European Jews by the Nazis during World War II. The Holocaust

was the largest genocide in history.

Genocide – the

attempt to kill an

entire ethnic or

religious group of

people.

Anti-Semitism –

prejudice against

Jewish people.

decided gassing at

death camps was

much faster than the

Einsatzgruppen.

Although he referred

to the Holocaust with

code words, few

historians doubt Hitler

was directly involved.

Hitler called the

Holocaust “the final

solution to the Jewish

question,” and the

“clean sweep.”

Hitler &

Himmler

During the First World War (1914-1918), Hitler was a soldier in the German army. At the end of the war he, and many other German soldiers like him, could not get over the defeat of the German Empire. The German army command spread the myth that the army had not lost the war on the battlefield, but because they had been betrayed. By a ‘stab in the back’, as it was called at the time. Hitler bought into the myth: Jews and communists had betrayed the country and brought a left-wing government to power that had wanted to throw in the towel. Adolf Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II. Over the next six years, the conflict took more lives and destroyed more land and property around the globe than any previous war.