When did the Final Solution end?

Answer 1

• The Nazi mobile killing units first went into action in Kaunas, Lithuania, on 25 June 1941.
• Routine mass gassings started at Chelmno on 8 December 1941. (There had been some earlier experimental gassings).

The systematic killings and the Holocaust are usually taken to be the same thing.

The start of the Holocaust is now often given as June 1941. Almost immediately after the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union mobile death squads started to operate in the areas occupied by German army.

It used to be common to date the start of the Holocaust from the Wannsee Conference of January 1942. However, this was a quite short meeting concerned with administative matters. The policy decision had already been taken and at a much higher level.

The persecution of the Jews by the Nazis began soon after they came to power in January 1933, and many Jews were killed by the Nazis before the Holocaust began. The position of the Jews in Germany became particularly bad from late 1938 onwards.

From November 1939 onwards the Nazis set up ghettos in Polish cities such as Warsaw, Lodz and Lublin. Conditions in these ghettos soon became very bad indeed and death-rates rose sharply.

(The Holocaust ended finally in May 1945).

The Final Solution was the Nazi genocide of the Jews in 1941-1945. It did not have 'stages', but if your teacher thinks it did, then look at the related question.

The Final Solution was final and didn't really have 'stages'. If you mean 'When did the Nazi genocide of the Jews begin?' there is no single agreed date, as it started piecemeal in the June-December 1941. The traditional idea that Hitler barked out a single order, and that the Holocaust (Final Solution) started with a 'big bang' on a definite date is rejected by practically all historians of the Holocaust). However, you may wish to note the following dates:

25 June 1941: The German mobile killing units went into action in Kaunas, Lithuania.

8 December 1941: Routine mass gassings started at Chelmno.

Obviously, the 'invention' of fixed gas chambers marked a significant intensification of the Holocaust/Final Solution.

1941, and it was stopped in 1945.

1941

It started in 1942 after the Wannsee conference, Here some stuff about the Wannsee conference and some qutoes from the conference.

On January, 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's second in command of the SS, convened the Wannsee Conference in Berlin with 15 top Nazi bureaucrats to coordinate the Final Solution (Endlösung) in which the Nazis would attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, an estimated 11 million persons.

"Europe would be combed of Jews from east to west," Heydrich stated.

The minutes of that meeting have been preserved but were edited by Heydrich substituting the coded language Nazis used when referring to lethal actions to be taken against Jews.

"Instead of emigration, there is now a further possible solution to which the Führer has already signified his consent - namely deportation to the east," Heydrich stated for example when referring to mass deportations of Jews to ghettos in occupied Poland and then on to the soon-opened death camps at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.

"...eliminated by natural causes," refers to death by a combination of hard labor and starvation.

"...treated accordingly," refers to execution by SS firing squads or death by gassing - also seen in other Nazi correspondence in a variety of connotations such as "special treatment" and "special actions" regarding the Jews.

It was the term used at the Wansee Conference of 1942, as a way to describe the escalation of the Holocaust. The whole phrase refers to "the final solution to the Jewish question", implying that the aim was to completely destroy all European Jews through systematic genocide.

The Holocaust (and the "Final Solution") were brought to an end in May 1945, with the collapse of the Nazi government and the surrender of Germany to the Allied forces.

The Final Solution is the same as the Holocaust. Please see the related question.

The Final Solution was secret and there was never any 'announcement'.

_____

Well, there were a couple. (but they happened well after the Final Solution started).

______

The second answer would be more plausible if the dates and places of the announcements were named.

There was never any public announcement of the Final Solution.

Answer 2

It appears that the decision crystallized in Septemeber-November 1941.

1. Originally, the 'Solution' was probably meant to be territorial, at least as far as German and Austrian Jews were concerned. Until 1940 the policy was to make life so unpleasant for Jews that they left Germany. In 1940 there was vague and completely unrealistic talk of dumping Jews on the island of Madagascar in the Indian ocean.

2. In Poland, the initial policy was 'ghettoization'. In 1939-40 Jews were herded into small areas of the larger Polish towns, such as Warsaw. These areas were sealed off, and and the inhabitants were given no (legal) opportunity to earn a living. The Nazis provided very little food and no medicines. There were frequent outbreaks of disease in these desperately overcrowded areas; other died of malnutrition. It was a form of killing.

3. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941 death squads (SD-Einsatzgruppen) followed the German army and slaughtered Jews in mass open air killings. Later that year many Jews were deported from Berlin to Riga (in Latvia), which became a vast killing field.

4. At various time in 1941 Hitler discussed the next stage with Goering, Goebbels and Himmler.

The point of this answer is to suggest that the decision was taken in stages and consisted of a series of decisions. Few historians now think that there was a master plan or blueprint in place in the 1920s, as was widely assumed from 1945 till into the 1960s.

Answer 3

Probably in the second half of 1941 but there had been killings of Jews before then. We don't know an exact date, as only fragmentary records survived the war.

The Wannsee Conference of January 1942 was called to coordinate the final solution and to establish the SS as being in charge of it, so the decision must have been taken before then.

Try looking at the Nizkor.org site, as well.

____

Routine (as opposed to experimental) mass gassings of Jews began on 8 December 1941 at Chelmno.

The decision seems to have been taken some time between September and December 1941. Have a look at Christopher Browning, Origins of the Final Solution ..., 2004. He narrows the timespan down to September-October, 1941, when the Nazis thought they were close to victory in their crusade against "Judeo-Bolshevism".

Answer 4

The Nuremberg Laws were proclaimed in September 1935. Persecution of the German Jews had already started in 1933.

Answer 5

The Final Solution was the Holocaust.

Answer 6

The final solution ended in 1945