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 1.2 million Jews in late 1941 and early 1942 east of the Soviet border.

Hitler understood the meaning of the Final Solution better than any scholar:

“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).

As commander-in-chief of a great nation-state, Hitler understood that national leaders had the "right" to send their own soldiers to be slaughtered in battle. German soldiers were required to be "obedient unto death." It followed logically, Hitler reasoned, that if nation-states have the right to sacrifice their most valuable members, certainly they have the right to take the lives of its least valuable members.