Final Solution To The Holocaust

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The Final Solution to the Jewish Question is the most debated aspect of the Holocaust because it is unable to be attributed to any one set idea or progression of decisions during the war. This aspect is highly confusing to historians because it is impossible to tell whether or not it was just a final step as the Germans were forced to go to more and more extreme lengths to deal with the Jewish population. There is no written evidence suggesting that slaughter was ever considered as a goal in the beginning, and records seem to indicate that it was more of a gradual expansion to more extreme reactions. The purpose seemed to be generally accepted to be purging the Jews from German society, but it does not seem like violence was an immediate method …show more content…
The shift from legal restrictions to outright violence happened when a Jew named Herschel Grunspan assassinated a Nazi German diplomat in Paris. A wave of pogroms known as Kristallnacht was put into place by the Nazi government, and it was claimed to be a spontaneous event spurred by public outrage. Jews, their properties, and their synagogues were attacked and tens of thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps where they were held until they promised to emigrate or they surrendered their property to the Nazis. This event led to the German Jews being held accountable for the pogroms and they were forced to pay for the damages incurred during the attacks. By this point, the Jews became incapable of having a public life within Germany and it was about to get …show more content…
The invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, led to a change in the meaning of the “Final Solution” yet again. German propaganda indoctrinated German soldiers into viewing the war against the Soviet Union as both an ideological and a racial war that was intended to wipe out the opposite side. It was a war that was completely focused on the annihilation of the enemy and anyone caught in the German’s path would be exterminated. Those within the ghettos and camps were increasingly exterminated along with the groups the soldiers faced in Soviet territory. In border areas, Jews and non-Jewish gentile citizens had been turned against each other because of the persecution faced by one group in Germany and the other in the Soviet Union. The Jews believed they faced better odds by escaping to the USSR, and the Gentiles believed that they faced better odds in Germany. This left the two groups viewing each other as the enemy, and it lent the Nazis many willing workers to work in the extermination camps. This new “Final Solution” now included the public mass killings of Jews in Soviet territory where thousands would be shot to death in one operation and buried into mass graves. When the stench of rotting bodies threatened to reveal to the unsuspecting Jews their real fate, the bodies began to be cremated instead. By
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