the redefinition of war. His version of militarism went beyond preparation for conventional wars, as in the Balkans. He intended not just to take territory that might be portrayed as ethnically contiguous, as in the Balkan Model, but to destroy entire states and master entire races. “Our border,” as the SS slogan went, “is blood.” In 1938, Hitler did away with the position of minister of war, and took personal command of the armed forces. Himmler, Göring, Heydrich, and the other Nazi leaders planned a war of extermination, starvation, and colonization in eastern Europe.
