Andropov wrote:Is there any information on how Hitler acquired his views? Why did he have such an intense hatred of Russia and of the Slavic peoples?
I would not say his personal dislike for Russia or the Russian people was greater than that held by any German nationalist, and as Fuser mentioned, anti-Slavic attitudes as a component of German nationalist thought really predate the advent of German fascism (National Socialism) and go back centuries. Why? It was inherent because a Germany which desired expansion would nearly always have and look to do so at the expense of the Slavic peoples of the East. That basic geopolitical necessity which played out through a series of conflicts long before the 20th century, stretching to the early medieval period obviously gave way to an ideological aspect in which Slavs were not only viewed as culturally inferior and takers of excessive space (in the German view, unjustified by their productive capabilities and level of civilization), but at times targets for dehumanization as the need for such propaganda arose.
One can date that outgrowth past the Battle of Grunwald and the almost mythic need in the German consciousness to avenge the defeat of 1410 at the hands of the Polish and Lithuanian forces long after the matter was thought settled by the Germanisation of Prussia (as a consequence of the Livonian Crusade of the 13th century) and eventually when the German nation was, in addition to being so divided pre-unification, being squeezed between the Tsarist Russian Empire to the east which was a hegemon and a powerful French state to the west. That and, as previously mentioned, the desperate need for the acquisition of land and resources as a precursor to power (in the German case pre-1870, especially with the experience of the liberal revolutions, not even regional, continental, or global power or hegemony, but simple unification and independence) breeds generational contempt which naturally accompanies any manner of ethnic strife which is inextricably linked with real geostrategic concerns of raw power and for obvious reasons won't resolve itself in a day.
That reality which manifested as a component in the foreign policy of NS Germany, that collective German understanding, had nothing to do with Hitler's personal biases but was a matter of strong consensus. Really no differently than the attitude of Anglo-Saxons and the British establishment which developed toward the Irish or the attitude of the Anglo-descended establishments of the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand toward their respective indigenous populations. Contrary to popular belief, dehumanization usually serves logical material concerns and only later projects the outward appearance of feverish irrationality or acquires a romanticist character. As it did to reduce an entire race of people (the Sub-Saharan Africans) to the egregious bondage of chattel slavery. Not borne out of hatred, but greed and a power struggle. It is the irrational-romanticist conception or narrative which is often best suited for adoption by the apolitical masses to mask which is in actuality a natural desire for power and domination with the dislike or even intense hatred of an unspecified other for unspecified reasons.
This is of course not only done by Germans, but all of humanity, and in Western Europe, Germans have been such the target of a dehumanization campaign over the centuries by the same British and French imperialists (now liberal-capitalist surrogates of the U.S. project in Europe) who first sought to subjugate Germany by military means and occupation (as the French did straight through the Napoleonic era) and later by financial means; and then had the supreme gall to later not only harangue but
demonize the vital attempt by Germany to liberate herself from this paradigm by any means necessary. Yes...to fucking hell with that and three centuries of British and French cowardly moral hypocrisy. Nothing would be more satisfying than to see another shot taken at it in my lifetime, if not to win than just to hurt and do damage and harm to the very same people who did so much damage to the heroic German people.
On a side note, it should also be pointed out that the Soviet Union and the Marxist-Leninist doctrine it subscribed to under Stalin's administration was viewed as an entirely Jewish project (not surprisingly or unreasonably given the Jewish origins of nearly all the founders and leading ideological forces of the doctrine within Russia and outside of it, from Marx to Lenin to Trotsky) which kept captive the Russian people who were really viewed with little more animosity than they were in previous eras. The Russian people were regarded as well as a victim of Judeo-Bolshevism as were the Ukrainian people and other peoples, and Stalin, even as an ethnic Georgian, was given a slight nod of respect if only in the sense that he was perceived to have even slightly de-Judaized and Russified Soviet communism.
"I am never guided by a possible assessment of my work" - President Vladimir Putin
"Nations whose nationalism is destroyed are subject to ruin." - Muammar Qaddafi