Once Hitler has decided to kill all Russian Jews it was a small step to kill all Jews. The decision was taken in 1941 (this view is accepted by many). Goering operating under Hitler sent a note to Heydrich asking him to organise a complete solution to the Jewish question. However this note is seen by some as not the declaration of the final solution but just an extension to the happenings that were already going on in Russia. However it could suggest that awesome task that was upon them now needed more than a few thousand Einstazgruppen members to help in its completion. However, Browning believes that two orders were issued by Hitler one concerning the Russian Jews and other in September 1941 concerning the rest of the European Jews. Browning believes that the decision was taken when the war with the Russians was looking good for Germany and this gave Hitler the push he needed to show that he could kill on a mass scale. However Hitler seems to have been wary of associating himself too closely with any killing preparation and so it is possible that he could have asked Himmler to produce a solution to the Jewish question without actually enquiring about it in too much detail. Some however believe that at no stage were officials acting on their own imitative they were obeying orders form Himmler who was in turn obeying orders form Hitler “I do nothing that the Fuhrer does not know”.
The killing of the Russian Jews by the end of 1941 was well underway. The Einstazgruppen had the task of killing them. Their main method was shooting. Probably the most infamous killing took place at Babi yar. 33,771 Jews were killed in 3 days on the outskirts of Kiev. By now the German armed forces were involved too. The army willing carried out orders to cleanse Russia of all Jews. Again were the army acting under orders of Hitler and were they just facilitating the Russian effort or were they under a specific order to kill solely the Jews. From this stemmed the idea of killing all European Jews however organisation was the key and did Hitler authorise the undertaking of the European Jew policy or was his officials working under initiative.
A conference was called in 1942 to organise the methods that the Germans were to use to rid Europe of al its Jews. The conference at Wannsee was attended by many Nazi officials. In 90 minutes the officials s had formulated procedure by where 11 million Jews would be ‘resettled’. Taken by Adolf Eichmann, the minutes of this conference are one of the most important documents recorded on the planning and organization of the murder of European Jewry by the Nazi regime The minutes detail the decision, taken at Wannsee, to eliminate all Jews from Europe through a combination of "evacuation, deportation to the camps, liquidation, and ghettoization." ." The Wannsee Conference is a horrifying document and ultimately six million Jews were to fall victim to the plans. Hitler must have authorised this because so many officials got together to put on paper what was going on. Hitler the head off all the Nazi officials world have certainly known about it because all tings had to be passed through him. The conference was not the starting paint it was there to finalise the idea. The operations could now be put into place systematically.
Operation Reinhard was Nazis’ code-name for the extermination of the Jews that lived in the so-called General Government in Poland. It concerned 2 million Jews. A total of 1 ¾ million Jews from Poland, the Soviet Union and Western Europe were killed during a mere 17 months in the three Operation Reinhard extermination camps: Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. The camps had only one purpose: to kill the more than 2 million Jews that lived in the General Government. Later Jews from all over Europe were also transported to the camps and murdered. The three camps were not concentration camps, but pure extermination camps – also known as death camps. In many cases the time between arrival and death (and subsequent burning) was only a few hours. Only very few Jews, between 700 and 1,000, were used as workers in the camps. But they as well had to give up their lives after a brief period of time as victims of Nazi bullets or gas. By now the systematic killing had begun it had evolved from shooting odd Jewish communist in Russia to killing them all then to implementing a systematic way of killing to the rest of Europe. Hitler by now must have authorised this such a powerful man would not have let systematic killing houses be built without his say so. So even if before now he did not know to what extent or the exact details of the final solution. He now must have knew that the final solution was underway and he must have authorised it because it was to large to let people just get on with it.
Auschwitz was the final step on the journey to mass annihilation of the Jews. The Auschwitz complex was divided in three major camps: Auschwitz I main camp or Stammlager; Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, established on October 8th, 1941 as a 'Vernichtungslager' (extermination camp); Auschwitz III or Monowitz, established on May 31st , 1942 as an 'Arbeitslager' or work camp. Here millions of Jewish people were killed. And it was an organised camp solely for the extermination of Jewish people. This was the life long dream of Hitler to have all Jews dead surly he must have authorised it and actively taken a role to help with the mass murder of the Jews known as the final solution. In its entirety, the "Final Solution" consisted of gassings, shootings, random acts of terror, disease, and starvation that accounted for the deaths of about six million Jews -- two-thirds of European Jewry.
On analysis of all the evidence presented for the steps to the systematic annihilation of the Jews it’s hard to decide when Hitler did actually authorise the final solution. It seems at each stage Hitler could have known and made it happen for example the decision to kill all Russian Jews would seem to have been an order of Hitler. However, we must take into account that Germany is a very large country and its inhabitants are numerous and not all can be controlled by one man and so we have to look to the functionalist view of Hitler and say that he may not have known what was going on. However one must come to a conclusion and it is this… that Hitler had in his mindset from that very being the intention of killing all Jews. The problem came when a decision needed to be made on when to do it. However after seeing the success that the Einstazgruppen were having in Russia Hitler authorised the final solution, what involvement he had after that may have been minimal but his authorisation was all the officials needed to work then on their own initiative. However one question still remains could Hitler have carried out such a huge scale attack in such a huge country without the initiative of others?
