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Although this paper belongs in the general context of German public administration during nazism, its precise subject concerns a ministry created in 1941, the Eastern occupied territories. It studies the ideological and ethical representations of the major civil servants of this ministry in order to show the meaning they gave to their roles and actions. These representations played a role in the policies they proposed at their level of competence as well as in the way they described the situations they were confronted with. While the civil servants’ thinking often went along with a practical sense of the distinctions between the ideologically necessary and the economically useful, it also included the essential elements of the traditional ethics of public service. The study of this thinking contributes to enriching the image as a whole of the Ostministerium, too often centered on the minister himself or on often remarkable personalities like Erich Koch or Wilhelm Kube.