Bloodlands‘ take on Hitler’s war aims fits neatly with my earlier exegesis of Mein Kampf:

…Stalin had an economic revolution to defend, whereas Hitler needed a war for his economic transformation. Whereas Stalin had his “socialism in one country,” Hitler had in mind something like National Socialism in several countries: a vast German empire arranged to assure the prosperity of Germans at the expense of others. Stalin presented collectivization itself both as an internal class war and as a preparation for foreign wars to come. Hitler’s economic vision could be realized only after actual military conflict – indeed, after a total military victory over the Soviet Union. The secret of collectivization (as Stalin had noted long before) was that it was an alternative to expansive colonization, which is to say a form of internal colonization. Unlike Stalin, Hitler believed that colonies could still be seized abroad; and the colonies he had in mind were the agrarian lands of the western Soviet Union, as well as the oil reserves in the Soviet Caucasus. Hitler wanted German, as he put it, to be “the most autarkic state in the world.” Defeating Britain was not necessary for this. Defeating the Soviet Union was. In January 1941 Hitler told the military command that the “immense riches” of the Soviet Union would make Germany “unassailable.” [emphasis added]