The 'Final Solution' & the Holocaust (AQA A Level History: Component 2: Depth study): Revision Note

Summary

• Prejudice, discrimination and violence meant that almost all of Germany's Jewish population had left the country by 1939,

  • However, the invasions of Poland and the USSR meant the Nazi government found itself in control of millions of Jewish people

    • The debate over the fate of these people became known as the 'Jewish problem'

• After initially deporting them to ghettos and then ordering their deaths by shooting by the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazis arrived at a 'final solution' to the 'Jewish question' during the Wannsee Conference in 1942

  • The 'final solution' involved the creation of six extermination camps in Eastern Europe to which the Jewish population of Nazi-occupied countries would be sent by rail

  • Once there, they would be murdered in specially constructed gas chambers and their bodies cremated in vast ovens

  • This industrialised mass-murder became known as the Holocaust and claimed the lives of between 5 and 6 million Jewish people

• Some historians believe that this attempted extermination was always Hitler's intention

  • Others believe it evolved during the chaos of World War Two

The origins of the 'Final Solution'

• The invasion of Poland and the Soviet Union led to the Nazi government gaining control over the lives of millions of Jewish people

  • What to do with these people became known as the "Jewish Question" amongst the Nazi leaders

• Their first response to this 'question' had been the creation of the ghettos in major cities in the east, including the Polish cities of Lodz and Warsaw

  • This began in 1939 and involved the enforced deportation of large populations of Jewish people to walled-in areas where they were deprived of food and medicine

• The second response to the 'Jewish question' began when the Soviet Union was invaded in 1941

  • Special divisions called Einsatzgruppen were tasked with identifying and murdering Jewish populations

  • It is estimated that the Einsatzgruppen murdered around 1.3 million Jewish people

20.9.41 in Nemencing
128 Jews, 176 Jewesses, 99 Jewish children

22.9.41 in Novo-Wilejka
468 Jews, 495 Jewesses, 196 Jewish children

24.9.41 in Riess
512 Jews, 744 Jewesses, 511 Jewish children

25.9.41 in Jahiunai
215 Jews, 229 Jewesses, 131 Jewish children

27.9.41 in Eysisky
989 Jews, 1,636 Jewesses, 821 Jewish children

An extract from a report written by SS-Standartenführer (Colonel) Karl Jaeger, a commander in the Einsatzgruppen. This extract of the report records the killings of one week in September 1941. The figures in the report indicate that Jaeger's Einsatzgruppen unit murdered 130,000 people in a five-month period. A third of those killed were children.

• In January 1942, senior Nazi and SS officials met at a villa on the banks of Lake Wannsee near Berlin

  • The purpose of this conference was to agree upon a 'final solution' to the 'Jewish question'

The Wannsee Conference, 1942

• The conference was led by Reinhard Heydrich, the second most senior leader of the SS

  • Attendees discussed finding more efficient solutions to the 'Jewish question' than had previously been used

• The use of ghettos was seen as taking housing and resources away from German citizens

• The Einsatzgruppen were viewed as being a costly drain on bullets and being limited to how many Jewish people they could kill

  • It was decided to find a 'solution' that could destroy the European Jewish population in as efficient a way as possible

The implementation of the 'Final Solution'

• At Wannsee, it was agreed that:

  • All Jewish people in Nazi-controlled territory must be killed

  • To do this, the Nazis would begin to build extermination camps (death camps)

    • Six camps were built, the largest being Auschwitz

    • The others were at Chelmno, Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka

    • Railway networks were built to transport Jewish people from ghettos to these extermination camps

    • Each camp had gas chambers, disguised as shower blocks

    • The camps contained large crematoriums to burn the bodies of those killed

• Heinrich Himmler was selected to oversee the 'Final Solution'

• Between 5 and 6 million Jewish people were murdered in what became known as the Holocaust

  • Jewish people were not the only people who were murdered in the extermination camps

  • Other groups considered 'Untermenschen' (sub-human) by the Nazis were also sent to them to be murdered

  • It is estimated that around 250,000 Roma or Sinti people were murdered by the Nazis

  • Although Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and Soviet prisoners of war were usually sent to concentration camps, many were gassed to death in extermination camps too

  • Unlike with Jewish people, there is no evidence of a systematic plan to exterminate all of these groups

Responsibility for the holocaust

• Hitler had always been extremely clear and open about his fanatical hatred of Jewish people

  • Although Hitler never signed an order to commence the murder of millions of European Jewish people, it was clear that people such as Heydrich and Himmler were interpreting his ideas and goals

• The Nazi power structure was very complicated, with the responsibilities of different people and departments often overlapping

  • This was inefficient but also led to many Nazi leaders trying to implement policies that would please Hitler

• It is the SS leaders, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, who are widely viewed as being responsible for both designing and implementing the 'final solution'

  • However, other senior Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring and Martin Bormann were also deeply involved

• The Holocaust was a vast undertaking that required the cooperation and assistance of thousands of Nazi Party officials, soldiers, police officers and civil servants

  • Although attempts were made to keep the 'final solution' secret and all of the extermination camps were located in the east, knowledge of mass killings was well known in Germany

  • However, the German people were not made aware of the decision to exterminate millions of European Jewish people and cannot be held responsible for it

Why did Nazi policy develop into genocide?

• Some historians argue that it was always the intention of Hitler and the Nazis to exterminate the Jewish people of Europe

  • They believe that the war simply allowed the Nazis to carry out something they had always planned

At the time of my struggle for power, it was chiefly the Jewish people who laughed at my prophecies that I would one day assume in Germany the leadership of the state and thus the entire Volk (people), and would then, among other things, also bring the Jewish problem to a solution. I believe, however, that the Jews in Germany have already choked on the uproarious laughter of those days.

I wish to be a prophet again today: should international financial Jewry in and outside of Europe succeed in plunging the nations once again into a world war, the result will not be the Bolshevization of the world and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.

An extract from a speech made by Hitler in January 1939. Some argue this indicates that Hitler had always planned the Holocaust.

• Other historians believe that it was the chaos of war and the prospect of defeat that led the Nazis to begin the construction of the extermination camps

  • These historians believe that the Nazis saw the extermination of European Jewish people as their legacy

  • They point to the fact that the murders of millions of Jewish people only began after the invasion of the USSR and accelerated once the Nazis began to retreat