What was the Purpose and Nature of the Final Solution?

Jeffrey Nelson

What was the Purpose and Nature of the “Final Solution”?

The purpose and nature of the “Final Solution” was to solve the Jewish question, it refers to the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish people. The Jewish community was treated harshly even before the “Final Solution” had been decided upon. After the June 1933 Nazi party rise to power, state-enforced racism resulted in anti-Jewish legislation, economic boycotts, loss of citizenship, "Aryanization” and finally the horrific violence of “Kristallnacht” ("Night of Broken Glass"), all of which aimed to isolate the Jews from German society and drive them out of the country. After the beginning of World War Two, anti-Jewish policy had evolved into a comprehensive plan to exterminate all European Jews.

Adolf Hitler’s hatred of Jews is partly thought to have come from a Jewish conspiracy theory, that first appeared at the “Protocol’s of the Elders of Zion” published in 1903, they were later proved to be forgeries. Even with this proof, Hitler still believed the conspiracy existed and blamed the Jews for all of Germany’s and indeed, the world’s problems. In Hitler’s book “Mien Kampf” (My Struggle) he also blamed the Jews for helping in the signing of the “Armistice” and the “Treaty of Versailles”. This strengthened his belief that the Jewish people were engaged in a conspiracy to weaken Germany, to take over the country and to final attempt world domination.

The “Final Solution” was not the first attempt to dispose of the Jews; the first attempt was in fact “The Madagascar Plan” through which the Nazi’s planned to move four million Jews from Europe to the island of Madagascar. The Nazis had been expecting a quick end to the war so that they could transfer European Jews to Madagascar, but as the Battle of Britain lasted much longer than planned and with Hitler's decision in the fall of 1940 to invade the Soviet Union, the Madagascar Plan became unfeasible. Alternate, more drastic, more horrific solutions were being proposed to eliminate the Jews of Europe. Within a year, the killing process began.

The Nazis established ghettos in occupied Poland where Polish and western European Jews were deported to. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, mobile killing squads “Einsatzgruppen” began killing entire Jewish communities. The methods used, mainly shooting or gas vans, were soon regarded as inefficient. Some Nazi’s believed it was a waste of a money or ammunition to shoot them and that they weren’t exterminating them as quickly as desired. These mass murders were also starting to have a psychological effect on the killers; it was feared that this would lessen their efficiency as soldiers. This mass eradication of over 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 the systematic mass slaughter of Jews began. This decision was made at the Wannsee conference in Berlin on January 20, 1942. It was at this conference that a group of German Nazi officials decided upon the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". By November 1, 1941, the first extermination camps had been built: first Belzec, then Sobibor, Treblinka, Chełmno and Majdanek, and finally Auschwitz-Birkenau. This industrialised extermination of the Jewish people, or “Operation Reinhard”, began in early 1942, although hundreds of thousands had already been killed by Death Squads.

Nazi-German extermination camps can be distinguished from concentration camps which were mostly intended as places of incarceration and forced labour. In the early years of the Holocaust the Jews were primarily sent to concentration camps, but from 1942 onward they were mostly deported to the extermination camps. Extermination camps should also be distinguished from forced labor camps, which were set up in all German-occupied countries to exploit the labor of prisoners. Many Jews were worked to death in these camps but eventually the Jewish labor force, no matter how useful to the German war effort, was destined for extermination. In most Nazi camps there were usually very high death rates as a result of execution, starvation, disease, exhaustion, and extreme brutality, nevertheless, only the extermination camps were intended specifically for mass killing. On arriving at these camps prisoners were told that they were merely at a transit stop for relocation further east, or that they were simply at a work camp. Little did they know that like most prisoners they had little time left before they were heartlessly exterminated. The means by which the Jews were slaughtered was mechanical and brutal. Groups were confined in the gas chambers, possibly under the false pretence that they were to be showered, but the posion gas Zykon B was emitted into the air and each Jew died. It was efficient and it wasted little time and no ammunition. To avoid further waste the prisoners’ belongings were recycled in order to help Germany’s war effort. Their bodies were then disposed of by means of cremation or buried in mass graves, before more unsuspecting victims arrived. These camps were small in size, only several hundred meters long and wide, as only minimal housing and support facilities were required. The true purpose and nature of the “Final Solution” was to eradicate the entire Jewish population as quickly and as efficently as possible.

According to Sources 1, 2 and 3, how could the German People have found out About The “Final Solution”?

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According to Sources 1, 2 and 3, how could the German People have found out About The “Final Solution”?

According to sources one, taken from “The Era of the Second World War” by Philip Sauvain (1993), an American observer claims that the German people could have known about the “Final Solution” because of the electricity dropping in their houses in the morning when the crematoria in “Dachau” were turned, and additionally when the ashes from the crematoria fell and settled on their front lawns. However it could be speculated that when the electricity dropped in the houses in the morning, people would not automatically come to the conclusion it was the camps draining the power, it could have been anything during the war, an allied attack for example. The ash falling could also have come from anything; people wouldn’t automatically assume it was human ash. Moreover, it has been suggested that corpses at Auschwitz were cremated at night, since this particular camp was located in Poland the German people were at a distance too far to know any better. Workers at an extermination camp in Austria were told, “Keep quiet or face the death penalty”; one could argue that they did know something but were forced to turn a blind eye in exchange for their own safety.

Source two, an American serviceman, claims that after the war had ended the allies made sure that the German people knew what had happened. People were rounded up and taken round the camps to witness first hand the cruelty of the Nazis. However the speculations of this source come from an American serviceman who may very well have held a grudge against the German people wanting to expose them as advocates of the “Final Solution”. He claims it was impossible for the Germans not to know because of the greasy smoke and the unmistakable odour of burning bodies; but realistically it is not necessarily plausible that laymen would recognise greasy smoke or the smell of burning bodies. If the villagers made up petitions to move the camps elsewhere nothing substantial suggests that they didn’t have different reasons other than these. The American serviceman even goes on to say, “I never knew what to believe”; if even he doesn’t believe his own claims then we should have no strong reason to believe them.

Source three comes from “Public Opinion Under Nazism” by David Bankier (1992).

This source suggests that although the “Final Solution” was a closely guarded secret, it was said that some of the Nazi soldiers would openly boast and brag about the liquidation of Jews. Ruth Andreas Friedrich mentions that an SS man vaingloriously declared in a suburban train that 2000 Jews were being murdered every week in Auschwitz. However this again is hearsay and speculation.

It is also said that any German who continued to ignore the existence of these death factories only had to listen to allied broadcasts to consider the possibility. The BBC launched a massive broadcast campaign on the extermination of Jews at the end of 1942, but then it could be argued that the German people were not likely to have listened to the BBC, the enemy’s own broadcasting device; additionally, it may have even been dangerous for the German people in light of being seen as disloyal to their country. Regardless of whether or not they listened to broadcasts declaring the Nazis’ exploits, the allied planes still dropped leaflets relaying information on annihilation policy, with warnings of the consequences of these atrocities- people must surely have taken notice of this. It is confirmed in SS reports and other sources that people did read and discussed the leaflets, but then again, the German people could have seen the leaflets as propaganda from their enemies, trying to turn them against each other. This source does not give enough evidence to prove whether or not the German people heard the radio broadcasts or what they actually thought about the leaflets, so most of this is speculation.

How reliable is source 4 as evidence of what the German people knew about the “Final Solution”?

Source four is an extract from a pamphlet issued illegally by Hans Scholl in 1943, he was a student that served as a medical orderly on the eastern front and was aware of the atrocities carried out on the Jews and Russians. Scholl was a member of the “White Rose”, an anti-Nazi resistance movement. He assumes that all the German people knew about these terrible atrocities and blames them for not acting, but still, not everyone was privy to the information he was. After all, he served on the Eastern Front at Russia so he saw these atrocities with his own eyes. He doesn’t take into account that anyone that did know, or had an idea of what was happening may have been too afraid to come forward for fear Nazi punishment for disloyalty. Hans Scholl’s accusations against the German people could be bias as he was so angry that nothing was done to prevent the Nazis. This source cannot be considered as concretely reliable as it is from the point of view of an individual whose senses are clouded by anger and disappointed in his country. But conversely, one must consider the possibility that this man was simply opposed to and disgusted by violence and that he worked as a medical orderly on the Eastern Front for humanitarian reasons and not for anti-Nazi purposes- this would support his reliability.

To what extent do sources 5, 6 and 7 give a full and accurate account of what the German people knew about the “Final Solution”?

Source five comes from an American serviceman that had participated in showing local Germans around a concentration camp after the war was over. This account is very vague in its description of the camp and no details are given about the torture chambers or ovens. He mentions men and women screaming, fainting and crying hysterically. One may argue that the American serviceman is sensationalising the situation for dramatic effect, which detracts from his reliability. In this source the camp is called a concentration camp, which is different from an extermination camp. A concentration camp was used for forced labour where people died predominantly from starvation and exhaustion rather than execution, but an extermination camp was for the systematic killing of Jews. The German people who were shown around all swore that they knew nothing of what was going on inside these camps, but one could argue that no matter how pennant they felt it is not likely that they would have admitted to being aware for guilt and for fear of retribution from the allies after the war had ended. This takes away from the reliability of this source.

It could be argued that the author of source six is trying to cover for her mother’s belief in the Nazi’s. By highlighting the fact that when she was taken around the camps her emotions and guilt got the better of her and caused a nervous breakdown the author is perhaps using emotive language in an attempt to stir sympathy for her mother and to almost forgive her for her initial Nazi patriotism. It could be argued that this is a domestic and personal source that intentionally addresses our sympathies, which would mean the source is tailored for a direct intention as opposed to accuracy, thus detracting from its reliability.

Source seven is taken from a woman’s dairy, which in itself affirms its reliability. Information written in a dairy is not usually intended to be read by others, it is therefore not tailored to the sympathies or opinions of a specific target audience, and so outlines the truth to be as accurate as the author believes. We can safely assert that this woman was aware of the goings on in the Nazi camps, since she gives accurate details of the techniques that the Jewish people were subjected to. This source seems in no way biased, but rather is simply matter of fact, which makes it more reliable.

Source eight states that “An enormous number of the ordinary, representative Germans became… Hitler’s willing executioners. Use all the sources to explain whether or not you support this view.

In source one, workers were told to keep quiet about the killings or face the death penalty, this would help to show how some Germans were just too afraid not to do what they were told. With source two it could be agued that the villagers around the camps didn’t want them there but didn’t actually know what was going on inside them until they were shown around them. Greasy smoke and the odour of the burning bodies is not enough to prove that the villagers knew for certain what was going on the camps, this casts doubt on whether they were willing participants in the killing.

Source three informs us that some Nazi soldiers may have bragged about killing the Jews in public, but again only the German people close to the soldiers would have heard, and again were probably too afraid or powerless to do anything about it, besides had anyone decided to object to the existence of these camps it is not certain that there would have been anyone to turn to for help to rise against the Nazis. Any radio stations or newspapers would have been powerless as most media was then controlled or mediated by the Nazis. Source three also informs us that there were allied broadcasts about the treatment of Jews, but we cannot know how many Germans heard these broadcasts as they may have been banned from listening to allied broadcasts anyway. The leaflets dropped by the allied planes may have given the German people more of an insight as to what was happening, but then again during the war this could have been taken as enemy propaganda and may not have been believed.

Another source that shows how fear can make people do what they do not want to is source four where Hans Scholl, a medical orderly and member of a Nazi resistance is made to work for the Eastern Front helping the Nazi’s despite being truly opposed to what they were doing. Evidently as a German he was forced to aid the Nazis and so he obliged, otherwise he himself would have risked execution. Hans Scholl also blamed the German people for behaving so apathetically toward the Nazis, he blamed them for ignoring the problem and giving the Nazis the boldness and opportunity to storm ahead. One could argue that Han Scholl is being hypocritical, because he like many of the German people were being forced to help the Nazi’s by fear of punishment and death, but still he cannot be held accountable for simply trying to stay alive.

With source five it could be argued that the Nazis did keep the activities in the camps so secret that the people just didn’t know, additionally, if anyone did start to ask questions again fear of punishment or death would hold them back. With source six, one could argue that the Mother dismissed all the whispers of these atrocities because she didn’t want to believe that they were true, in this case ignorance was bliss as the true alternative was simply too grisly and too terrible to believe in a country for which she held such high esteem. The fact that she did have a nervous breakdown is emotive and regardless of the author’s intentions in her writing we still gain valuable insight into the fact that despite knowing or not knowing about the camps, the German people were forced into a hideous situation of bearing the scrutiny of the world for the sins of the Nazis. We must distinguish between the two: Germans and Nazis.

From source seven we learn from a woman’s dairy that she knew what was going on in these camps in great detail and that she was trying to help the Jews and their plight. This source is the antithesis of the passive German. She was by no means a willing executioner as she wanted to help save the Jews from their horrible fate, this is highly admirable. She is an exceptional and active person, but comparing the abilities of the Germans with such a figure would be unfair as not everyone is inherently exceptional.

Source eight is a very biased and emotional opinion, categorising all the German people under one sentiment. It cannot be proven how many of the German people were for or against Hitler’s plan for the Jews. It would be wrong to blame them all, and it would be wrong to say that all the German people knew what was happening to the Jews. Source eight mentions the opinion of the Germans that were on the Nazis’ side but doesn’t mention any of the German people that were opposed to the terrible treatment of the Jewish community, source seven proves that there were those trying to help the Jews.

In my opinion it would be, invalid to support one claim over another as every individual is different, some Germans may have been pro Nazi, some may have been indifferent and some may have been sympathetic to the Jewish people but were too afraid to come forward to help. Regardless, what we must bear in mind is the fact that the “Final Solution” was one enacted by Hitler and his Nazis, not the German people. It is unfair to stigmatise an entire country with blame for the actions of one group. Whether one was aware of Hitler’s actions it would be unjust to label them “a willing executioner”- many factors contribute to a person’s actions or inactions and these must be considered, as we have done. We can deduct that a number of the population were truly unaware of the atrocities inflicted upon the Jews, we can also assume that there did exist an amount who delighted in the Nazis’ crimes, but for the remainder who may have been aware but turned a blind eye, we can, to an extent, forgive them for simply trying to get on with life.

What was the Purpose and Nature of the Final Solution?

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