Adolf Hitler: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 09:40, 13 May 2004

Revision as of 14:20, 13 May 2004

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''Main article: [[Holocaust]]''.

[[Image:Hitler29.jpg|thumb|right|Hitler greets Croatian puppet state leader Ante Pavelic]]The Holocaust refers to the Nazis' systematic extermination of "undesirables" in [[concentration camp]]s. Jews were primarily targeted, though many others died in the camps, as well: [[Communist]]s, [[homosexual]]s, [[gypsy|gypsies]], the physically [[handicapped]], the mentally [[retarded]], [[Soviet]] prisoners of war, the [[Poland|Polish]] [[intelligentsia]], [[Jehovah's Witnesses]], [[Catholic]] and [[Protestant]] clergy, [[trade union]]ists, [[psychiatric]] patients, and common [[criminal]]s all perished alongside one another in the camps.

Adolf Hitler's fanatical [[anti-Semitism]] was laid out in his [[1925]] book [[Mein Kampf]] - largely ignored when it was first printed, it became popular after Hitler's rise to power. When Germany occupied Europe, in many places Jews were resettled into concentrated areas, [[ghetto]]s. It is believed that mass murder of the Jews began with the [[Einsatzgruppen]] who followed the [[Wehrmacht]] into the Soviet Union, conducting mass shootings of Jews throughout the recently occupied territories which have been estimated to have killed approximately 2 million Jews. However there remained a question of millions of Jews in the European ghettoes, especially within the [[General Government]] of [[Poland]].