“When did Hitler authorise the undertaking of the Final Solution?”
Hitler launched operation Barbarossa on 22nd June 1941, which was the attack on the USSR. He was now fighting the war he had always wanted. As German troops penetrated deeper into Russia, special units of police and SS waged an unprecedented campaign of murder against communist officials and Jews. This was the prelude to the holocaust, the logical extermination of all the European Jews. A great deal of controversy surrounds this “Final solution” not least the question of when, but also the process which the genocide decision was made. There are many reasons how and who authorised the undertaking of the “Final Solution” some say it was Hitler and the operation Barbarossa, it also points towards Himmler and Heydrich who were made to come up with a genocide feasibility study. The Wannasee Conference, Operation Reinhard, economic considerations were all other issues to when the undertaking of the Final solution came about, but it is not shown in historian times that Hitler had actually authorised the undertaking of the Final solution even though he was really anti-Semitic there is no proper evidence to him authorising, the undertaking of the final solution.
Operation Barbarossa which was the attack on the USSR, Hitler issued a secret directive to his army high command insisting that “the Bolshevik/ Jewish intelligentsia” in the USSR must be eliminated, in the same way the Polish elite had been annihilated. Army leaders increased faith towards Hitler’s orders, showing Hitler wanted all Jews murdered, but this doesn’t show he authorised the undertaking of the final solution but was close enough to it. It is shown by historians that Hitler made the fateful decision to exterminate all European Jews not later than January 1941, as the operation of Barbarossa went ahead, was the first part towards it. The final solution thereafter just became a matter of “time and timing”... however this hasn’t being disagreed and other historians say it provides littler circumstantial evidence to support the case. Given the hard lack of hard evidence most holocaust historians think that the genocide decision came later, yet there is no absolutely doubt that Hitler was determined to defeat and destroy “Jewish- Bolsheviks”.
