The Final Solution Flashcards
What were the origins of the ‘Final Solution’?
Hitler’s ideological goals were fixed before 1933; if the Nazis ever came to power, it was certain that the Jewish people faced harmful consequences. Reichkristallnacht in November 1938 opened the way for increasingly violent persecution. For the Holocaust to take place, however, the Second World War was an essential precondition. Hitler himself explicitly linked the war in Europe with the fate of the Jews. When the decision was taken, late in 1940, to turn the war eastwards against the Soviet Union, it was clear that this would be a war of racial annihilation. By the end of 1941, the Nazi regime had to face the fact that the complete conquest of the Soviet Union had not been achieved and that final victory would have to wait until the summer of 1942 at the earliest. Some of the previous plans to send millions of deported Jews to be resettled on the island of Madagascar or in Siberia had to be abandoned. It was also clear by then the vast numbers of Jews already deported to the General Government area of Poland were too many for the authorities there to cope with. It was the urgency of the problems facing the Nazi regime late in 1941 that led to radical new policies.
Why was the Wannsee Conference, January 1942 pushed back?
The key moment in the implement if systematic murder was the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. The meeting was originally scheduled to take place in December 1941; invitations went out in November. The timetable had to be pushed back due to the military crisis caused by Soviet counter-offensive at Moscow in the first week of a December, followed by Pearl Harbour and the entry into the war of Japan and the USA. New invitations went out on 6 January for the meeting two be held two weeks later.
What was the Wannsee Conference, January 1942?
The key moment in the implementation of systematic murder was the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. The importance of the Wannsee Conference is frequently misrepresented as the occasion when the final decision was taken to exterminate Europe’s Jews. In reality, Wannsee was a meeting to inform senior bureaucrats of their roles in implementing a decision that had already been taken. Most historians now agree that the decision came fairly soon after the the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June. Exactly what that decision was, however, is still a matter of controversy and debate. Was it the signal for a new policy of all-our genocide? Or a decision to widen the existing programme of deportations to ‘reservations’ somewhere in the east? Or was it a sudden emergency decision, forced by the fact that German conquest of the Soviet Union had unexpectedly stalled?
What did the Wannsee conference in January 1942 consist of?
The top secret meeting at Wannsee comprised of 15 high ranking Nazi officials. Hitler and Himmler were not in attendance. The chairman was Reinhard Heydrich, the most powerful man in the SS after Heinrich Himmler. Heydrich had received orders from Hermann Goering, empowering him to organise the preparations for the ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish question’. Some historians believe that the driving force was an unwritten order from Hitler. Others have speculated that Heydrich was involved in ‘empire building’, acting on his own initiative to enhance his power and authority.
What happened after Wannsee seemed to prove that the purpose of the meeting was to clarify the previously confused situation concerning deportations to the east. Heydrich considered the meeting a great success. The civilian authorities had all been willing to follow the lead of the RSHA (Reich Security Head Office) and not make objections. The deportation of Jews was no longer to vague destinations somewhere in Poland, but specific areas where there was an organised camp system. The way was open to coordinate and accelerate mass killings. More than half of all Jews to die in the Holocaust were exterminated between February 1942 and February 1943.
What happened when the war turned against Germany, concerning the Jews?
When the war turned against Germany in 1942-43, the mass killings were accelerated and given higher proportion than military needs. Nazi propaganda became even more hate-filled than before.
- Spring 1943: After the German surrender at Stalingrad in February 1943, Joseph Goebbels delivered the epic ‘Total War’ speech in Berlin in mid-February, followed by a massive propaganda drive in the Nazi press.
- Autumn 1943: When Germany suffered from mass bombing rails and the Red Army was beginning to push back German forces in the east, another similar surge of anti-Jewish propaganda occurred.
- Summer 1944: At the time of the Allied landings in France, there was another surge.
Numerous articles and speeches by Goebbels and other Nazi leaders emphasises the idea that the war would result in the destruction of the Jews. The Jewish populations of states such as France, Italy, Greece and Slovakia were rounded up for deportation. The Jewish ghettos at Minsk and Vilnius were destroyed. In February 1944, the remaining Jews of Amsterdam were deported to Aushwitz.
In 1942 where did the Nazis establish killing centres?
In 1942, Nazi officials established the Belzec, Sobidor, and Treblinka killing centres in the so-called General Government. Between March 1942 and November 1943, the SA and their auxiliaries murdered approximately 1,526,500 Jews in these three camps. The overwhelming majority of Jews deported to Belzec, Sobidor and Treblinka were murdered in gas chambers immediately upon arrival. These three killing centres were part of Operation Reinhard, the German plan to systematically murder the remaining Jews in German - occupied Poland. In total, 1.7 million victims were killed in Operation Reinhard and related actions.
When did the Nazis try to conceal what was going on?
Only in November 1944, when the Soviet armies had advanced deep into Poland, did the Nazis move to close down the killing machine and try to conceal what they had been up to.
