Final Solution

<p>The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a plan orchestrated by <a href="/facts/Nazi_Germany/8kRbqRpo">Nazi Germany</a> during <a href="/facts/World_War_II/2efV5L1U">World War II</a> for the <a href="/facts/Genocide/IjkNvg7y">genocide</a> of individuals they defined as <a href="/facts/Jews/T9Y4wE6A">Jews</a>. The "Final Solution to the <a href="/facts/Jewish_question/9henyRKd">Jewish question</a>" was the official <a href="/facts/Code_name/MRq0mo4b">code name</a> for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across <a href="/facts/German-occupied_Europe/QbETgWUY">German-occupied Europe</a> was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by <a href="/facts/Government_of_Nazi_Germany/fTAlVUAD">Nazi leadership</a> in January 1942 at the <a href="/facts/Wannsee_Conference/sUDpbf70">Wannsee Conference</a> held near Berlin, and culminated in <a href="/facts/The_Holocaust/vGQsAb2y">the Holocaust</a>, which saw <a href="/facts/The_Holocaust_in_Poland/m221M6dY">the murder of 90% of Polish Jews</a>, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe.
</p><p>The nature and timing of the decisions that led to the Final Solution is an intensely researched and debated aspect of the Holocaust. The program evolved during the first 25 months of war leading to the attempt at "murdering every last Jew in the German grasp". <a href="/facts/Christopher_Browning/eLsuWTcm">Christopher Browning</a>, a historian specializing in the Holocaust, wrote that most historians agree that the Final Solution cannot be attributed to a single decision made at one particular point in time. "It is generally accepted the decision-making process was prolonged and incremental." In 1940, following the <a href="/facts/Fall_of_France/mqqL078G">Fall of France</a>, <a href="/facts/Adolf_Eichmann/WygcLDLr">Adolf Eichmann</a> devised the <a href="/facts/Madagascar_Plan/CoWjMddE">Madagascar Plan</a> to move Europe's Jewish population to the French colony, but the plan was abandoned for logistical reasons, mainly <a href="/facts/Blockade_of_Germany_(1939%25E2%2580%259345)/o4LGEq8r">a naval blockade</a>. There were also preliminary plans to deport Jews to <a href="/facts/Palestine_(region)/HxMSPazK">Palestine</a> and <a href="/facts/Siberia/oaCoPEjF">Siberia</a>. <a href="/facts/Raul_Hilberg/6FNIypwI">Raul Hilberg</a> wrote that, in 1941, in the first phase of the mass-murder of Jews, the <a href="/facts/Einsatzgruppen/9og7Cctp">mobile killing units</a> began to pursue their victims across occupied eastern territories; in the second phase, stretching across all of German-occupied Europe, the Jewish victims were sent on <a href="/facts/Holocaust_trains/0DDPpJ0K">death trains</a> to centralized <a href="/facts/Extermination_camp/v9VjaFP8">extermination camps</a> built for the purpose of systematic murder of Jews.
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Final Solution