Sunday, 28th July 1941, evening
Colonisation of the Ukraine—
The soldier-peasants.
We’ll take the southern part of the Ukraine, especially the Crimea, and make it an exclusively German colony.
With the discharge of soldiers after twelve years of service, we shall have thirty to forty thousand men to do what we like with every year. For those of them who are sons of peasants, the Reich will put at their disposal a completely equipped farm.
The soil costs us nothing, we have only the house to build. The peasant’s son will already have paid for it by his twelve years’ service. During the last two years he will already be equipping himself for agriculture. One single condition will be imposed upon him: that he may not marry a townswoman, but a countrywoman who, as far as possible, will not have begun to live in a town with him. These soldier-peasants will be given arms, so that at the slightest danger they can be at their posts when we summon them. That’s how the ancient Austria used to keep its Eastern peoples under control.
Thus we shall again find in the countryside the blessing of numerous families. Where as the present law of rural inheritance dispossesses the younger sons, in future every peasant’s son will be sure of having his patch of ground. And thirty to forty thousand peasants a year—that’s enormous!
In the Baltic States, we’ll be able to accept as colonists some Dutch, some Norwegians—and even, by individual arrangement, some Swedes.