During the pivotal year of 1941, Nazi Germany's war irrevocably turned against the German aggressor, the issue and implementation of Criminal Orders became accepted practice within the German army, anti-Jewish policy in the east developed into genocide, and plans for the exploitation of the eastern territories detailed millions of additional deaths. If in the first instance German policy was radicalized by the decision to invade the Soviet Union and the subsequent planning for both the military campaign and the occupation, the experience of warfare in the east ensured further cycles of radicalization, which influenced all areas of Nazi policy. Thus, the process was cumulative as action determined reaction in a region where legal norms counted for little or nothing and Nazi concepts for the east were given space to unfold, leading to ever bolder initiatives and a general escalation of violence.

Nazi propaganda, which spoke of an “Asian peril” and cast the whole war in the east as a preventative strike against “Bolshevik hordes,” established a convenient enemy image (Feindbild) that justified almost any measure in the defense of “cultured Europe.” By the same token, the supposed backwardness of the Soviet state as well as the perceived inferiority of the Slavic peoples further justified the brutality of these measures and persuaded the German invaders that the eastern lands were indeed ripe for settlement as part of Hitler's long-envisaged Lebensraum.