As described in Chapter 4, Hitler had decided in principle in December 1941 to kill the Jews in Europe, Göring had given the matter urgency in August 1942, and by June 1942 Himmler had adopted a plan to murder all of the Jews within one year, i.e., by the middle of 1943. But none of this meant that annihilation would run automatically or smoothly. Further mass murders required new impulses and institutional support based on the views and interests of German functionaries. They also needed the consent of foreign governments, bureaucracies and, to a certain extent, populations. Moreover, in the second half of World War II, Germany occupied one friendly country after the other in order to prevent them from switching sides, and this brought new Jewish communities under more direct German control. This expanded and prolonged efforts aimed at the extermination of Jews, with greatly varying outcomes.

By the end of 1942, the great majority of Jews within the German sphere of influence had been murdered. About 4.5 million were dead, about 1.1 million lived in German-occupied countries (primarily Poland and France), and some 1.2 million others lived in countries allied with Germany but not occupied (above all, Hungary and Romania). About 3 million Jews perished from May to December 1942, 2 million in the four horrible months from July to October 1942 alone.

This chapter provides a survey of the major mass murders of the second half of World War II, and is based on the assumption that they did not happen randomly. Rather, the places and times of their occurrence were the result of certain political groups, and their considerations, winning the upper hand over other groups and considerations. The fact that the pace of mass murder clearly slowed after the end of 1942 was also due to a number of political factors. In German-occupied countries without dependent national governments, the German demand for Jewish labor decelerated the destruction. In several countries with a national government, whether under German occupation or not, the readiness of regimes, non-German administrations and local non-state actors to hand over their Jewish compatriots decreased considerably. Such reluctance had already begun to develop between August and November 1942, most notably, and in remarkably parallel fashion, in Romania, Italy, France and Slovakia – but also, to a certain degree, in occupied Poland, though for other reasons.

From the onset of Nazi rule, Jews were the targets of hostile propaganda in the German media, on posters and banners, and in mass gatherings. The central government under Hitler desired this atmosphere. However, there was no single authority in charge of the persecution of Jews. Rather, different state and Nazi Party agencies – central, regional and local – pursued their own anti-Jewish policies. These policies were related to other political areas, for no authority and virtually no single official in the government or Party was responsible for Jews alone. There was no consistent, undisputed, overall strategy. Accordingly, this chapter tries to sketch anti-Jewish policies in Germany, the relevant agents from 1933 through mid 1941 on different levels, legislation and centralized action, popular violence, communal policies and Jewish behavior. The chapter also covers the first years of German anti-Jewish policies in annexed and occupied countries until mid 1941, before the systematic massacres started.

The Nazi Party was handed power on January 30, 1933, at the low point of the Great Depression. Within months, it erected a dictatorship, introduced press censorship, took control of radio broadcasting, outlawed all other political parties and suppressed leftist opposition through mass arrests and detention, partially in improvised camps. In the general elections of March 5, 1933, the Nazis, despite their intimidation, did not win an absolute majority. In the months afterwards, however, they gained the often-enthusiastic sympathy of the vast majority of Germans who often flocked to Nazism of their own accord. This mass support was consolidated by an economic recovery stronger than in many other countries, a recovery that was built in no small degree on dirigiste measures – and especially on a massive rearmament effort – and accompanied by the rhetoric of class compromise that in reality gave entrepreneurs a free hand. By 1938, Germany enjoyed full employment. The social crisis seemed to be overcome. Nazi organizations and their propaganda permeated the everyday, but at the same time the regime integrated most of the traditional elites and the middle classes into its politics. The Party's relationship with parts of the Protestant and Catholic Church remained conflicted, incomes were modest, and there was repeated grumbling over scarce consumer goods and too much empty Nazi propaganda. Currency problems restricted foreign trade. Still, birth rates rebounded – indicating increasing confidence.

This chapter deals with a period of time that included several dramatic turns in German anti-Jewish policies and practices. Extermination was not decided upon all at once. Within one-and-a-half years, from the spring of 1941 to the late summer of 1942, the imaginations about schemes for the territorial concentration of the Jews came to include more and more violence combined with ideas for the selective mass murder of Jews in the Soviet Union that was to be occupied. This led to intentions to kill virtually all Soviet Jews; to which were then added plans to murder those Polish Jews who were regarded as unproductive, until, finally, the plan to kill all European Jews by 1943 was developed. Such policies came about through a complex process involving different central and regional authorities and agencies – at different levels of their hierarchies – and were the result of a number of intertwined motives. Practice evolved accordingly, though in regionally uneven ways – from selective mass shootings to almost complete annihilation in the occupied Soviet territories in 1941, though in some regions large numbers of Jews were spared for a year or longer; and from selective deportations from many countries to newly built extermination centers; and then the almost complete wiping out of Jewish communities in 1942. Other policies of mass violence also emerged and evolved during 1941–42, including the starving of Soviet POWs and others, forced labor, and anti-guerrilla warfare, all of which were, in some ways, connected to the fate of Jews. All of these developments were closely connected to the war's having become a relentless life-and-death struggle as a result of Germany's invasion of the USSR in June 1941 – and the subsequent hard-fought battles; of Germany's feverish efforts to support the Eastern Front with a wartime economy hampered by scarcity; and by the start of guerrilla uprisings in several countries. Non-German policies and actions against Jews and others must also be borne in mind.

It is important to examine the many initiatives and twists and turns in German decision-making because such patterns indirectly provide insights into more profound questions about the motives behind, the forces driving, and the political structures responsible for the extermination of Jews.