only systematic, but it was extensive both within Germany and only intensified in the occupied zones during the war under Hitler's leadership. Because Nazism co-opted the popular success of socialism and Communism among working people while simultaneously promising to destroy Communism and offer an alternative to it, Hitler's anti-communist program allowed industrialists with traditional conservative views (tending toward monarchism, aristocracy and laissez-faire capitalism) to cast their lot with and help underwrite the Nazi rise to power. When asked in a 1923 interview why Hitler called himself a National Socialist when the Nazi Party was "the very antithesis of that commonly accredited to socialism", Hitler responded: "Socialism is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists." Lebensraum and the invasion of the Soviet Union Historian Roderick Stackelberg contends that Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union was the result of "mutually reinforcing ideological, racial, and geopolitical assumptions" that Hitler had plainly laid out in Mein Kampf. Noted German historian Andreas Hillgruber shares this view. In fact, Hillgruber encapsulates Hitler's political views (which drove German policy throughout his rule) in summary through the invasion of the Soviet Union. He places it within the context of Hitler's intent to create a continental Reich which included the destruction of the Jews. According to Hillgruber, Hitler had the following objectives in mind when he invaded the former Soviet Union: 1. The total eradication of all forms of "Judeo-Bolshevik" leadership, which encompassed its perceived biological roots, namely the millions of Jews occupying central and eastern Europe. 2. The requisite acquisition of Lebensraum or colonial space necessary for German settlement in the finest and most arable territories within Russia, or in those parts of Russia which provided political or strategic advantages in Hitler's mind. 3. The subjugation and decimation of the Slavic people, which was to be divided into four German territories or "Reich Commissariats" entitled Ostland, Ukraine, Moskovia and Caucasus, with each subordinated to German "viceroys". One of the principal aims of German leadership in these Reich Commissariats would be the cancellation of any semblance or memory of Russian statehood and the conditioning of these subordinated "states" to German mastery. 4. Ultimately, a "great space" autarchy in Continental Europe under German suzerainty would result, one capable of defeating any possible Allied