Final Solution
The so-called
"Final Solution of the Jewish Question" (
German "Endlösung der Judenfrage") refers to the
German Nazis' plan to engage in systematic
genocide against the European Jewish population during
World War II. The term was coined by
Adolf Eichmann, a top Nazi official who supervised the genocidal campaign and was tried and executed by
Israeli authorities in 1961-62. The implementation of the Final Solution resulted in the most deadly phase of the
Holocaust. The expression itself is a typical occurrence of the
Nazi newspeak, which made of the Jewish European population a "question" and a "problem" although in reality the only "problem" was the Nazis' will to annihilate them.
Mass killings of over one million Jews occurred before the plans of the Final Solution were fully implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to eradicate the entire Jewish population that the
extermination camps were built and industrialized mass slaughter of Jews began in earnest. This decision to systematically kill the Jews of Europe was made by the time of, or at the
Wannsee conference, which took place in
Berlin, in the Wannsee Villa on
January 20,
1942. During the conference there was a discussion held by a group of Nazi officials to decide on the
"Final Solution of the Jewish Question". The records and minutes of this meeting were found intact by the
Allies at the end of the war and served as valuable evidence during the
Nuremberg Trials. By spring of 1942,
Operation Reinhard began the systematic extermination of the Jews, although hundreds of thousands had already been killed by death squads and in mass
pogroms.
There is still considerable debate among historians about when, exactly, the decision to eradicate the Jewish population of Europe was made by the Nazi leadership. The consensus is that the outlines of the Final Solution arose gradually throughout the summer and fall of 1941. Prominent Holocaust historian
Christopher Browning has stated that the decision to exterminate the Jews was actually two decisions, one in July of 1941 to kill the Jews of Russia (mass killings by the
Einsatzgruppen had already begun by the summer of 1941), the second in October of 1941 to exterminate the remaining Jews of Europe. There is ample evidence for this view, for example on
July 31,
1941, under instructions from
Adolf Hitler, Nazi official
Hermann Göring ordered
SS general
Reinhard Heydrich to "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question."
Christian Gerlach has argued for a different timeframe suggesting that the decision was made by Hitler on
December 12 1941, when he addressed a meeting of the
Nazi Party (the Reichsleiter) and of regional party leaders (the Gauleiter). In his diary entry of
13 December 1941, the day after Hitler's private speech,
Joseph Goebbels wrote:
Regarding the Jewish question, the Führer is determined to clear the table. He warned the Jews that if they were to cause another world war, it would lead to their own destruction. Those were not empty words. Now the world war has come. The destruction of the Jews must be its necessary consequence. We cannot be sentimental about it. It is not for us to feel sympathy for the Jews. We should have sympathy rather with our own German people. If the German people have to sacrifice 160,000 victims in yet another campaign in the east, then those responsible for this bloody conflict will have to pay for it with their lives.[1]
After this decision, plans were made to put the Final Solution into effect. For example, on
December 16, at a meeting of the officials of the
General Government,
Hans Frank referred to Hitler's speech as he described the coming annihilation of the Jews:
As for the Jews, well, I can tell you quite frankly that one way or another we have to put an end to them. The Führer once put it this way: if the combined forces of Judaism should again succeed in unleashing a world war, that would mean the end of the Jews in Europe. .... I urge you: Stand together with me ... on this idea at least: Save your sympathy for the German people alone. Don't waste it on anyone else in the world, . . . I would therefore be guided by the basic expectation that they are going to disappear. They have to be gotten rid of. At present I am involved in discussions aimed at having them moved away to the east. In January there is going to be an important meeting in Berlin to discuss this question. I am going to send State Secretary Dr. Buhler to this meeting. It is scheduled to take place in the offices of the RSHA in the presence of Obergruppenführer Heydrich. Whatever its outcome, a great Jewish emigration will commence. But what is going to happen to these Jews? Do you imagine there will be settlement villages for them in the Ostland? In Berlin we were told: Why are you making all this trouble for us? There is nothing we can do with them here in the Ostland or in the Reich Commissariat. Liquidate them yourselves! .... Here are 3.5 million Jews that we can't shoot, we can't poison. But there are some things we can do, and one way or another these measures will successfully lead to a liquidation. They are related to the measures under discussion with the Reich.... Where and how this will all take place will be a matter for offices that we will have to establish and operate here. I will report to you on their operation at the appropriate time.
At first, vague plans were made in Nazi Germany to ship all European Jews to
Madagascar.
Adolf Eichmann, in particular, supported this option before the 1942
Wannsee Conference where he was told what the "Final Solution" was to be.
SS chief
Heinrich Himmler stated, "However cruel and tragic each individual case may be, this method is still the mildest and best, if one rejects the
Bolshevik method of physical extermination of a people out of inner conviction as un-German andimpossible." ("Madagascar Plan" in the
Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, 1990)The plan was to use the British navy after Britain's defeat. However, when the British were not defeated as expected, the Madagascar Plan had to be abandoned.
By
1 November 1941 the first extermination camps were being built: first
Belzec, then
Sobibor,
Treblinka,
Chełmno extermination camp and
Majdanek, and finally
Auschwitz-Birkenau. The mass execution of Jews began in early 1942.
* Browning, Christopher R. The Origins of the Final Solution, William Heinemann, London, 2004.
* Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984.
* Christian Gerlach. The Wannsee Conference, the Fate of German Jews, and Hitler's decision in principle to exterminate all European Jews, The Journal of Modern History. Chicago: Dec 1998.Vol.70, Iss. 4; pg. 759, 54 pgs
* Longerich, Peter. The Unwritten Order â€" Hitler's Role in The Final Solution, Tempus Publishing Limited, Stroud, 2003.
* Baumslag, Naomi. Murderous Medicine â€" Nazi Doctors, Human Experimentation, and Typhus, Praeger Publishers, (an imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.), 2005. ISBN 0275983129
*
1941-1944: The "Final Solution"*
When did Hitler decide on the Final Solution?*
The Emergence of the Final Solution*
The Final Solution of the Jewish Question in the Holocaust
