("The third reich: foreign policy", n.d.)
Hitler knew that in order to answer the “Jewish question” he would have to carry out certain means. Hitler’s goals were to have Nazi control over the government. He first accomplished this goal on February 27, 1933, by the Decree of the Reich President for Protecting the German Volk, which gave him rights to govern any state that could not maintain order. Next, the Law to Relieve the Distress of the Volk and Reich was passed, which allowed Hitler to issue laws and decrees for four years without Reichstag approval. Terror swept the nation because of the Nazi’s reign. Anyone against Hitler’s movement was sent to a camp because they endangered the state’s security. Soon after, the Nazis began to imprison groups of people who were thought to be criminals. The Enabling Act of 1933 gave Hitler full control over Germany. Now that Hitler was in political power he used the old ideas of Germany to finally answer the “Jewish question”. He bonded together old Germany’s beliefs with racist anti-Semitism, which became the Nazi’s central political foundation (Crowe, 2008).
On March 28, 1933, Hitler declared a boycott of all Jewish businesses to begin in April. On April 25, Jews were forced to create alternative schools for their children because they were banned from German schools. That summer Hitler passed other laws which gave authorities the right to seize properties of organizations as well as strip citizenship of anyone that did not seem to fit citizenship criteria. By 1935, six concentration camps were opened throughout the Third Reich. On September 1, 1939, Hitler and Germany invaded Poland. Hitler used the war as a cover-up to euthanize selected groups of people, such as the handicapped, as well as kill Polish officials and isolate Jews from Poland. The Nazi’s first mass murder attempt during the Holocaust was a means to get rid of “lives unworthy of life” during the end of 1938 with the T-4 “euthanasia” program. Euthanasia was the rationale Nazis used as their weapon. The first two years of World War II was the intermediary stage of the Holocaust which caused the Germans to intensify their campaign against the minorities, Jews, handicapped people, Roma, etc. Once the Germans had control over Poland, they wanted to place the massive Jewish population that was in Poland into ghettos for cheap labor. The ghettos were designed to have the
minorities experience a slow death (Crowe, 2008).
After Hitler captivated Poland he approved the creation of the General Government for the Occupied Areas of Poland which would become the
Nazi’s racial laboratory and a dumping area for those that “seemed less than fit
to live” (Crowe, 2008). Poland would be home to five of the six Final Solution
death camps. The Final Solution, the movement of people from the ghettos and
camps into the death camps which were located in Poland and the Soviet Union,
was the beginning of Hitler’s plan in exterminating the Jewish population. One
of the major death camps, Auschwitz, held 1.1 million Jews, 150,000 Poles,
23,000 Romas, and 15,000 Soviet POWs. Almost every single one of them was
murdered. The factory of death, Auschwitz 11-Birkenau held the first gas chamber (Crowe, 2008).
On March 28, 1933, Hitler declared a boycott of all Jewish businesses to begin in April. On April 25, Jews were forced to create alternative schools for their children because they were banned from German schools. That summer Hitler passed other laws which gave authorities the right to seize properties of organizations as well as strip citizenship of anyone that did not seem to fit citizenship criteria. By 1935, six concentration camps were opened throughout the Third Reich. On September 1, 1939, Hitler and Germany invaded Poland. Hitler used the war as a cover-up to euthanize selected groups of people, such as the handicapped, as well as kill Polish officials and isolate Jews from Poland. The Nazi’s first mass murder attempt during the Holocaust was a means to get rid of “lives unworthy of life” during the end of 1938 with the T-4 “euthanasia” program. Euthanasia was the rationale Nazis used as their weapon. The first two years of World War II was the intermediary stage of the Holocaust which caused the Germans to intensify their campaign against the minorities, Jews, handicapped people, Roma, etc. Once the Germans had control over Poland, they wanted to place the massive Jewish population that was in Poland into ghettos for cheap labor. The ghettos were designed to have the
minorities experience a slow death (Crowe, 2008).
After Hitler captivated Poland he approved the creation of the General Government for the Occupied Areas of Poland which would become the
Nazi’s racial laboratory and a dumping area for those that “seemed less than fit
to live” (Crowe, 2008). Poland would be home to five of the six Final Solution
death camps. The Final Solution, the movement of people from the ghettos and
camps into the death camps which were located in Poland and the Soviet Union,
was the beginning of Hitler’s plan in exterminating the Jewish population. One
of the major death camps, Auschwitz, held 1.1 million Jews, 150,000 Poles,
23,000 Romas, and 15,000 Soviet POWs. Almost every single one of them was
murdered. The factory of death, Auschwitz 11-Birkenau held the first gas chamber (Crowe, 2008).