Are you on something? Or are you totally ignorant of the history here? There was no Final Solution in 1937 or 1938. Or 1940 for that matter, which is when my father in law escaped Hamburg. The Final Solution didnt start until 1942 when Germany was already at war.
Oh, really? Lets see what a few sources other than me and thee have to say about the (Big "H") Holocaust, which is, after all, what we are talking about, right?
Wiki sez:
Many scholars date the beginning of the Holocaust itself to the anti-Jewish riots of the Night of Broken Glass ("Kristallnacht") of November 9, 1938, in which Jews were attacked and Jewish property was vandalized across Germany. Approximately 100 Jews were killed, and another 30,000 sent to concentration camps, while over 7,000 Jewish shops and 1,574 synagogues (almost every synagogue in Germany) were damaged or destroyed. Similar events took place in Vienna at the same time.
The Jewish Virtual Library sez:
The Holocaust (also called Shoah in Hebrew) refers to the period from January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, to May 8, 1945 (VÂE Day), when the war in Europe ended.
Just who, other than you, limits it to WWII?
Stalin's purges happened long before he contemplated getting into war.
Wrong again. Germany and Russai had been on a collision course since the Nazi ascendency in 1933 - and both parties knew it. They agreed to a temporary truce to divy up Poland and attempt to settle the Finnish question. The decimation of the Soviet military leadership may have prompted Hitler to violate the nonagression pact earlier than he originally planned.
He had even signed a peace accord with Germany.
An accord neither party intended tohonor.
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