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The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a
Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
plan for the
genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the ...
of individuals they defined as
Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. The "Final Solution to the
Jewish question The Jewish question, also referred to as the Jewish problem, was a wide-ranging debate in 19th- and 20th-century European society that pertained to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews. The debate, which was similar to other " national ...
" was the official
code name A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in industrial ...
for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across
German-occupied Europe German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 an ...
was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, and culminated in
the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...
, which saw the murder of 90% of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe. The nature and timing of the decisions that led to the Final Solution is an intensely researched and debated aspect of the Holocaust. The program evolved during the first 25 months of war leading to the attempt at "murdering every last Jew in the German grasp".
Christopher Browning Christopher Robert Browning (born May 22, 1944) is an American historian who is the professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). A specialist on the Holocaust, Browning is known for his work documenting ...
, a historian specializing in the Holocaust, wrote that most historians agree that the Final Solution cannot be attributed to a single decision made at one particular point in time. "It is generally accepted the decision-making process was prolonged and incremental.". In 1940, following the
Fall of France The Battle of France (french: bataille de France) (10 May – 25 June 1940), also known as the Western Campaign ('), the French Campaign (german: Frankreichfeldzug, ) and the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France during the Second World ...
,
Adolf Eichmann Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ,"Eichmann"
'' Madagascar Plan to move Europe's Jewish population to the French colony, but the plan was abandoned for logistical reasons, mainly a naval blockade. There were also preliminary plans to deport Jews to Palestine and
Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...
. In 1941, Raul Hilberg wrote that in the first phase of the mass-murder of Jews, the mobile killing units began to pursue their victims across occupied eastern territories; in the second phase, stretching across all of German-occupied Europe, the Jewish victims were sent on death trains to centralized
extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
s built for the purpose of systematic murder of Jews.


Background

The term "Final Solution" was a
euphemism A euphemism () is an innocuous word or expression used in place of one that is deemed offensive or suggests something unpleasant. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the user wishes ...
used by the Nazis to refer to their plan for the annihilation of the
Jewish people Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
. Some historians argue that the usual tendency of the German leadership was to be extremely guarded when discussing the Final Solution. For example, Mark Roseman wrote that euphemisms were "their normal mode of communicating about murder". However, Jeffrey Herf has argued that the role of euphemisms in Nazi propaganda has been exaggerated, and in fact Nazi leaders often made direct threats against Jews. For example, during his speech of 30 January 1939, Hitler threatened " the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe". From gaining power in January 1933 until the outbreak of war in September 1939, the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany was focused on intimidation, expropriating their money and property, and encouraging them to emigrate. According to the Nazi Party policy statement, Jews and the
Romani people The Romani (also spelled Romany or Rromani , ), colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan peoples, Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic Itinerant groups in Europe, itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have Ro ...
were the only "alien people in Europe". ''Also in:'' In 1936, the Bureau of Romani Affairs in
Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...
was taken over by
Interpol The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO; french: link=no, Organisation internationale de police criminelle), commonly known as Interpol ( , ), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and cr ...
and renamed the Center for Combating the Gypsy Menace. Introduced at the end of 1937,)
"The Gypsy question"
 the " final solution of the Gypsy Question" entailed round-ups, expulsions, and incarceration of Romani in concentration camps built at, until this point,
Dachau Dachau () was the first concentration camp built by Nazi Germany, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents which consisted of: communists, social democrats, and other dissidents. It is lo ...
, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg,
Mauthausen Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 further ...
,
Natzweiler Natzwiller () is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Grand Est in northeastern France. History Built in spring 1941 on the territory of the commune, Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp opened for prisoners in May 1941. It was the only N ...
, Ravensbruck, Taucha and
Westerbork Camp Westerbork ( nl, Kamp Westerbork, german: Durchgangslager Westerbork, Drents: ''Börker Kamp; Kamp Westerbörk'' ), also known as Westerbork transit camp, was a Nazi transit camp in the province of Drenthe in the Northeastern Netherlands, d ...
. After the Anschluss with Austria in 1938, Central Offices for Jewish Emigration were established in
Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...
and
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...
to increase Jewish emigration, without covert plans for their forthcoming annihilation.. The outbreak of war and the
invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week af ...
brought a population of 3.5 million Polish Jews under the control of the Nazi and Soviet security forces,; also in and marked the start of
the Holocaust in Poland The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in German-occupied Poland. During the genocide, three million Polish Jews were murdered, half of all Jews murdered during the Holoca ...
. In the German-occupied zone of Poland, Jews were forced into hundreds of makeshift ghettos, pending other arrangements. Two years later, with the launch of
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named afte ...
, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the German top echelon began to pursue
Hitler's Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
new anti-Semitic plan to eradicate, rather than expel, Jews. Hitler's earlier ideas about forcible removal of Jews from the German-controlled territories to achieve ''
Lebensraum (, ''living space'') is a German concept of settler colonialism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, '' lso in:' became a geopolitical goal of Imper ...
'' were abandoned after the failure of the air campaign against Britain, initiating a
naval blockade A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions. It include ...
of Germany. ''
Reichsführer-SS (, ) was a special title and rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945 for the commander of the (SS). ''Reichsführer-SS'' was a title from 1925 to 1933, and from 1934 to 1945 it was the highest rank of the SS. The longest-servi ...
''
Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
became the chief architect of a new plan, which came to be called ''The Final Solution to the
Jewish question The Jewish question, also referred to as the Jewish problem, was a wide-ranging debate in 19th- and 20th-century European society that pertained to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews. The debate, which was similar to other " national ...
''. On 31 July 1941, ''
Reichsmarschall (german: Reichsmarschall des Großdeutschen Reiches; ) was a rank and the highest military office in the '' Wehrmacht'' specially created for Hermann Göring during World War II. It was senior to the rank of , which was previously the hig ...
''
Hermann Göring Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German politician, military leader and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1 ...
wrote to
Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...
(Himmler's deputy and chief of the
RSHA The Reich Security Main Office (german: Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and '' Reichsführer-SS'', the head of the Naz ...
), authorising him to make the "necessary preparations" for a "total solution of the Jewish question" and coordinate with all affected organizations. Göring also instructed Heydrich to submit concrete proposals for the implementation of the new projected goal. Broadly speaking, the extermination of Jews was carried out in two major operations. With the onset of
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named afte ...
, mobile killing units of the SS, the ''
Einsatzgruppen (, ; also ' task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the im ...
'', and Order Police battalions were dispatched to the occupied Soviet Union for the express purpose of murdering all Jews. During the early stages of the invasion, Himmler himself visited
Białystok Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area. Białystok is located in the Białystok U ...
at the beginning of July 1941, and requested that, "as a matter of principle, any Jew" behind the German-Soviet frontier was to be "regarded as a partisan". His new orders gave the SS and police leaders full authority for the mass-murder behind the front lines. By August 1941, all Jewish men, women, and children were shot. In the second phase of annihilation, the Jewish inhabitants of central, western, and south-eastern Europe were transported by
Holocaust trains Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the '' Deutsche Reichsbahn'' national railway system under the control of Nazi Germany and its allies, for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews, as well as other victims of the Holocau ...
to camps with newly built gassing facilities. Raul Hilberg wrote: "In essence, the killers of the occupied USSR moved to the victims, whereas outside this arena, the victims were brought to the killers. The two operations constitute an evolution not only chronologically, but also in complexity.". Massacres of about one million Jews occurred before plans for the Final Solution were fully implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to annihilate the entire Jewish population that
extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
s such as Auschwitz II Birkenau and
Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...
were fitted with permanent
gas chamber A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or other animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide. History ...
s to murder large numbers of Jews in a relatively short period of time. The plans to exterminate all the Jews of Europe were formalized at the Wannsee Conference, held at an SS guesthouse near Berlin, on 20 January 1942. The conference was chaired by Heydrich and attended by 15 senior officials of the Nazi Party and the German government. Most of those attending were representatives of the
Interior Ministry An interior ministry (sometimes called a ministry of internal affairs or ministry of home affairs) is a government department that is responsible for internal affairs. Lists of current ministries of internal affairs Named "ministry" * Ministr ...
, the Foreign Ministry, and the
Justice Ministry A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in ...
, including Ministers for the Eastern Territories. At the conference, Heydrich indicated that approximately 11,000,000 Jews in Europe would fall under the provisions of the "Final Solution". This figure included not only Jews residing in Axis-controlled Europe, but also the Jewish populations of the United Kingdom and of neutral nations (Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and European Turkey). Eichmann's biographer David Cesarani wrote that Heydrich's main purpose in convening the conference was to assert his authority over the various agencies dealing with Jewish issues. "The simplest, most decisive way that Heydrich could ensure the smooth flow of deportations" to death camps, according to Cesarani, "was by asserting his total control over the fate of the Jews in the Reich and the east" under the single authority of the
RSHA The Reich Security Main Office (german: Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and '' Reichsführer-SS'', the head of the Naz ...
. A copy of the minutes of this meeting was found by the
Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
in March 1947; it was too late to serve as evidence during the first
Nuremberg Trial The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded ...
, but was used by prosecutor General Telford Taylor in the subsequent Nuremberg Trials. After the end of World War II, surviving archival documents provided a clear record of the Final Solution policies and actions of Nazi Germany. They included the Wannsee Conference Protocol, which documented the co-operation of various German state agencies in the SS-led Holocaust, as well as some 3,000 tons of original German records captured by Allied armies, including the ''Einsatzgruppen'' reports, which documented the progress of the mobile killing units assigned, among other tasks, to murder Jewish civilians during the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. The evidential proof which documented the mechanism of
the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...
was submitted at Nuremberg.


Phase one: death squads of Operation Barbarossa

The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union codenamed
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named afte ...
, which commenced on 22 June 1941, set in motion a " war of annihilation" which quickly opened the door to the systematic mass murder of European Jews. For Hitler,
Bolshevism Bolshevism (from Bolshevik) is a revolutionary socialist current of Soviet Marxist–Leninist political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined party of social revolution, ...
was merely "the most recent and most nefarious manifestation of the eternal Jewish threat". On 3 March 1941,
Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the '' Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previo ...
Joint Operations Staff Chief
Alfred Jodl Alfred Josef Ferdinand Jodl (; 10 May 1890 – 16 October 1946) was a German '' Generaloberst'' who served as the chief of the Operations Staff of the '' Oberkommando der Wehrmacht'' – the German Armed Forces High Command – throughout Worl ...
repeated Hitler's declaration that the " Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia would have to be eliminated" and that the forthcoming war would be a confrontation between two completely opposing cultures. In May 1941,
Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
leader
Heinrich Müller Heinrich Müller may refer to: * Heinrich Müller (cyclist) (born 1926), Swiss cyclist * Heinrich Müller (footballer, born 1888) (1888–1957), Swiss football player and manager * Heinrich Müller (footballer, born 1909) (1909–2000), Austrian ...
wrote a preamble to the new law limiting the jurisdiction of military courts in prosecuting troops for criminal actions because: "This time, the troops will encounter an especially dangerous element from the civilian population, and therefore, have the right and obligation to secure themselves." Himmler and Heydrich assembled a force of about 3,000 men from
Security Police Security police officers are employed by or for a governmental agency or corporations to provide security service security services to those properties. Security police protect facilities, properties, personnel, users, visitors and enforce cer ...
,
Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
,
Kripo ''Kriminalpolizei'' (, "criminal police") is the standard term for the criminal investigation agency within the police forces of Germany, Austria, and the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland. In Nazi Germany, the Kripo was the criminal poli ...
, SD, and the
Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
, as the so-called "special commandos of the security forces" known as the ''
Einsatzgruppen (, ; also ' task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the im ...
'', to eliminate both communists and Jews in occupied territories. These forces were supported by 21 battalions of Orpo Reserve Police under
Kurt Daluege Kurt Max Franz Daluege (15 September 1897 – 24 October 1946) was chief of the national uniformed ''Ordnungspolizei'' (Order Police) of Nazi Germany. Following Reinhard Heydrich's assassination in 1942, he served as Deputy Protector for th ...
, adding up to 11,000 men. The explicit orders given to the Order Police varied between locations, but for
Police Battalion 309 The Police Battalion 309 (''Polizeibattalion 309'') was a formation of the Order Police (uniformed police) during the Nazi era. During Operation Barbarossa, it was subordinated to the German Army's 221st Security Division and deployed in German ...
participating in the first mass murder of 5,500 Polish Jews in the Soviet-controlled
Białystok Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area. Białystok is located in the Białystok U ...
(a Polish provincial capital), Major Weiss explained to his officers that Barbarossa is a war of annihilation against Bolshevism, and that his battalions would proceed ruthlessly against all Jews, regardless of age or sex. After crossing the Soviet demarcation line in 1941, what had been regarded as exceptional in the Greater Germanic Reich became a normal way of operating in the east. The crucial taboo against the murder of women and children was breached not only in Białystok but also in Gargždai in late June. By July, significant numbers of women and children were being murdered behind all front-lines not only by the Germans but also by the local
Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...
and Lithuanian auxiliary forces. On 29 July 1941, at a meeting of SS officers in Vileyka (Polish Wilejka, now Belarus), the ''Einsatzgruppen'' had been given a dressing-down for their low execution figures. Heydrich himself issued an order to include the Jewish women and children in all subsequent shooting operations. Accordingly, by the end of July the entire Jewish population of Vileyka, men, women and children, were murdered. Around 12 August, no less than two-thirds of the Jews shot in Surazh were women and children of all ages. In late August 1941 the ''Einsatzgruppen'' murdered 23,600 Jews in the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre. A month later, the largest mass shooting of Soviet Jews took place on 29–30 September in the ravine of
Babi Yar Babi Yar (russian: Ба́бий Яр) or Babyn Yar ( uk, Бабин Яр) is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. T ...
, near
Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Ky ...
, where more than 33,000 Jewish people of all ages were systematically machine-gunned. In mid-October 1941, HSSPF South, under the command of Friedrich Jeckeln, had reported the indiscriminate murder of more than 100,000 people. By the end of December 1941, before the Wannsee Conference, over 439,800 Jewish people had been murdered, and the Final Solution policy in the east became common knowledge within the SS. Entire regions were reported " free of Jews" by the ''Einsatzgruppen''. Addressing his district governors in the
General Government The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
on 16 December 1941, Governor-General
Hans Frank Hans Michael Frank (23 May 1900 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician and lawyer who served as head of the General Government in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War. Frank was an early member of the German Workers' Par ...
said: "But what will happen to the Jews? Do you believe they will be lodged in settlements in
Ostland The Reichskommissariat Ostland (RKO) was established by Nazi Germany in 1941 during World War II. It became the civilian occupation regime in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the western part of Byelorussian SSR. German planning documents i ...
? In Berlin, we were told: why all this trouble; we cannot use them in the Ostland or the Reichskommissariat either; liquidate them yourselves!" Two days later, Himmler recorded the outcome of his discussion with Hitler. The result was: "''als Partisanen auszurotten''" ("exterminate them as partisans"). Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer wrote that the remark is probably as close as historians will ever get to a definitive order from Hitler for the genocide carried out during the Holocaust. Within two years, the total number of shooting victims in the east had risen to between 618,000 and 800,000 Jews.


''Bezirk Bialystok'' and ''Reichskommissariat Ostland''

Several scholars have suggested that the Final Solution began in the newly formed district of '' Bezirk Bialystok''. ''Also in:'' : "During the Wannsee meeting, the number of Jews in Białystok (i. e., in ''Bezirk Bialystok'')—subject to Final Solution—was estimated by Heydrich at 400,000. In Lithuania: 34,000. In Latvia: 3,500. In
White Russia White Russia, White Russian, or Russian White may refer to: White Russia *White Ruthenia, a historical reference for a territory in the eastern part of present-day Belarus * An archaic literal translation for Belarus/Byelorussia/Belorussia * Ru ...
(excluding Bialystok): 446,484, and in USSR: 5,000,000. Estonia was listed in the minutes as being already ''
Judenfrei ''Judenfrei'' (, "free of Jews") and ''judenrein'' (, "clean of Jews") are terms of Nazi origin to designate an area that has been "cleansed" of Jews during The Holocaust. While ''judenfrei'' refers merely to "freeing" an area of all of its ...
'' (see
Wannsee Protocol
', Nuremberg)." The German army took over Białystok within days. On Friday, 27 June 1941, the Reserve Police Battalion 309 arrived in the city and set the Great Synagogue on fire with hundreds of Jewish men locked inside. The burning of the synagogue was followed by a frenzy of murders both inside the homes around the Jewish neighbourhood of Chanajki, and in the city park, lasting until night time. The next day, some 30 wagons of dead bodies were taken to mass graves. As noted by Browning, the murders were led by a commander "who correctly intuited and anticipated the wishes of his
Führer ( ; , spelled or ''Fuhrer'' when the umlaut is not available) is a German word meaning "leader" or " guide". As a political title, it is strongly associated with the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Nazi Germany cultivated the ("leader princip ...
" without direct orders. For reasons unknown, the number of victims in the official report by Major Weis was cut in half. The next mass-shooting of Polish Jews within the newly formed ''Reichskommissariat Ostland'' took place in two days of 5–7 August in occupied Pińsk, where over 12,000 Jews were murdered by the ''Waffen SS'', not the ''Einsatzgruppen''. An additional 17,000 Jews perished there in a ghetto uprising crushed a year later with the aid of
Belarusian Auxiliary Police The Belarusian Auxiliary Police ( be, Беларуская дапаможная паліцыя, Biełaruskaja dapamožnaja palicyja; german: Weißruthenische Schutzmannschaften, or Hilfspolizei) was a collaborationist paramilitary force establis ...
. An Israeli historian
Dina Porat Dina Porat (born 24 September 1943 in Buenos Aires) is an Israeli historian. She is professor emeritus of modern Jewish history at the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University and the chief historian of Yad Vashem. The subject of
the Holocaust in Lithuania The Holocaust in Lithuania resulted in the near total destruction of Lithuanian (Litvaks) and Polish Jews, living in '' Generalbezirk Litauen'' of '' Reichskommissariat Ostland'' within the Nazi-controlled Lithuanian SSR. Out of approximately 2 ...
has been analysed by Konrad Kweit from USHMM who wrote: "Lithuanian Jews were among the first victims of the Holocaust eyond the eastern borders of occupied Poland The Germans carried out the mass executions ..signaling the beginning of the 'Final Solution'." and Published under the same title, but expanded in About 80,000 Jews were murdered in Lithuania by October (including in formerly Polish Wilno) and about 175,000 by the end of 1941 according to official reports.


''Reichskommissariat Ukraine''

Within one week from the start of
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named afte ...
, Heydrich issued an order to his ''Einsatzgruppen'' for the on-the-spot execution of all Bolsheviks, interpreted by the SS to mean all Jews. One of the first indiscriminate massacres of men, women, and children in
Reichskommissariat Ukraine During World War II, (abbreviated as RKU) was the civilian occupation regime () of much of Nazi German-occupied Ukraine (which included adjacent areas of modern-day Belarus and pre-war Second Polish Republic). It was governed by the Reic ...
took the lives of over 4,000 Polish Jews in occupied Łuck on 2–4 July 1941, murdered by ''Einsatzkommando'' 4a assisted by the
Ukrainian People's Militia Ukrainian People's Militsiya or the Ukrainian National Militsiya ( uk, Українська Народна Міліція), was a paramilitary formation created by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the General Government territory ...
. Formed officially on 20 August 1941, the ''Reichskommissariat Ukraine''—stretching from prewar east-central Poland to Crimea—had become operational theatre of the ''Einsatzgruppe'' C. Within the Soviet Union proper, between 9 July 1941 and 19 September 1941 the city of
Zhytomyr Zhytomyr ( uk, Жито́мир, translit=Zhytomyr ; russian: Жито́мир, Zhitomir ; pl, Żytomierz ; yi, זשיטאָמיר, Zhitomir; german: Schytomyr ) is a city in the north of the western half of Ukraine. It is the administrative ...
was made ''
Judenfrei ''Judenfrei'' (, "free of Jews") and ''judenrein'' (, "clean of Jews") are terms of Nazi origin to designate an area that has been "cleansed" of Jews during The Holocaust. While ''judenfrei'' refers merely to "freeing" an area of all of its ...
'' in three murder operations conducted by German and Ukrainian police in which 10,000 Jews perished. In the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre of 26–28 August 1941 some 23,600 Jews were shot in front of open pits (including 14,000–18,000 people expelled from Hungary). After an 1941 Bila Tserkva massacre, incident in Bila Tserkva in which 90 small children left behind had to be shot separately, Paul Blobel, Blobel requested that Jewish mothers hold them in their arms during mass shootings. Long before the conference at Wannsee, 28,000 Jews were shot by SS and Ukrainian military in Vinnytsia on 22 September 1941, followed by the 29 September massacre of 33,771 Jews at
Babi Yar Babi Yar (russian: Ба́бий Яр) or Babyn Yar ( uk, Бабин Яр) is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. T ...
. In Dnipropetrovsk, on 13 October 1941 some 10,000–15,000 Jews were shot. In Chernihiv, 10,000 Jews were murdered and only 260 Jews were spared. In mid-October, during the Kryvyi Rih, Krivoy-Rog massacre of 4,000–5,000 Soviet Jews the entire Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, Ukrainian auxiliary police force actively participated. ''Also in:'' In the first days of January 1942 in Kharkiv, 12,000 Jews were murdered, but smaller massacres continued in this period on daily basis in countless other locations. ''Also in:'' In August 1942 in the presence of only a few German SS men over 5,000 Jews were massacred in Polish Zofjówka by the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police leading to the town's complete sweep from existence.


''Distrikt Galizien''

Historians find it difficult to determine precisely when the first concerted effort at annihilation of all Jews began in the last weeks of June 1941 during Operation Barbarossa. Dr. Samuel Drix (''Witness to Annihilation''), Jochaim Schoenfeld (''Holocaust Memoirs''), and several survivors of the Janowska concentration camp, who were interviewed in the film ''Janovska Camp at Lvov'', among other witnesses, have argued that the Final Solution began in Lviv, Lwów (Lemberg) in ''Distrikt Galizien'' of the
General Government The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
during the German advance across Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union, Soviet-occupied Poland. Statements and memoirs of survivors emphasize that, when Ukrainian nationalists and ''ad hoc'' Ukrainian People's Militia (soon reorganized as the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police) began to murder women and children, rather than only male Jews, the "Final Solution" had begun. Witnesses have said that such murders happened both prior to and during the Lviv pogroms, pogroms reportedly triggered by the NKVD prisoner massacre. The question of whether there was some coordination between the Lithuanian and Ukrainian militias remains open (i.e. collaborating for a joint assault in Kaunas, Kovno, Vilnius, Wilno, and Lwów). The murders continued uninterrupted. On 12 October 1941, Stanisławów Ghetto, in Stanisławów, some 10,000–12,000 Jewish men, women, and children were shot at the Jewish cemetery by the German uniformed SS-men and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police during the so-called "" '':de:Blutsonntag von Stanislau, (de)''. The shooters began firing at 12 noon and continued without stopping by taking turns. There were picnic tables set up on the side with bottles of vodka and sandwiches for those who needed to rest from the deafening noise of gunfire. It was the single largest massacre of Polish Jews in ''General Government, Generalgouvernement'' prior to mass gassings of ''Aktion Reinhard'', which commenced at Bełżec extermination camp, Bełżec in March 1942. Notably, the extermination operations in Chełmno extermination camp, Chełmno had begun on 8 December 1941, one-and-a-half months before Wannsee, but Chełmno—located in ''Reichsgau Wartheland''—was not a part of Reinhard, and neither was Auschwitz-Birkenau functioning as an extermination center until November 1944 in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, Polish lands annexed by Hitler and Provinz Oberschlesien, added to Germany proper. The conference at Wannsee gave impetus to the so-called ''second sweep'' of the Holocaust by the bullet in the east. Between April and July 1942 in Volhynia, 30,000 Jews were murdered in death pits with the help of dozens of newly formed Ukrainian ''Ukrainian Auxiliary Police#Battalions, Schutzmannschaft''. Owing to good relations with the Ukrainian ''Hilfsverwaltung'', these auxiliary battalions were deployed by the SS also in Russia Center, Russia South, and in Byelorussia; each with about 500 soldiers divided into three companies. They participated in the extermination of 150,000 Volhynian Jews alone, or 98 percent of the Jewish inhabitants of the entire region. In July 1942 the Completion of the Final Solution in the General Government territory which included ''Distrikt Galizien'', was ordered personally by Himmler. He set the initial deadline for 31 December 1942.


Phase two: deportations to extermination camps

When the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the area of the
General Government The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
was enlarged by the inclusion of regions that had been annexed by the Soviet Union since the 1939 invasion. The murders of Jews from the Łódź Ghetto in the ''Warthegau'' district began in early December 1941 with the use of gas vans (approved by Heydrich) at the Kulmhof extermination camp. Victims were misled under the deceptive guise of "World War II evacuation and expulsion, Resettlement in the East", organised by SS Commissioners, which was also tried and tested at Chełmno. By the time the European-wide Final Solution was formulated two months later, Heydrich's
RSHA The Reich Security Main Office (german: Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and '' Reichsführer-SS'', the head of the Naz ...
had already confirmed the effectiveness of industrial murder by exhaust fumes, and the strength of deception. Construction work on the first killing centre at Bełżec extermination camp, Bełżec in occupied Poland began in October 1941, three months before the Wannsee Conference. The new facility was operational by March the following year. By mid-1942, two more death camps had been built on Polish lands: Sobibór extermination camp, Sobibór operational by May 1942, and
Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...
operational in July. From July 1942, the mass murder of Polish and foreign Jews took place at
Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...
as part of Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. More Jews were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi
extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
apart from Auschwitz concentration camp, Auschwitz. By the time the mass killings of Operation Reinhard ended in 1943, roughly two million Jews in German-occupied Poland had been murdered. The total number of people murdered in 1942 in Majdanek concentration camp, Lublin/Majdanek, Bełżec extermination camp, Bełżec, Sobibor extermination camp, Sobibór, and Treblinka was 1,274,166 by Höfle Telegram, Germany's own estimation, not counting Auschwitz II Birkenau nor ''Chełmno extermination camp, Kulmhof''. Their bodies were buried in mass graves initially. Both Treblinka and Bełżec were equipped with powerful crawler excavators from Polish construction sites in the vicinity, capable of most digging tasks without disrupting surfaces. Although other methods of extermination, such as the cyanic poison Zyklon B, were already being used at other Nazi killing centres such as Auschwitz, the ''Aktion Reinhard'' camps used carbon monoxide poisoning, lethal exhaust gases from captured tank engines. The ''Holocaust by bullets'' (as opposed to the ''Holocaust by gas'') went on in the territory of occupied Poland in conjunction with the ghetto uprisings, irrespective of death camps' quota. In two weeks of July 1942, the Słonim Ghetto#The revolt, Słonim Ghetto revolt, crushed with the help of Latvian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian ''Schutzmannschaft'', cost the lives of 8,000–13,000 Jews. The second largest mass shooting (to that particular date) took place in late October 1942 when the insurgency was suppressed in the Pińsk Ghetto; over 26,000 men, women and children were shot with the aid of
Belarusian Auxiliary Police The Belarusian Auxiliary Police ( be, Беларуская дапаможная паліцыя, Biełaruskaja dapamožnaja palicyja; german: Weißruthenische Schutzmannschaften, or Hilfspolizei) was a collaborationist paramilitary force establis ...
before the ghetto's closure. Also in: Further info: During the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II), 13,000 Jews were killed in action before May 1943. Numerous other uprisings were quelled without impacting the pre-planned Nazi deportations actions. About two-thirds of the overall number of victims of the Final Solution were murdered before February 1943, which included the main phase of the extermination programme Military Administration in Belgium and Northern France, in the West launched by Eichmann on 11 June 1942 from Berlin. The
Holocaust trains Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the '' Deutsche Reichsbahn'' national railway system under the control of Nazi Germany and its allies, for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews, as well as other victims of the Holocau ...
run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn#Holocaust, Deutsche Reichsbahn and several other national railway systems delivered condemned Jewish captives from as far as Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Moravia, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, and even Scandinavia. The cremation of exhumed corpses to destroy any evidence left behind began in early spring and continued throughout summer. The nearly completed clandestine programme of murdering all deportees was explicitly addressed by Heinrich Himmler in his Posen speeches made to the leadership of the Nazi Party on 4 October and during a conference in Posen (Poznan) of 6 October 1943 in occupied Poland. Himmler explained why the Nazi leadership found it necessary to murder Jewish women and children along with the Jewish men. The assembled functionaries were told that the Nazi state policy was "the extermination of the Jewish people" as such. On 19 October 1943, five days after the prisoner revolt in Sobibór extermination camp, Sobibór, Operation Reinhard was terminated by Odilo Globocnik on behalf of Himmler. The camps responsible for the murder of nearly 2,700,000 Jews were soon closed. Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka were dismantled and ploughed over before spring. Also in: The operation was followed by Aktion Erntefest, the single largest German massacre of Jews in the entire war carried out on 3 November 1943; with approximately 43,000 prisoners shot one-by-one simultaneously in Majdanek concentration camp, three nearby locations by the Reserve Police Battalion 101 hand-in-hand with the Trawniki men from Ukraine. Auschwitz alone had enough capacity to fulfill the Nazis' remaining extermination needs.


Auschwitz II Birkenau

Unlike Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Lublin-Majdanek, which were built in the occupied
General Government The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
territory inhabited by the largest concentrations of Jews, the killing centre at Auschwitz subcamp of Auschwitz concentration camp#Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Birkenau operated in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany directly. The new gas chambers at Bunker I were finished around March 1942 when the Final Solution was officially launched at Belzec. Until mid-June 20,000 Silesian Jews were murdered there using Zyklon B. In July 1942, Bunker II became operational. In August, another 10,000–13,000 Polish Jews from Silesia were murdered, along with 16,000 French Jews declared 'stateless',. and 7,700 Jews from Slovakia.). The infamous 'Gate of Death' at Auschwitz II for the incoming freight trains was built of brick and cement mortar in 1943, and the three-track rail spur was added. Until mid-August, 45,000 Thessaloniki Jews were murdered in a mere six months, including over 30,000 Jews from Sosnowiec Ghetto, Sosnowiec (Sosnowitz) and Bendzin Ghettos. The spring of 1944 marked the beginning of the last phase of the Final Solution at Birkenau. The new big ramps and sidings were constructed, and two freight elevators were installed inside Crematoria II and III for moving the bodies faster. The size of the ''Sonderkommando'' was nearly quadrupled in preparation for the Special Operation Hungary (''Sonderaktion Ungarn''). In May 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau became the site of one of the two largest mass murder operations in modern history, after the ''Grossaktion Warsaw (1942), Großaktion Warschau'' deportations of the Warsaw Ghetto inmates to Treblinka in 1942. It is estimated that until July 1944 approximately 320,000 Hungarian Jews were gassed at Birkenau in less than eight weeks. ''Also in:'' The entire operation was Auschwitz Album, photographed by the SS. In total, between April and November 1944, Auschwitz II received over 585,000 Jews from over a dozen regions as far as Greece, Italy, and France, including 426,000 Jews from Hungary, 67,000 from Łódź, 25,000 from Theresienstadt, and the last 23,000 Jews from the General Government. Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on 27 January 1945, when the gassing had already stopped.


Historiographic debate about the decision

Historians disagree as to when and how the Nazi leadership decided that the European Jews should be exterminated. The controversy is commonly described as the functionalism versus intentionalism debate which began in the 1960s, and subsided thirty years later. In the 1990s, the attention of mainstream historians moved away from the question of top executive orders triggering the Holocaust and focused on factors that were overlooked earlier, such as personal initiative and ingenuity of countless functionaries in charge of the killing fields. No written evidence of Hitler ordering the Final Solution has ever been found to serve as a "smoking gun", and therefore, this one particular question remains unanswered. Hitler made numerous predictions regarding the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe prior to the beginning of World War II. During a 30 January 1939 Reichstag speech, speech given on 30 January 1939, on the sixth anniversary of his accession to power, Hitler said: Raul Hilberg, in his book ''The Destruction of the European Jews'', was the first historian to systematically document and analyse the Nazi project to murder every Jew in Europe. The book was initially published in 1961, and issued in an enlarged version in 1985. Hilberg's analysis of the steps that led to the destruction of European Jews revealed that it was "an administrative process carried out by bureaucrats in a network of offices spanning a continent". Hilberg divides this bureaucracy into four components or hierarchies: the Nazi Party, the civil service, industry, and the
Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the '' Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previo ...
armed forces—but their cooperation is viewed as "so complete that we may truly speak of their fusion into a machinery of destruction". For Hilberg, the key stages in the destruction process were: definition and registration of the Jews; expropriation of property; concentration into ghettoes and camps; and, finally, annihilation. Hilberg gives an estimate of 5.1 million as the total number of Jews murdered. He breaks this figure down into three categories: Ghettoization and general privation: over 800,000; open-air shootings: over 1,300,000; extermination camps: up to 3,000,000. With respect to the "functionalism versus intentionalism" debate about a master plan for the Final Solution, or the lack thereof, Hilberg posits what has been described as "a kind of structural determinism". Hilberg argues that "a destruction process has an inherent pattern" and the "sequence of steps in a destruction process is thus determined". If a bureaucracy is motivated "to inflict maximum damage upon a group of people", it is "inevitable that a bureaucracy—no matter how decentralized its apparatus or how unplanned its activities—should push its victims through these stages", culminating in their annihilation. In his monograph, ''The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942'',
Christopher Browning Christopher Robert Browning (born May 22, 1944) is an American historian who is the professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). A specialist on the Holocaust, Browning is known for his work documenting ...
argues that Nazi policy toward the Jews was radicalized twice: in September 1939, when the History of Poland (1939–45), invasion of Poland implied policies of mass expulsion and massive loss of Jewish lives; and in spring 1941, when preparation for
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named afte ...
involved the planning of mass execution, mass expulsion, and starvation—to dwarf what had happened in Jewish Poland. Browning believes that the "Final Solution as it is now understood—the systematic attempt to murder every last Jew within the German grasp". took shape during a five-week period, from 18 September to 25 October 1941. During this time, the sites of the first extermination camps were selected, different methods of murder were tested, Jewish emigration was forbidden, and 11 transports departed for Łódź as a temporary holding station. Of this period, Browning writes, "The vision of the Final Solution had crystallised in the minds of the Nazi leadership, and was being turned into reality." This was the peak of Nazi victories against the Soviet Army on the Eastern Front (World War II), Eastern Front, and, according to Browning, the stunning series of German victories led to both an expectation that the war would soon be won, and the planning of the final destruction of the "Jewish Bolshevik#Nazi Germany, Jewish-Bolshevik enemy". Browning describes the creation of the extermination camps, which were responsible for the largest number of murders in the Final Solution, as bringing together three separate developments within Nazi Germany: the Nazi concentration camps, concentration camps which had been established in Germany since 1933; an expansion of the gassing technology of the Action T4, Nazi euthanasia programme to provide a murder technique of greater efficiency and psychological detachment; and the creation of "factories of death" to be fed endless streams of victims by mass uprooting and deportation that utilized the experience and personnel from earlier population resettlement programmes—especially the SS and Police Leader, HSSPF and Adolf Eichmann's
RSHA The Reich Security Main Office (german: Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and '' Reichsführer-SS'', the head of the Naz ...
for "Jewish affairs and evacuations". Peter Longerich argues that the search for a finite date on which the Nazis embarked upon the extermination of the Jews is futile, in his book ''Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews'' (2011). Longerich writes: "We should abandon the notion that it is historically meaningful to try to filter the wealth of available historical material and pick out a single decision" that led to the Holocaust. Timothy Snyder writes that Longerich "grants the significance of Arthur Greiser, Greiser's murder of Jews by gas at Chełmno in December 1941", but also detects a significant moment of escalation in spring 1942, which includes "the construction of the large death factory at Treblinka for the destruction of the Warsaw Jews, and the addition of a gas chamber to the concentration camp at Auschwitz for the murder of the Jews of Silesia". Longerich suggests that it "was only in the summer of 1942, that mass killing was finally understood as the realization of the Final Solution, rather than as an extensively violent preliminary to some later program of slave labor and deportation to the lands of a conquered USSR". For Longerich, to see mass-murder as the Final Solution was an acknowledgement by the Nazi leadership that there would not be a German military victory over the USSR in the near future. David Cesarani emphasises the improvised, haphazard nature of Nazi policies in response to changing war time conditions in his overview, ''Final Solution: The Fate of the European Jews 1933–49'' (2016). "Cesarani provides telling examples", wrote Mark Roseman, "of a lack of coherence and planning for the future in Jewish policy, even when we would most expect it. The classic instance is the invasion of Poland in 1939, when not even the most elementary consideration had been given to what should happen to Poland's Jews either in the shorter or longer term. Given that Poland was home to the largest Jewish population in the world, and that, in a couple of years, it would house the extermination camps, this is remarkable." Whereas Browning places the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews in the context of the Wehrmacht victories on the Eastern front, Cesarani argues that the German subsequent realisation that there would be no swift victory over the Soviet Union "scuppered the last territorial 'solution' still on the table: expulsion to Siberia". Germany's declaration of war on the United States on 11 December 1941, "meant that holding European Jews hostage to deter the US from entering the conflict was now pointless". Cesarani concludes, the Holocaust "was rooted in anti-Semitism, but it was shaped by war". The fact that the Nazis were, ultimately, so successful in murdering between five and six million Jews was not due to the efficiency of Nazi Germany or the clarity of their policies. "Rather, the catastrophic rate of killing was due to German persistence ... and the duration of the murderous campaigns. This last factor was largely a consequence of allied military failure." The entry of the U.S. into the War is also crucial to the time-frame proposed by Christian Gerlach, who argued in his 1997 thesis Originally presented as the author's doctoral thesis at . that the Final Solution decision was announced on 12 December 1941, when Hitler addressed a Reich Chancellery meeting of 12 December 1941, meeting of the Nazi Party (the ''Reichsleiter'') and of regional party leaders (the ''Gauleiter''). The day after Hitler's speech, on 13 December 1941 Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary: Cesarani notes that by 1943, as the military position of the German forces deteriorated, the Nazi leadership became more openly explicit about the Final Solution. In March, Goebbels confided to his diary: "On the Jewish question especially, we are in it so deeply that there is no getting out any longer. And that is a good thing. Experience teaches that a movement and a people who have burned their bridges fight with much greater determination and fewer constraints than those that have a chance of retreat.". When Himmler addressed senior SS personnel and leading members of the regime in the Posen speeches on 4 October 1943, he used "the fate of the Jews as a sort of blood bond to tie the civil and military leadership to the Nazi cause".


See also

* Höfle Telegram with arrivals for the camps of ''Einsatz Reinhardt'' * History of the Jews during World War II * Korherr Report written in 1943 on the progress of the Final Solution * Never again * Porajmos, Romani genocide during World War II * Timeline of the Holocaust – The
genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the ...
of Jewish people by Nazi Germany, under the rule of Adolf Hitler


Notes


References


Bibliography

* * * * * Newer edition by Univ. of Nebraska Press / Yad Vashe
2007
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links


Website of the House of the Wannsee ConferenceThe Development of the "Final Solution"
lecture from Dr. David Silberklang, Yad Vashem
Elimination of the Jewish National Home in Palestine: The Einsatzkommando of the Panzer army Africa, 1942
by Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers
Death Decree: Göring directive officially launches the Final Solution
{{Authority control 1942 in Europe The Holocaust Nazi terminology Holocaust terminology Holocaust historiography Ethnic cleansing in Europe Euphemisms