Genocide: Was it the Nazis' Original Plan?

Abstract

Since the 1940s scholars have debated the ques tion, Did Hitler and his henchmen plan the Final Solution decades before 1941? Many have answered in the affirmative. However, examination of those developments that led to the Final Solution raises serious questions. Although some have declared that the Nazis with Hitler at the helm did indeed plan the mass execution even before the 1930s, nowhere is there any pronouncement of this before 1939! The plan the Nazis did have was to evict all Jews from Germany. Although sev eral hundred thousand did leave, those left behind as well as the millions conquered as the Nazis swept through Europe provided a dilemma. Hitler wanted them out. No one wanted them. The Schacht-Rublee negotiations and the Nisko/ Madagascar plans, efforts to clear Europe of Jews, had failed dismally before 1939. The last alternative was the Final Solution, which took form in 1941 with the adoption of the Einsatzgruppen plan for the mass murder of Jews in Russia, mainly by machine gun, and the Wannsee plan for the mass murder of Jews in Poland in the gas ovens and the crematoria established at six death camps.