ABSTRACT
German leaders were divided into two basic schools of thought, which persisted with only minor change until the final stages of the war. The first and dominant school reflected the attitudes and intentions of Hitler and the Nazi leadership. The war objectives espoused by the Nazis faithfully reflected the main postulates of the national-socialist Weltanschauung. Most relevant among those were the imperative of territorial aggrandizement of the German Reich and the racial theories that were the essence of Nazi ideology. Like other Nazi leaders, Rosenberg subscribed to the basic objectives of the German policy in the East, as formulated by Hitler. The majority of these "realists" were middle-level officials who had had little access to decisionmaking circles before the war and yet began playing an important role once the war started. This somewhat incongruous development was, in part, the result of the Nazis' inability to permeate completely all echelons of government with ideologically reliable cadres.
