What+was+Hitler's+plan+once+he+became+powerful?

("Holocaust Survivors from Mauthausen-Gusen Concentration Camp")

Hitler’s goal was to maintain the purity of the Aryan-Nordic-Germanic blood. He wanted to wipe out anyone who was “not a German” by his standards. However, no one can be exactly sure what Hitler’s thoughts were or what he had originally intended in terms of World War II and the Holocaust. According to an SS officers journal entry, Hitler said, "The plan is clear: total removal, total separation. What does this mean? This means not only the removal of the Jews from the economy of the German people...It means much more than that! No German should be asked to live under the same roof with Jews, who are a race marked as murderers and criminals, nad who are the mortal enemies of the German people." (Lace 67)

Between 1939 and 1945, Hitler managed to kill 6 million Jews, but Jews were not the types of people he was trying to eradicate. In that same period of time, he killed about the same number of homosexuals, gypsies, and mentally or physically disabled people. The killing of these people is known as the Final Solution of the Jewish question.

The Nazis began persecuting the Jews specifically by boycotting their businesses and encouraging others to do the same. As World War II progressed, so did the Nazis strength and popularity. They were soon able to evacuate Jewish towns and move all Jews into small, dirty ghettos. After living in the ghettos, many Jews were shipped to either a labor camp or a death camp.

During World War II, the Nazis set up at least 1,000 ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union. When the Nazis moved people into ghettos, they took all the Jews’ personal belongings, leaving them without a home, furniture, money and little food. Jews were forced to wear a badge on their arm depicting the Star of David. Some people lived in ghettos for only a few days, others for years. Throughout this time, some citizens tried to smuggle food, medicine, and even people through the walls of the tiny ghetto. Sometimes these attempts were successful, but Nazi officers did not hesitate to shoot anyone who was perceived as a threat. When the Nazis finally decided on their plan to kill all Jews, soldiers would go into the ghettos and murder the residents, or ship them to a place made especially for killing called a “concentration camp.”

Some Jews were transported, normally by train, to labor camps where they were forced to work for no reward. The conditions in these camps were horrible. People being forced to do physical labor were not fed reasonable amounts of food and the officers that patrolled the camps mistreated the prisoners without mercy. In the early 1940’s, when World War II began, the authorities decided to expand the concentration camps. Conditions were becoming worse, and now they had made death camps where people were not even forced to work. They were simply sent to the camps to be exterminated. Many people who were not instantly shot or put in gas chambers died of starvation or disease. (Lace)