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  • Essay / World War II Killing Centers

    Just two decades after World War I, the deadliest and most widespread war of all time broke out. It became known as World War II. World War II began when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. The Nazis played a major role in this war of monumental proportions (WWII). Adolf Hitler was the mastermind behind the plans of the Nazis (Adolf Hitler). The Nazis created killing centers for efficient mass murder (Killling Centers: An Overview). Unlike concentration camps, which served as labor and detention centers, extermination centers were only used to kill non-Aryan individuals. He organized, implemented and executed the terror that the Nazis inflicted on millions of innocent human beings. He was behind the systematic extermination and ethnic cleansing of six million Jews and millions of non-Aryans, such as Gypsies and Jehovah's Witnesses (Adolf Hitler). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay The Nazis are estimated to have killed between five and seven million innocent Jews during World War II (The Holocaust: an introductory story). The Nazis killed Jews in different ways. They mainly killed them in gas chambers and by shooting them. Overwork, starvation, and disease also killed some non-Aryans (Methods of Murder). There were gas chambers in almost all Nazi camps, including concentration camps. In the gas chambers, people usually died within minutes from lack of oxygen. While in custody, prisoners were forced to carry the corpses. These prisoners, called sonderkommandos, were ordered to remove all valuables from the corpses. The bodies were either buried in mass graves or burned in ovens. One of the most evil things the Nazis did was tricking Jews into entering the chambers. The guards told them they were going to shower to get rid of the lice, but then the guards closed and locked the doors and threw Zyklon-B pellets into the rooms (Bachrack 52). The chemicals primarily used in the chambers were carbon monoxide and Zyklon-B (toxic gas). Healthier Jews who had not been selected to die early on were subjected to hard labor as sonderkommandos and other tedious work. More than a million Jews were slaughtered by SS commandos. These commandos would follow the troops as they invaded different locations, then they would round up all the Jews, shoot them, then throw the bodies into ditches (Methods of Murder). Gas trucks were another way the Nazis used to exterminate “undesirables.” The Jews were forced into tightly sealed trucks, and then the truck's exhaust was carried into the area filled with Jews, who suffocated quite quickly (Methods of Mass Murder). The Nazis relentlessly sought to make the Aryan race the dominant species. Approximately seven million people were massacred due to the Nazi killing processes. The sole objective of Hitler's regime was to exterminate non-Aryans (victims). Even in Germany, there were people who disagreed with Nazi policies, and some were even willing to die for their beliefs. One of these groups was the Jehovah's Witnesses. Hitler felt very threatened by them because, from the beginning, Jehovah's Witnesses stood firmly behind.