How Did Hitler Exterminate The Holocaust

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The view that the Nazis intended to exterminate the Jews of Europe from the moment they came into power is widely accepted by many in the wake of the Holocaust. However, evidence such as a possible plan to send the Jews to Madagascar, the time it took to start the mass killings and the lack of evidence of any early murderous intent demonstrates that the path to extermination did not appear until the middle of the Second World War. The serious consideration of the Madagascar Plan, which involved the mass relocation of European Jews to Madagascar, strongly supports the view that the Nazis decided on extermination during the war and not when they came to power. Hitler and several members of his inner circle, such as Heinrich Himmler (chief…show more content…
The Jews were not targeted for mass murder until 1941, eight years after the Nazis’ rise to power. During this time, the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews forced many Jews out of Europe, while the Vienna and Prague branches of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration were set up by Adolf Eichmann to expel Jews from Nazi-controlled areas. The expulsion of Jews out of Europe meant that they were letting their targets of mass genocide leave instead of exterminating them, and thus shows that the Nazis had never intended to wipe out the European Jewish population from the moment they came into power. Another indication during this time that the Nazis had not planned the extermination of Jews was the methods they used. At first, propaganda was used to alienate the Jews, before they were herded into ghettos or forced to work at concentration camps. Afterward, the Einsatzgruppen, special murder squads containing people from the German middle class, were sent in to kill Jews as the German war machine advanced through Europe. Out of these four actions, only the latter involved pure murderous intent, but once the killing took its toll on the men, another plan had to be implemented. This was what eventually led to the gassing of the Jews, rather than a premeditated intention to murder the Jews. Although some say that…show more content…
The first documentation about their intention to exterminate the Jews appears in the 1942 Wannsee conference, when Germany faced a difficult situation in the Soviet Union. This illustrates that the Nazis had decided on the complete eradication of the Jews as the war became increasingly difficult. The extreme anti-Semitism displayed by Hitler in his speeches and comments and Nazi propaganda has been used to support the belief that the Nazis had decided on extermination as soon as they gained power. However, Hitler was known to exaggerate in his speeches to the extremist audiences, with remarks such “As soon as I have power, I shall have gallows after gallows erected… Then the Jews will be hanged one after another, and they will stay hanging until they stink”. Clearly, the method mentioned is unfeasible and this had the role of causing a sensation. Similarly, many of his other comments, such as “If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into world war, the results will be… the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe” have double meanings, and originally referred to their planned deportation out of Europe. Also, the comment “But the final objective must be the complete removal of the Jews” clearly does not refer to the
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