Under cover of war, with the other countries too concerned about their own welfare, the Nazis dared to carry out acts they would never have attempted under normal circumstances. Some believe that Hitler always had the plans in the back of his mind, as to when he would be most advantaged to purify society. On the day the war started, Hitler was more interested in getting any non- Aryans eliminated. (As Jews were blamed for Germany loosing the First World War.) He started by putting out an order of the systematic extermination of the mentally disabled. Families would send their sons, daughters, brothers and sisters, to be looked after in “care homes” where they would secretly be exterminated. They would be guinea pigs, to find efficient ways of killing. This is proved, as many of the people working on the euthanasia programme later went on to help with the mission of exterminating all Jews.
As this was all happening, the Germans also had the war to focus on; this was a major point as to why the treatment changed for the worse. The Jews were seen a distraction for Germans, as they had many men trying to control them, and there was a lot of Jews. This meant to Hitler and his Nazis that the Jews had to go in order to be able to win the war.
There was a big change in the treatment of the Jews when in 1939 the option of emigration was brought to a halt and the Nazis took on a different angle of discrimination, they decided to set up ghettos in countries such as Poland. These camps segregated Jews from the rest of the population and forced them to live in extremely poor conditions, often killing many Jews. This not only helped find more living space for the German population, but also put a stand still to any further uprising within the Jews. However with the massive scale of Jews that were coming under Hitler’s control, the Ghettos started to become too crowded, this led to Hitler realising he needed to get rid of Jews faster.
After a while a competition started to arise within the Nazis, ways as to which they could get rid of Jews, all trying to impress Hitler and other high ranked Nazis, suggestions as to how to kill the Jews were coming from every direction. However Hitler and Himmler were only interested in those ideas that would exterminate Jews in the most largest of scales, while still being efficient.
Einzatsgruppen were mobile killing squads that would go into invaded countries and take their Jews from towns and villages; they would then line them up and shoot them into big burial pits. However there was a problem with this technique as many of the soldiers who carried out the task often ended up with mental problems, due to the trauma and stress of what they were doing. With the start of the war, Hitler obviously sped up his invasion of neighbouring countries, therefore leaving more Jews to kill. Finally this lead to the realisation of what was happening; Hitler had to find another efficient way of killing the Jews due to the stress of his soldiers. This is what led to the gassing of the Jews, this was found to be an incredibly easy way of killing Jews as you didn’t need many soldiers to do it and it could be done quickly on a massive scale.
There are many reasons as to why the treatment towards the Jews changed, many people believe that Hitler had always had the idea of killing the Jews in such vulgar ways and on such massive scales, however many also believe that it all came about due to the way the Nazis all wanted to gain power, therefore wanting bigger better ways of purifying Europe. I however believe only the fact that it was a combined effort from both Hitler and his Nazis that changed the treatment of the Jews from discrimination to killing.
