Hitler also allowed considerable autonomy to the Croats, who were as Slavic as anybody. The Croats mostly used this to launch extermination programs against Serbs, Roma and Jews that shocked even the Nazis.
In general, the Nazis believed all Slavs were racially inferior and would eventually have to be exterminated if they couldn’t be successfully “domesticated.”
Of all the Slavic nations, only the Russians and Poles were large and powerful enough to be an immediate threat, so they were targeted first.
One of the most fascinating aspects of WWII, to me, is that you can make a very credible case that the Nazis’ racial doctrines are the major reason they lost the war. There is considerable evidence that the first German troops to cross into USSR were often welcomed as liberators from the commies. The Germans could have had many, if not most of the Russians fighting on their side.
Yet it didn’t take the Russians long to figure out the Nazis, for them, were even worse than the commies.
Had 5M men been subtracted from the Red Army and added to the Wehrmacht, the outcome of the war on the Eastern Front might have been very different.
you’re right of course — except, I know that they were welcomed in the Ukraine, but in Russia proper?