It was interesting to read the article on the Russian execution of German soldiers for gassing Russians. They used the words exterminating the “inferior Russian race”. One wonders if this these weren’t code words for the New York Times to hide the full extent of the Holocaust, and if it really were only Jews that were killed.
That one phrase about exterminating “the inferior Russian race” is why I have a rule about alternate World War 2 histories: The alternate history is not valid if it involves the Germans not being the Germans and Hitler not being Hitler. So often people claim that Germany could have won the war had they only cast themselves to the Russians and Ukrainians as liberators. Well, that involves the Germans not being the Germans. The whole point of Operation Barbarossa was to turn the eastern lands into Germany’s “Lebensraum,” and to subjugate the native population. Making friendly with said natives was never in the cards.