The Final Solution

Question 1

When was the conference to discuss the Final Solution?

Answer 1

January 1942

Question 2

Where was the conference to discuss the Final Solution?

Answer 2

Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin

Question 3

What happened during the Wannsee conference? (Card 1)

Answer 3

• A group of senior Nazis discussed what they called the ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Question.’
• Himmler, head of the SS and Gestapo, was put in charge of the systematic killing of Jews within Germany and German-occupied territory
• Slave labour and death camps were built at Auschwitz, Treblinka and Chelmno in Poland

Question 4

What happened during the Wannsee conference? (Card 2)

Answer 4

• Old, sick and young children were immediately killed
• The rest were sent to work at the labour camps and some were used for medical experiments
• Jews, European Gypsies, political prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexual and Russian and Polish prisoners of war were sent to these camps
• They worked to death, gassed or shot

Question 5

How many Jews were killed in the Final Solution?

Answer 5

Six million Jews, 500,000

Question 6

Who resisted against the Final Solution? (Card 1)

Answer 6

• Many Jews escaped from Germany before the killing started
• Other Jews managed to live under cover in Germany and the occupied territories
• Some joined resistance groups
• In 1945, Jews in the Warsaw ghetto in Poland rose up against the Nazis
• Armed uprisings in five concentration camps
• Greek Jews managed to blow up the gas ovens at Auschwitz

Question 7

Was the ‘Final Solution’ planned from the start?

Answer 7

• Some historians (intentionalists) believe that the whole process had been carefully planned for years
• Structuralists argue that there was no clear plan and the policy of mass murder evolved during the war years

Question 8

What would the genocide not been possible without?

Answer 8

• The Civil Service bureaucracy who collected, stored and supplied information about Jews
• Police forces in Germany and the occupied territories: many victims of the Nazis were actually seized by the police rather than the Gestapo or SS
• The SS: The Death’s Head battalions and Einsatzgruppen carried out many killings and Jews were transported to concentration camps
• The Wehrmacht (the German armed forces): army leaders were fully aware of what was going on
• Industry: Volkswagen and Mercedes had their own slave labour camps
• The German people: anti-Semitism was widespread and Germans turned a blind eye to mass murder

Question 9

What happened in the July Bomb Plot in 1944?

Answer 9

• Count von Stauffenberg was a colonel in the German army
• On the 20th July planted a bomb in Hitler’s conference room
• The plan was to kill Hitler, close down the radio stations, round up the other leading Nazis and take over Germany
• It failed because the revolt was poorly planned
• Hitler survived and the Nazis took a terrible revenge, killing 5000 people