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When did Hitler decide on the Final Solution?

Sausio 30, 1939

http://www.holocaust-history.org/der-ewige-jude/hitler-19390130.shtml

Hitler's speech to the Reichstag of January 30, 1939

Europe will not have peace until the Jewish question has been disposed of. The world has sufficient capacity for settlement, but we must finally break away from the notion that a certain percentage of the Jewish people are intended, by our dear God, to be the parasitic beneficiary of the body, and of the productive work, of other peoples.

Jewry must adapt itself to respectable constructive work, as other peoples do, or it will sooner or later succumb to a crisis of unimaginable proportions.

If the international finance-Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations into a world war yet again, then the outcome will not be the victory of Jewry, but rather the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!

1940 vasara

Hitlerio kalba baigiamas filmas "Amžinas žydas" http://www.holocaust-history.org/der-ewige-jude/

Lapkričio 18, 1941

http://www.holocaust-history.org/piper/piper-english.shtml On November 18, 1941, Alfred Rosenberg hosted a reception for the press. His appointment as "Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories" had only been announced the day before, although he had already been in the position for four months. In the Ministry's conference room, then located in the premises of the former royal Yugoslav embassy at 17-18 Rauch Street in "Berlin-Tiergarten", Rosenberg wanted now to prepare for what was to come. Taking notes was strictly forbidden, and reporting explicitly not allowed. The reception had another goal: the "Hauptschriftleiter" in attendance, as chief editors were called in Nazi jargon, were to take a united stand and see things "in the same light."

Alfred Rosenberg explained that the East had been "called to solve a question that has been put to the peoples of Europe: that is, the Jewish Question. About six million Jews live In the East and this question can only be solved by a biological eradication of the whole of Jewry in Europe".

Lapkričio 20, 1941

Lietuva tai tarptautinis žudynių centras. http://www.holocaust-history.org/piper/piper-english.shtml After hundreds of thousands of Jews had already been murdered in the conquered eastern regions, deportations began in the fall of 1941 of "Reich German" Jews to the East. On November 20, 1852 men, 2755 women and 327 children from Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Munich were deported and five days later, immediately after their arrival in Fort IX, shot before the gates of the Lithuanian city Kaunas. On November 29 a second major shooting action took place there whose victims were Jews from Vienna and Breslau [Wroclaw].

On the same day in Berlin, the Chief of the Reich Main Security Office, Reinhard Heydrich sent out invitations to a meeting on December 8 with breakfast included at which would be considered "all necessary preparations ... for a complete solution to the Jewish Question in Europe". Heydrich was at that time also President of the International Criminal Police Commission. Its department at 16 Am Kleinen Wannsee was provided as the location of the meeting.

The meeting was not to take place. Shortly beforehand it was cancelled - due to an event that took place almost 12,000 kilometres away and was to have a decisive impact on further course of the war. In the morning of December 7, the Japanese air force launched its attack from six aircraft carriers on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. More than 2400 soldiers lost their lives, a dozen ships were sunk or wrecked, more than 300 aircraft were destroyed or damaged. A day later the United States declared war on Japan. In Berlin, Heydrich's colleagues informed the invitees to the conference at Wannsee that the meeting would be postponed.

Gruodžio 11, 1941

On December 11, Adolf Hitler called the "men of the Reichstag" together in order to declare war on the United States in their presence. It was to take until December 1942 before American and German soldiers came into direct contact with one another in the African campaign. Nevertheless Germany now found itself suddenly in a world war, a term that previously had only been used for the 1914-1918 war. In his Reichstag speech of January 1939, Hitler had uttered the prophesy that the consequence of a new world war would be the extermination of the Jews. This event had now in his opinion occurred.

Gruodžio 12, 1941

The next day, Hitler invited the Reich and Gau Leaders of the NSDAP, approximately 50 people, to the Reich Chancellery and said more openly than ever before what it was all about for him. Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary: "With respect to the Jewish Question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. (...) The world war is here, and the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence".

Gruodžio 14, 1941

Akivaizdu, kad dar nebuvo pradėję vykdyti žydų išžudymo... o Lietuvos provincijoje jau buvo išžudyti.

Alfred Rosenberg's Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories was involved at all levels in the implementation of the million-fold murder program - administrative as well as planning, political as well as ideological. On December 14 Rosenberg had a one-on-one meeting with Hitler; subsequently he noted about the meeting: "I maintained the point of view not to speak of the extermination of the Jews. The Führer agreed with this position and said they had imposed the war and brought destruction, thus it is no wonder that they suffer the consequences first of all." Rosenberg and Hitler agreed: The Jews were to be exterminated, but to make it public did not appear advisable at this point in time.

Alfred Rosenberg was a National Socialist ideologue and convinced antisemite. He came from Estonian Reval (today Talllinn). His opponents suspected that he spoke better Russian than German. During the years of the rise of the Nazi Party he had played an important role, was however after 1933 increasingly on the margins of the political power centre. When Hitler concluded a non-aggression pact with Stalin in 1939, Rosenberg was not involved in the preparations because such a power-political pragmatism was completely beyond the comprehension of a fanatical rabble-rouser against the "Jewish-Bolshevik Soviet Union".

Now that the battle was against the Soviet Union, Rosenberg was once again required. Already in April 1941, the preparations for the attack in full swing, Hitler summoned him. At the end of a multi-hour conversation, he said to him: "Rosenberg, your big moment is here!"

Gruodžio 18, 1941

Vėlgi, rytų ministerijoje delsė - reiškia, kad vyko pagrinde Einsatgruppen A. (ir dar Kieve).

The second is a note in his own handwriting by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in his soon to be published diary of a meeting he had with Hitler at the latter's Headquarters (Wolfsschanze) on December 18, 1941. The notes are simply: [8]

Judenfrage / als Partisanen auszurotten

Jewish Question / to be exterminated like the partisans

In the Eastern Ministry, there were at first reservations about the mass murder of Jews. In the last weeks of the year, no such signs were discernible any more. On December 18 the diplomat Otto Bräutigam, who headed the department "General Policy", wrote to Reich Commissar for the East Land Hinrich Lohse: "In respect of the Jewish Question, clarity has been achieved in the meantime through oral discussions. Economic considerations are in general to be ignored in settlement of the problem." This document showed it clearly: The Jews were to be killed without exception. Not even forced labourers were to be exempted from this.

Sausio 8, 1942

On January 8 1942, a month after the originally established date for the Wannsee Conference, Reinhard Heydrich sent out new invitations to a meeting.

Sausio 20, 1942

It would now take place on January 20 in the Chief of the Security Police and Security Service's guest house at 56-58 Am Großen Wannsee. Heydrich brought several colleagues with him, including Adolf Eichmann, who wrote the Protocol. Among the 15 participants were to be found alongside representatives of the Race and Settlement Main Office, the Party Chancellery and the civil administration in the occupied territories in the East, two representatives of the Eastern Ministry: State Secretary Alfred Meyer and Georg Leibbrandt, head of the policy department.

The Wannsee Conference took place at a point in time when the German advance had come to a stop. It became evermore clear that the "labour deployment in the east", in unconquered Siberia, would remain a fiction and the "evacuation" of Jews meant for many immediate, and for the rest, only deferred death. Immediately after the conference nationwide deportations began in Germany; in addition, the incidence of murder dovetailed with a comprehensive program of forced labour.

Sausio 29, 1942

The Conference concluded with several subsequent meetings on January 29 in the Eastern Ministry. Here the question of half-breeds, which had played an important role at Wannsee, was a major theme. The radicals among the destruction bureaucrats urged the murder of the so-called "half Jews" as well as "full Jews" in the occupied eastern territories - unlike in the German Reich.

In early 1942, the second and most dreadful wave of murder began, at the end of which stood the clearing of the ghettos. Within 12 months, more than 50 percent of all Holocaust victims died. This has contributed to the incorrect impression that the extermination of the Jews was decided at the Wannsee Conference. In fact, it was already underway while several implementation questions were still being discussed.

1942

Rosenberg's territorial commissioners in the eastern territories under the control of the civil administration at times tried to outdo Himmler's commandos in their killing efficiency. It was the same people who months before had protested against the extermination of manpower. Wilhelm Kube, General Commissar for White Russia, who at first had scruples about executing German Jews, turned out to be an especially eager murderer. In the summer of 1942 he reported that in the previous ten weeks, 55,000 Jews had been liquidated. There were occasional rivalries with the military administration, about which Kluge lamented: "The rear military zone has, without contacting me, liquidated 10,000 Jews, whose systematic eradication had been intended by us in any event." However, mostly Kube himself was active: "In addition the Sluzk region has been unburdened of several thousand Jews". In 1943, the cynic Kube was killed with a bomb by a White Russian partisan who had disguised herself as a maid.

Spalio 4, 1943

http://www.holocaust-history.org/himmler-poznan/ Heinrich Himmler's Speech at Poznan (Posen)