Among 50 million dead during the Second World War, more than 12 million constitute the civilian victims of the Third Reich’s extermination policy, including more than a million deaths in the Nazi German Auschwitz concentration camp and extermination center. Never before in the history of civilization had a crime on such a scale been planned and carried out and industrial killing methods used to meet that end.

The basics of the Nazi expansion and extermination policy were not only to strive towards political dominance in Europe and, eventually, the world, but also plans of deep demographic changes in the areas deemed to be German “living space”. This was according to the Nazi racist doctrine proclaiming biological inequality of nations and the right of dominance of the “superior” German peoples over “inferior” peoples like Jews, Roma or Slavs.

The idea of German “living space” (Lebensraum) as well as the nature of the demographic changes in the relevant areas were described in detail in many documents of the Nazi movement. Adolf Hitler said in Mein Kampf:

To raise no doubts concerning those intentions, in November 1937, on a secret conference attended by the military commanders and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hitler farther stated:

This idea was explained and complemented by Heinrich Himmler in July 1942:

The liquidation of the “Eastern people” was supposed to have various forms: from Germanisation of some “racially fit” people through various forms of actions aimed at decrease in reproduction, mortality increase to, finally, physical extermination.