TheFinal Solution (German:Die Endlösung) was a plan made byNazi Germany to exterminateEuropeanJews (along withRoma andSinti people) duringWorld War II.[1] The Final Solution was part of theHolocaust.[2]
On July 31 1941, NaziLuftwaffe leaderHermann Goering ordered theSchutzstaffel (SS) to make plans for a "Final Solution to the Jewish question."[1][2] Nazi leaders planned a large part of the Final Solution at theWannsee Conference on January 20, 1942.[3]
Early on, the Nazis killed Jews in a variety of ways, includingmass shootings bydeath squads like theEinsatzgruppen.[4]
Starting in the autumn of 1941, SS and police forces also began using mobile gasvans to kill people bycarbon monoxide poisoning.[1][5] The Nazis had already been using gas to executepeople with disabilities in their T-4Euthanasia Program, but had never used mobile gas chambers before.[5]
In the gas vans, victims were sealed into the back passenger compartment. The vans had been changed so theirexhaustgases (such ascarbon monoxide) would enter the back. Victims suffered and then died from gas poisoning.[5]
In 1942Heinrich Himmler proposedOperation Reinhard, a plan toexterminate all Polish Jews.[6] The operation was named after SS GeneralReinhard Heydrich, who had been killed byCzech soldiers.[6]
The Nazis first set up three death camps in Poland:Belzec,Sobibor andTreblinka.[7] Their purpose was to kill as many people as possible, and these camps had their own permanent gas chambers.[1][6] In 1942 moredeath camps were set up in Poland atAuschwitz (which also had its own gas chamber),Majdanek, andChelmno.[1]
By the end of World War II, the Nazis had killed about six million Jews and millions of others.[1][8][9][10]
