Everything about Endl F Sung totally explained
The
Final Solution (
German:
Die Endlösung) was
Nazi Germany's plan and execution of its systematic
genocide against
European Jewry during
World War II, resulting in the final, most deadly phase of the
Holocaust (
Shoah).
Hitler termed it: "the solution of the
Jewish question in Europe."
Mass killings of about 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 German 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 already had been killed by death squads and in mass
pogroms. In
Heinrich Himmler's
speech at the
Posen Conference of
October 6,
1943, Himmler, for the first time, clearly elucidated to all assembled leaders of the Reich, in frank and brutal terms, what the "Final Solution" referred to.
Historiographic debate about the decision
Prior to the beginning of World War II, during a speech given on
January 30,
1939 (the six year anniversary of his accession to power), Hitler foretold the coming Holocaust of European Jewry when he said:
"Today I'll once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result won't be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!"
Christian Gerlach has argued for a different timeframe, suggesting 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
December 13,
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 can't be sentimental about it. It isn't 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."
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've 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'd therefore be guided by the basic expectation that they're going to disappear. They have to be gotten rid of. At present I'm involved in discussions aimed at having them moved away to the east. In January there's going to be an important meeting in Berlin to discuss this question. I'm 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'll have to establish and operate here. I'll report to you on their operation at the appropriate time."
The Madagascar plan
At first, vague plans were made in Nazi Germany to deport all European Jews to
Madagascar.
Adolf Eichmann, in particular, supported this option before the
Wannsee Conference of 1942, where he was made privy to the exact details of the "Final Solution".
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 and impossible."
The original plan was to use the
Royal Navy after Britain's defeat to exile all of Europe's Jews to Madagascar. However, since the British were not defeated as anticipated by the Nazis, the Madagascar Plan had to be abandoned.
First extermination camps
By
November 1,
1941, the first
extermination camps were being built: first
Belzec, then
Sobibor,
Treblinka,
Chełmno,
Majdanek, and finally
Auschwitz-Birkenau. The mass execution of Jews began in early 1942.
Heydrich's letter
The relevant text is a handwritten cover letter, by
Reinhard Heydrich to
Martin Luther of the Foreign Office, dated February 26, 1942, forwarding the
minutes of the
Wannsee Conference. In the opening sentence Heydrich uses explicitly the expression, "the final solution to the Jewish question". The following is a translation of the letter from German to English:
Dear Fellow Party Member [Parteigenosse] Luther!
Enclosed I'm sending you the minutes of the proceedings that took place on January 20,1942.
Since the basic position regarding the practical execution of the final solution of the Jewish question has fortunately been established by now, and since there's a full agreement on the part of all agencies involved. I'd like to ask you at the request of the Reich Marshal to make one of your specialist officials available for the necessary discussion of details in connection with the completion of the draft that shows the organizational, technical and material prerequisites bearing on the actual starting point of the projected solutions.
I want to schedule the first discussion along these lines for 10:30 a.m. on March 6, 1942 at 116 Kurfürstenstrasse, Berlin. I therefore ask you that for this purpose your specialist official contact my functionary in charge there, SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann.
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