'' (RKO) Just after the start of
Operation Barbarossa,
Alfred Rosenberg suggested that to facilitate the break-up of the
Soviet Union and
Russia as a geographical entity, conquered Soviet territory should be administered in separate Reichskommissariats: ;
Reichskommissariat Ostland (RKO): formerly
Estonia,
Latvia,
Lithuania, and
Belarus (except
Gomel) 1941–1945. ;
Reichskommissariat Ukraine (RKU): formerly
Ukraine and
Rostov, minus
District of Galicia,
Odessa,
Vinnytsia and the
Crimea; 1941–1944. ;
Reichskommissariat Kaukasien (RKK):
Southern Russia and the
Caucasus area; never fully established.
German military advance halted in 1942/43. ;
Reichskommissariat Moskowien (RKM): the remainder of the Soviet Union's
European territories, minus
Karelia and the
Kola peninsula, which were promised to
Finland; never fully established.
German military advance halted in 1941/42. ;
Reichskommissariat Turkestan (RKT): the Soviet Union's
Central Asian territories; proposed, never established. At Hitler's request, the
Turkestan project was shelved by
Rosenberg for the immediate future, who was instead ordered to focus on Europe for the time being. The region was determined to be a future target for
German expansion, as soon as Axis armies moved there. The interest in part of Turkestan of Germany's major Axis partner, the
Empire of Japan (see
Axis power negotiations on the division of Asia during World War II), could have become a topic of discussion regarding their own contemporaneous establishment of the
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. ==References==