How did the definition of the final solution change during WWII? What was the Wansee conference?

1. How did the final solution come about and who was to blame for it? B aim – to explain how and why the Nazis carried out the Final Solution, how planned it was and who was to blame for it A/A* aim - to explain how and why the Nazis carried out the Final Solution and assess how planned it was and who was to blame for it • How did the definition of the final solution change during WWII? • What was the Wansee conference? pp. 221-222 red

2. How did the Nazis come up with the final solution? pp. 221-222 red

3. Why did the Nazis come up with the extermination final solution at the Wansee Conference? • Pp. 221-222 red

4. How can we explain the development of the extermination final solution? • Experience of WWII – desensitised to violence, dehumanising, pressure on territorial solution- Russia/Madagascar/hostages • Long-term anti-Semitism/scape-goating – propaganda impact, der Jude, dehumanising Jewish people • Chaos of the Nazi state – Kristallnacht Goebbels, Hitler’s oral orders, Hitler retreated to the Berghof, Wansee Conference called to response from the Gauleiters pressure in Warthengau, radicalisation happened as lower down Nazis are trying to advance their careers • Didn’t know – focusing on surviving, rumours, Hamburg 1942 newspaper headline ‘Exterminate all the Jews!’, senior Nazis said that Hitler knew and directed it, Hitler never made a spoken or written record directing or acknowledging

5. Was the final solution planned or improvised? • The Final Solution was planned from the outset – kausar, reginald, deborah • The Final Solution was improvised – agonita, charis, whelan • Add further evidence from 221-222 red

6. Who was to blame for the final solution? • Feedback from homework and use evidence from the lesson

7. A question planning • Systematic extermination emerged as the Final Solution to the Jewish Question as result of the chaotic nature of the Nazi state. How far do you agree with this statement?

8. Sources activity. ‘The German people were responsible for the Holocaust’. How far do the sources agree with the statement? The German perpetrators of the Holocaust treated Jews in all the brutal and lethal ways that they did because, by and large, they believed that what they were doing was right and necessary. Second, that there was long existing, virulent antisemitism in German society that led to the desire on the part of the vast majority of Germans to eliminate Jews somehow from German society. Third, that any explanation of the Holocaust must address and specify the causal relationship between antisemitism in Germany and the persecution and extermination of the Jews which so many ordinary Germans contributed to and supported. Goldhagen – Hitler’s Willing Executioners, 1996 The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference. Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1998 Goldhagen does not understand much about the antisemitic movements in the nineteenth century. He only addresses the impact antisemitism had on the masses in Germany, especially in the Weimar period, which is quite problematic.... He [Goldhagen] did not say that explicitly, but he construes a unilinear continuity of German antisemitism from the medieval period onwards, and he argues that Hitler was the result of German antisemitism. This, however, and similar suggestions are quite wrong, because Hitler's seizure of power was not due to any significant impact of his antisemitic propaganda at that time. Obviously, antisemitism did not play a significant role in the election campaigns between September 1930 and November 1932. Goldhagen just ignores this crucial phenomenon. Besides that, Goldhagen, while talking all the time about German antisemitism, omits the specific impact of the völkisch antisemitism as proclaimed by Houston Stuart Chamberlain and the Richard Wagner movement which directly influenced Hitler as well as the Nazi party. He does not have any understanding of the diversities within German antisemitism, and he does not know very much about the internal structure of the Third Reich either. For instance, he claims that the Jews lost their German citizenship by the Nuremberg Laws, while actually this was due to Hans Globke's collaboration with Martin Bormann in changing the citizenship legislation late in 1938. Mommsen, Interview 1997

9. Homework – Due Monday • Write a question • Systematic extermination emerged as the Final Solution to the Jewish Question as result of the chaotic nature of the Nazi state. How far do you agree with this statement? • Watch Conspiracy 2001 full movie on youtube and write a review explaining what interpretation it shows of how the Holocaust came about and who was to blame for it.

10. Homework – Due Thursday • Research the Wannsee Conference and write a description of what it was • Use the index and contents of the pink and red books and prepare the following • The Final Solution was planned from the outset – kausar, reginald, deborah • The Final Solution was improvised – agonita, charis, whelan • Write a list of who was to blame for the Holocaust with evidence next to each part