A thought just occurred while reading this joke yet again the other night. The logistics and cost of gas and natural resources (e.g. coal for the transportation of jews to the concentration camps) MUST have been paramount. I was just wondering, how did this cost manifest itself to the ones in power at the time? Was it personally Hitler's debt and responsibility? Any clarification would be very much appreciated.
That's possibly the case, but I think that people are mistaken in which type of gas. While the Holocaust was an enormously evil enterprise, it was also an enormously large waste of resources that also needlessly alienated, imprisoned, and later executed a significant number highly skilled Jewish scientists, intelligentsia, workers, entrepreneurs, and craftsmen. Additionally, it was a huge waste of resources.
More to the point, I think most people are getting at the notion that Nazi Germany had more trouble finding the ability to fuel its tanks for its blitzkrieg than for Zyklon B. The Wehrmacht was running on fumes in the Soviet Union, less because of the shortage of gas, but more because it was at the absolute limit of its logistical resources.
Once the Soviet Union pushed back, the Germans also lost precious oil fields in Romania and in Lvov, and were absolutely desperate for resources.
The Jews actually paid for their own transportation to the extermination camps in Poland. The SS were charged excursion rates by the various railway authorities of the occupied countries the trains passed through as well as by the Reichsbahn which was in charge of trains within occupied Poland. These tickets were financed by the proceeds of the sale of Jewish possessions. Here's a link to earlier comments I wrote about the proceeds of the Holocaust.
As to the gas: Zyklon B, which was used in Auschwitz, was used extensively in delousing (lice are a problem in any army that spends a lot of time in prolonged unhygienic combat conditions) and was therefore a very common commodity that was used by the Army and the SS in great quantities. In addition, it takes less Zyklon B to kill people than it does to kill lice. In the five other extermination camps exhaust fumes from truck engines were used in the gas chambers (or gas vans in Chelmno). This entailed the running of one large engine per gassing operation. When one thinks of how many army vehicles were constantly driving around all over Europe in the course of the war, a couple of truck engines running for twelve hours a day for a few years isn't going to make any appreciable dent in any budget.