>>21598
>They could have posed as liberators who frees the people from the oppression of evil bolsheviks. But for this they would had to give up their Lebensraum dream. Or postpone it to later date.

They actually did it, and did it like your said. Near 1 million (numbers go from 600k to 1500k) of different Soviet citizens fought on German side (it is only about soldiers, not workers). German propaganda displayed bolsheviks, communists and Jews as the enemy, but not the common Russian person.

Of course war is war, especially when it is that big, so civilians often suffered, were killed in battles or shot by Germans, but there were no full-going ethnic cleansing of every Russian or such. Some groups, like Jews, party members and commissars were executed or gone to camps, but most of common people lived as the live (although in pretty poor conditions). Some people were taken to Germany to work at factories (involuntarily of course).

For example, my grandma lived some time under German occupation in south part of Russia. She said that even schools worked, and main problem was food. Germans soldiers weren't too friendly, but did not do anything very barbarous except executing group of miners who tried to rebel. She had much more negative view about local cossacks, who openly supported Hitler and hated other Russians.

After the war propaganda gone to full demonization of Germans and Russian collaborationists. Name of Vlasov (leader of Russian Liberation Army) became taboo even in historical documents, and even today this part of story is very negatively viewed by public.

For Germans - they didn't try to push their autistic ideas at start of war much (I guess they waited for victory to implement Lebensraum), and stopped everything when they saw that war is going bad. So, they even started to invent all these imaginary "Gothic-Crimean connection" and other things to recruit locals into army. That didn't help them though.