Direct answer: The Final Solution was implemented through a progression of stages designed to systematically remove Jews from European society, culminating in their extermination. The key stages commonly identified by historians include:
- Early persecution and legal segregation: From 1933 onward, Jews faced increasing discrimination through laws that restricted rights, excluded them from public life, and isolated them economically and socially.
- Ghettoization and mass deportations began: Jews were forced into overcrowded ghettos and subjected to forced labor, starvation, and brutal living conditions while authorities organized mass deportations to concentration and extermination camps.
- Centralization of bureaucratic control: Nazi offices coordinated deportations, labor assignments, and the management of victim populations, turning genocide into a highly bureaucratic process.
- Establishment and use of extermination facilities: Central extermination camps with industrial-scale murder techniques became the primary mechanism for mass murder, particularly in occupied Poland.
If you’d like, I can break these down with dates, key events, and the roles of specific agencies and figures to provide a more precise timeline.