The Holocaust began on the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union before the establishment of death camps and gas chambers. The Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) followed the German army into Russia and murdered 1.5 million Jews in late 1941 and early 1942 east of the Soviet border.

Hitler was undisturbed by the extermination of men, women and children:

“If I don’t mind sending the pick of the German people into the hell of war without regret for the shedding of valuable Germany blood, then I have naturally the right to destroy millions of men of inferior races who increase like vermin” (Meltzer, 1976).

The Holocaust was a dependent variable, war the independent variable. Hitler understood that national leaders waging war have the right to sacrifice their own soldiers. Therefore, Hitler concluded, if nations have the right to kill their own soldiers, why would they not also have the right to kill Jews, Germany's mortal enemy? This was Hitler's logic: the logic of the Holocaust.

Richard Koenigsberg