The "Final Solution" 1941-1945
The SS prepare for the "Final Solution"
The "Final Solution" was the Nazi’s plan to exterminate all Jews. This resulted in the deaths of six million Jews. The "Final Solution" was organized into stages. At first laws were made which forced racism which lead to boycotts, Jewish owned businesses being taken over by Germans, and the"Night of Broken Glass". The "Night of Broken Glass" also known as Kristallnacht happened on November 9, 1938. Kristallnacht was a Nazi attack on Jewish people. The plan was to alienate the Jewish population from the rest of European society. On June 22nd, 1941 mobile killing squads that carried out mass-murder began to follow the German army as they descended into Soviet territory. They first started killing Jewish men, and then later on began to kill any Jew, which included men, women, and children, no matter how young. The mobile killing squads not only killed the Jews by shooting them, but also used gas vans. December 8th, 1941 Chelmno, the first killing center began operating others like Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Majdanek. At Chelmno people were killed in gas vans, every other killing center used gas chambers. These killing centers were responsible for millions of deaths during the "Final Solution". January 20th, 1942 the Wannsee conference was held which planned to send millions of people to die in killing centers from 1941-1944. The Jews were killed by gassings, shootings, disease, starvation, or random acts of violence.