Lesson video

Hello, welcome to History here at Oak National Academy.

My name's Mr. Newton, and I will be your teacher today, guiding you through the entire lesson.

Right, let's get started.

In the early years of Nazi rule, persecution of Jewish people didn't begin with violence or death camps.

It began with words, policies, and shifting public attitudes.

However, over time, antisemitism became official state policy introduced step by step.

At the time, many people didn't know where this would lead.

Some hoped things would calm down, others ignored it, some even supported it.

Then came the Second World War, and with war came a shift.

Among the Nazi leadership, a plan was evolving.

Jews were seen as a problem, and the regime became increasingly determined to find a solution.

In the end, this would unfold into what Nazis called their 'Final Solution,' the attempt to annihilate the Jewish people entirely.

By the end of the lesson, you'll be able to explain why the Nazis carried out the Final Solution.

Before we begin, there are a few key words that we need to understand.

A ghetto is an area of a city where people of a particular race or religion live.

Task Forces, or in German, Einsatzgruppen, where mobile SS killing squads responsible for murdering those the Nazis saw as racial or political enemies.

Genocide is the intent to destroy in whole or in part a particular national, racial, ethnic, or religious group.

The Final Solution was the Nazi plan to murder all Jews in Europe.

And this was formalized at the Wannsee Conference in 1942.

And the Holocaust was the mass murder of millions of Jews by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

Today's lesson is called The Final Solution, and the lesson is split into three parts.

First, we'll look at the ghettos and Task Forces.

This was the early stages of the Holocaust where Jewish people were rounded up and rehomed in small areas and mobile SS units carried out mass shootings across Eastern Europe.

Next, we'll examine the creation of death camps and the coordination of genocide at the Wannsee Conference, this was the point where the Nazis formalized the systematic plans to carry out mass extermination.

Finally, we shift our focus to the responses, knowing, acting, resisting, and we'll ask, what did people know at the time who resisted, who helped and who stayed silent? Right, let's begin the lesson with ghettos and Task Forces.

So Jewish communities across Eastern Europe were forced into overcrowded ghettos.

This mass confinement didn't happen overnight.

It was the result of a broader military campaign of the Second World War.

As the war rumbled on, the Nazi army pushed deep into Eastern Europe occupying vast territories with large Jewish populations.

Poland was among the first to witness the dark campaign that unfolded.

In city after city, Jewish communities were forced into ghettos.

These were cramped, walled in neighborhoods designed to isolate and imprison.

In Warsaw alone, a third of the city's people were packed into just the sliver of its total area, 2.

4% of its total area.

The Nazis were systematically concentrating Jews into ever shrinking spaces.

Conditions were appalling.

Starvation, disease, cold and filth turned each ghetto into a slow death trap.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

What I want you to do here is complete this sentence with the correct missing word.

As the Nazi army pushed deep into Eastern Europe, Jewish communities were forced into blank, cramped, walled in neighborhoods designed to isolate and imprison.

Pause a video, fill in the blank, and then come right back.

Okay.

Welcome back, and let's see how that sentence should have read.

As the Nazi army pushed deep into Eastern Europe, Jewish communities were forced into ghettos, cramped, walled in neighborhoods designed to isolate and imprison.

Okay, let's continue.

Task Forces, or in German, Einsatzgruppen, followed the German army into Eastern Europe, carrying out mass shootings of Jews and others.

But who were these Task Forces and why were they sent in? As the Nazi army steadily marched eastwards, mobile units known as Task Forces followed closely behind, their mission was to eliminate perceived threats in newly conquered territories.

In reality, they were SS death squads.

Jews, communists, political leaders, and other so-called enemies of the Reich were to be exterminated.

Often this meant Jews were rounded up, marched out of town, forced to dig their own graves, and then shot.

As the violence intensified, local populations often collaborated in the slaughter, carrying out brutal pogroms or massacres that gave the appearance of spontaneous outbursts rather than German directed policy.

Some German officers, appalled by the cruelty, attempted to intervene, but senior Nazi leaders responded coldly with renewed orders of mass shootings.

As 1941 drew to a close, Nazi leaders began to recognize that mass shootings, while brutally effective, were not a sustainable method for what they called the solution to the Jewish problem.

Even from the perpetrator's perspective, mass shootings, though already vast in scale, were seen as too slow and too disorderly to achieve their aims. Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

What was the primary role of the Task Forces or Einsatzgruppen, as the Nazi army advanced eastward? A, to eliminate Jews and other perceived enemies through mass shootings.

B, to organize food supplies and medical aid for occupied territories.

C, to protect German troops from persistent allied attacks.

Pause the video, have a think, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done if you knew the correct answer was A, to eliminate Jews and other perceived enemies through mass shootings.

Okay, great.

Let's move on to Task A.

And what I want you to do here is using the knowledge gained from the lesson so far, discuss supporting evidence for the following statements.

And you can see I've got three statements here for you.

So the first statement: The Nazis had to find new ways to manage the large Jewish populations in Eastern Europe.

So what I want you to do is to discuss any details, any facts, any knowledge that you gained from the lesson so far, which you think can back up that statement.

And then I want you to do the same for the other two statements.

Statement number two is the Nazis used Task Forces to carry out their plans in newly conquered territories.

And number three is mass shootings became a problem for the Nazis themselves.

And you can even jot these down as a bullet point list on a piece of paper as well if you want.

Pause the video, have a go at the task, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done for having a go at that task.

So let's have a look at this first statement.

The Nazis had to find new ways to manage the large Jewish populations in Eastern Europe.

So you could have said something like: The rapid eastward advance of the German army brought millions more Jews under Nazi control.

And the ghettos were used to contain and isolate these populations.

And that ghettos created cramped and harsh conditions; starvation, disease, cold and filth meant that ghettos were really slow death traps.

And for the second statement: The Nazis used Task Forces to carry out their plans in newly corporate territories.

You could have discussed the fact that Einsatzgruppen or Task Forces were SS death squads with the mission to eliminate perceived threats, including Jews, communists, political leaders.

Task Forces rounded up Jews, marched them outside towns and forced them to dig their own graves and then shot them.

And you could have also mentioned the fact that local populations sometimes joined in the pogroms or massacres.

And the final statement: Mass shootings became a problem for the Nazis themselves.

You could have said that from the Nazi perspective, shootings were too slow and too disorderly.

Great, so we've now seen how Jewish communities were forced into ghettos and how Nazi Task Forces carried out mass shootings across Eastern Europe.

But even with all this violence, the Nazi leadership began to see these methods as too chaotic and too slow.

So this brings us to the next part of our lesson, Death Camps and the Wannsee Conference.

This saw the development of permanent death camps and the key moment when the Nazi leadership sat down and planned genocide as a matter of state policy.

Nazi leaders approved the construction of death camps to achieve large scale systematic murder.

But the road to death camps didn't start there.

Before construction began, the Nazis had already been searching for faster, more efficient ways to kill.

The Nazis briefly turned to mobile gas vans, and these were sealed trucks that pumped in exhaust fumes to suffocate those inside.

But this method quickly evolved to something more large scale.

In late 1941, Nazi leaders approved the construction of permanent extermination camps at sites like Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

These were not labor or concentration camps.

They were death camps built for one purpose, the mass genocide of Europe's Jews.

Victims were told they were being resettled and were led to buildings containing gas chambers sealed with airtight doors.

At first, carbon monoxide from engines was used.

Later at Auschwitz-Birkenau the pesticide Zyklon B was adopted as a more effective method of killing.

Their bodies were then buried in mass graves or burned in open pits and crematoria.

By the end of 1941, death camps were already killing on a large scale, but the machinery of genocide was not yet fully coordinated.

That changed in January, 1942.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

What I want you to do here is complete this sentence with the correct missing word.

To replace less efficient methods, the Nazis built death blank to enable the large scale genocide of Jewish people.

Pause the video, fill in the blank, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and let's see how that sentence should have read.

To replace less efficient methods, the Nazis built death camps to enable the large scale genocide of Jewish people.

Okay, let's continue.

At the Wannsee Conference in January, 1942, Nazi leaders formalized the Final Solution.

So how did it come to this? Historians have argued about whether this genocide was inevitable.

Nazi policy towards Jews seemed to escalate gradually, from arrests and attacks, to random killings, mass shootings, gas vans, and finally, death camps built for extermination.

But this scattered approach unequivocally became a centrally coordinated policy at the Wannsee Conference.

The Nazis already had much of the machinery in place, but at Wannsee, they sat down a meticulously detailed plan for genocide.

In a quiet lakeside villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, 15 senior Nazi officials gathered around a long table.

It looked like any other high level meeting, typed agendas, maps, coffee cups, but the subject was mass murder.

The men had not come to debate whether to kill Europe's Jews.

That decision had already been made.

They came to coordinate how to do it.

The meeting, chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, laid out what the Nazis called the Final Solution to the Jewish question.

Jews across Europe were to be rounded up, stripped of rights, and deported eastward, many to be worked to death, the rest gassed.

Wannsee was about logistics, drawing up transport timetables, assigning regional quotas, and defining who counted as Jewish.

Ministries of transport, justice, foreign affairs and the interior were all brought into line.

Behind the bland administrative language lay a crime of unfathomable scale.

Jews were taken from ghettos and across occupied Europe, told they were being resettled.

In reality, most were gassed within hours of arrival.

By the war's end, historians estimate that at least 6 million Jews were murdered through gas chambers, shootings, starvation, forced labor, disease, and medical neglect.

This tragic chapter became known as the Holocaust or the Shoah, its name in Hebrew, a word meaning catastrophe.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

Which of the following statements correctly describe what happened at the Wannsee Conference? Select two correct answers.

A, to delay further killings until after the war was won and Eastern Europe conquered.

B, to develop a solution for Jewish communities to safely be resettled in other parts of Europe.

C, to formalize what the Nazis called the "Final Solution to the Jewish question." D, to organize a system where many Jews would be worked to death while others would be gassed.

Pause the video, select your two correct answers, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done if you knew the correct answers were C, to formalize what the Nazis called the "Final Solution to the Jewish question." And D, to organize a system where many Jews would be worked to death while others would be gassed.

Okay.

Let's move on to Task B.

And what I want you to do here is describe two features of the Final Solution.

And to help you to structure your answer, I want you in your first sentence to identify the feature that you wish to describe, then you need to back up that sentence with a detailed description of the feature.

Pause the video, have a go at the task, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done having a go at that task.

So there's many ways that you could have responded to that task, but compare your answers with the model answers I have here.

So you may have answered: One feature of the Final Solution was the creation of extermination camps designed solely for mass murder.

And we can see there in the first sentence, a clearly identified feature of the Final Solution has been stated.

So the next sentence or two will now go on to fully describe the feature.

From late 1941, the Nazis built camps such as Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

These were not labor camps, but death camps built for one purpose, the systematic genocide of Europe's Jews.

Another feature was the use of gas chambers as the main killing method.

Victims were deceived into thinking they were being resettled or sent to shower blocks.

Inside they were gassed using carbon monoxide, or later Zyklon B.

Their bodies were buried in mass graves or burned in open pits and crematoria.

And of course, there's many different features that you may have answered, so I'll just give you one more alternative.

A further feature of the Final Solution was that it became a centrally coordinated policy at the Wannsee Conference in January, 1942.

15 senior Nazi officials, led by Reinhard Heydrich, met to organize how the genocide would be carried out.

The plan stated that Jews across Europe were to be rounded up, many to be worked to death, and the rest gassed, ensuring every part of government helped to execute mass murder efficiently.

So we've now reached the final part of our lesson, and perhaps the most important to reflect on.

We've seen how the Nazis move step by step from discrimination and ghettoization to mass shootings, to the construction of death camps, and finally, to the formal coordination of genocide.

But history isn't just about what was done, it's also about how people responded.

Some resisted, some obeyed, and some chose to look away.

Right, let's begin the final part of the lesson, knowing, acting, resisting.

So even under brutal oppression, Jews resisted.

In the Warsaw Ghetto, in April, 1943, Jewish fighters held off the German army for weeks, armed with smuggled pistols and homemade bombs.

Similar uprisings took place in other ghettos.

Take a look at this photograph.

It shows the ghetto uprising in Warsaw, and it captures one of the most significant acts of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.

We can see that the Germans are systematically burning down the ghetto building by building to crush Jewish resistance.

But how did this happen and why? So in 1942, the Nazis began mass deportations, removing Jews from ghettos like this one in Warsaw.

Thousands of Jews were sent to the Treblinka death camp in just a few months.

Those who remained realized the truth.

These deportations weren't resettlements, they were death sentences.

In response, young Jewish men and women began organizing underground resistance.

They smuggled in weapons, most had never used a gun before, and their weapons were few, pistols, grenades, Molotov cocktails, and determination.

The uprising began on the 19th of April, 1943, when German forces entered the ghetto to carry out a final deportation.

But this time they were met with armed resistance.

The fighters ambushed German patrols from bunkers and hidden positions.

The Nazis were shocked and ordered the ghetto to be wiped out.

Over 27 days, they burned the ghetto to the ground, destroyed thousands of homes, and killed thousands of Jews.

Some were captured and executed.

Others died in the flames.

By mid-May, the uprising was crushed.

This image reminds us that even in the face of overwhelming terror, people still found the courage to fight back, not just for their lives, but for their dignity.

Later the same year, in August, 1943, prisoners at the Treblinka death camp set fire to buildings and attempted a mass escape, but resistance to quieter forms too.

In Warsaw, a secret archive was created to hide diaries and documents so the truth would survive.

Plays were staged, prayers whispered and children hidden with the help of Polish families.

Some forged papers and passed as non-Jews, many were caught.

Few acts could change the outcome, but each was a refusal to surrender dignity.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

Which of the following were forms of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.

Select three correct answers.

A, launching a mass armed conflict against the Nazi regime across Europe.

B, organizing uprisings in ghettos like Warsaw and camps like Treblinka.

C, secretly documenting events to preserve the truth for the future.

D, staging plays and whispering prayers despite Nazi oppression.

Pause the video, select your three correct answers, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done.

If you knew the correct answers were B, organizing uprisings in ghettos like Warsaw and camps like Treblinka.

C, secretly documenting events to preserve the truth for the future.

D, staging plays and whispering prayers despite Nazi oppression.

Although details were unclear, many Germans had some awareness of the persecution and violence.

Just take a look at this photo, which shows the smashed windows of a Jewish owned shop during the Night of Broken Glass or Kristallnacht.

This was a nationwide coordinated attack on Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues in 1938.

Events like this didn't happen in secret.

They were seen on the streets, reported in newspapers and witnessed by thousands.

So while the later stages of genocide were often carried out far from the public eye, the early warning signs, the hatred, the destruction, and the arrests were right in front of people.

But as the war continued and the persecution intensified, the picture becomes less clear.

Much of what people knew came through fragments, stories that leak through letters, whispers, rumor.

Much of the violence was no longer always visible on city streets.

In instead, it moved out of sight to forests, train platforms, and distant camps.

But traces of the truth still reached people.

Journalists, officials, and train station workers witnessed the mass deportations.

Soldiers returning from the Eastern front spoke of shootings in villages and forests.

Historians still debate the full extent of public knowledge, but many Germans had some awareness, not always of gas chambers, but certainly of expulsions, brutality and death.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

And what I want you to do here is complete this sentence with the correct missing word.

Many Germans had some awareness of Jewish persecution, even if they did not know the full details of death camps and blank chambers.

Pause a video, fill in the blank, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and let's see how that sentence should have read.

Many Germans had some awareness of Jewish persecution, even if they did not know the full details of death camps and gas chambers.

So faced with growing knowledge of Jewish persecution, Germans responded in different ways.

Some resisted, some complied, but many remained silent.

While some looked away, others became involved.

Police enforced Nazi laws, business owners and neighbors profited from confiscated property.

So the question is then why did they act or fail to act? For some, it was fear of the Gestapo or punishment, of standing out.

For others, it was gain, a better job, a larger apartment, or greater security.

And for some it was hatred, fueled by years of Nazi propaganda and deep-rooted antisemitism.

Years later, political thinker, Hannah Arendt, would described this quiet, everyday participation in atrocity as the banality of evil.

The terrifying idea that great crimes can be committed not only by fanatics, but by ordinary people simply following orders, doing their jobs, or failing to think deeply about their actions.

This was not evil done with passion, but with paperwork.

After the war, some Germans claimed they had not known the full extent of what had happened.

Others admitted they had helped in small ways, or had chosen not to intervene.

Whether they understood the scale of the catastrophe or not, many lived with a quiet awareness that they had in some way looked away.

Even those who simply followed orders or kept to themselves often carried a hidden guilt.

It became a private burden passed down through families and communities, a legacy that would linger not only with the survivors, but with their descendants and the conscience of a nation.

Have a look at the image on the left.

What you're seeing here is part of the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.

Each photo represents a person, a life that was lived, a story that was cut short.

These are not just numbers, they were teachers, children, artists, parents, shopkeepers, people with families, futures, and dreams. Throughout today's lesson, we've talked about policies, plans, ghettos, Task Forces, death camps, et cetera.

But it's important to remember that behind every stage of this system was an individual human life.

This image reminds us why we studied the Holocaust, not just to understand what happened, but to remember who it happened to.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

In which ways did some Germans respond to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust? Select the three correct answers.

A, choosing not to think deeply about their actions.

B, participating in and profiting from Nazi persecution of Jews.

C, staying silent out of fear or indifference.

D, refusing to believe that any persecution was happening.

Pause the video, select your three correct answers and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done if you knew the correct answers were A, choosing not to think deeply about their actions.

B, participating in and profiting from Nazi persecution of Jews.

C, staying silent outta fear or indifference.

Okay, let's move on to the final task, Task C.

What I want you to do here is explain why the Nazis carried out the Final Solution and how different groups responded to it.

And to help you to structure your answer, I want you to write two paragraphs.

In paragraph one, I want you to explain why the Nazis carried out the Final Solution.

In other words, what their aims were and how their methods changed over time.

In paragraph two, I want you to explain how different groups responded.

In other words, how Jewish people resisted and how ordinary Germans reacted.

Pause the video, have a go at the task, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done on having a go at that task.

So there's many ways that you could have written your answers, but compare your paragraphs with the model paragraphs I have here.

So for the first paragraph, you could have answered: The Nazis carried out the Final Solution because they wanted a faster and more organized way to kill Europe's Jews.

At first, Jews were forced into ghettos, such as the Warsaw Ghetto, where overcrowding, starvation, and disease caused many deaths.

As the German army invaded Eastern Europe, SS Task Forces, Einsatzgruppen, began mass shootings.

But these were seen as too slow and Nazi leaders decided they needed a more efficient method.

In late 1941, they built extermination camps such as Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

At the Wannsee Conference in January, 1942, Nazi officials coordinated the entire process, planning, transport, quotas, and defining who counted as Jewish.

The goal was total genocide, the murder of all European Jews.

This became known as the Holocaust, or Shoah in Hebrew, meaning catastrophe.

And for your second paragraph, you could have answered: Jews and Germans responded to the Final Solution in very different ways.

Many Jews resisted despite the danger.

In 1943, fighters in the Warsaw ghetto held off the German army for weeks, and prisoners at Treblinka revolted and set fire to buildings.

Others resisted quietly by hiding children, keeping diaries, or preserving Jewish culture and religion.

Ordinary Germans also responded in different ways.

Some helped or tried to speak out, but most remained silent.

Fear of the Gestapo, years of Nazi propaganda and the chance to benefit from Jewish property, all led many to ignore what was happening.

Some claimed they did not know the full truth, but many knew enough to understand the persecution.

Overall, Jewish resistance showed courage while most Germans chose not to act.

Okay, let's summarize today's lesson, The Final Solution.

The Nazi invasion of Eastern Europe brought millions more Jews under control and into ghettos.

Task Forces, or Einsatzgruppen, mass shootings were brutal but inefficient, leading to the search for faster killing methods.

Death camps like Auschwitz were built for genocide, using gas chambers to kill Jews on an industrial scale.

At Wannsee, in 1942, Nazi leaders coordinated the Final Solution.

Mass murder that became known as the Holocaust.

Jews resisted in ghettos and camps, while most Germans remained silent or looked away outta fear or benefit.

Well done everyone.

And today we've traced the path from discrimination to destruction, from ghettos and mass shootings to death camps and the coordinated machinery of genocide.

This history challenges us to think about how people respond when others are treated unfairly.

Who notices, who challenges it, and who chooses to look away? See you next time.