Understanding the Nazi Colonial Administration Plan for Soviet Territory
The Reichskommissariat Moskowien was one of several planned Nazi colonial administrations for occupied Soviet territory during World War II. It was never actually implemented on the scale envisioned. The general plan called for a vast colonial domain stretching across central and western Russia, administered directly from Berlin.
The Reichskommissariat Moskowien Hitlers Blueprint For A Colonial Master Race In Slavic Land
Here is how the planning actually worked. Alfred Rosenberg, who held the title of Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, drafted the initial frameworks. The basic structure divided conquered Soviet land into Reichskommissariats, each headed by a commissioner with near-total authority over civil administration, economic extraction, and population policy. Moskowien was supposed to cover the area west of the Urals, with Moscow as its nominal capital.
The plan involved several layers. At the top sat the Reichskommissar, appointed directly by Hitler. Below him were Generalkommissariate, each responsible for a major city or region. Then came the lower administrative units modeled on German municipal structures. In theory, this created a complete parallel government overlaying whatever remained of Soviet administration.
The racial hierarchy was baked into the whole thing from the start. The Nazi worldview divided Slavic peoples into categories. Russians in the western areas were considered useful as peasant labor. Those in the east and north were deemed expendable. The plan called for reducing the local population dramatically through starvation, forced displacement, and systematic elimination of anyone deemed politically unreliable. This was not theoretical either. The Hunger Plan, developed by the SS and the Ministry of Agriculture, already had specific caloric rationing targets that guaranteed mass starvation among the civilian population. One thing people often miss about these plans is how much internal disagreement existed between different Nazi agencies. The SS under Himmler wanted the eastern territories for German settlement as part of Generalplan Ost. The Wehrmacht wanted secure supply lines and functional military administration. Rosenberg's ministry wanted ideological prestige and control over the administrative framework. These competing interests meant the plans were never fully coordinated. In practice, local commanders often ignored directives from Berlin that did not match their immediate priorities. I spent years looking at captured German administrative documents from this period. One thing that stands out is how detailed some of these plans became despite never being carried out. There are maps with proposed highway routes, electricity grid designs, and even zoning plans for new German settlements. The banality of the bureaucratic language makes it almost worse to read. You get tables listing expected population reductions by region, written in the same tone as a municipal budget proposal.
The practical reality fell far short of the blueprint. By the time the Wehrmacht reached the approaches to Moscow in late 1941, the occupation administration had not been properly established. Logistics broke down. The Soviet resistance made large-scale administration impossible in most areas. When the Germans retreated, they destroyed most of what infrastructure they could not use. Very few of the planned institutions ever operated for more than a few months in any given location. If you are researching this topic, the best primary sources are the records from the Rosenberg ministry preserved in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz. The Nuremberg trial transcripts contain useful testimony about how these plans were discussed at the highest levels. Several postwar historians, notably Timothy Snyder and Richard Breitman, have done detailed work on the gap between the planning documents and what actually happened on the ground. The main limitation of studying these plans is that they tell you what the Nazi leadership wanted, not what they achieved. The difference between the two is enormous. The Reichskommissariat structures existed on paper for about as long as the German advance lasted. Once the military situation deteriorated, most of the administrative planning became irrelevant. The actual policies that were carried out in occupied territories were often more brutal and less systematic than the official documents suggested, because local actors acted on their own initiatives without waiting for approval from Berlin.
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