B: Compulsory Reading: Stargardt, The 'Final Solution' - Assignment Example

The Jews who were occupants of the German-occupied Europe were mass murdered with the backing of various government agencies and individuals. The plight of the Jews is critically analyzed by Stargardt in the article. Jews were subjected to mental and psychological torture before being mass executed. The Jews underwent a sorting process that was followed by the deportation to the death chambers. The Germans considered themselves as the superior being and authority while committing these atrocities (Stargardt, 2001).

The article also touches on the disrespectful treatment of the Jews even after their execution. In one of the most shocking situations, over half a million Hungarian Jews were gassed at Birkenau in 1944 followed by the mass burning of the corpses. The case as identified by Stargardt indicates that crematoria services in the Country could not handle the cremation of so many bodies that they had to be burned in the open space. The articles addresses the plight of those considered to be social liabilities within German-controlled territories.

The drunken, workshy, and the vagrant were also executed alongside the Jews. Some of the other groups that perished in the ‘final solution’ were the Soviets, who were starved by the Germans seeking to weaken them and later attack their homes (Stargardt, 2001). 1941 has been considered as the crucial year that resulted in the Holocaust though no evidence can reject the possibilities of an earlier cause. The links originate from the works of Aly in the extermination of psychiatric patients and the murder and expulsion of Jews in Western Poland to create room for the ethnic Germans.

Hitler, though on an unofficial documentation, informed directly on the needs of the Holocaust. Hitler in a disguised prophecy in 1939 stated that the killings of Jews fitted well with early provisions in case there happened to be a World War.