Many Christians had hated Jews for many generations because they blamed the Jews for the death of their Lord, Jesus Christ. Hitler knew how to stir up these racist ideas and his diary, Mein Kampf, added to the ideas which were already circulating about Jews. He said that Germany was the greatest country and it had only lost the First World War because it had been betrayed from inside by non-Aryans. One of the main reasons why the Nazis were able to step up their campaign against the Jews once the ear had started, was because people were very worried that Germany still had some impurities in society because of the Jew. The last thing that they wanted was to loose the war again as a result of still having Jews around, just as Hitler had said had happened in WW1. This meant that More extreme forces of action would be tolerated.
However, Anti-Semitism was not anything new to Europe. It was not only Nazi Germans who carried out the attacks on Jews. In fact without the help of collaborators in other countries, many of the massacres could not have been carried out. This is because Germany simply was not big enough to have Nazi’s doing all the dirty work. Civilians often joined in, in the massacres and then the transportation of Jews into the death camps. The reason why they helped out was because they too had hatred for Jews and wanted rid of them. The death camps came into place when Hitler realised that he could not let female Jews reproduce or let the Jewish children grow up to replace and avenge the Jews which had been slaughtered. So by autumn, Hitler had Heinrich Himmler find a way to kill all of Russia’s 5 million Jews and any other Jews which were in Germany control.
The new technology which was around soon lead to development of murder by gas. After experimenting with gas chambers, Himmler soon discovered a method which would kill Jews by the millions without the mess and hassle of shooting. This was known as the ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Question’.
In what ways did the Nazis try to eliminate all Jews in Europe in the years from 1941 onwards.
The Ghettos which were built in 1939 had lead to the deaths of over hundreds of thousand Jews. People were not supposed to survive easily in the ghettos. Their rations only consisted of only 300 calories daily, that is one thousand and seven hundred less calories than humans are meant to be able to survive on. Warsaw had been the worst. By 1941, more than 1,000 Jews would die each week as a result of the awful living conditions which the Nazis forced them to endure. A third of the cities population had been Jewish and they had all been forced into just 3 per cent of the living space available. With horrible overcrowding and only 1 per cent of the homes having running water, disease spread quickly. Dysentery, typhus, hunger and execution were the major killers in the ghetto.
This could not be the answer to solving the ‘Jewish Question’. When Germany invaded Russia, (22nd June 1941) the Einsatzgrppen was set up to hunt down and kill all Russian Jews. But even still, they only killed the Jewish men at first. It wasn’t until later that year when the orders changed. It was realised that Jewish woman could not be allowed to live because they could give birth to a new generation of Jews to replace those which had been murdered or they even might breed with Aryans and contaminate the blood of Germany. Children were also shot. In September, 56,459 Jews were recorded as being executed by one squad, of these 41,000 were woman and children. It was argued that the innocent children had to be killed because they might grow up trying to avenge their fathers which would be a large threat to Germans. They all had to die.
January 1942, leading Nazis met outside Berlin. They had come to discuss how to murder all of Russia’s 5 million Jews and all others in German control. Himmler disliked the Einsatzgrppen’s methods of shooting the Jews. He had witnessed one massacre and even been splattered with the brains of one unfortunate victim. He had wished to carry out Hitler’s orders as efficiently as possible. The shooting process was both messy and slow. Also, it seemed some of the men were being effected by the killing of Jews at such close range. The increase in science and technology had lead to developments in poisonous gas which Himmler seemed to like the idea of. Sealed vans were built with their exhaust fumes being fed into the back of the van where the 30 passengers/victims would soon suffocate. The vans were seen as being ‘successful’, but they could only hold 30 people at a time. Plans for mass gassing and death camps were set up. The Conference has established that some Jews would be kept in labour camps where they could work to benefit Germany. Here they would be underfed and overworked. It was certain that thousands would simply die from “Natural wastage”. Which to the Nazis, seemed to be a good way of getting rid of the Jews.
The head of the Gestapo dealing with Jewish affairs, Adolf Eichmann, made a list of where he believed all of Europe 11 million Jews lived. This demonstrated where would be the best places to build the death camps for maximum efficiency. Jews would arrive at the camps in train loads. This massive operation had been carefully planned out to kills as many Jews as quickly but as resourcefully as possible. Special lines had been built in order to transport Jews to the death camps. The weak, the old, the very young, the pregnant and the dying were all sent directly to the gas chambers. In order to keep operations running smoothly, the Jews were not told of their fate. Treblinka train station had even been designed so that it would look like any normal station with signs for the ‘restaurant’. In Treblinka, there was no labour camp and so everyone who arrived was gassed by carbon monoxide. In one hour, 1,000 people could be gassed and killed. The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, made what he calls an ‘improvement’ in source H, when he decided to build chambers capable of containing 2,000 people and use Zyklon B to gas the Jews.
The Death Camps was not the only way in which Jews were murdered. In the labour camps, Jews were expected to survive about three months as a result of the living conditions there. It was worked out that a person who was not doing any physical activities, would need a minimum of 2,000 calories a day to survive. The Jews were given 1,500 calories and were forced to work for Germany. many were literally worked to death by the Nazis. In the camps Jews were said to have the worst conditions in order to speed up their elimination. By the end of the war, the Nazis had killed 6 million of Europe’s 11 million Jews. There is no doubt that had they won the war, they would have gone on to try and wipe out the entire Jewish population in Europe.