Hitler “saw the entire world as an ‘Africa,’ ” writes historian Timothy Snyder. “And everyone, including Europeans, in racial terms.” Ukrainians and Poles were derided as “blacks.” Slavs were said to fight “like Indians.” And the Germans imagined themselves as heroic colonizers, “tamers of distant lands,” writes Snyder. Among those nations under Hitler’s boot, the message was not missed. “We are like slaves,” a Ukrainian woman wrote in her diary. “Often the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin comes to mind. Once we shed tears over those Negroes, now obviously we ourselves are experiencing the same thing.”
