ABSTRACT
Soviet Russia had halted its advance, started to win battles, and seized the military initiative more and more. In the German corridors of power, officials responded to the deteriorating military situation by exhausting all possibilities of increasing the war effort. The critical voices, which had accompanied German occupation policy for years, tried to make themselves heard. The unconditional objective of winning the war instituted a new powerful interpretive frame. German discourse allowed for a broader spectrum of thoughts and arguments concerning the means, so that the scope of conceivable and expressible long-term conceptions widened. As the war effort broadened the spectrum of justifiable New Order concepts, new understandings of Europe emerged in discourse and some previously silenced imaginations resurfaced. Impending defeat brought National Socialist Germany back down to earth, but many kept dreaming of a new German-led Europe.
