I imagine that the first years of sequestration of Jews and "other undesirables" into concentration camps and work camps was reasonably profitable for the Nazi regime. They got the property and the slave labor. The people of the camps began to be a burden, I'd bet, as the Nazis looked at issues like supplies of food and fuel. And, as you starve people down, their ability to do useful work declines.
"What to do? What to do?"
"Here is my final solution..."
Art
"
I am not implying any such thing. I am stating historical fact that extermination of European Jewry was not an aim of the Nazis prior to 1942 and the Wannsee Conference. "
Sorry do dig this old monster of an ugly thread up but I just wanted to
tell about the two theories about the holocaust known to me:
The first which Art has described would be: Functionalist - meaning a situation which went from bad to worse, imprisonment, forced labor and then the final solution.
The second would be: Intentionalist - meaning Hitler has planned it all along.
The Wannsee conference seemed to be not a question of the if but the how and it has to be mentionned that it took place only after Hitler and the leading Nazis recognized that they would lose the war which in my opinion leans more to the functionalist theory.
There was antisemitism in Germany like anywhere else, but it did not lead to the Holocaust, that was Hitlers doing and the real crime of the Germans and later the Austrians, the French, the Polish, the Hungarian, the Swiss, the Italians etc. was to let it happen.