Nazis' Attempts to Eliminate Jews in Europe from 1941 Onwards

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Nazis' Attempts to Eliminate Jews in Europe from 1941 Onwards

Before 1941, the Nazis used one main method to eradicate the Jewish

population in Nazi controlled Europe. They attempted to make life for

the Jews unbearable so that they would move to other countries. The

Nazis also attempted to control them inside Ghettos. They were even

trying to deport them to the African country of Madagascar.

There were major problems with this. One was that the countries they

invaded had large populations of Jews. This meant that the Ghettos

would be even more packed than before. Their plan to deport the Jews

to the African country of Madagascar wasn't carried out because of the

outbreak of War. The Jews were unable to move to other countries

because the other countries didn't want to take them into their

countries. Because the Nazis couldn't force the Jews out of their

lebensraum, they had to get rid of the Jews by themselves.

The Nazis began to get rid of the Jews with the mobile execution

squads, also known as Einsatzgruppen. They would go around Nazi ruled

Europe, round up the Jews and murder them. They also used gas vans,

which basically used petrol fumes form the engines to gas the Jews in

the airtight backs of the vans. Although the Einsatzgruppen was

capable of killing tens of thousands of Jews in a few days and the gas

vans killed 150,000 Jews, they realized that it was too slow,

expensive and was having serious psychological effects on the

soldiers.

Although they were unable to carry out any of these methods any more,

they were still able to carry on sending Jews to concentration camps.

In these camps they would be fed close to n...

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...centration camps

were turned into camps for displaced persons, which included former

holocaust victims unable to be repatriated. The Nazis legacy was an

empire of murder and exploitation that has affected people in all

parts of the world. The toll in lives was enormous.

It is fair to say that the change in the treatment of the Nazis may

not have taken place, if the allied nations had not declared war on

Germany. Firstly, because there would have been more soldiers and so

there might not have been a need to establish gas chambers and

therefore many more Jews would have been saved. Also, Hitler had

openly threatened that if the allied nations resisted Germany's

invasion of Europe, than Hitler would hold the Jews hostage and as a

result many Jews were unable to leave Europe and became prisoners in

their own country.

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