New Order (Nazism)

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 30th of January 1941, Adolf Hitler stood before his followers and proclaimed a "European New Order." The phrase sounded almost benign, like a bureaucratic reorganization. But the Nazi vision behind it was something far darker: a blueprint for reshaping an entire continent according to racial hierarchy, colonial conquest, and genocide. Historians still debate whether the New Order was exclusively a European project or a roadmap for a Germanocentric world government. What is clear is that this plan, known in German as the Neuordnung, was already in development before a single shot of World War II had been fired. It reached into almost every corner of the globe, from the fjords of Norway to the plains of Antarctica. And its pursuit was a primary cause of the deadliest conflict in human history.

• 2. Racial Hierarchy and Ideology

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  The Neuordnung rested on a strict racial hierarchy built from what the Nazis called "bio-politics." At its apex sat the Aryan master race, with Nordic peoples held up as its purest expression. Nazi thinkers argued that Nordic peoples had created and sustained Western civilization, and that this supposed superiority entitled them to global domination, a doctrine called Nordicism.

  Hitler's ideas about eastward expansion drew heavily on Karl Haushofer, whose influence grew during Hitler's 1924 imprisonment. Haushofer argued that control of the Eurasian heartland was the key to permanent German global power. Italy and Japan were seen as complementary partners, their regional naval strength protecting Germany from the sea.

  In a 1930 speech at Erlangen University, Hitler proclaimed that no people had a greater right to seize control of the globe than the Germans. This argument echoed a 1927 letter by Rudolf Hess, who paraphrased Hitler's belief that world peace required the "racially best" power to attain uncontested supremacy, acting as a world police force while restricting what the Nazis called "lower races."

  Those deemed unworthy had no place in this order. The plan explicitly outlined the Holocaust against Jews, Romani people, and others labeled "unworthy of life." It also mandated the extermination, expulsion, or enslavement of most Slavic peoples and others classified as Untermenschen, a German word meaning subhumans.

• 3. Carving Up Western Europe

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  France presented a particular obsession for Nazi planners. In May 1940, Hitler instructed Interior Ministry State Secretary Wilhelm Stuckart to draft proposals for a new western border. Stuckart's June 1940 memorandum proposed annexing territories in eastern France that had historically been part of the Holy Roman Empire, creating a "Westraum" for the Reich. The Armistice of the 22nd of June 1940 formalized French economic subordination and established the collaborationist Vichy regime.

  German planners also considered a separate "Burgundian Free State" reportedly discussed in 1943. According to Felix Kersten, Heinrich Himmler's personal physician, this proposed state would encompass Picardy, Artois, Champagne, Luxembourg, Lorraine, Franche-Comté, Burgundy, Dauphiné, and Provence, governed by the SS under Léon Degrelle. Hitler considered either Rheims or Troyes as its capital. Himmler allegedly told Kersten that France, due to its perceived degeneracy, would be stripped of territories and reduced to a minor state known merely as "Gaul."

  For the Netherlands, Nazi Germany took a different approach at first, tolerating local fascist groups like the Nederlandsche Unie, which sought a self-determining Greater Netherlands under Nazi patronage. Dutch fascist Anton Mussert envisioned a "Dietsland" uniting the Netherlands and Flanders as a maritime equal to Germany. Behind these diplomatic gestures, Germany's actual long-term goal was complete annexation, later accelerated by the 1944 creation of Reichsgau Flandern and Reichsgau Wallonien.

  Otto Bräutigam of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories later claimed that Heinrich Himmler intended for the Sicherheitsdienst to exterminate roughly 80% of the French and British populations following a German victory.

• 4. The Northern and Eastern Flanks

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  Nazi philosophers held the Nordic countries in unusually high regard, classifying their populations as racially suitable Aryans due to their shared Germanic heritage. The Nazis viewed the Viking expansion as a historical model and considered Scandinavians racially purer than Southern Germans. Yet this supposed esteem carried a brutal logic: Nordic populations faced relatively lenient occupation while resistance was met with strict suppression.

  Denmark was uniquely allowed to maintain domestic institutions, including the Folketing and the monarchy under Christian X of Denmark. But Germany applied heavy pressure to suppress opposition parties and subordinate the Danish economy. Growing resistance eventually led to the 1943 Operation Safari, which dissolved the Danish government and disarmed its military.

  In Norway, Germany established the Quisling regime, a puppet state nominally led by Vidkun Quisling, while actual authority rested with the Reichskommissariat Norwegen under Josef Terboven. Nazi planners also proposed constructing Nordstern, a heavily fortified, German-populated naval city in Norway to project power across the North Atlantic. Contingency plans for Norway included irredentist claims to the Faroes, Orkney, Shetland, the Outer Hebrides, Iceland, and potentially Greenland, dependent on Norwegian military contributions and Danish compliance.

  For Eastern Europe, the plan went further still. Operation Barbarossa launched on the 22nd of June 1941. Alfred Rosenberg was appointed Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, while Heinrich Himmler was tasked with implementing the Generalplan Ost, which mandated the enslavement, expulsion, and extermination of Baltic and Slavic peoples. By 1942, administrative divisions had been established across Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine, with three additional regions planned for European Russia, the Caucasus, and Soviet Central Asia.

• 5. Resettling the Conquered East

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  Conquest alone was not enough. On the 7th of October 1939, Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler as Reich Commissar for the Consolidation of Germandom, authorizing him to repatriate ethnic Germans, known as Volksdeutsche, into occupied Poland and other territories slated for Germanization. To make room, hundreds of thousands of Polish and French citizens were expelled from their lands.

  By the end of 1942, some 629,000 Volksdeutsche had been resettled, with preparations underway for an additional 393,000. The Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle planned to resettle a further 5.4 million Volksdeutsche, primarily from Transylvania, the Banat, France, Hungary, and Romania. Settlers were classified into categories: the highest-rated were placed in the annexed eastern territories, the racially or politically unreliable were sent to the Altreich proper, and others went to transit camps.

  Himmler encountered resistance from ethnic Germans in France and Luxembourg, many of whom preferred to keep their existing citizenship. The Dutch East Company, known as the Nederlandsche Oost-Compagnie, was used to facilitate the transfer of Dutch settlers to Pskov to support eastern colonization efforts.

  To drive German birth rates higher, the Lebensborn program was expanded and the Cross of Honor of the German Mother was instituted to reward women who bore at least eight children. Martin Bormann and Himmler also considered legislation allowing decorated war heroes to take additional wives. Himmler envisioned a German population of 300 million by the year 2000.

  By the 1st of June 1944, resettlement records showed that of the roughly 1,009,113 people processed, some 662,448 had been placed in annexed eastern territories. The single largest group came from Russia, where 350,000 people were processed and 177,146 resettled.

• 6. Global Ambitions Beyond Europe

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  The New Order did not stop at Europe's borders. In Africa, Hitler intended to divide the continent into three broad zones: northern Africa to Italy, a central German domain restoring the Mittelafrika project, and a southern sector controlled by a pro-Nazi Afrikaner state. In a 1933 meeting with Heinrich Schnee, president of the German Colonial Society, Hitler said that Germany had by no means abandoned colonial aspirations. By 1939, Hitler had commissioned Franz Ritter von Epp to re-establish the Reich Colonial Office. Between 1941 and 1942, further institutions, including a Colonial Police Office and a Technical School of Foreign Trade, were created to prepare for managing African territories.

  In Asia, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan held a secret diplomatic conference in 1942 to divide Asia along the Yenisey River. Hitler signed the treaty on the 18th of January 1942. The arrangement proved strategically damaging: crossing the boundary required prior consultation, which made joint offensives against British positions in the Middle East impossible. Japan was even forced to cancel a planned attack on Madagascar because the island had been delegated to Germany under the treaty.

  In the Pacific, Germany planned to temporarily sell its former colonies, including German New Guinea and German Samoa, to Japan to strengthen the Tripartite Pact. Hitler dismissed Australia and New Zealand as concerns for Germany; he believed both would be colonized by Japan following the anticipated collapse of the British Empire.

  For Antarctica, Nazi Germany planned a colonial domain named New Swabia between 20°W and 20°E in what is now Queen Maud Land. Norway formally annexed the territory five days before the first German expedition arrived aboard the MS Schwabenland. The primary economic goal was establishing whaling stations to reduce German reliance on foreign exchange for dietary and industrial fats.

• 7. Collapse of the Blueprint

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  The decisive defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad in February 1943 and the failure of the 1943 summer offensive forced Germany onto the defensive. The active territorial implementation of the New Order in the Soviet Union was halted, though the genocidal campaigns against Jews, Romani, and other minorities continued without pause.

  By October 1943, Hitler privately suggested to Joseph Goebbels that Germany should seek a temporary armistice with the Soviet Union, returning to the 1941 borders. His plan was to defeat the Western Allies first, then resume the war for Lebensraum in the east, a task he believed he would have to leave to his successor. Even during the Ardennes offensive and the Allied crossing of the Rhine, Hitler held to the possibility that a localized victory might salvage the regime and allow for a partition of Poland with the Soviets.

  Hitler only acknowledged Germany's total defeat in the days immediately before his suicide. The elaborate continental and global architecture of the New Order, spanning plans for Burgundian client states, Scandinavian naval fortresses, African colonial dominions, and Antarctic whaling stations, collapsed with the Reich that had designed it. What remained was the wreckage the plan had already produced: the Holocaust, the forced displacement of millions, and a continent in ruins. Heinrich Himmler had described the envisioned future conflict against Asia as a "vital struggle" for human civilization in his 1943 Posen speeches. That struggle never came; the regime that imagined it was gone before it could begin.