Final Solution was a policy followed by Nazi Germany during World War II (1939-1945). In full, the policy was called the “final solution of the Jewish question.” The policy called for the murder of every Jew under German rule. The “final solution” laid the groundwork for the Holocaust, a systematic Nazi campaign of genocide (extermination of a cultural group).
Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists (Nazis) took control of Germany in 1933. Hitler blamed Jews for Germany’s economic and political problems, and he made anti-Semitism (prejudice against Jews) a government policy. Nazi persecution of German Jews intensified in the late 1930’s. The Nazis set up a system of concentration camps where Jews and others were imprisoned, and often killed, without legal proceedings.
After World War II began, Germany conquered new lands in Europe. As a result, millions of Jews came under German control. The Nazis killed many of the Jews and sent others to concentration camps. In 1941, Nazi leadership finalized the details of a policy to eliminate all Jews under their rule—the “final solution.”
The slaughter began with Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Special squads of Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS) troops accompanied the advancing German forces. These killing squads were called Einsatzgruppen. The Nazis rounded up Jews, Roma, prisoners of war, Soviet leaders, and other civilians and shot them to death one by one. However, the face-to-face killing became difficult for the killers. The Nazis soon sought a more impersonal and efficient method of genocide.
The Nazis began using sealed vans. The prisoners choked to death on exhaust fumes as the vans traveled to a burial pit. At the Wannsee Conference, held in Berlin in January 1942, Nazi leaders further systematized the killing. They decided that Jews throughout German-occupied territory would be evacuated to concentration camps in eastern Europe. These camps would become centers for slave labor and extermination. The favored method of killing would be poison gas.
The Nazis targeted all Europe’s Jews for eventual extermination. During 1942, the most notorious Nazi killing centers—including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bełżec, and Treblinka—began operating at full strength. By the time the Nazis were defeated in May 1945, they had killed some 6 million European Jews.
