Chapter 23 - The ‘Final’ Solution

Question 1

What were the origins of the ‘Final Solution’?

Answer 1

• Hitlers ideological goals were fixed before 1933.
• Reichkristallnacht in November 1938 opened the way for increasingly violent persecution
• The Second World War was an essential precondition for the Holocaust to take place. Hitler linked the war in Europe with the fate of the Jews.
• By the end of 1941, it was clear final victory for the Nazis would have to wait until the summer of 1942 at the earliest.
• Some previous plans to send millions of deported Jews to be resettled on Madagascar or in Siberia had to be abandoned.
• It was also clear that the vast numbers of Jews already deported to the General Government area of Poland were too many for the authorities to cope with.
• The urgency of the problems facing the Nazi regime in late 1941 led to radical new policies

Question 2

What was the Wannsee Conference, January 1942?

Answer 2

• The key moment in the implementation of systematic murder was at the Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942
• It was a meeting to inform senior bureaucrats of their roles of implementing the ‘Final Solution’
• The meeting comprised of 15 high-ranking Nazi officials.
• The chairman was Reinhard Heydrich, the most powerful man in the SS after Himmler.
• Heydrich has received orders from Goering, empowering him to organise preparations for the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish problem’
• Heydrich considered the meeting a great success. What happened after Wannsee proved the purpose of the meeting was to clarify the previously confused situation concerning deportations to the East.
• The civilian authorities had been willing to follow the lead of the Reich Security Head Office and not make objections
• The deportation of Jews was no longer to vague destinations in Poland, but specific areas where there was an organised camp system

Question 3

How was Nazi propaganda intensified as Germany hit periods of crisis in the war efforts?

Answer 3

• Spring 1943: After the German surrender at Stalingrad in February 1943, Goebbels delivered the ‘Total War” speech in Berlin, a public admission that Germany in danger in the war, which was followed by a massive propaganda drive in the Nazi press
• Autumn 1943: When Germany suffered from mass bombing raids and the Red Army was beginning to push back German forces in the east, another surge of anti-Jewish propaganda occurred
• Summer 1944: Allied landings in France, there was another surge

Question 4

How was the Final solution carried out in the war years?

Answer 4

• Numerous articles and speeches by Goebbels and other Nazi leaders emphasised the idea that the war would result in the destruction of the Jews.
• The Nazi regime didn’t spell out what was taking place but the general threat of destruction was hammered out repeatedly.
• Mass killings were accelerated
• The Jewish populations of states such as France, Italy, Greece and Slovakia were rounded up for deportation into camps
• In February 1944, the remaining Jews of Amsterdam was deported to Auschwitz
• By Summer 1944, it was clear Germanh faced inevitable defeat in the war, but the ‘Final solution’ was not abandoned, only intensified
• In November 1944, when Soviet armies were deep into Poland, the Nazis tried to conceal what they had been up to
• The crematoria at Auschwitz was blown up and covered over
• Surviving prisoners were pressed into forced marches westwards, away from the Red Armt
• The size of the complex at Auschwitz-Birkenau made total destruction impossible

Question 5

What was the camp system like for the Final Solution?

Answer 5

• Death camps were in operation from 1942-1945 while concentration camps had been in order from 1933 for political prisoners, commencing with Dachau. These concentration camps