The Rise of Adolf Hitler and World War II and

“The Final Solution”

By History.com, adapted by Newsela staff

The word "Holocaust" comes from the Greek words "holos" (whole) and "kaustos" (burned).
The term was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar.

World War II was the most destructive war in human history. Lasting from 1939 to 1945, it
engulfed the globe and resulted in the deaths of millions of people. During this time, another
horror was taking place in Europe. It was called the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the mass
murder of 6 million Jews by German Nazis. Jews are followers of the religion of Judaism.

Millions of people from other groups also were caught and killed by the Nazis. They included
Roma (sometimes negatively called Gypsies) and people with disabilities. Jews, though, were the
Nazis' main targets and victims.

Adolf Hitler was the powerful leader of Germany and the Nazi Party. To him and his followers,
Jews were a lower race of people and a danger to German society. Once he came to power in
1933, he began turning his hateful ideas into deadly action.

Historical anti-Semitism and Hitler's rise to power

Anti-Semitism is anti-Jewish bigotry. Anti-Semitism and discrimination had roots in Europe
long before the rise of Hitler. Followers of the Jewish religion were often seen as strange
outsiders by their Christian neighbors. In many places, this suspicion and hatred took the form of
racism. Racism is a dislike of people because of their skin color, culture or where they come
from.

Why Adolf Hitler hated Jewish people so intensely is unclear. He served in the German army in
World War I, which lasted from 1914 to 1918. Germany's defeat in this war left the country poor
and weak. Hitler and people like him blamed the Jews for Germany's downfall, though more than
100,000 German Jews fought for their country.
After the war, Hitler joined a political group that became known as the Nazi Party. He was jailed
in 1923 for plotting against the government. In prison, he wrote a book called "Mein Kampf,"
which means "My Struggle" in English. In the book, he predicted another great war. He said
Germany needed to seize more land for its people. He also argued for the elimination of all the
Jews in Germany.

Many Germans were still upset about the troubles they faced after World War I. Following his
release from prison in 1924, Hitler used their despair and anger to recruit followers.

Under his leadership, the Nazi Party grew. They went from a small political group to a powerful
one. In 1933, he was chosen for a top post in the German government. A year later, he named
himself "Führer," Germany's supreme ruler. Huge Nazi marches and rallies were staged to show
off the Führer's power. Hitler took advantage of the weakness of his political opponents. What he
did was horrible and intentional.

In June 1941, the German raid on the Soviet Union marked a new level of brutality in warfare.
Mobile killing units would murder more than 500,000 Soviet Jews and others over the course of
the German occupation.

Germans sent Jews to concentration camps

In late 1941, the Germans began sending people from the ghettos in Poland to the concentration
camps. The Nazis' mass killings would take place at these camps. From 1942 to 1945, Jews were
captured all over Europe and taken to concentration camps. Hundreds of camps were built in
Germany and the countries it occupied. The twin goals of racial purity and territorial
expansion were the core of Hitler's worldview. After 1933, they became the driving forces
behind his foreign and domestic policy.

Beginning in late 1941, the Germans began transporting huge numbers of people from the
ghettos in Poland to the concentration camps. They started with those people viewed as the least
useful: the sick, the old, the weak and the very young. The first mass gassings began at the camp
of Belzec on March 17, 1942.

The Nazis tried to hide what happened at the camps. But the size and scale of the camps and the
number of killings that took place made this impossible. Eyewitnesses brought reports of Nazi
atrocities to the Allied nations. These countries were fighting Germany in World War II. They
included Britain, France, the United States and many other countries. After the war, Allied
governments were criticized for not doing more to stop the killings.

This lack of action was likely due to a focus on winning the war. But it was also due to shock
and denial. Some people refused to believe that such atrocities could be happening on such a
huge scale. At Auschwitz alone, more than 2 million people were murdered. The killing
continued until the end of the war. In 1944, as many as 12,000 Jews were killed every day.
Life was difficult for survivors of the Holocaust
The wounds of the Holocaust were slow to heal. People who survived the camps found it nearly
impossible to return home. In many cases, they had lost their families and been denounced by
their non-Jewish neighbors. As a result, the late 1940s saw a great number of refugees moving
across Europe. There was pressure on the Allied nations to make a homeland for Jewish people
who survived the Holocaust. This eventually led to the establishment of the state of Israel in
1948.

In the years after the war, Germans struggled with the bitter legacy of the Holocaust. Survivors
and the families of victims fought to be repaid for the property stolen from them by the Nazis. In
1953, the German government began to make these payments. This was a way of admitting guilt
for the atrocities and crimes committed during the Nazis' rule.