The Holocaust and Population Policy in Yad Vashem Studies, Volume XXIV

The Holocaust and Population Policy: Remarks on the Decision on the “Final Solution”

Heim and Aly argue that economic considerations primarily dictated the Final Solution of the “Jewish question” in Nazi-dominated Europe and that this plan was a product of decisions made by young economics experts within the Nazi bureaucracy. These experts regarded the Eastern European countries as suffering from heavy rural overpopulation. In the period from 1938 to 1941, plans concerning the solution of this problem began to be connected with the elimination of Jews from these areas as documented in the proposals and memoranda of P. H. Seraphim, W. Conze, H. Aubin, T. Schieder, and others. The implementation of these ideas — simultaneous resettlement of Poles and Germans, and the annihilation of the Jews — began at the end of 1941. The Nazis’ Final Solution may be regarded as an experiment in social engineering, a result of Nazi “expertocracy.”