The Final SolutionAdolf 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 four-year 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).

• 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.

Adolf Hitler

The Holocaust“We will regain our health only by eliminating all the Jews.” - Adolf Hitler

At first, Hitler required all Jews to wear largeYellow 6-point stars for identification.Then he passed laws against them

Higher taxes, confiscating their property,Laws against intermarriage, etc.Then pogroms, especially kristallnachtThen 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 HolocaustDr. 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?

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Nazi CreativityThe 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 Zyklon-B 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

LiberationWhen 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 ReactionMost 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.