World War 2
The Holocaust
Jews had been persecuted in Germany from the very moment the Nazis came to power in 1933. In 1935 the Nuremberg Laws deprived them of full German citizenship. By November 1938 roughly 150'000 of Germany's 500'000 Jews had emigrated, although many found refuge in countries which the German Army would subsequently go on to raid and conquer.
The diplomatic victories of 1938 and 1939 brought many Eastern European Jews under Nazi control. The conquest of Poland and western Russia delivered millions more into Hitler's hands. On the orders of Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS, massacres began almost immediately. Between June and November 1941, SS Einsatzgruppen (task groups) killed at least one million Jews behind German lines in Russia.
Most of the Jews were killed by mass shooting; a method Himmler considered inefficient as this was using too much ammunition from the German supply. At the Wannsee conference in January 1942, Himmler approved the 'Final Solution to the Jewish problem'. Jews were rounded up in ghettos to which they had been confined and sent to death camps in the East. When there, they were either killed on arrival or if deemed useful and healthy enough they were worked to the point of death in SS factories before being consigned to the gas chambers. This was the fate which befell some six million Jews and many non-Jews as well, most of them forced labourers who were kept alive so long as they could work.
The removal of the Jewish population, if not their exact fate, was known to everyone in Nazi-occupied Europe. From1942 the Allied leadership was aware of what may be happening. But it was not until the last months of the war, whan Nazi-territory was shrinking, when the death camps were discovered and overrun, and now the whole world was confronted with the discusting horrible truth.