Hitler and Genghis Khan

Abstract

In a radio broadcast to the British public on 24 August 1941, Winston Churchill observed that the German police troop executions in Russia surpassed anything since the Mongol invasions of Europe in the sixteenth century: 'There has never [since] been methodical, merciless butchery on such a scale, or approaching such a scale'.' Churchill would have done better to locate the Mongol hordes in the thirteenth century, but in other respects his analogy was unwittingly apt. The Mongols held a significant role in Adolf Hitler's bastardized view of world history and geopolitics, a role that has gone largely unnoticed.' To a certain extent, Hitler's policies in the east were designed to remedy the 'Mongol problem' -not as salient as the Jewish question, but perceived as a long-term danger nonetheless. In other ways, however, Hitler was consciously following what he had learned about Genghis Khan's methods. Hitler obliquely acknowledged a source of information about Genghis Khan in one of his most famous or infamous speeches, to the commanders of the armed services on 22 August 1939.