on 23 August 1939 to lull the Soviet Union into a false sense of security.

* Second, the Blitzkrieg German invasion and conquest of France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway to neutralize opposition from the west. This occurred in the spring of 1940.

* Third, the neutralization or the conquest of the United Kingdom. Initially, Hitler wanted to make a deal with Great Britain in which the British Empire would be given a free hand over the oceans of the world and Germany would be given a free hand in Europe. However, when Britain refused this deal, Hitler planned the conquest of Great Britain in Operation Sea Lion, which was to be implemented after the anticipated German victory in the Battle of Britain. After the German conquest of Britain, the allegedly pro-German Duke of Windsor would have been restored as King Edward VIII as Hitler’s puppet king. Plans were made for sending out an Einsatzgruppe Gross-Brittanien under the command of SS-General Franz Alfred Six, the mobile killing squads formed and assigned to deal specifically with Britain. Most English men would have been exported as slave labor to the East. About 2,000,000 young Nordic English women would have been forced into stud farms as part of the lebensborn program to be impregnated by SS men to help populate the East with the master race. [9]

The first two phases of the initial plan for the establishment of the New Order were successful, but Hitler was unable to implement the third phase since the United Kingdom won the Battle of Britain.
Conquest of Eastern Europe
Offensive plan for Operation Barbarossa.

Implementation of the long range plan for the New Order, outlined for the Nazi elite in the Generalplan Ost ("General Plan for the East"), was begun on 22 June 1941 with Operation Barbarossa--the invasion of Russia. By 1942 the military regimes called the General Gouvernment in Poland, the Reichskommissariat Ostland in the Baltic states and White Russia, and the Reichskommissariat Ukraine in Ukraine had been established.

Nazi party philosopher Alfred Rosenberg (who, incidentally, protested against the inhumane policy shown toward the Slavs[10]) was the Minister for the Eastern Territories nominally in charge of the project, and Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, was assigned to implement the enslavement and extermination of the non-Aryan population. The long range plan, as detailed by Hitler in Mein Kampf, was annexation of large eastern territories for German settlement, eventually expanding the territory of Greater Germany to where its eastern border would be the Ural Mountains. This would facilitate Germany's obtaining lebensraum [9].

It was planned to set up a Reichskommissariat Moskau that would include the Moscow metropolitan area and vast tracts of adjacent European Russia, and a Reichskommissariat Kaukasus in the Caucasus area. This policy was accompanied by the extermination of their Jewish population (see final solution) as well as the enslavement of their Slavic population, who it was planned would be made slave laborers on the estates to be granted to SS men after the conquest of European Russia. Each SS man "gentleman farmer" was expected to father at least seven children.[11]

German women were encouraged to have as many children as possible to populate the anticipated Eastern territories to be annexed. To encourage this fertility policy, the lebensborn program was expanded and the state decoration known as the Gold Honor Cross of the German Mother was instituted, which was awarded to German women who bore eight or more children for the Third Reich. Himmler envisaged a German population of 300,000,000 by 2000.
The Yenisei River basin in Siberia. The Yenisei River was the agreed division point of Eurasia between Japan and Nazi Germany.[12]
The New Order in Europe

In 1942, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia (including the German-dominated autonomous area of Banat) were already satellites of Nazi Germany. Montenegro and Greece were satellites of Italy while Albania had been annexed by Italy). After Germany had conquered Russia, the plan was to then make Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, much of the other Caucasus peoples, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, as well as some other non-Slavic peoples of the USSR such as the Tatars and Cossacks, also become satellites of Germany.
Secret diplomatic conference to divide Asia

In 1942, a secret diplomatic conference was held between Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire in which they agreed to divide Asia along a line that followed the Yenisei River to the border of China, and then along the border of China and the Soviet Union, the northern and western borders of Afghanistan, and the border between Iran and India (what is now Pakistan was then part of India).[13]

It was agreed that after Nazi German troops had reached the Ural Mountains, Japan would invade the Soviet Union from the east to finish it off and the German and Japanese troops would meet at the Yenisei River. Nazi Germany planned to establish a Reichskommissariat West Sibirien between the Ural Mountains and the Yenisei River for housing in concentration camps as slave labor for industrial enterprises those Slavs who were not being worked as slaves on the estates of the German farmers west of the Urals.[14]
Other parts of the world
Plans for an African Colonial Empire
Approximate location of Mittelafrika in light blue and dark blue, with pre-existing German colonies in dark blue. Possible inclusions (Portuguese colonies) are shaded light blue.

Hitler's geopolitical thoughts about Africa always occupied a secondary position to his expansionist aims in Europe itself: "A colonial policy only makes sense if you first control the continent". His public announcements prior to outbreak of the war that Germany's former colonies be returned to it served primarily as bargaining chips to further territorial goals in Europe itself. This area was nevertheless intended to also fall under German control in some way or another after it had first achieved supremacy over its own continent.[15]

Hitler's overall intentions for the future organization of Africa divided it in three basic portions. The northern third was to be assigned to its Italian ally, while the central part would fall under German rule. The remaining southern sector would be controlled by a pro-Nazi Afrikaner state built on racial grounds.[16] On the division of French African colonies between the Spanish and Italian governments Hitler refused to provide any official promises during the war however, fearful of losing the support of Vichy France.

In 1940, the general staff of the German Navy produced a much more detailed plan accompanied by a map showing a proposed German colonial empire in sub-Saharan Africa extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean.[17] The proposed domain was supposed to fulfill the long-sought territorial German goal of Mittelafrika, and even further beyond. It was to provide a base from which Germany was to achieve a pre-eminent position on the African continent just as the conquest of Eastern Europe was to achieve a similar status over the continent of Europe.

In contrast to territories that were to be acquired in Europe itself (specifically European Russia), these areas were however not envisaged as targets for extensive German population settlement. The establishment of a vast colonial empire was to serve primarily economic purposes, for it would provide Germany with most natural resources that it would not be able to find in its continental possessions, as well as an additional nearly unlimited supply of labor. Racialist policies would nevertheless be strictly enforced on all inhabitants (meaning segregration of whites and blacks and punishing of interracial relationships) to maintain "Aryan" purity.

The area included all pre-WWI German colonial territories in Africa, as well as additional parts of the French, Belgian and British colonial holdings in Africa. These were the Belgian Congo, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Kenya, Uganda, Gabon, the French Congo, Ubangui-Chari, Nigeria, Dahomey, the Gold Coast, and nearly all of Niger and Chad.

A second part of the plan entailed the construction of a huge string of fortified naval and air bases for future operations against the Western hemisphere spanning much of the Atlantic coastline of Europe and Africa from Trondheim in Norway all the way up to the Belgian Congo, as well as many off-lying islands such as the Cape Verde and Azores islands. A less extensive but similar initiative was intended for the east coast of Africa.
Hitler's plans for India and Operation Maximillian
Main article: Indische Legion
Bose inspecting Indische Legion troops alongside Oberstleutnant Kurt Krappe
Banner of the Indische Legion.

Nazi Germany did cultivate a close interest in the affairs of India, the crown jewel of the British empire. Hitler and the Japanese supported an indigenous military militia led by Subhas Chandra Bose to keep the British pinned down.

Hitler allegedly wanted to 'complete the unfinished task of Alexander the Great' in India and was keen to discover the Aryan roots of the Indian civilization. He believed that a 'super-aryan' being existed in the Himalayas. Hitler also sent an expedition team consisting of Nazi racial theorists and scientists along with a strong SS contingent to study the racial links with Indian Aryans.

An invasion was planned in the general direction towards India after the invasion of Soviet Union was complete. Erich von Manstein had encouraged Wilhelm Keitel to consider such a plan. The expected resistance from the British Indian Army was considered to be vastly inferior. The possible dividends would be huge, not only in terms of a great conquest, but also the total demoralization of Britain. The OKW with its usual rigor started working on a plan by mid 1940. The minute details and plans for the invasion of India were in place by April, 1941. The operation was codenamed 'Maximillian'.

Operation Maximillian

Operation Maximillian would take off after the Soviet Union was secured up to the Urals and the Afrika Korps reaching up to Iraq. After stabilization, a massive invasion force was to be assembled in the deserts of Iraq. Three army groups were to be pressed into action. The Nazi war machine would then thrust through into India via Afghanistan. The first group would follow a northern route hugging the Himalayas and reach its final destination in Calcutta; the second group would do a pincer movement into central India and return to Delhi; and the third group would sweep down into the southern Indian heartland and capture the port city of Madras.

A strategic reserve consisting of the Reich's most elite SS Panzer units was to be located near Lahore. Operation Maximilian was to be halted near Burma, the Reich's proposed border with Imperial Japan before the secret agreement of 1942, which assigned India to Japan's sphere of influence. In this 1940 military plan, all operations were to have been concluded before 1945.

Racial Plans for India

Most of the Indo-Aryan race was considered to be contaminated by mixing with other lower races. Himmler had identified purest of the Aryan castes in India to be Germanized; the rest would either be exterminated or subjugated for slave labor.
Plan for German domination of South America

Germany planned to dominate South America east of the Andes Mountains.[18] Hitler planned to open up Argentina (a country already having a large population of German origin) to extensive German settlement.[19]
Hitler's plan for the eventual conquest of North America

In the unpublished transcript Zweites Buch, written in 1928, Hitler envisioned an apocalyptic air war of conquest against the United States by his successor in 1980, conducted by a great fleet of German long range bombers.

Approximately nine months before the United States entered WWII, American president Franklin D. Roosevelt made a reference to the New Order in a speech he gave on March 15, 1941[20]:

... Nazi forces are not seeking mere modifications in colonial maps or in minor European boundaries. They openly seek the destruction of all elective systems of government on every continent, including our own. They seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers who seize power by force.
Yes, these men and their hypnotized followers call this a "New Order." It is not new, and it is not order. For order among nations presupposes something enduring, some system of justice under which individuals over a long period of time are willing to live. Humanity will never permanently accept a system imposed by conquest, and based on slavery. These modern tyrants find it necessary to their plans to eliminate all democracies — eliminate them one by one. The nations of Europe, and indeed we, ourselves, did not appreciate that purpose. We do now.

Hitler's plans for retirement

At the time of the initial invasion of the Soviet Union with Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941, Hitler had expected to win victory in World War II by 1945, and he then planned, after completing the construction of the Welthauptstadt Germania plan of Albert Speer for Berlin, to hold a great World's Fair in Berlin in 1950 and then retire to his hometown of Linz.[21]
Abandonment of the project for the New Order

After the decisive German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad on 2 February 1943, Germany was forced onto the defensive and was no longer able to actively pursue implementation of the New Order in the Soviet Union, although the genocide against Jews, Gypsies, and other minorities continued. The New Order project was officially renounced at the end of 1944 because Himmler hoped to get the Western Allies to agree to a separate peace apart from the Soviet Union, and to do so, he wanted to appear more humane. In March 1945, Himmler even agreed to meet with a representative of the World Jewish Congress, saying "Let's bury the hatchet"