“Following the Nazi rise to power, Adolf Hitler's government conducted a foreign policy aimed at the incorporation of ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) living outside German borders into the Reich; German domination of western Europe; and the acquisition of a vast new empire of "living space" (Lebensraum) in eastern Europe. The realization of German hegemony in Europe, Hitler calculated, would require war, especially in Eastern Europe. The "racially inferior" Slavs would either be driven east of the Urals, enslaved, or exterminated. Besides acquiring Lebensraum, Hitler anticipated that the "drive to the East" would destroy Bolshevism.“

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “German Foreign Policy, 1933-1945.”

Holocaust Encyclopedia.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005203

Accessed on 6/12/11.”