Anti - Slavic sentiment Anti - Slavism , also known as Slavophobia , a form of racism or xenophobia , refers to various negative attitudes towards Slavic peoples , most common manifestation being claims of inferiority of Slavic nations with respect to other ethnic group s . Its opposite is Slavophilia . Anti - slavism reached its highest peak during World War 2 when Nazi Germany declared Slavs to be subhuman and planned to exterminate majority of Slavic people . 20th Century . Albania . At the beginning of the 20th century , Anti - Slavism developed in Albania through the work of the Franciscan monk s who had studied in monasteries in Austria - Hungary . They imitated and transposed national epic s of the literature produced there , like Gjergj Fishta did with his Lahuta e Malcís , but substituted the struggle against Turks with struggle against the Slavs , propagating Anti - Slavic feelings . Albanian intelligentsia proudly asserted : " " We Albanians are the original and autochthonous race of the Balkans . The Slavs are conquerors and immigrants who came but yesterday from Asia . " " In Soviet historiography , Anti - Slavism in Albania was inspired by the Catholic clergy which took position against Slavic people because of role the Catholic clergy had in preparations " for Italian aggression against Albania " and because Slavs opposed " rapacious plans of Austro - Hungarian imperialism in Albania " . Fascism and Nazism . Anti - Slavism was notable in Italian Fascism and Nazism prior to and during World War II . In the 1920s , Italian fascists targeted Yugoslavs — especially Serbs — and accused Serbs of having " atavistic impulses " , claimed that Yugoslavs were conspiring together on behalf of " Grand Orient masonry and its funds " and one anti - Semitic claim that Serbs were part of a " social - democratic , masonic Jewish internationalist plot " . Benito Mussolini identified Yugoslavs as a threat to Italy and as competitors over the region of Dalmatia which was claimed by Italy , and claimed that this threat rallied Italians together at the end of World War I , saying : " The danger of seeing the Jugo - Slavians settle along the whole Adriatic shore had caused a bringing together in Rome of the cream of our unhappy regions . Students , professors , workmen , citizens — representative men — were entreating the ministers and the professional politicians " . Anti - Slavic racism was an essential component of Nazism . Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party movement regarded Slavic countries and their peoples as " Untermenschen " ( subhumans ) , one of a number of inferior " foreign races " ( ) that were , unlike the " Aryan master race " , although there were exceptions for some Slavs who were deemed by the Nazis to be of descendants of ethnic German settlers and who were willing to be Germanised . Hitler considered the Slavs to be inferior as the Bolshevik Revolution had put the Jews in power over the mass of Slavs , who were , by his own definition , incapable of ruling themselves but instead being ruled by Jewish masters . Because according to the Nazis the German people was in need for more territory to sustain its surplus population , an ideology of conquest and depopulation was formulated for Eastern Europe according to the principle of " Lebensraum " , itself based on an older theme in German nationalism which maintained that Germany had a " natural yearning " to expand its borders eastward ( " Drang Nach Osten ) " . This drive was focused especially towards the Soviet Union , as it alone was deemed capable of providing enough territory to accomplish this goal , although they reached a much more advanced state in occupied Poland due to its immediate proximity to Germany . According to the resulting genocidal " Generalplan Ost " , millions of German and other " Germanic " settlers would be moved into the conquered territories , while the original Slavic inhabitants were to be annihilated , removed , or enslaved . Hitler perceived the development of the modern Russian state had been the work of Germanic elements in the nation and not that of Slavs , but that those achievements had been undone and destroyed by the October Revolution . The Nazis policy towards Slavs was to exterminate , ethnically cleanse and enslave the vast majority of the Slavic population and repopulate their land with millions of ethnic Germans and other Germanic peoples . a . In order to deviate from their ideological theories for strategic reasons by forging alliances with Croatia ( a puppet state created after the Invasion of Yugoslavia ) and Bulgaria , the Croats were officially described as " more Germanic than Slav " , a notion supported by Croatia ' s fascist dictator Ante Pavelić who maintained that the Croatians were descendants of the ancient Goths and " had the Panslav idea forced upon them as something artificial " . Hitler also deemed the Bulgarians to be " Turkoman " in origin .