Editing Final Solution (section)

==Historiographic debate about the decision==
{{see also|Responsibility for the Holocaust}}
{{The Holocaust sidebar}}
Historians disagree as to when and how the Nazi leadership decided that the European Jews should be exterminated. The controversy is commonly described as the [[functionalism versus intentionalism]] debate which began in the 1960s, and subsided thirty years later. In the 1990s, the attention of mainstream historians moved away from the question of top executive orders triggering the Holocaust and focused on factors that were overlooked earlier, such as personal initiative and ingenuity of countless functionaries in charge of the killing fields. No written evidence of Hitler ordering the Final Solution has ever been found to serve as a "smoking gun", and therefore, this one particular question remains unanswered.<ref name="hist">{{cite book |title=Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements |first1=David |last1= Bankier |first2= Dan |last2= Mikhman |publisher=Berghahn Books |year=2008 |isbn=978-9653083264 |page=330 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aNzjTUT6jdYC&q=smoking%2Bgun}}</ref>

Hitler made numerous predictions regarding the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe prior to the beginning of World War{{nbsp}}II. During a [[30 January 1939 Reichstag speech|speech given on 30 January 1939]], on the sixth anniversary of his accession to power, Hitler said:

{{Blockquote|Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the [[Bolsheviks|Bolshevization]] of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!|Adolf Hitler, 1939<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/documents/part1/doc59.html |title=Extract from the Speech by Hitler, 30 January 1939 |first=Adolf |last=Hitler |date=30 January 1939 |publisher=YadVashem.org }} ''[Also in:]'' {{cite web |url=http://www.holocaust-history.org/der-ewige-jude/hitler-19390130.shtml |title=Adolf Hitler on the Jewish Question |date=30 January 1939 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080314131150/http://holocaust-history.org/der-ewige-jude/hitler-19390130.shtml |archive-date=14 March 2008}} ''[And:]'' {{cite web |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_fi.php?ModuleId=10005175&MediaId=3108 |title=Hitler Speaks before the Reichstag (German Parliament) |publisher=United States Holocaust Museum }}</ref>}}

[[Raul Hilberg]], in his book ''[[The Destruction of the European Jews]]'', was the first historian to systematically document and analyse the Nazi project to murder every Jew in Europe. The book was initially published in 1961, and issued in an enlarged version in 1985.<ref name =BrowningHil>{{cite web |url= http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=395051 |title= The Revised Hilberg |last= Browning |first= Christopher |date= 10 May 1987 |access-date= 2 June 2014 |work= Museumoftolerance |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20140602195555/http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=395051 |archive-date= 2 June 2014 |url-status= dead }}</ref>

Hilberg's analysis of the steps that led to the destruction of European Jews revealed that it was "an administrative process carried out by bureaucrats in a network of offices spanning a continent".{{sfnp|Hilberg|1985|p=ix}} Hilberg divides this bureaucracy into four components or hierarchies: the Nazi Party, the civil service, industry, and the [[Wehrmacht]] armed forces—but their cooperation is viewed as "so complete that we may truly speak of their fusion into a machinery of destruction".{{sfnp|Hilberg|1985|p= 56}} For Hilberg, the key stages in the destruction process were: definition and registration of the Jews; expropriation of property; concentration into ghettoes and camps; and, finally, annihilation.{{sfnp|Hilberg|1985|p=354}} Hilberg gives an estimate of 5.1 million as the total number of Jews murdered. He breaks this figure down into three categories: Ghettoization and general privation: over 800,000; open-air shootings: over 1,300,000; extermination camps: up to 3,000,000.{{sfnp|Hilberg|1985|p=1219}}

With respect to the "functionalism versus intentionalism" debate about a master plan for the Final Solution, or the lack thereof, Hilberg posits what has been described as "a kind of structural determinism".<ref name=BrowningHil/> Hilberg argues that "a destruction process has an inherent pattern" and the "sequence of steps in a destruction process is thus determined". If a bureaucracy is motivated "to inflict maximum damage upon a group of people", it is "inevitable that a bureaucracy—no matter how decentralized its apparatus or how unplanned its activities—should push its victims through these stages", culminating in their annihilation.{{sfnp|Hilberg|1985|pp= 998–99}}

In his monograph, ''The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939&nbsp;– March 1942'', [[Christopher Browning]] argues that Nazi policy toward the Jews was radicalized twice: in September 1939, when the [[History of Poland (1939–45)|invasion of Poland]] implied policies of mass expulsion and massive loss of Jewish lives; and in spring 1941, when preparation for [[Operation Barbarossa]] involved the planning of mass execution, mass expulsion, and starvation—to dwarf what had happened in Jewish Poland.{{sfnp|Browning|2004|loc=(2007 ed.: p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=d9Wg4gjtP3cC&q=scale%2Bdwarf 213]).}}

Browning believes that the "Final Solution as it is now understood—the systematic attempt to murder every last Jew within the German grasp"<ref name=Browning424>{{harvp|Browning|2004|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=d9Wg4gjtP3cC&q=%22murdering%20every%20last%20Jew%20in%20the%20German%20grasp%22&pg=PA424 424]}}.</ref> took shape during a five-week period, from 18 September to 25 October 1941. During this time, the sites of the first extermination camps were selected, different methods of murder were tested, Jewish emigration was forbidden, and 11 transports departed for [[Łódź]] as a temporary holding station. Of this period, Browning writes, "The vision of the Final Solution had crystallised in the minds of the Nazi leadership, and was being turned into reality."{{r|Browning424}} This was the peak of Nazi victories against the Soviet Army on the [[Eastern Front (World War II)|Eastern Front]], and, according to Browning, the stunning series of German victories led to both an expectation that the war would soon be won, and the planning of the final destruction of the "[[Jewish Bolshevik#Nazi Germany|Jewish-Bolshevik]] enemy".{{sfnp|Browning|2004|pp= 426–27}}

Browning describes the creation of the extermination camps, which were responsible for the largest number of murders in the Final Solution, as bringing together three separate developments within [[Nazi Germany]]: the [[Nazi concentration camps|concentration camps]] which had been established in Germany since 1933; an expansion of the gassing technology of the [[Action T4|Nazi euthanasia programme]] to provide a murder technique of greater efficiency and psychological detachment; and the creation of "factories of death" to be fed endless streams of victims by mass uprooting and deportation that utilized the experience and personnel from earlier population resettlement programmes—especially the [[SS and Police Leader|HSSPF]] and [[Adolf Eichmann]]'s [[RSHA]] for "Jewish affairs and evacuations".{{sfnp|Browning|2004|p= 354}}

[[Peter Longerich]] argues that the search for a finite date on which the Nazis embarked upon the extermination of the Jews is futile, in his book ''Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews'' (2011). Longerich writes: "We should abandon the notion that it is historically meaningful to try to filter the wealth of available historical material and pick out a single decision" that led to the Holocaust.{{sfnp|Longerich|2010|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=cxYqYIn73SgC&q=abandon%2Bnotion&pg=PA6 6]}}<ref name=NYRB>{{cite journal |author-link=Timothy Snyder |last=Snyder |first=Timothy |title=A New Approach to the Holocaust |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/23/new-approach-holocaust/ |access-date=30 March 2015 |journal=The New York Review of Books |date=23 June 2011 |volume=58 |issue=11 }}</ref>

[[Timothy Snyder]] writes that Longerich "grants the significance of [[Arthur Greiser|Greiser's]] murder of Jews by gas at [[Chełmno]] in December 1941", but also detects a significant moment of escalation in spring 1942, which includes "the construction of the large death factory at [[Treblinka]] for the destruction of the Warsaw Jews, and the addition of a gas chamber to the concentration camp at [[Auschwitz]] for the murder of the Jews of Silesia".{{r|NYRB}} Longerich suggests that it "was only in the summer of 1942, that mass killing was finally understood as the realization of the Final Solution, rather than as an extensively violent preliminary to some later program of slave labor and deportation to the lands of a conquered USSR". For Longerich, to see mass-murder as the Final Solution was an acknowledgement by the Nazi leadership that there would not be a German military victory over the USSR in the near future.<ref name=NYRB/>

[[David Cesarani]] emphasises the improvised, haphazard nature of Nazi policies in response to changing war time conditions in his overview, ''Final Solution: The Fate of the European Jews 1933–49'' (2016). "Cesarani provides telling examples", wrote [[Mark Roseman]], "of a lack of coherence and planning for the future in Jewish policy, even when we would most expect it. The classic instance is the invasion of Poland in 1939, when not even the most elementary consideration had been given to what should happen to Poland's Jews either in the shorter or longer term. Given that Poland was home to the largest Jewish population in the world, and that, in a couple of years, it would house the extermination camps, this is remarkable."<ref name="Roseman">{{cite magazine |url=http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/the-last-word/ |title=The last word |last1=Roseman |first1=Mark |date=10 August 2016 |access-date=13 February 2017 |magazine=The Times Literary Supplement}}</ref>

Whereas Browning places the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews in the context of the Wehrmacht victories on the Eastern front, Cesarani argues that the German subsequent realisation that there would be no swift victory over the Soviet Union "scuppered the last territorial 'solution' still on the table: expulsion to Siberia".<ref name="Waschmann">{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/16/final-solution-the-fate-of-the-jews-1933-1949-david-cesarani-review |title=Final Solution by David Cesarani review – the Holocaust on the hoof |author-link=Nikolaus Wachsmann |last1=Wachsmann |first1=Nikolaus |date=16 June 2016 |access-date=13 February 2017 |newspaper=The Guardian}}</ref> Germany's declaration of war on the United States on 11 December 1941, "meant that holding European Jews hostage to deter the US from entering the conflict was now pointless".<ref name="Waschmann"/><ref>[[s:Adolf Hitler's Declaration of War against the United States|Adolf Hitler's Declaration of War against the United States]] in Wikisource.</ref> Cesarani concludes, the Holocaust "was rooted in anti-Semitism, but it was shaped by war".<ref name="Waschmann"/> The fact that the Nazis were, ultimately, so successful in murdering between five and six million Jews was not due to the efficiency of Nazi Germany or the clarity of their policies. "Rather, the catastrophic rate of killing was due to German persistence ... and the duration of the murderous campaigns. This last factor was largely a consequence of allied military failure."{{sfnp|Cesarani|2016|pp=796}}

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B06275A, Berlin, Reichstagssitzung, Rede Adolf Hitler.jpg|thumb|Berlin, [[Reichstag (Nazi Germany)|Reichstag]] session of 11 December 1941: Adolf Hitler declares war on the United States of America.]]
The entry of the U.S. into the War is also crucial to the time-frame proposed by [[Christian Gerlach]], who argued in his 1997 thesis<ref>{{cite book |author-link=Christian Gerlach |last=Gerlach |first=Christian |orig-year=1997 |title=Kalkulierte Morde: die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 1941 bis 1944 |location=Hamburg |publisher=[[Hamburger Edition]] |year=1999 |pages=1018–36|oclc=764039257}} Originally presented as the author's doctoral thesis at {{nowrap|[[Technical University of Berlin|TU Berlin]]}}.</ref> that the Final Solution decision was announced on 12 December 1941, when Hitler addressed a [[Reich Chancellery meeting of 12 December 1941|meeting of the Nazi Party]] (the ''[[Reichsleiter]]'') and of regional party leaders (the ''[[Gauleiter]]'').<ref name="Dec12">{{cite web |url= http://www.holocaust-history.org/december-12-1941 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20130802104948/http://www.holocaust-history.org/december-12-1941 |archive-date= 2 August 2013 |title=December 12, 1941 |first=Götz |last= Aly |translator-first= Gord |translator-last= McFee |access-date=3 February 2016 |author-link=Götz Aly |publisher=Holocaust-history.org |quote=The original appeared in the German edition of ''Berliner Zeitung'' on December 13, 1997.}}</ref>{{Efn|Commenting on Gerlach, Christopher Browning writes: "What he interprets as Hitler's basic decision, I see as an official initiation of party leaders to
a decision taken several months earlier."{{sfnp|Browning|2004|pp=540f}} }} The day after Hitler's speech, on 13 December 1941, [[Joseph Goebbels]] wrote in his diary:<ref name="Donough57">{{cite book |title=The Holocaust |first=Frank |last=McDonough |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |year=2008 |isbn=978-1137020482 |page=57 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G4kdBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA57}}</ref>

{{blockquote|With respect of the Jewish Question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that if they again brought about a world war, they would see their annihilation in it. That wasn't just a catch-word. The world war is here and the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence.<ref name="Donough57"/><ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.holocaust-history.org/hitler-final-solution/ |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150602232947/http://www.holocaust-history.org/hitler-final-solution/ |archive-date=2 June 2015 |title=When did Hitler decide on the Final Solution? |author=Gord McFee |publisher=Holocaust-history.org |quote=Research in this area is hampered by the fact that no written Hitler-Order launching the Final Solution has ever been found, and that if there ever was one, it most likely was destroyed.}}</ref>}}

Cesarani notes that by 1943, as the military position of the German forces deteriorated, the Nazi leadership became more openly explicit about the Final Solution. In March, Goebbels confided to his diary: "On the Jewish question especially, we are in it so deeply that there is no getting out any longer. And that is a good thing. Experience teaches that a movement and a people who have burned their bridges fight with much greater determination and fewer constraints than those that have a chance of retreat."<ref name=Cesarani665>{{harvp|Cesarani|2016|p=665}}.</ref>

When Himmler addressed senior SS personnel and leading members of the regime in the [[Posen speeches]] on 4 October 1943, he used "the fate of the Jews as a sort of blood bond to tie the civil and military leadership to the Nazi cause".{{r|Cesarani665}}

{{blockquote|Today, I am going to refer quite frankly to a very grave chapter. We can mention it now among ourselves quite openly and yet we shall never talk about it in public. I'm referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. Most of you will know what it's like to see 100 corpses side by side or 500 corpses or 1,000 of them. To have coped with this and—except for cases of human weakness—to have remained decent, that has made us tough. This is an unwritten—never to be written—and yet glorious page in our history.{{r|Cesarani665}}}}