The Nazi perception of Georgians, however, began to change for worse in light of series of defections and Adolf Hitler's growing paranoia. Hitler mistrusted Georgians because "the Georgians are not a Turkish people, rather a typical Caucasian tribe, probably even with some Nordic blood in them...The only ones I consider to be reliable are the pure Muslims, which means the real Turkish nations."[5] Hitler also surmised that Joseph Stalin's Georgian ethnicity, as well as the fact that Georgian SSR was nominally autonomous, would eventually draw the Georgians closer to the USSR than to Germany.[6]