The Final Solution
Adolf Hitler’s plan to make
Europe, and especially
Germany, the perfect living
space for his Nazi Party and
Aryan ‘Master Race’.
He killed six million people.
Adolf Hitler
• Born April 20, (4-20!) 1889 in
Branau-An-Inn, Austria.
• Dad was a Customs official, wanted him to be
the same, but young Adolf hated the idea.
• Adolf loved his mother. He originally wanted
to be a priest.
• When Dad died, Adolf dropped out of school
and went to Vienna to become an artist.
• He failed the entrance exam twice.
Adolf Hitler
• He lived in a shelter and never learned a skill.
He survived on charity and occasional
unskilled labor jobs.
• In Vienna, he became suspicious of Jews, (“Is this a
German?”) then a total Anti-Semite.
• Like many Austrians, he considered himself German.
• When WWI started, he was drafted into the Austrian
army, but jumped the border and asked King Ludwig
of Bavaria to let him join the German army.
• He became a courier and was wounded in action
twice.
Adolf Hitler
• After the war, he didn’t want to get a REAL
job, so he stayed in the army. They fed and
clothed him.
• His job was to spy on political organizations.
• He was sent to spy on the NSDAP (National Socialist
German Workers Party) and eventually they asked
him to join.
• He joined and quickly took over.
• He tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic, and was
jailed in Landesberg Prison.
• There, he was treated like a hero, and he wrote Mein
Kampf, the second-best selling book.
Adolf Hitler
• In Mein Kampf, he outlined exactly what he
planned to do with the Jewish population of
Germany. But nobody took him seriously.
• He was pardoned after serving 10 months of a fouryear sentence.
• He contrived to be appointed the Minister of the
Legation of Brunswick, which automatically made him
a German citizen, and eligible to run for office.
• He then contrived to have the elderly and dying
Reichmarshal Hindenberg appoint him Chancellor.
• He used his new position to declare a national
emergency, and declare himself fuhrer (leader).
Adolf Hitler
• At first, he did some good things for Germany.
• He got Germany back to work, and out of the Great
Depression, which was much worse in Germany.
• He commissioned the autobahn. Eisenhower later
borrowed this idea for the interstate highway
system in the U.S.
• He commissioned the “People’s Car”, and a town in
which to make it.
• He re-armed Germany in direct defiance of the
Treaty of Versailles. He said it was unfair (it was).
• But then everything went wrong….
Adolf Hitler
• In addition to starting WWII, he also started his
Final Solution of the Jewish Question, his plan to
eradicate the entire Jewish population of Europe.
• His Final Solution ordered the deaths of six million
Jews, two-thirds the Jewish population of Europe.
• He also is responsible for the killing of two million
Polish people, three million Soviet prisoners of war,
and numerous physically or mentally disabled
people, members of religions that he didn’t like,
and of course, hundreds of German political
prisoners.
Adolf Hitler
• Not every German shared his views.
White Rose Society - a student organization
• He survived over 38 assassination attempts, many
by his own higher-ranking officers.
• The most famous was Operation Valkyrie,
orchestrated by Field Marshal Erwin “The Desert
Fox” Rommel, Colonel Count Claus Von
Stauffenberg, and General Rudolph Von Gersdorff.
• Von Stauffenberg tried many times.
• Hitler’s luck ALWAYS held.
The Holocaust
“We will regain our health only by
eliminating all the Jews.” - Adolf Hitler
At first, Hitler required all Jews to wear large
Yellow 6-point stars for identification.
Then he passed laws against them
Higher taxes, confiscating their property,
Laws against intermarriage, etc.
Then pogroms, especially kristallnacht
Then came the Einsatzgruppen: death
squads
who killed Jews in occupied areas.
The Holocaust
•The Final Solution was ordered by Hitler,
and organized by Heinrich Himmler and
Reinhardt Heydrich at the Wannasee
Conference, 1942
• It called for imprisoning all Jews in
concentration camps.
•Some were to be used for slave labor, but
most were scheduled for extermination.
•Nazis confiscated all their possessions,
including the gold in their fillings and even
their hair
•Inmates were beaten and starved.
The Holocaust
•Firing squads, beating squads, hanging,
torture, experiments, and gas chambers.
•A total of six million Jews were murdered.
•Gypsies, Freemasons, and some religious
groups were also incarcerated and killed.
• Physically and mentally disabled as well.
•Political dissidents and gays were too.
•Among the 1200 camps: Dachau,
Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka,
Warsaw, Solvau
The Holocaust
Dr. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death”,
was notorious for deciding at a glance who
would live or die immediately.
•He conducted/sponsored experiments on
prisoners.
•Surgery without anesthetic.
•Baby twins in a freezer; who would live
longer?
•Galvanic response to pain.
•How much skin/blood/brain can be
removed before subject dies?
Images
Nazi Creativity
The Nazis invented Zyklon-B, a highly toxic gas.
When a trainload of prisoners arrived, they would
have them strip, then go to ‘the showers’. Once
inside, the guards would bolt the doors, and ZyklonB was pumped in through the showerheads. They
could kill 1000 at a time that way. Then, the bodies
were taken to the crematorium for disposal.
Images
Liberation
When the Allies finally discovered the camps, the
soldiers were horrified and in disbelief.
Supreme Allied Commander D.D. Eisenhower told
his soldiers, “Be sure you get a lot of pictures and
document everything. If you don’t, someday some
son-of-a-b**** is going to say that it never
happened.”
And in spite of the
documentation, some claim
it never happened anyway.
German Reaction
Most Germans knew nothing about the camps. Locals
around Auschwitz claimed to believe that they thought
it was a sausage plant.
General Eisenhower made them clean up the camps.
Why?
Questions about the Holocaust and the Third Reich
still remain, but the biggest questions are:
•Why did Hitler and the Nazis implement the Final
Solution?
•Why the Jews? Why not some other group?
•Why didn’t the rest of the world step in sooner?
•Other countries
•Churches, especially the Pope
•Why didn’t the Jews fight back?
Why?
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak
out-Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not
speak out-Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to
speak for me.
-Martin Niemoller
Now, in
Israel,…
Elie Wiesel (A-7713)
•Born 1928 in Sighet, Romania
•Third of four children.
•Sighet was occupied by Nazis in 1940.
•In 1944, the town was sent to the camps.
•Elie never saw his mother or little sister
again: they were executed in the camps.
•He watched his father die as well.
•He was freed by the U.S. Third Army in 1945.
•He wrote And the World Remained Silent
in 1958, which was re-worked into Night.
The book speaks for itself.