How Far Was Hitler Responsible For The Holocaust

Surprisingly, when Hitler came to power in 1933 he had not yet decided to attempt the systematic murder of an entire people. In fact, it took until two years after the start of World War II for him to officially decide to implement the genocide of Jewish people. Though Hitler did begin his so-called “Euthanasia” program in the fall of 1939 for the annihilation of handicapped German people, it still took six years into Hitler’s reign before he decided that genocide was the best option. Nevertheless, genocide was the most likely outcome in Hitler’s racial state from the beginning because of the Nazi’s belief in race “science”, Germany's desire for more “living space,” the failed attempts of forced Jewish emigration, and because the outbreak of World War II provided the perfect cover for genocide. Hitler’s focus on race “science” is one of the reasons genocide was ultimately a goal of Hitler’s racial state during World War II. Eugenics, the …show more content…
What ultimately pushed Hitler towards the implementation of his genocidal policies was the invasion of Russia. Because of its massive size, obtaining Russia would have meant the achievement of Lebensraum for Germany, but it also meant Germany would be gaining an enormous number of Jews. In 1939, “the fate of the Polish Jews could wait,” but by 1941 “the Russian commissioners nor Russian Jews could” not. Once the Russian Jews were being mass murdered, Hitler released a plan to kill all European Jews under Nazi control, thus starting the Final Solution. The cover of war also influenced Hitler’s decision to implement a genocidal policy. Since the world was distracted by a war, it was easier for the government to get away with something like the Holocaust. When Hitler realized the effectiveness of killing the Russian Jews and saw that it was relatively easy to get away with it during war-time, it justified using this policy for all the biologically “inferior” people living in