Ural Mountains in Nazi planning

In 1725, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg first used the Ural Mountains as part of the eastern demarcation of Europe. Since c. 1850 most cartographers have regarded the Urals and the Ural River to the south of them as the eastern boundary of Europe, geographically recognised as a subcontinent of Eurasia. The Nazis rejected the notion that these mountains demarcated the border of Europe, at least in a cultural if not in a geographic sense. Nazi propaganda and Nazi leaders repeatedly labelled the Soviet Union as an "Asiatic state" and equated the Russians both with the Huns and with the Mongols. German media portrayed the German campaigns in the east as necessary to ensure the survival of European culture against the "Asian menace". In a major conference on 16 July 1941, where chief aspects of German rule in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe were laid out, Hitler emphasised to the attendees (Martin Bormann, Hermann Göring, Alfred Rosenberg, and Hans Lammers) that "the Europe of today was nothing but a geographical term; in reality Asia extended up to our frontiers". Hitler also expressed his belief that in ancient times the concept of "Europe" was limited to the southern tip of the Greek peninsula, and was then "brought into confusion" by the expanding borders of the Roman Empire. He stated that if Germany won the war, the boundary of Europe "would extend eastward to the furthest German colony". In an attempt to influence Nazi policy, Norwegian fascist politician Vidkun Quisling produced a memorandum for the Germans – "Aide-mémoire on the Russian Question" (Denkschrift über die russische Frage) – which expressed his own ideas on the "Russian question", which he described as "the main problem in world politics today". He advocated the Dnieper River as a general division-line between Western Europe ("Germania") and Russia. This would necessitate the division of Ukraine, but he argued that this "could be defended from geographical and historical perspectives". ==Plans for a border==

Albert Speer recounted a 1941 episode in his post-war memoirs wherein he observed Hitler's early ruminations about the Urals. Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, travelled to Berlin in mid-November 1940 to discuss German–Soviet relations with Hitler and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. By then, Hitler had made up his mind that he would attack the Soviet Union the following spring, having already issued orders for a military plan which would later become Operation Barbarossa. A few months later, an army adjutant pointed out to Speer an ordinary pencil line which Hitler had drawn on his globe at the Berghof, running north–south along the Ural mountains, signifying the future boundary of Germany's sphere of influence with that of Japan. He confirmed this objective, but emphasised that the primary goal was to "eradicate Bolshevism", and that, if necessary, further military campaigns would be carried out to ensure this. He expressed his belief that it would be impossible for Stalin to retake Europe from Siberia, comparing it to himself hypothetically retaking Germany if he were driven back to Slovakia, and that the German invasion of the Soviet Union which was then under way would "bring about the downfall of the Soviet Empire". On 16 September 1941, Hitler mentioned to Otto Abetz, the German ambassador in Paris, that "the new Russia as far as the Urals" would become Germany's India, but that due to its geographic proximity to Germany was far more favorably located for the Germans than India was for Britain. In the above-mentioned conference of 16 July 1941, it was codified as policy that in order to "secure the safety of the [Third] Reich" no non-German military power would ever again be allowed west of the Urals (including non-Russian native militias), even if it meant war for the next hundred years. No organised Russian state would also be allowed to exist west of this line, which Hitler clarified as actually meaning a line 200–300 km east of the mountains, "Living wall" Hitler later rejected the mountains as an adequate border, calling it absurd that "these middle-sized mountains" represented the boundary between the "European and Asiatic worlds", stating that one might as well accord that title to one of the large Russian rivers. He explained that only a "living [racial] wall" of Aryan fighters would do as a frontier, and that keeping a permanent state of war present in the east was necessary to "preserve the vitality of the race". The theme of a "living wall" was used by Hitler as early as Mein Kampf (published 1925–1926). In it he presented the future German state under National Socialist rule as a "father's house" (Vaterhaus), a safe place which would keep in the "right human elements", and keep out those which were undesirable. On 10 December 1942 (as the Battle of Stalingrad was turning unfavourably against the Germans), he told Anton Mussert, a Dutch Nazi collaborator, that the "Asiatic waves were threatening to overrun Europe and exterminate the higher races", and that this threat could only be countered by wall-building and long-term fighting. He indicated that this design was also to be used for defence purposes at Germany's "ultimate eastern border deep within Russia" — if the Axis had completely defeated the Soviets, there might have existed the possibility of any remnant Soviet forces or Japanese forces from the northwesterly mainland Siberian-located extremities of Imperial Japan's Co-Prosperity Sphere attempting to cross such a frontier westwards. ==Related plans==

Various German agencies assumed a number of different boundaries in the east. The administrative planning carried out by Alfred Rosenberg from April to June 1941 in his capacity as Plenipotentiary for the Central Treatment of Questions of the Eastern European Space (basis of the future Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories) for the territories that were to be conquered in the Soviet Union based the envisaged civil districts of the Reichskommissariate to a large extent on the borders of the pre-existing Soviet oblasts and autonomous republics, particularly in Reichskommissariat Moskowien. This included even territory to the east of the mountains, such as the Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg) region. The Wehrmacht assumed an eastern boundary at the A–A line (a limit along the Volga river between the cities of Archangelsk and Astrakhan), which was the military objective of Operation Barbarossa. In a later treaty with Japan, the Japanese proposed allocating all of Afro-Eurasia west of the 70th meridian east to the Germans and Italians in the case of a total Soviet collapse, but after negotiations the boundary was changed to the Yenisey River (roughly 90 east) before the original proposal was approved by Hitler. ==See also==