Reichskommissariat Moskowien (RKM; ) was the civilian occupation-regime that Nazi Germany intended to establish in central and northern European Russia during World War II, one of several similar Reichskommissariate. It was also known initially as the Reichskommissariat Russland (Reich Commissariat of Russia). Siegfried Kasche was the projected Reichskomissar, but due to the Wehrmacht's failure to occupy the territories intended to form the Reichskommissariat, it remained on paper only. Background Nazi Germany intended to destroy Russia permanently, particularly due to the Jewish Bolshevism conspiracy theory and Nazi racial theories with regard to Slavic people. Adolf Hitler's Lebensraum policy, expressed in Mein Kampf, was to dispossess the Russian inhabitants – as was to happen with other Slavs in Poland and most of Eastern Europe- and to either expel most of them beyond the Ural mountains or to exterminate them by various means. Under Generalplan Ost, German colonial settlement was to be encouraged. As the campaign against the Soviet Union advanced eastward, the occupied territories would gradually be transferred from military to civilian administration. Hitler's final decision on its administration entailed the new eastern territories being divided into four Reichskommissariats in order to destroy Russia as a geographical entity by dividing it into as many different parts as possible. These new institutions were to be under the nominal supervision of Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg as head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. The leaders of these provinces, the Reichskommissars, would however be direct subordinates of Hitler himself, and answerable only to him. Conquered territories of most of Russia proper were initially to become a Reichskommissariat Russland (Reich Commissariat of Russia) according to Rosenberg's plans, although this was later changed to Moskowien (Muscovy) informally also known as Moskau (Moscow). These eastern districts were thought to be the most sensitive to administer of the conquered territories. As a consequence, they would be managed from the regional capitals and directly by the German government in Berlin. The plans were never fulfilled as the German military's plans to capture Moscow and central Russia in the Operation Typhoon failed. The transfer of conquered territories to Nazi civilian rule was therefore never completed. Territorial planning The envisioned province included most of European Russia between the Ural mountains (as well as some districts east of it, including the city of Sverdlovsk) and its boundaries with Finland, the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine. The Russian parts of the Caucasus