Wehrbauer
Encyclopedia
Wehrbauer was a concept used by the Schutzstaffel
(SS) of the Nazi Party to refer to soldiers designated as setters for the lands conquered during the German invasions of the the Soviet Union and Poland.
sending urban children to the countryside not only for the experience, but as a core of Wehrbauern.
The Nazi goal of colonizing the conquered East in accordance with Hitler
's Lebensraum
ideology was to be achieved through these soldier peasants, who were planned to act both as colonists and also as soldiers defending the new German colonies from the surrounding Slavic population
in the cases of insurgency. They would be charged with not extending civilization but preventing it arising outside their settlements; any civilization, being non-German, would challenge Germany.
The SS plan for genocide and colonization of the territories of the Soviet Union was titled Generalplan Ost
(English
: Master Plan East). This plan projected the settlement
of 10 million racially valuable "Germanics
" (Germans
, Dutch
, Flemish
, Scandinavians
and English
) in these territories in a span of 30 years, while circa 30 million Slavs and Balts
were either to be assimilated or forcefully transferred to Siberia
to make room for the newcomers. Volksdeutsche
, such as the Volga Germans would also be transplanted. The German Foreign Ministry however suggested that the racially unwanted population should be instead moved to Madagascar
and Central Africa
as soon as Germany had recovered her colonies
lost in the Treaty of Versailles
.
From a historical perspective, the SS Wehrbauer concept was a deliberate reference to the model of the Military Frontier
held by the Habsburg Empire against the incursions of the Osman Turks. Himmler also believed that during the early migration period
and the German eastward expansion of the Middle Ages
, the conquering Germanic peasant farmer had, in addition to farming, defended his land with arms; the Wehrbauer model was to revive this custom.
(composed entirely of pre-war Polish territory
) a number of "settlement areas" (German
: Siedlungsgebiet) were to be set up, centered on the six Teilräume ("spatial regions") of Cracow, Warsaw
, Lublin
, Lviv/Lwów
(German
: Lemberg), Bialystok
, and Litzmannstadt (Lódz
). The colonization of the former territories of the USSR was be accomplished through the creation of three major "settlement marches" (German
: Siedlungsmark), alternatively also called Reichsmarken ("marches of the Reich
"). Smaller "settlement points" (German
: Siedlungsstützpunkt)., as well as a number of "settlement strings" (German
: Siedlungsperlen, literally meaning "settlement pearls") were also to be established in the east.
and Reichskommissariat
s and given to the custody of the Reichsführer-SS
, who was to name an SS and Police Leader
(German
: SS- und Polizeiführer) for the region and also distribute temporary and inheritable fiefs and even permanent land ownership for the settlers.
In a time span of 25 years the populations of Ingria
(German
: Ingermanland), the Memel-Narew
region (i.e. the district of Bialystok
and Western Lithuania), and the southern Ukraine
and the Crimean peninsula (to be renamed Gotengau after the former Germanic tribe
) were to become at least 50% German.
-Zhitomir-Kiev
, Leningrad
-Mogilev
-Kiev, and Zhitomir-Vinnitsa-Odessa
(note however that Odessa was awarded to Romania
in the course of Operation Barbarossa
). These would be connected by a major Autobahn, along the track of which new German cities were planned to be build roughly every 100 kilometres. Further extensions were projected towards the Don
and the Volga, and eventually towards the Ural mountains
.
s of the SS, who were to be supplied with weaponry for the armed defense of their respective communities. In October 1939, Himmler stated that the German settlements in Poland would be divided between different German cultural and linguistic groups such as Swabians
, Franconias
, Westphalians
and Lower Saxons
.
The foundation of the settlements was to be funded by the compulsory savings of the individual SS men. Each settlement was to be planned in advance (Soviet villages emptied of their previous inhabitants were to be destroyed) and was to comprise 30–40 farms, each 300 acres; a NSDAP party headquarters; a manor-house for the SS or party leader; an agricultural instruction center; a house for a community nurse; and a cinema. The houses of the settlement were to built "as in the old days", two or three stone courses
thick. Baths and showers were to be available in every house.
The exact amount of weaponry delivered to each individual soldier peasant was also calculated. The manor was planned to be occupied by a SS or NSDAP leader of merit, chosen by his qualities as a man and a soldier: this individual was to be the Leader (German
: Leiter) of the settlement, acting on the administrative side as a Burgomeister and on the Party side as the political leader
of the local group, effectively combining the jurisdictions of the Party and the State. He was also to act as the military commander of a company
-sized force consisting of the community's peasants, their sons and laborers.
Unlike Medieval farming villages, the Wehrbauer communities were planned to not have any churches. Himmler stated that if the clergy were to acquire money to construct churches on their own in these settlements, the SS would later take the buildings over and transform them into "Germanic holy places
".
During one of his many private dinner monologues
, Hitler presented his vision of the soldier peasant. After twelve years of military service, soldiers from peasant families were to be given completely equipped farms located in the conquered East. The last two years of the military service would be focused on agricultural education
. The soldier was not to be allowed to marry a townswoman, but only a peasant woman who, if possible, had not begun to live in a town with him. This would enable them to live the blood and soil
principles of Nazi Germany. Also, it would be conducive to large families. Thus, Hitler stated "we shall again find in the countryside the blessing of numerous families. Whereas the present law of rural inheritance dispossesses the younger sons, in future every peasant's son will be sure of having his patch of ground." Hitler also believed that former non-commissioned officer
s would make ideal teachers for the primary schools of these Utopian communities. Although Himmler wanted these settlements to be totally agrarian, Hitler planned to introduce certain types of small-scale industry
to them.
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
(SS) of the Nazi Party to refer to soldiers designated as setters for the lands conquered during the German invasions of the the Soviet Union and Poland.
Ideology
The concept predated the Nazis, with the Artaman LeagueArtaman League
The Artaman League was a German agrarian and völkisch movement dedicated to a Blut und Boden-inspired ruralism. Active during the inter-war period, the League became closely linked to, and eventually absorbed by, the Nazi Party.-Etymology:The term Artamanen had been coined before the First World...
sending urban children to the countryside not only for the experience, but as a core of Wehrbauern.
The Nazi goal of colonizing the conquered East in accordance with Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's Lebensraum
Lebensraum
was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany...
ideology was to be achieved through these soldier peasants, who were planned to act both as colonists and also as soldiers defending the new German colonies from the surrounding Slavic population
Slavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
in the cases of insurgency. They would be charged with not extending civilization but preventing it arising outside their settlements; any civilization, being non-German, would challenge Germany.
The SS plan for genocide and colonization of the territories of the Soviet Union was titled Generalplan Ost
Generalplan Ost
Generalplan Ost was a secret Nazi German plan for the colonization of Eastern Europe. Implementing it would have necessitated genocide and ethnic cleansing to be undertaken in the Eastern European territories occupied by Germany during World War II...
(English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
: Master Plan East). This plan projected the settlement
Settler colonialism
Settler colonialism is a specific colonial formation whereby foreign family units move into a region and reproduce. Land is thus the key resource in settler colonies, whereas natural and human resources are the main motivation behind other forms of colonialism...
of 10 million racially valuable "Germanics
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
" (Germans
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
, Dutch
Dutch people
The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...
, Flemish
Flemish people
The Flemings or Flemish are the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Belgium, where they are mostly found in the northern region of Flanders. They are one of two principal cultural-linguistic groups in Belgium, the other being the French-speaking Walloons...
, Scandinavians
Scandinavians
Scandinavians are a group of Germanic peoples, inhabiting Scandinavia and to a lesser extent countries associated with Scandinavia, and speaking Scandinavian languages. The group includes Danes, Norwegians and Swedes, and additionally the descendants of Scandinavian settlers such as the Icelandic...
and English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
) in these territories in a span of 30 years, while circa 30 million Slavs and Balts
Balts
The Balts or Baltic peoples , defined as speakers of one of the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, are descended from a group of Indo-European tribes who settled the area between the Jutland peninsula in the west and Moscow, Oka and Volga rivers basins in the east...
were either to be assimilated or forcefully transferred to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
to make room for the newcomers. Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
, such as the Volga Germans would also be transplanted. The German Foreign Ministry however suggested that the racially unwanted population should be instead moved to Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...
and Central Africa
Mittelafrika
Mittelafrika is the name created for a geostrategic region in central and east Africa. Much like Mitteleuropa, it articulated Germany's foreign policy aim, prior to World War I, of bringing the region under German domination...
as soon as Germany had recovered her colonies
German colonial empire
The German colonial empire was an overseas domain formed in the late 19th century as part of the German Empire. Short-lived colonial efforts by individual German states had occurred in preceding centuries, but Imperial Germany's colonial efforts began in 1884...
lost in the Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
.
From a historical perspective, the SS Wehrbauer concept was a deliberate reference to the model of the Military Frontier
Military Frontier
The Military Frontier was a borderland of Habsburg Austria and later the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which acted as the cordon sanitaire against incursions from the Ottoman Empire...
held by the Habsburg Empire against the incursions of the Osman Turks. Himmler also believed that during the early migration period
Migration Period
The Migration Period, also called the Barbarian Invasions , was a period of intensified human migration in Europe that occurred from c. 400 to 800 CE. This period marked the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages...
and the German eastward expansion of the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, the conquering Germanic peasant farmer had, in addition to farming, defended his land with arms; the Wehrbauer model was to revive this custom.
Settlement division
In the General GovernmentGeneral Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
(composed entirely of pre-war Polish territory
Second Polish Republic
The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...
) a number of "settlement areas" (German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: Siedlungsgebiet) were to be set up, centered on the six Teilräume ("spatial regions") of Cracow, Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, Lublin
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...
, Lviv/Lwów
Lviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
(German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: Lemberg), Bialystok
Bialystok
Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. Located on the Podlaskie Plain on the banks of the Biała River, Białystok ranks second in terms of population density, eleventh in population, and thirteenth in area, of the cities of Poland...
, and Litzmannstadt (Lódz
Lódz
Łódź is the third-largest city in Poland. Located in the central part of the country, it had a population of 742,387 in December 2009. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is approximately south-west of Warsaw...
). The colonization of the former territories of the USSR was be accomplished through the creation of three major "settlement marches" (German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: Siedlungsmark), alternatively also called Reichsmarken ("marches of the Reich
Reich
Reich is a German word cognate with the English rich, but also used to designate an empire, realm, or nation. The qualitative connotation from the German is " sovereign state." It is the word traditionally used for a variety of sovereign entities, including Germany in many periods of its history...
"). Smaller "settlement points" (German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: Siedlungsstützpunkt)., as well as a number of "settlement strings" (German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: Siedlungsperlen, literally meaning "settlement pearls") were also to be established in the east.
Siedlungsmarken
The settlement marches were to separated from the civil administration of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern TerritoriesReich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories
The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories was created by Adolf Hitler on July 1941 and headed by the Nazi theoretical expert and Baltic German, Alfred Rosenberg. Alfred Meyer was Rosenberg's deputy. This ministry was created to control the vast areas captured by the Germans in...
and Reichskommissariat
Reichskommissariat
Reichskommissariat is the German designation for a type of administrative office headed by a government official known as a Reichskommissar...
s and given to the custody of the Reichsführer-SS
Reichsführer-SS
was a special SS rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945. Reichsführer-SS was a title from 1925 to 1933 and, after 1934, the highest rank of the German Schutzstaffel .-Definition:...
, who was to name an SS and Police Leader
SS and Police Leader
SS and Police Leader was a title for senior Nazi officials that commanded large units of the SS, of Gestapo and of the regular German police during and prior to World War II.Three levels of subordination were established for bearers of this title:...
(German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: SS- und Polizeiführer) for the region and also distribute temporary and inheritable fiefs and even permanent land ownership for the settlers.
In a time span of 25 years the populations of Ingria
Ingria
Ingria is a historical region in the eastern Baltic, now part of Russia, comprising the southern bank of the river Neva, between the Gulf of Finland, the Narva River, Lake Peipus in the west, and Lake Ladoga and the western bank of the Volkhov river in the east...
(German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: Ingermanland), the Memel-Narew
Narew
The Narew River , in western Belarus and north-eastern Poland, is a left tributary of the Vistula river...
region (i.e. the district of Bialystok
Bezirk Bialystok
The Bezirk Bialystok , also Belostok was an administrative unit that existed during the World War II occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany...
and Western Lithuania), and the southern Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
and the Crimean peninsula (to be renamed Gotengau after the former Germanic tribe
Crimean Goths
Crimean Goths were those Gothic tribes who remained in the lands around the Black Sea, especially in Crimea. They were the least-powerful, least-known, and almost paradoxically, the longest-lasting of the Gothic communities...
) were to become at least 50% German.
Siedlungsstützpunkte
In addition to the settlement marches, 36 settlement points were planned to be established. The population of these points was to be circa 20-30 % German. In the central of the point was to be a planned German city of c. 20 000 inhabitants, which was to be surrounded by closely located German villages in a 5–10 km radius. The villages were to secure the German control of all major road and railroad nodes.Siedlungsperlen
The settlement strings were to be located along the routes Cracow-LvivLviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
-Zhitomir-Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, Leningrad
Leningrad
Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
-Mogilev
Mogilev
Mogilev is a city in eastern Belarus, about 76 km from the border with Russia's Smolensk Oblast and 105 km from the border with Russia's Bryansk Oblast. It has more than 367,788 inhabitants...
-Kiev, and Zhitomir-Vinnitsa-Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
(note however that Odessa was awarded to Romania
Romania during World War II
Following the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, the Kingdom of Romania officially adopted a position of neutrality. However, the rapidly changing situation in Europe during 1940, as well as domestic political upheaval, undermined this stance. Fascist political forces such as the Iron...
in the course of Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
). These would be connected by a major Autobahn, along the track of which new German cities were planned to be build roughly every 100 kilometres. Further extensions were projected towards the Don
Don River
- Australia :* Don River , a tributary of the Fitzroy River * Don River in North Queensland* Don River - United Kingdom :* River Don, South Yorkshire, England...
and the Volga, and eventually towards the Ural mountains
The Ural mountains in Nazi planning
The Ural mountains played a prominent role in Nazi planning. Adolf Hitler and the rest of the Nazi German leadership made many references to them as a strategic objective of the Third Reich, in the event that it decisively won the battle on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union.-As a...
.
The peasant soldier community
The soldier peasants would mainly be front-line veteranVeteran
A veteran is a person who has had long service or experience in a particular occupation or field; " A veteran of ..."...
s of the SS, who were to be supplied with weaponry for the armed defense of their respective communities. In October 1939, Himmler stated that the German settlements in Poland would be divided between different German cultural and linguistic groups such as Swabians
Swabia
Swabia is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany.-Geography:Like many cultural regions of Europe, Swabia's borders are not clearly defined...
, Franconias
Franconia
Franconia is a region of Germany comprising the northern parts of the modern state of Bavaria, a small part of southern Thuringia, and a region in northeastern Baden-Württemberg called Tauberfranken...
, Westphalians
Westphalian language
Westphalian is one of the major dialect groups of West Low German. Its most salient feature is the diphthongization . For example, speakers say iEten instead of Eːten for eat...
and Lower Saxons
Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony is a German state situated in north-western Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the sixteen states of Germany...
.
The foundation of the settlements was to be funded by the compulsory savings of the individual SS men. Each settlement was to be planned in advance (Soviet villages emptied of their previous inhabitants were to be destroyed) and was to comprise 30–40 farms, each 300 acres; a NSDAP party headquarters; a manor-house for the SS or party leader; an agricultural instruction center; a house for a community nurse; and a cinema. The houses of the settlement were to built "as in the old days", two or three stone courses
Course (architecture)
A course is a continuous horizontal layer of similarly-sized building material one unit high, usually in a wall. The term is almost always used in conjunction with unit masonry such as brick, cut stone, or concrete masonry units .-Styles:...
thick. Baths and showers were to be available in every house.
The exact amount of weaponry delivered to each individual soldier peasant was also calculated. The manor was planned to be occupied by a SS or NSDAP leader of merit, chosen by his qualities as a man and a soldier: this individual was to be the Leader (German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: Leiter) of the settlement, acting on the administrative side as a Burgomeister and on the Party side as the political leader
Ranks and insignia of the Nazi Party
Ranks and insignia of the Nazi Party were paramilitary titles used by the National Socialist German Workers Party between approximately 1928 and the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945...
of the local group, effectively combining the jurisdictions of the Party and the State. He was also to act as the military commander of a company
Company (military unit)
A company is a military unit, typically consisting of 80–225 soldiers and usually commanded by a Captain, Major or Commandant. Most companies are formed of three to five platoons although the exact number may vary by country, unit type, and structure...
-sized force consisting of the community's peasants, their sons and laborers.
Unlike Medieval farming villages, the Wehrbauer communities were planned to not have any churches. Himmler stated that if the clergy were to acquire money to construct churches on their own in these settlements, the SS would later take the buildings over and transform them into "Germanic holy places
Heathen hofs
Heathen hofs or Germanic pagan temples were the temple buildings of Germanic paganism; there are also a few built for use in modern Germanic neopaganism...
".
During one of his many private dinner monologues
Hitler's Table Talk
Hitler's Table Talk is the title given to a series of wartime conversations and monologues delivered by Adolf Hitler, which were transcribed from 1941 to 1944...
, Hitler presented his vision of the soldier peasant. After twelve years of military service, soldiers from peasant families were to be given completely equipped farms located in the conquered East. The last two years of the military service would be focused on agricultural education
Agricultural education
Agricultural education is instruction about crop production, livestock management, soil and water conservation, and various other aspects of agriculture. Agricultural education includes instruction in food education, such as nutrition...
. The soldier was not to be allowed to marry a townswoman, but only a peasant woman who, if possible, had not begun to live in a town with him. This would enable them to live the blood and soil
Blood and soil
Blood and Soil refers to an ideology that focuses on ethnicity based on two factors, descent and homeland/Heimat...
principles of Nazi Germany. Also, it would be conducive to large families. Thus, Hitler stated "we shall again find in the countryside the blessing of numerous families. Whereas the present law of rural inheritance dispossesses the younger sons, in future every peasant's son will be sure of having his patch of ground." Hitler also believed that former non-commissioned officer
Non-commissioned officer
A non-commissioned officer , called a sub-officer in some countries, is a military officer who has not been given a commission...
s would make ideal teachers for the primary schools of these Utopian communities. Although Himmler wanted these settlements to be totally agrarian, Hitler planned to introduce certain types of small-scale industry
Industry
Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...
to them.
See also
- Greater Germanic ReichGreater Germanic ReichThe Greater Germanic Reich , fully styled the Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation is the official state name of the political entity that Nazi Germany tried to establish in Europe during World War II...
- New Order
- Blood and soilBlood and soilBlood and Soil refers to an ideology that focuses on ethnicity based on two factors, descent and homeland/Heimat...
- Reichskommissariat OstlandReichskommissariat OstlandReichskommissariat Ostland, literally "Reich Commissariat Eastland", was the civilian occupation regime established by Nazi Germany in the Baltic states and much of Belarus during World War II. It was also known as Reichskommissariat Baltenland initially...
- Reichskommissariat UkraineReichskommissariat UkraineReichskommissariat Ukraine , literally "Reich Commissariat of Ukraine", was the civilian occupation regime of much of German-occupied Ukraine during World War II. Between September 1941 and March 1944, the Reichskommissariat was administered by Reichskommissar Erich Koch as a colony...
- HegewaldHegewald (colony)Hegewald was a short-lived German colony in Reichskommissariat Ukraine near Zhitomir during World War II. Its purpose was to hold Poles and Ukrainian settlers who had been classified as Volksdeutsche for Germanization...
- Zamość UprisingZamosc UprisingThe Zamość Uprising refers to the actions by Polish resistance against the forced expulsion of Poles from the Zamość region under the Nazi Generalplan Ost...