The Final solution

• German invasion of Poland. Action units (SS Einsatzgruppen) moved in

  September 1939
• First 'sealed' Ghetto established in Lodz

  April 1940
• SS Einsatzgruppen moved into the USSR behind the advancing armies to round up and kill Jewish people


  1941 June
• All Jewish people forced to wear the Yellow Star of David


  1941 1st September
• First deportation of Jewish people from certain German provinces

  1941 October
• Wannsee Conference. Various government and party agencies agreed on the 'Final Solution' to the Jewish Problem.

  1942 20th January
• Extermination facilities set up at Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka


  1942 Spring
• Transportation of the Jewish People from all over German-occupied Europe to death camps began. 


  1942-1944
• The destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and the start of sending Germany's Sinti and Roma to Auschwitz

  1943 February
• Liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet Troops

  1945 27th January
• Key stages of the final solution timeline:

  • Legal Changes 1933-38 = restrictions of Jews -> marriage, citizenship
  • Emigration 1938-39 = very few countries let them in
  • Deportations and Ghettos 1939-40
  • Madagascar Plan 1939-40
  • Einsatzgruppen 1941
  • Final Solution 1942-45
• Treblinka - Documentary:

  • Location: Poland and lasted 13 months between 1942-1943
  • Ghettos set up from 1940 were intended to be temporary
  • As late as 1940 there was no plan to systematically exterminate the Jews
  • dealt with the Jews by deporting them
  • June 1940 - Madagascar Plan
  • propaganda presented eastern Jews as parasites who undermined culture
  • Reinnard Heydritch -> charged with cleansing the east of undesirables
  • Himmler and Heydritch --> crush communism and Judaism in the east
• Treblinka - Documentary: pt 2

  • 4 main Einsatzgruppen with an actual total of 3000-4000
  • Lithuanians welcomed the Germans as they were Catholic
  • Lithuanian population - would beat them to death
  • Einsatzgruppe A interpreted Heydrich's orders as a Bare Minimum
  • Minsk execution 1941 - attended by Himmler
  • 1941 -> decided kids and women (Jewish) would be murdered too
  • Himmler tried to find a more 'humane' way of killing Jews as it was mentally affecting Nazis
  • +80% of the Einsatzgruppen were locals in the Baltic states
  • September 1941 - Wear the Star of David + transported east
• Sinti and Roma:

  • why were they persecuted - religion was indeterminate and had their own dialect, non white, 'traveller' lifestyle was resented
  • persecution during the Weimar period - 1929 "The Central Office for the Fight Against the Gypsies"
  • 1933 - 25 000 - 30 000 population
  • defined like Jewish People
  • Himmler in 1938 issues - "The Struggle Against the Gypsy Plague"
  • deported to Poland at the start of the war
  • Jan 1940 = Sinti and Roma children gassed at Buchenwald
  • estimated 225 000 - 500 000 killed
• Ghetto


  term used to describe the historic area lived in by the Jewish people in a city
• Hans Frank (1900-46):

  • earliest member of the NSDAP
  • governor general of the General Government of Poland 1939-45
  • oversaw the creation of many of the Ghettos
• Einsatzgruppen 


  SS units who followed the regular German army in the USSR. Destroy opposition and the squads killed large numbers of suspected partisans, communist officials, prisoners and Jewish People. Killing of Jewish people was mainly by enthusiastic local antisemites and regular police.
• Auschwitz

  Originally established as a concentration camp in 1940, grounds of a former polish barracks the Nazis built Auschwitz II at the Birkenau camp in 1941. Specifically chosen as a death and labour camp, rail links which enabled Jewish people and others to easily be brought there. Responsible for 1.5 million deaths over three years.
• Racial Policies in Poland:

  • 3 million Jewish population
  • SS Einsatzgruppen were sent in to destroy any resistance - 16 000 poles were executed in mass shootings
  • Poland was split into 3 areas
• 3 areas Poland was split into:

  • Warthegau - annexed areas incorporated into the Reich and were therefore 'Germanised'. Aspects of Polish life were closed
  • 'General Government' - area not annexed by the Reich but controlled by Germany. Population was exploited as Poles were forced to work in German factories and farms
  • Occupied Soviet Area - initially controlled by the USSR in the period of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Stopped after German invasion of Russia
• Polish Jews:

  • violent persecution started immediately
  • 'resettle' large numbers of people in the Lublin reservation in the south-west corner of the General Government
  • Abandoned plan in early 1940
  • Jewish Ghettos established in areas such as Warsaw and Lublin
  • initially set up as temporary holding bays
  • Spring 1940 - Ghettos sealed and conditions deteriorated
  • first 2 years of the war - 500 000 Polish Jews died
• The Ghettos 1939:

  • Polish Jews were herded into Ghettos - most famous being Warsaw Ghettos
  • Conditions were appalling
  • food - less than 300 calories to do which led to malnutritionment
  • disease - rife due to the crowded conditions
  • limited heating which caused death during the harsh winters
  • Hans Frank - Poles didn't want Jews and or others in their areas
  • temporary solution
• The Madagascar 1940:

  • after the defeat of France in the summer of 1940
  • Germany acquired the island of Madagascar
  • plan to move the Jews to the island
  • American Jewish Committee commissioned a special report, published in May 1941, that sought to demonstrate that Jews could not survive the conditions on the island.
  • Wouldn't survive on the island due to the lack of food and diseases
  • Britain had naval domination in the surrounding sea - plan couldn't occur
• The Invasion of Russia:

  • June 1941
  • SS Einsatzgruppen moved in behind the advancing armies
  • 4 special Action Units A,B,C and D
  • rounded up the local Jewish population and Communist officials
  • murdered thousands in a series of mass shooting
  • 30 000 women and children slaughtered in 2 days in a ravine near Kiev
  • escalation of Nazi racial policy
• The Wannsee Conference January 1942:

  • West Berlin
  • seen as the 'decisive' meeting for the Final solution
  • meeting invitations were originally sent out on the 29th November
  • systematic extermination
  • chaired by Heydrich and organised by Eichmann
  • put Hitler's wishes into affect
  • 90 minutes long
  • grim details to plan to kill the 11 million Jews in Europe
• Death Camps:

  • vast majority of Death Camps in Poland
  • put into mass operation from 1942
  • quick selection process
  • camps built near railway lines for ease of movement and equipped with gas chambers and crematoria
• In Death Camps who were killed immediately?


  Kids, women with babies, elderly and the ill
• Who were temporarily kept in death camps?

  Women and Men for slave labour
• The Final Solution:

  • actual decision making process for the final solution still remains unclear
  • no written order for the killing of Jews ever found from Hitler
  • January 1944 - Himmler stated that Hitler gave him a Fuhrer order to give priority to the Jewish Question
  • bloody massacre of Russian Jews - premeditated
  • only happened due to war with Russia not going the way it believed
  • Eichmann began the process, testimony in 1960 Israel
  • first practice of using Zyklon B in Auschwitz in September
• Extermination and Death Toll:

  • 6 million Jews killed
  • euthanasia of the disabled killed around 100 000 to 200 000
  • Jehova's Witnesses saw 10 000 killed
  • only 4000 Polish Jews out of 3 million survived the war
• Intentionalist:

  • stress that Hilters intentions to the Jewish population was always genocidal
  • early speeches, 25-Point-Programme, Mein Kampf, January 1939 Reichstag speech
• Functionalists:

  • extermination policies developed during the war
  • move from emigration plan to the ghettos to the Madagascar Plan to the Einsatzgruppen to the Final solution