 At the beginning of the 1930s, the Nazi Party's rise to power increased tensions between Germany and the Soviet Union, along with other countries with ethnic Slavs, who were considered "Untermenschen" (inferior) according to Nazi racial ideology.Moreover, the anti-Semitic Nazis associated ethnic Jews with both communism and financial capitalism, both of which they opposed.Nazi theory held that Slavs in the Soviet Union were being ruled by "Jewish Bolshevik" masters.