Ways in Which the Nazis Tried to Eliminate all Jews in Europe from 1941 and On

Ways in Which the Nazis Tried to Eliminate all Jews in Europe from 1941 and On

The Second World War began on the 1st September 1939: whilst Hitler

had been strengthening his control within Germany, he had also been

reinforcing Germany’s position within Europe. He had reclaimed parts

of Germany in 1935; in 1938, he had annexed Austria, and part of

Czechoslovakia ( which he totally invaded in 1939 ). World leaders,

desperate to avoid another war, had hoped that by allowing him to do

this, he would be satisfied.

The Nazis’ territorial gains of Poland gave them control over more

Jews, but this did not mean that they were all treated the same. In

East Poland, the Jews were publicly killed. Many were beaten and shot

dead. The more east the Nazis moved into Poland, the more violent

their attacks were on the Jews. Many Germans encouraged it- local

Germans had even volunteered to help the slaughter of the Jews.

Millions of Jews who had thought they were safe from the Nazis

suddenly found themselves under German rule, and this time, they were

unable to escape.

In the west, the Nazis treated the Jews somewhat differently. Instead

of killing them there and then, the Nazis imprisoned the Polish Jews

in ghettos, such as the Warsaw Ghetto. Their plan was to persuade

France to make the island of Madagascar available as a

police-supervised tropical island where all Jews could be dumped. A

German official from the German Foreign House thought of this idea in

June 1940, but by 1941, the idea had come to nothing, as Hitler had

come to a radical action which would change the Nazi policy towards

Jews forever.

A German operation, known as Barb...

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...dreds of thousands were worked

or starved to death in labour camps and ghettos.

As the Soviet army moved closer to the slave labour camps that the

Germans had set up on Polish soil, the slave labourers were evacuated

westward, to factories and concentration camps on German soil

(backtracking into Germany). The largest slave labour camp, the Zyclon

B region, was the factory zone that Germany industrialists had created

around Auschwitz. More than 30,000 Jewish men and women were being

employed there at the time of the evacuation. The evacuation started

in mid 1944, and went on into the following year. Many people died on

the marches back into Germany- the Nazis planned their routes so that

the marches took days, even weeks to reach Germany. The Nazis were

indifferent to the many Jews who died on the trails as a result.