Frontsheet 6/ Lesson 05

The ‘Final Solution’

Key Questions:

How did the persecution of Jews escalate after 1941?

Why do you think the war led to greater persecution of Jews and minorities?
When was the decision to carry out total racial annihilation made?
Who was responsible for the Holocaust?

Possible Essay Questions

1. ‘The decision to exterminate Europe’s Jews was made at the Wannsee Conference in January
1942.’ Assess the validity of this view.

2. ‘To what extent was Hitler was solely responsible for the Holocaust?

3. ‘The Nazis followed a clear and consistent policy toward the Jews in the years 1939-1945.’
Assess the validity of this view.

To what extent was the Wannsee Conference a turning point in the

treatment of the Jews?

Date
 January 1942
 It was originally scheduled for Dec 1941 but was delayed to 20 Jan 1942 due to military crisis at
Moscow and Pearl Harbor.

Attendance

 15 high ranking officials from the Nazi party attended the conference. Hitler and Himmler did not
attend.
 Reinhard Heydrich, the second most powerful man in the SS after Himmler led the conference.

Decision Making
 Heydrich had received orders from Goering empowering him to organise preparations for a ‘final
solution’ to the ‘Jewish question’.
 Some believe Heydrich was also acting on an unwritten order from Hitler, others think he was acting
on his own initiative to build his power and authority.
 Heydrich told the meeting that the ultimate aim was to exterminate all 11 million European Jews
The Nuremberg Laws would be used to decide who was a Jew.
 All Jews in Europe would be brought to Poland; those fit enough would work, those not would be
exterminated

Significance
 Heydrich convened the Wannsee Conference to inform and secure support from government
ministries.
  The men discussed the implementation of a policy decision that had already been made. Gassing
had begun at Chelmo whilst Belzac and Auschwitz Birkenau were already under construction in
1941. Heydrich considered the meeting a success as the civilian authorities all agreed to follow the
lead of the RHSA (Reich Security Office).
• Following Wannsee, Adolf Eichmann became responsible for the planning and implementation of
the ‘Final Solution’

• The SS were responsible for the running and administration of the camps

• Zyklon B was provided by IG Farben, this was used for the mass killings

• The operation was largely kept secret by the Nazis; even though it involved mass organisation and
the participation of thousands

• Wannsee can be seen as a turning point from a haphazard programme, to an institutional, planned
approach to mass extermination. By March 1942 Jewish people from across Nazi occupied territory
including France were being systematically deported to the death camps.

The Wannsee conference was NOT when the decision to kill all Jews was made. It was actually a meeting
to inform officials of their role in the final solution. Chelmo had already opened as an extermination camp
and had begun using gas van in Dec 1941.

Heydrich’s Official Speech at the Conference

“During the course of the Final Solution, the Jews will be deployed under appropriate
supervision at a suitable form of labour deployment in the East. In large labour
columns, separated by gender, able-bodied Jews will be brought to those regions to
build roads, whereby a large number will doubtlessly be lost through natural
reduction. Any final remnant that survives will doubtless consist of the elements most
capable of resistance. They must be dealt with appropriately, since, representing the
fruit of natural selection, they are to be regarded as the core of a new Jewish revival.”

1. How does his reference to ‘a suitable form of labour

deployment” fit in with your understanding of the wartime
economy?

2. Why were a ‘large number….lost through natural reduction‘?

3. How does Heydrich use ideology to justify the treatment of

Jews?
 4. To what extent was the Wannsee Conference a turning point in the treatment of the Jews?

5. Is the conference proof of a clear and consistent policy toward the Jews?

Escalation of mass murder

As the war turned against Germany, the campaign against the Jews escalated.

Extermination Camps
At least six camps were purpose built for extermination:
Auschwitz (also a labour camp)
Chelmno
Belzec
Sobibor
Majdanek
Treblinka

Other camps were adapted: eg: Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald

By 1942 all had a railway platform, gas chambers, and adjacent crematoria (except Chelmno where killing
was done using mobile vans)
Auschwitz was the largest and had the capacity to kill 20,000 people per day
Goebbels intensified the propaganda war against the Jews after each defeat for example: Stalingrad in the
spring of 1943; after the increase in Allied bombing raids in the summer of 1943; in the summer of 1944 at
the time of the Allied landing in Normandy (D-Day).

Articles and speeches made it clear that the war would result in the absolute destruction of the Jewish
race.

Mass killings were accelerated, Ghettto’s including Warsaw and Lodz were ‘cleared’ and the survivors sent
to death camps.

Jews in remaining in occupied territory such Italian Jews were rounded up for deportation. In February
1944 the remaining Jews of Amsterdam were deported to Auschwitz.

By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Germany faced inevitable defeat but rather than abandon the ‘Final
Solution’ it was escalated. Only in November 1944 did the Nazis attempt to destroy evidence of the
crematoria at Auschwitz, as Soviet troops advanced into Poland.

Between 1942 and 1944, over 2.5 million Jews died in Auschwitz alone.

Death marches
From autumn 1944, the Nazi regime carried out a frantic evacuation.
Some camps were shut down and the prisoners forced to march long
distances westwards as the Red Army advanced. Hundreds died of
malnutrition, illness and the effects of extreme cold weather. Many
were shot by their guards. In total an estimated 250,000-400,000
people died during these marches.

The End of the War

The implementation of the ‘Final Solution’ was never completed:
In January 1945, Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz.

In the following months American troops liberated Dachau and Mauthausen in the west.

British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald in the north.

By May 1945 Hitler was dead, Germany had surrendered and the full horror of the camps was revealed.

It is estimated over 6 million Jews in total were killed in the Holocaust. Over 7 million non-Jews were also
killed in a variety of ways: Slavs, Poles, Russians, Gypsies, LGBTQ, mentally ill and physically
handicapped

The Evolution of the ‘Final Solution’: An Overview

1. Anti-Semitism & The appeal of the Nazi Party
 2. Discrimination Against Jews 1933-37
3. Growth of Radical Anti-Semitism 1937-39
4. Persecution of Polish Jews 1939-41, ghettoisation
5. The Invasion of Russia 1941: Einsatzgruppen Shootings
6. Extermination Camps open (Chelmo 1941)
7. The Wannsee Conference, January 1942
8. ‘The Final Solution’ 1942-1945

Exam Practice:

‘The ‘Final Solution’ was the result of a systematic plan’. Assess the validity of this view.

Words to define?

Date range?

Four Themes?

Causation or change question?

Homework: Revision Style Essay Plan

TASK 1: ON a separate sheet of paper, write up a detailed essay plan for this question FROM
MEMORY
TASK 2: In a different colour pen, use your worksheet to add more factual details.
TASK 3: In a third colour, add judgments and change words,