To what extent was the final solution planned Essay

To what extent was the final solution planned - Essay Example While some people believe that this was a spontaneous decision made by Hitler, others believe that the process was systematically planned. The aim of this paper is to find out how far the Final Solution was planned. The investigation will cover what the Final Solution was, the debate of the decision, the extermination camps, and to what extent it was planned. It was right around 1942 when the plans of the Final Solution fully took hold, but over one million Jews had already been murdered. â€Å"It was only with the decision to eradicate the entire Jewish population that the extermination camps were built and industrialized mass slaughter of Jews began in earnest. This decision to systematically kill the Jews of Europe was made by the time of or at the Wannsee Conference, which took place in Berlin, in the Wannsee Villa on January 20, 1942. During the conference, there was a discussion held by a group of German Nazi officials to decide on the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’† (Wikipedia 2008, p. 1). The extent to which the Final Solution was planned can be proven by documents that contain the minutes and other records of the Wannsee Conference. The Allies located these documents at the end of World War II and used them as evidence in the Nuremberg Trials. â€Å"The records and minutes of this meeting were found intact by the Allies at the end of the war and served as valuable evidence during the Nuremberg Trials. â€Å"By spring of 1942, Operation Reinhard began the systematic extermination of the Jews, although hundreds of thousands already had been killed by death squads and in mass pogroms. In Heinrich Himmlers speech at the Posen Conference of October 6, 1943, Himmler, for the first time, clearly elucidated to all assembled leaders of the Reich, in frank and brutal terms, what the "Final Solution" referred to† (Wikipedia, 2008, p. 1). The Final Solution was the Nazi’s plan to