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When regarding how anti-Jewish policy developed in Germany from 1933 to 1939 we see a general pattern of policy becoming more radical. From initial measure such as defining who is a Jew in the Nuremberg Laws to the theft of Jewish property to the policies of forced emigration. The real "problem" so to speak, starts with the beginning of the war in 1939 when the Nazis occupy Poland, which was the country with the biggest Jewish population at the time. Their first policy is to house them in Ghettos but at the same time we see a variety of plans in development. From Eichmann's unsuccessful deportations to Nisko, to plans being drawn up for a Jewish Reservation somewhere in Eastern Poland, to - with the attack on France - the Madagascar Plan, i.e. the plan to deport all the Jews of Europe to Madagascar (which has been rightly characterized as a planned "genocide through neglect"). These plans however did not materialize due to various problems such as shipping space etc.

This all changes with the plan to attack the Soviet Union. To the Nazis Judaism and Bolshevism are inextricably linked, Bolshevism being a tool of "international Jewry" to control the world. On March 30 Hitler assembles his top generals in tells them in no uncertain terms that the war against the Soviet Union will be a "war of annihilation". Around the same time Hitler meets with Himmler and they draw up a new plan for the Einsatzgruppen. So while the Wehrmacht designs the Commissar's Order - an order mandating that all Political Commissars should be transferred to the Einsatzgruppen (in practice this also included Jews) - and the Barbarossa decree - no member of the German military apparatus can be held responsible for war crimes committed in the Soviet Union -, the Einsatzgruppen become a new mandate: Since all Jews are inevitably in league with Communism, the Einsatzgruppen's task is to seek out and shoot all the male Jews in the Soviet Union.

This policy is instituted and during the summer of 1941 the Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union escalate their policy towards the wholesale murder of all Jews at some point in August/September. Also, in September Hitler decides that the German Jews are to be deported from Germany to the newly conquered territories in the Soviet Union, a process which inherently means the killing of the Soviet Jews confined to Ghettos in order to make space for the German Jews.

As Ian Kershaw writes "by this time genocide was in the air". Several new initiatives pop up around the General Government, the Soviet Union and Serbia. In Serbia, the Wehrmacht is unable deport the male Jews they see as responsible for the Partisan uprising that gives them a lot of trouble because the Nazi officials in the General Government refuse to take on any new Jews because the Ghettos are bursting from people and typhus breaks out in a couple of places. So the Wehrmacht starts shooting the male Jews of Serbia as part of their reprisal policy because they hold them responsible for the actions of the Communists.

Also, in the General Government and the annexed Gau Wartheland, the Nazi officials responsible want to make their territory free of Jews and initiate certain schemes with the approval of Himmler. In the Warthegau construction of the Chelmno extermination camps starts under the supervision of the Sonderkommando Lange, a euthanasia killing unit that had operated in Poland in 1940 with their gas van, towards the end of October 1941. In the General Government, the construction of the Belzec extermination camp begins in November 1941. Both of these camps - and despite Belzec's later role in the mass killing of Operation Reinhard - were when looking at their capacity not designed to kill all of Europe's Jews but rather for local action, i.e. the killing of the Jews from the Lodz Ghetto in Chelmno's case and the killing of the Jews from formerly Soviet occupied Galicia in Belzec's case.

So by this point, we have a decision by Hitler that the Jews of the Soviet Union are to be killed, which had been taken by March 1941 the latest (most likely it was some time in January/February 1941 or even dating back earlier), which lead to the Einsatzgruppen killings. Sometime between September 14 and 17 when he had a couple of meetings with important people of the Reich leadership, Hitler had decided to deport the German Jews to the Soviet Union, which leads to another round of killing to make space for them. At the same time seeing that killing Jews is a viable option, we see a couple of important local initiatives spring up: In Serbia to battle the communist uprising; in the Warthegau to clear the Ghettos; near Galicia to assist the Einsatzgruppen and clear the Ghettos.

At this time however, there was no overarching decision to kill all Jews of Europe. The reason why we know this lies in what happens in late November. On November 30 1941, 1000 German Jews are deported to Riga, taken by the Einsatzgruppe A under orders of the local Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich Jeckeln and shot in the Rumbula forest together with 24.000 Latvian Jews. Himmler reacts furiously. He writes Jeckeln a very angry letter on December 1 that the killing of German Jews is not acceptable. A couple of days later however, this policy seems to have changes because on December 6 Heydrich sends out the invitations for the Wannsee Conference, which was originally scheduled for December 8 but postponed because of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Wannsee Conference dealt with two central topics: What are the logistics of killing the Jews of Europe and what to do with them. On December 18 Hitler and Himmler have a meeting. Himmler's notes on this meeting say: "Jewish Question. | Exterminate as Partisans".

Now, the very concrete meaning of this is not entirely clear but this has lead most historians to argue that the decision to kill all the Jews of Europe must have been taken by Hitler at some point in early December 1941 after the Rumbula massacre but before the invitation to the Wannsee Conference and the Himmler meeting. Some like Christopher Browning place the decision earilier, in late September, early October to coincide with the decision to deport the German Jews since this is the decision that sets off all the initiatives described above.

And while some initiatives such as Chelmno or Serbia might have grown locally as the structuralists describe, all important decision that set things in motion were taken by Hitler. He decides the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union and the policy of the Einsatzgruppen. He decides the deportation of the German Jews including the killing of the Soviet ones in Ghettos to make space for them. And he makes the decision to kill all the Jews of Europe systematically. Thus he was not the weak dictator Mommsen described though his cumulative radicalization did affect him too in his decision making.

Another interesting observation Ian Kershaw makes is that by Summer/Fall 1941 Hitler starts invoking his prophecy speech of September 1939, in which he "prophesized" that once the Jews start another World War, they will be annihilated, again in his table talks as well as public talks again. While the meaning of annihilation had certainly changed for him between 39 and 41, it is intersting to observe that around this time he starts referencing this speech more and more.

Hi! As this question pertains to basic, underlying facts of the Holocaust, I hope you can appreciate that it can be a fraught subject to deal with. While we want people to get the answers they are looking for, we also remain very conscious that threads of this nature can attract the very wrong kind of response. As such, this message is not intended to provide you with all of the answers, but simply to address some of the basic facts, as well as Holocaust Denial, and provide a short list of introductory reading. There is always more than can be said, but we hope this is a good starting point for you.

##What Was the Holocaust?

The Holocaust refers the genocidal deaths of 5-6 million European Jews carried out systematically by Nazi Germany as part of targeted policies of persecution and extermination during World War II. Some historians will also include the deaths of the Roma, Communists, Mentally Disabled, and other groups targeted by Nazi policies, which brings the total number of deaths to 11-17 million. Debates about whether or not the Holocaust includes these deaths or not is a matter of definitions, but in no way a reflection on dispute that they occurred.

##But This Guy Says Otherwise!

Unfortunately, there is a small, but at times vocal, minority of persons who fall into the category of Holocaust Denial, attempting to minimize the deaths by orders of magnitude, impugn well proven facts, or even claim that the Holocaust is entirely a fabrication and never happened. Although they often self-style themselves as "Revisionists", they are not correctly described by the title. While revisionism is not inherently a dirty word, actual revision, to quote Michael Shermer, "entails refinement of detailed knowledge about events, rarely complete denial of the events themselves, and certainly not denial of the cumulation of events known as the Holocaust."

It is absolutely true that were you to read a book written in 1950 or so, you would find information which any decent scholar today might reject, and that is the result of good revisionism. But these changes, which even can be quite large, such as the reassessment of deaths at Auschwitz from ~4 million to ~1 million, are done within the bounds of respected, academic study, and reflect decades of work that builds upon the work of previous scholars, and certainly does not willfully disregard documented evidence and recollections. There are still plenty of questions within Holocaust Studies that are debated by scholars, and there may still be more out there for us to discover, and revise, but when it comes to the basic facts, there is simply no valid argument against them.

##So What Are the Basics?

Beginning with their rise to power in the 1930s, the Nazi Party, headed by Adolf Hitler, implemented a series of anti-Jewish policies within Germany, marginalizing Jews within society more and more, stripping them of their wealth, livelihoods, and their dignity. With the invasion of Poland in 1939, the number of Jews under Nazi control reached into the millions, and this number would again increase with the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Shortly after the invasion of Poland, the Germans started to confine the Jewish population into squalid ghettos. After several plans on how to rid Europe of the Jews that all proved unfeasible, by the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, ideological (Antisemitism) and pragmatic (Resources) considerations lead to mass-killings becoming the only viable option in the minds of the Nazi leadership. First only practiced in the USSR, it was influential groups such as the SS and the administration of the General Government that pushed to expand the killing operations to all of Europe and sometime at the end of 1941 met with Hitler’s approval.

The early killings were carried out foremost by the Einsatzgruppen, paramilitary groups organized under the aegis of the SS and tasked with carrying out the mass killings of Jews, Communists, and other 'undesirable elements' in the wake of the German military's advance. In what is often termed the 'Holocaust by Bullet', the Einsatzgruppen, with the assistance of the Wehrmacht, the SD, the Security Police, as well as local collaborators, would kill roughly two million persons, over half of them Jews. Most killings were carried out with mass shootings, but other methods such as gas vans - intended to spare the killers the trauma of shooting so many persons day after day - were utilized too.

By early 1942, the "Final Solution" to the so-called "Jewish Question" was essentially finalized at the Wannsee Conference under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, where the plan to eliminate the Jewish population of Europe using a series of extermination camps set up in occupied Poland was presented and met with approval.

Construction of extermination camps had already begun the previous fall, and mass extermination, mostly as part of 'Operation Reinhard', had began operation by spring of 1942. Roughly 2 million persons, nearly all Jewish men, women, and children, were immediately gassed upon arrival at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka over the next two years, when these "Reinhard" camps were closed and razed. More victims would meet their fate in additional extermination camps such as Chełmno, but most infamously at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where slightly over 1 million persons, mostly Jews, died. Under the plan set forth at Wannsee, exterminations were hardly limited to the Jews of Poland, but rather Jews from all over Europe were rounded up and sent east by rail like cattle to the slaughter. Although the victims of the Reinhard Camps were originally buried, they would later be exhumed and cremated, and cremation of the victims was normal procedure at later camps such as Auschwitz.

##The Camps

There were two main types of camps run by Nazi Germany, which is sometimes a source of confusion. Concentration Camps were well known means of extrajudicial control implemented by the Nazis shortly after taking power, beginning with the construction of Dachau in 1933. Political opponents of all type, not just Jews, could find themselves imprisoned in these camps during the pre-war years, and while conditions were often brutal and squalid, and numerous deaths did occur from mistreatment, they were not usually a death sentence and the population fluctuated greatly. Although Concentration Camps were later made part of the 'Final Solution', their purpose was not as immediate extermination centers. Some were 'way stations', and others were work camps, where Germany intended to eke out every last bit of productivity from them through what was known as "extermination through labor". Jews and other undesirable elements, if deemed healthy enough to work, could find themselves spared for a time and "allowed" to toil away like slaves until their usefulness was at an end.

Although some Concentration Camps, such as Mauthausen, did include small gas chambers, mass gassing was not the primary purpose of the camp. Many camps, becoming extremely overcrowded, nevertheless resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of inhabitants due to the outbreak of diseases such as typhus, or starvation, all of which the camp administrations did little to prevent. Bergen-Belsen, which was not a work camp but rather served as something of a way station for prisoners of the camp systems being moved about, is perhaps one of the most infamous of camps on this count, saw some 50,000 deaths caused by the conditions. Often located in the Reich, camps liberated by the Western forces were exclusively Concentration Camps, and many survivor testimonies come from these camps.

The Concentration Camps are contrasted with the Extermination Camps, which were purpose built for mass killing, with large gas chambers and later on, crematoria, but little or no facilities for inmates. Often they were disguised with false facades to lull the new arrivals into a false sense of security, even though rumors were of course rife for the fate that awaited the deportees. Almost all arrivals were killed upon arrival at these camps, and in many cases the number of survivors numbered in the single digits, such as at Bełżec, where only seven Jews, forced to assist in operation of the camp, were alive after the war.

Several camps, however, were 'Hybrids' of both types, the most famous being Auschwitz, which was a vast complex of subcamps. The infamous 'selection' of prisoners, conducted by SS doctors upon arrival, meant life or death, with those deemed unsuited for labor immediately gassed and the more healthy and robust given at least temporary reprieve. The death count at Auschwitz numbered around 1 million, but it is also the source of many survivor testimonies.

##How Do We Know?

Running through the evidence piece by piece would take more space than we have here, but suffice to say, there is a lot of evidence, and not just the (mountains of) survivor testimony. We have testimonies and writings from many who participated, as well German documentation of the programs. This site catalogs some of the evidence we have for mass extermination as it relates to Auschwitz. I'll end this with a short list of excellent works that should help to introduce you to various aspects of Holocaust study.

##Further Reading

• "Third Reich Trilogy" by Richard Evans
• "Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution" by Ian Kershaw
• "Auschwitz: A New History" by Laurence Rees
• "Ordinary Men" by Christopher Browning
• "Denying the Holocaust" by Deborah E. Lipstadt
• AskHistorians FAQ