The Nazi goal of colonizing the conquered East in accordance with Hitler's Lebensraum ideology was to be achieved through these soldier peasants, who were planned to act both as colonists and also as soldiers defending the new German colonies from the surrounding Slavic population in the cases of insurgency. They would be charged with not extending civilization but preventing it arising outside their settlements; any civilization, being non-German, would challenge Germany.[2] A historical comparison was drawn to the Ordensburgen of the medieval German military orders, which were established to fortify territory against the pagan Baltic natives.