Hitler's Final Solution

Hitler’s Final Solution

Hitler officially came into power on the 30th of January, 1933, when he became Chancellor of Germany. Later on in that year, the Reichstag, the main German legislature, passed a decree giving him absolute power. He used this power to ban all political parties in Germany other than his. Many argue this is when Hitler became a dictator.

Within months of coming into power, Hitler opened the first concentration camp in Dachau, Bavaria. The first to be sent here were Hitler’s political opponents and enemies, but soon, the Nazi’s began sending anyone they considered “undesirables”. Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, the mentally ill, the disabled, and, of course, Jews fell into this category.

These people were seen as less than human. If you weren’t part of Hitler’s Aryan race - blonde, blue-eyed - you didn’t fit into Hitler’s plan for the future of Germany. He first tried to keep this race “pure” by making all of the “undesirables” emigrate out of the country. There were too many, however, and outside countries didn’t have any more room for them. They began to send them back. Hitler also tried to round these people up and make them live in crowded city districts called ghettos. This didn’t seem to satisfy him, however.

All other alternatives exhausted, Hitler put into effect his Final Solution. Schutzstaffel, search units, were sent throughout Europe to round up these “undesirables” and take them to death camps. Unlike a concentration camp where people were forced to work and died after months of horrible living conditions and the cruelty dealt them, the only purpose of a death camp was the swift killing of large amounts of people. Millions were murdered in these camps. The most well-known method was gassing. People were tricked into thinking they were going to take a group shower. But instead of water coming out of the shower heads, it was either exhaust gas or an even more poisonous gas called Zyclon B. The dead bodies were then either...