Final Solution

The Final Solution (German: Die Endlösung) was a plan made by Nazi Germany to kill millions of European Jews (along with Roma and Sinti people) during World War II.^[1] The Final Solution was part of the Holocaust.^[2]

On July 31 1941, Nazi Luftwaffe leader Hermann Goering ordered the Schutzstaffel (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 the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942.^[3]

Early on, the Nazis killed Jews in a variety of ways, including mass shootings by death squads like the Einsatzgruppen.^[4]

Starting in the autumn of 1941, SS and police forces also began using mobile gas vans to kill people by carbon monoxide poisoning.^[1][5] The Nazis had already been using gas to execute people with disabilities in their T-4 Euthanasia 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 their exhaust gases (such as carbon monoxide) would enter the back. Victims suffered and then died from gas poisoning.^[5]

In 1942 Heinrich Himmler proposed Operation Reinhard, a plan to exterminate all Polish Jews.^[6] The operation was named after SS General Reinhard Heydrich, who had been killed by Czech soldiers.^[6]

The Nazis first set up three death camps in Poland: Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.^[7] Their purpose was to kill as many people as possible, and these camps had their own permanent gas chambers.^[1][6] In 1942 more death camps were set up in Poland at Auschwitz (which also had its own gas chamber), Majdanek, and Chelmno.^[1]

By the end of World War II, the Nazis had killed about six million Jews and millions of others.^{[1][8][9][10]}

• The Holocaust
• Extermination camps (death camps)
• Bełżec extermination camp
• Auschwitz concentration camp and extermination camp
• Wannsee Conference
• Genocide