In any case, the German razing of the city had long been planned. Warsaw had been selected for destruction and major reconstruction as part of the Nazi's planned Germanization of Central Europe, a genocidal plan the Nazis justified based on their view that Poles were racially inferior Untermenschen. Yet the razing of the city in 1944 is historically remarkable insofar as it served no military purpose, and the Germans had abandoned their plans of colonizing the East.