All future anti – Jewish laws in Germany applied to Austrian Jews as well. Britain, France and Italy agreed that Germany could take territory called the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Jews living in that area fled to Czechoslovakia.
In 1938 this is really when the physical discrimination started. Jews were banned from owning business. Jewish children were banned from attending German schools. They were excluded from cinemas, theatres, concerts, exhibitions, beaches and holiday resorts. Jewish publishing houses and book shops were closed down. Jewish and gypsy children were forbidden to play with ‘Aryan’ children. Large numbers of gypsies were imprisoned in concentration camps.
In 1939 Jews were not allowed to leave their houses after 8pm (9pm during the summer) Jews could be evicted from their homes without reason and without notice. On September Germany, invaded Poland. More than 3 million Jews lived in Poland and their treatment by the Nazis was even more vicious than that of German and Austrian Jews. Jews in Poland had to wear an armband with a blue star of David, or sew a yellow star on to their clothing they were stripped of their possessions and between 1939- 40 100,000 were killed in labour camps and by random acts of violence.
Why did the Nazis treatment of the Jews change from 1939 – 45?
The invasion of Poland in September 1939 led Britain and France to declare war on Germany. This acted as a catalyst for change in the treatment of the Jews. The conquest of Poland brought more than 3 million polish Jews under Nazi rule, as this was the country with the highest Jewish population. Naturally, the situation grew worse as German captured more land, they found more Jews and this meant that step by step more countries could be occupied in the same way, hence more Jews being exterminated.
Hitler had stated repeatedly that if a war were to break out in Europe, he would unleash tremendous suffering on the European Jews, whom he blamed for war – mongering. He made good on his promise.
The Jews, which had been captured in Poland, were heavily terrorized with public humiliation, beatings and random killings. They were also driven into crowded ghettos in an area of Poland known as the general government. To mark them out, Jews were made to wear a yellow Star of David.
The initial solution to the 'Jewish problem' was ghettoriasation. This meant that Jews were deported to large ghettoes away from the Aryans, where they could not infect the blood of the 'Aryans'. In camps like these many people were starved to death, some rotted away while others died of diseases. Many commanders raped women in the camps, and others were used as guinea pigs in scientific experiments. However, as suggested above this solution could no longer operate due to the low number of soldiers available. Therefore, the Nazis considered the possibility of forcing all Jews to emigrate. One plan was to create a Jewish homeland somewhere in Eastern Europe. Another was to send all the Jews to Madagascar, a French island off the coast of southern Africa. But in 1941 both these options were discarded by a simpler, more direct plan for ending the 'Jewish problem,' this was known as the 'final solution.'
In 1941, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. In the path of the invasion lay the countries of Ukraine and Byelorussia, namely part of the Baltic States, which contained about 5 million Jews.
Before the invasion, Hitler gave out orders to his generals that they were to be merciless to the Slavs and doubly merciless towards Slav communists. He also said that special SS units known as the Einsatzgruppen were to shoot all communist. But the real order given to the SS units was to exterminate all soviet Jews. What followed could only be described as the brutal, in humane mass murder of the Jews.
Originally the executions were carried out by mobile killing squads, called the SS, however it was not soon before they became emotionally distressed a traumatized by the pleading cries of Jewish children and women. Therefore, Himmmler came up with a plan that could systematically kill the Jews in minutes. He introduced the idea of extermination camps, which could kill Jews in minutes.
The first death camp was set up in Chelmo in December 1941, a month before the wanasee conference. The death camp was responsible for the mass murder of Jews, anti -Nazis, gypsies and the mentally ill. Polish Jews were targeted first, where gas vans were used to kill them, the exhaust was turned back into the van so that they died of Carbon monoxide poisoning while being driven to mass graves. Other Jews met a similar fate however they were deceived into getting into trucks where they were told to have a shower. However when the taps were turned on gas was released instead of water. Carbon monoxide was also used in gas chambers constructed between autumn 1941 and spring 1942 at Belzec. At Auschwitz, and extermination camp, and insecticide called zyklon -b was used for killing. It is important to understand that the systematic killing of the Jews with gas had not yet been made official at the Wannsee Conference, in fact many of the acts stated above, were merely experiments. .
At the Wannsee Conference, that took place on January 1942, was where the German civil servants and the SS functionaries met and together tried to derive a plan on what could be done to the 14 million Jews in Europe. A man called Heydrich headed the conference. It became obvious that the rising number of Jews was too much for the Nazis to deal with, as they could not spare any soldiers due to the war. Heydrick decided that those who were fit enough to do so, would be appointed to work for the German industry while others who were not would be escorted to death camps in Poland and Austria, here they would be killed by gas. Poland was a popular choice for these camps as the country consisted of a large Jewish population. 'The final solution' added to the terror that Jews were already facing. No longer were Jews allowed to move out of areas under Nazi control. They were now being sent to death camps.
The Nazis did everything in their power to keep the extermination programme a secret. Therefore the death camps were located in remote areas in the East. However most people knew that Jews were being deported eastwards. But the Nazis never used such words as 'extermination' or 'killing'. Instead, they used code word such 'final solution' and 'evacuation'. This secret however was revealed in mid 1944.
It is fair to say that the change in the treatment of the Nazis may not have taken place, if the allied nations had not declared war on Germany. Firstly, because there would have been more soldiers and so there might not have been a need to establish gas chambers and therefore many more Jews would have been saved. Also, Hitler had openly threatened that if the allied nations resisted Germany's invasion of Europe, than Hitler would hold the Jews hostage and as a result many Jews were unable to leave Europe and became prisoners in their own country.
In What Ways Did the Nazis try To Eliminate the Jews in Europe from 1941 onwards?
Before 1941, the Nazis used one main method to eradicate the Jewish population in Nazi controlled Europe. They attempted to make life for the Jews unbearable so that they would move to other countries. The Nazis also attempted to control them inside Ghettos. They were even trying to deport them to the African coast of Madagascar.
On June 30th 1941 the German army invaded the Soviet Union. This would be a war to death, Hitler ordered a war of annihilation with no mercy. The conflict was seen in ideological terms Hitler believed that all Jews are Bolsheviks and therefore must be immediately liquidated. The first six weeks of the Second World War were a huge success. Hitler expected Russia to collapse at any time. The decision was taken to destroy all Jews sometime in the summer of 1941 in the mood of euphoria.
The Nazis began to get rid of the Jews with the mobile execution squads, also known as Einsatzgruppen. They would go around Nazi ruled Europe, round up the Jews and murder them. The procedure was as follows – Jews were rounded up and taken to a remote area then stripped naked, shot and buried in pits. Village areas were wiped of Jews. Only 135 of these were women. In September though the same squad killed 56,459 Jews. Among these were over 41,000 women and children. The killings were efficient however they were public and distressing for the shooters, so they started to find new solutions by doing experiments with gas which went on to be gas chambers and gas vans. They also used gas vans, which basically used petrol fumes from the engines to gas the Jews in the airtight backs of the vans. Although the Einsatzgruppen was capable of killing tens of thousands of Jews in a few days and the gas vans killed 150,000 Jews, they realized that it was too slow, expensive and was having serious psychological effects on the soldiers.
Although they were unable to carry out any of these methods any more, they were still able to carry on sending Jews to concentration camps. In these camps they would be fed close to nothing and would be worked to death. This was a very cost effective way of killing the Jews and to get the most out of a Jew as they possibly could. This idea of profit played a main part in the Nazis final solution of killing the Jews. On the 20th January 1942 a meeting was arranged by Reinhard Heydrich, who was the SS security chief and deputy to Himmler, to lay out the plans for Europe’s Jews which was known as the wannsee conference. The meeting was designed to make sure all Nazi departments agreed on one policy and that was to get rid of the Jews. This was when the final solution was decided. All the Nazi departments agreed on the final solution. All Jews, not just eastern Jews, were to be exterminated. A systematic genocide is given approval.
The final solution was decided on late in 1941. This was known as the Wannasee conference where many of the highly ranked Nazi officers officially agreed on the idea.
In the course of the final solution the Jews will be brought to the east for labor, large labor gangs will be formed, with sexes separated, which will be used for road construction. No doubt a lot of them will drop out though natural wastage. The remainder who survive will have to be dealt with accordingly. This was from the minutes of the meeting.
The main aim of the final solution was to kill the Jews as quickly and cheaply as possible. They were to deport the Jews to somewhere they would never return. Scientists and engineers competed to find a solution to the problem and it was found by building factories which would only be used to kill the Jews. These factories were to be called death camps by the Nazis. Some children and adults were used for hideous medical experiments
After the Nazis saw that gassing the Jews with carbon monoxide was also taking too long, they had to find another quicker method. The gas chamber was a great idea for the Nazis but the carbon monoxide wasn't. They finally decided to use Zyklon B pellets, which did the job much quicker. Five to seven kilograms of pellets would kill about 1,500 people.
The Jews going to one of these death camps would be sent there by train. As the Nazis wanted few people to know about these death camps, they told the Jews that they were going to be resettled in the East where they will be able to work. Once there they were separated into two groups (workers and non-workers) the group of non-workers would have been sent to showers to be deloused. These showers were disguised gas chambers where the Jews would have been killed.
Before they would enter the showers, they would undress, and be given a number that they would have to remember. If they forgot their number, they would be able to retrieve their clothes. However, they weren't going to retrieve their clothes because they were going to die. They were then gassed in very convincing showers and then cremated by other Jews.
When they were losing the war, the Nazis were still trying to eliminate the Jewish race from Europe. Once the news got to the death camps it was time to kill as many as they could in on final swoop. When Russian troops approached the Nazis they attempted to destroy the evidence. The surviving were ordered to make the Jews to march to Berlin. It didn't matter where you were, three steps away or even thousands of kilometers, they had to walk to Berlin. This was later to be known as the death march where the Jews trekked from one side of Germany to the other.
Altogether, the Nazis tried to eliminate the Jews in Europe as quickly, and cheaply as they possibly could. They tried to keep it secret from the enemy and also from the German public. They didn't care about who they were, just as long as they were Jews they would die.