Final Solution : The Holocaust

Summary: This article was an introduction to the Holocaust. The German Nazi’s thought that the Jews were a community. Not only the Jews were targeted, anyone with a racial inferiority was targeted. For example, although the Jews were the main threat the gypsies, Jehovah’s witnesses, and homosexuals and the disabled were also targeted. The Holocaust was a way to decrease the Jewish population; the final solution was to murder the Jews of Europe or anyone that was a threat to their German culture. Many died of incarceration and maltreatment. During the war they created ghettos, forced-labor camps between 1941 and 1944 the Nazi German Authorities would deport the Jews to extermination camps where they were murdered in gassing facilities. May 7, 1945 the German armed forces surrendered to the allies.

Adolf screamed, "If I am ever really in power, the destruction of the Jews will be my first and most important job. As soon as I have power, I shall have gallows after gallows erected, for example, in Munich on the Marienplatz-as many of them as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged one after another, and they will stay hanging until they stink. They will stay hanging as long as hygienically possible. As soon as they are untied, then the next group will follow and that will continue until the last Jew in Munich is exterminated. Exactly the same procedure will be followed in other cities until Germany is cleansed of the last Jew!"

1945. The end of the Holocaust. Total death: 6 million Jews. As tragic as it was, there was only one person behind it all; Adolf Hitler. Hitler, the dictator during the time, managed to transform peaceful and normal people into extreme haters towards the Jews. 158 years earlier, a man had introduced ideas that could have prevented these 6 million Jews from dying. That man was James Madison, also known as the Father of the US Constitution. In Philadelphia’s summer heat of 1787, James Madison along with 55 other delegates attended to what is now known as the Constitutional Convention. The meeting was held to discuss their loose federal government, or known as The Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation was a failure as it was too weak to unite a whole nation. The delegates thought that they must frame, or build a new government soon to be called the Constitution. The delegates were cautious about avoiding tyranny, or when harsh and absolute power gets in the hands of one or a group of individuals. The Constitution guarded the nation against tyranny through federalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, and small/large state compromises.

But today the world no longer sees it in that light, but rather understands its meaning differently. Today it refers to the mass murder of six million European Jews. Additionally, the German Nazis killed members of other persecuted groups during World War II such as homosexuals and Gypsies. This devastating Nazi moment in time has caused the world to wondering how it could have happened. According to the Adolf Hitler (a historical figure most people recognize) the Jews were an inferior race that was an alien threat to the purity of the German race and community. So as a result of his beliefs, the Holocaust happened during his Nazi rule. Unbelievably, common humanity was lost during this time in Germany with acceptance of Hitler’s solution to eliminate an “inferior race”.

The years of 1941 and 1942 paint a vivid description of ugly, taking place events too hard to take in, and the death of 6 million innocent people. The Final Solution in an excerpt from Witnesses to the Holocaust: An Oral History, where Sam Bankhalter and Hinda Kibort detail their horrifying account of Hitler’s rash and day to day life in the Nazi concentration camps where they were imprisoned. The Final Solution was a plan systematically matriculated by the Nazi to exterminate European Jews by placing them in work camps designed for certain death.

“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them twice,” Eli Wiesel. These words really reflect the groups that were forgotten to the Holocaust. Many more lives were taken than just the Jews, in fact, the Polish, the Gypsies, and the mentally and physically disabled were some of the main targets for the Nazis. Few people realize that more than just Jews were persecuted during the Nazi regime, so they could perfect their so called “Master Race”. These groups were deemed “defective,” did not have the right to live with the “Aryans” or the “Master Race,” and had to be eliminated along with the Jews. The Nazis did not stop just at the Jews, but planned to eliminate all that were thought to be “defective” or “racially inferior”. As Simon Wiesenthal once said, “The Holocaust is not only a Jewish tragedy, but also a human tragedy.”

The Holocaust was an event that took place from 1933 to 1945 in Germany. During this time, Adolf Hitler was in charge, resulting in the prejudice actions that are well written in history. Facing economic, social, and political oppression, thousands of German Jews wanted to flee, but found few countries wanting to take them in. Eventually, under Hitler’s leadership, some 6 million Jews were murdered during World War II. In this time period the Nazi’s waged a war against the Jews and other races that they considered to be unequal in race and superiority to the German race. The actions that took place during the Holocaust were seen as the “Final Solution”. The Holocaust was one of the darkest times in history, and can be traced to the rising of Hitler, “An egomaniac with delusions of grandeur, and power” (Steinberg 240). The Holocaust resulted in the deaths of many Jews and other non- Germans, until they were liberated by America.

The Madagascar Plan was one example of strategies which were formulated to remove Jews from Germany and its occupied lands. Many countries refused to accept Jewish refugees. This shift in policy resulted in the deportation of Jews to camps and ghettos in the East. The policy to "resettle" Jews to these ghettos and camps was a significant step in what was to become the "Final Solution" the systematic murder of millions of Jews.

This paper will compare and contrast how Gotz Aly, Gerhard Weinberg, and Ian Kershaw interpret the process that led to the Holocaust and ultimately the “Final Solution”. A brief background on the Final Solution may be helpful when considering the views of these authors. The Final Solution took place during World War Two in 1942. It is often referred to as the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question/Race”. The main goal was to remove the Jewish race from Europe and ultimately the world through a terrible and horrific genocide. In January of 1942 at the “Wannsee Conference”, this program and policy was constructed and implemented. As a result, about sixty-six percent of all Jews in Europe were killed.

During World War II, the Nazis persecuted and executed over six million Jews and placed them in concentration and death camps such as Auschwitz, Sobibor, and Treblinka. This event, named the Holocaust, is the worst known case of genocide in human history. Even though the Holocaust ended quite some time ago, the question “how could the Holocaust have happened?” still lingers in the minds of many. To answer this question, you must determine possible motives behind why this would happen. Another way to answer this question is to utilize different sources to help form some explanation as to how it was allowed to continue for so long. The purpose of this essay is to provide and explain some possible motives as to why the Holocaust happened while

Up to 6 million Jews, two-thirds of the Jews living in Europe in 1939, were executed as a result of the Final Solution.

Imagine a plan where the ulterior motive was to essentially to kill every Jewish person in Europe. The Final Solution was the “Nazis’ program to solve their ‘Jewish question’—what to do with the Jews?—by murdering every Jew in Europe.” (Gale: World History in Context). It was formed by the Nazis (led by Adolf Hitler) during the Wannsee Conference in 1941, unlike the Nazi’s previous plans to isolate the European Jewish population in different parts of Europe, the Final Solution was a “final product” to completely get rid of the Jews by genocide. Genocide is the systematic killing of an entire race or ethnic group of people, the most famous example being the Holocaust.

n November 9 to November 10, 1938, in an incident known as “Kristallnacht”, Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses and killed close to 100 Jews. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, also called the “Night of Broken Glass,” some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. German Jews had been subjected to repressive policies since 1933, when Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) became chancellor of Germany. However, prior to Kristallnacht, these Nazi policies had been primarily nonviolent. After Kristallnacht, conditions for German Jews grew increasingly worse. During World War II (1939-45), Hitler and the Nazis implemented their so-called “Final Solution” to the what

The Holocaust is defined as destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war. Following 1945, the word has taken on a new meaning referring to the mass slaughtering of millions of European Jews as well as other persecuted groups (gypsies and homosexuals), by the German Nazi regime during the Second World War. In Europe the Jews experienced anti-Semitism (hostility or prejudice against Jews) which dated back to the ancient world, to the time when the Jewish temples were destroyed and they were forced to leave Palestine by Roman authorities. This wide-spread hatred of the Jews augmented the virulent mindset behind the Holocaust.

The holocaust was a bleak and unrecoverable part of the history of the twentieth century that will always be remembered. Millions died for no reason except for one man’s madness. Although many people know why this war happened many don’t know when and what events lead up to this: the way Hitler came into power, or when the first concentration camp was established, and what city it was in, why Jews were hated so much by Hitler, and why the rest of the country also hated them as well as, and what the chronology of the Holocaust. These are some of the things I will explain in my paper.