The Final Solution
Question 1
By Charlene Harwood
Anti-Semitism is the hatred and discrimination of Jews for usually one of two reasons. The first being religious as Christian Europeans blamed the Jews for crucifying Jesus. The other is economic and, to some extent territorial, as the Europeans resented the Jews who tended to be better educated and therefore held better jobs or ran successful businesses. During the tyrannical rule of Adolf Hitler from 1933-1945 it has been estimated that six million out of eleven million Jews living in
Europe had been exterminated. Many more asocial groups such as gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and mentally handicapped also faced the wrath of the Nazi Party. The Endleosung der Judenfrage or “Final Solution to the Jewish question” was the series of events that ultimately led to the mass murders of the Jews. This plan began in the book “Mein Kampf” written by Hitler in Landsberg Fortress and the words Judenfrage appear no less than eleven times (this was used in Goering’s speech about the Nuremberg Laws.). The Final Solution was a simple one, rather than trying to move all the Jews to different areas they were mercilessly slaughtered.
Jews were seen as the leeches of society and they were depicted in a conspiracy to take over all the lands as they had none of their own. The Nazis viewed them as such and encouraged the German people to do the same. The Nazis were firm believers in racial politics, they believed that the Aryan (German race) were superior to the “sub-human” race of Jews. And of course they treated them as such. The Nazis could also have had economic reasons for the attempted genocide as when the Jews were dead or in concentration camps they had no use for their possessions so the Nazis took them. Gold rings, gold teeth, glasses, clothes, hair and homes were frequently taken under Nazi control. The other reason that this was carried out was for Hitler to occupy the SS so they would not challenge him or attempt to overthrow him. This shows a similarity to the “Night of the Long Knives” in which the SA leaders began to go against Hitler who then used the SS to kill Roehm and the other leaders. Could Hitler have been protecting himself from his past assassins by occupying them with hatred of Jews? To me, it appears the most likely reason for the Final Solution is the racial theory about the Aryan race being superior to all other races.