blockade and for whom the vanquished eastern territories could provide a theoretically inexhaustible source of raw materials and food necessary for any protracted war against the Allied powers. The establishment of this "German Reich of the Germanic nation" also included in its planning to feed its soldiers off the Russian land, although that meant that "many millions of people will be starved to death", a directive already contemplated by the Economic Staff East no later than 2 May 1941. Not alone in this interpretation of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union as a move of continental expansion and one with an antisemitic eliminationist political intent, Hillgruber is joined by the likes of historian Karl Dietrich Bracher, among others. In his work The German Dictatorship, Bracher called the invasion the consequence of Hitler's "ideological obsession" and stated that "Hitler's drive for territorial expansion and the relentless expansion of the SS state ushered in the final phase of National Socialist rule". That final phase proved disastrous for the Jews, Slavs, Roma-Sinti and countless others. Antisemitism and the Holocaust Among scholars of the Nazi era, Hitler's role and relationship to the regime and The Holocaust has been a source of consternation and acrimonious historiographical debate. Biographer Ian Kershaw wrote that for historians Hitler was "unreachable" and that he was "cocooned in the silence of the sources". What Kershaw was referencing was the absence of any clear political directives accompanied by Hitler's signed authorization (primary source documents) regarding the atrocities carried out by his Nazi underlings. Given the abounding circumstantial evidence in Hitler's speeches, writing in Mein Kampf, administrative meeting notes taken by subordinates and the recollections of those in or near his inner-circle, it seems that his political intention was for Jews, Slavs and other "enemies" of the Nazi state to be persecuted without mercy in lieu of how gradual the process actually developed. A debate between two primary schools of thought emerged about Hitler's political role in Nazi policy and the Holocaust. One is termed intentionalist, represented by scholars who contend that virtually all Nazi policies (including the extermination of the Jews) were resultant from Hitler's desires; whereas the other school, entitled functionalist/structuralist, consists of scholars who see the intensification of Nazi persecution policies due to power struggles within the Nazi government as his minions attempted to "interpret" their master's wishes, often acting autonomously. Either way, antisemitism always constituted one of the