To solve the problem of the substantial increase in the number of Jews, the Nazis had to introduce new methods to control them. In 1939, they developed their use of Ghettos. The Nazis used the Ghettos to control the Jews and not to kill them. However many did die because of many different reasons.
Conditions in the Ghettos were horrendous and became worse as more Jews were packed into these relatively small Ghettos. Even the largest Ghettos were too small. The Ghettos in Poland had to take 30% of its population and cram it into 2.4% of its space. This overcrowding caused many problems for the Jews living there, if you could call it living. The overcrowding led to rapid spreading of diseases, poverty and starvation. Many people died of starvation because of the little amount of food they were being fed. In the Warsaw Ghetto they were fed 1000 calories a day when the average person would need a minimum of 2400 calories a day. In some Ghettos, the inhabitants were fed as little as 180 calories a day.
As the Ghettos were already overflowing with what the Nazis would consider as undesirables, they had to find new ways of controlling them. They decided to put them into concentration camps. These camps were very similar to the Ghettos, because they were used to control them. However, many more of these were built to combat the massive population of Jews.
These camps were located near the centre of the German empire mainly to stop opposing forces from knowing their whereabouts. Another reason for being close to the centre of their empire was because Poland was there. Poland had the largest Jewish population in their empire. If most of the concentration camps were located near most of the Jews, the Nazis wouldn’t have to spend too much money or time on transporting them.
After this, the Einsatzgruppen were sent to remote areas to collect all Jews, round them up and shoot them. This was introduced when Germany invaded Russia, so that when they had invaded a town, most Jews would have been killed. However, many problems arose during this. When Heinrich Himmler investigated how these mobile execution squads worked, he noted that it was beginning to have psychological effects on the soldiers. Another problem with the method was that it was costing a lot. They were using too much ammo.
It was because of these problems that they moved onto the idea of using gas vans. The soldiers didn’t have to watch them die and all they had to pay was petrol costs. What the Nazi soldiers would do was collect the Jews, put them into the vans and turn the engines on. The back of the vans, where the Jews were kept, was airtight and the fumes from the vans would go into them. The Jews were told that they were going to be resettled in the east. Instead, they were gassed with carbon monoxide. However this proved too slow and the Nazis had to change their methods again.
On January 20th 1942, an important meeting between fifteen high-ranking officers took place. One of these officers was Reinhard Heydrich, and another was Adolf Eichmann who played a major part in the conference. It was staged in Wannsee later to be known as the Wannsee conference. This was where the “Final Solution” was revealed to the world. It was where the agreement of the systematic extermination of the Jews took place. It was where the Nazis agreed the deportation of all Jews in German owned Europe to a destination where they would never return.
