ABSTRACT
Three final solutions: The Nazis planned not one but three “final solutions” to what they considered major social problems. First by far among them was, according to a Hitler memoir of 1936, a “final solution of the German problem”. The Nazi leader believed that the German people were strapped for land and would die of hunger unless they conquered colonies in fertile east Europe. A second documented “final solution” was planned by Himmler in 1938; it was to control and destroy the gypsies. The third final solution, that of the European Jews, has a more complicated documentary history. While the Nazi leadership never issued a written plan or order for a “final solution of the Jewish problem”, from 1939 onward they made frequent public announcements about it. When the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939, they began to implement the “final solution of the German problem”, systematically killing large numbers of Jewish and Catholic Poles. The murder of Catholics ebbed off after 1940, whereas the murder of Jews continued unabated. The Nazi leaders even considered the annihilation of Jews more important after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. When the conquest of the Soviet Union ground to a first halt in August 1941, the murder of Jews became a war aim.
