Why did the Nazis use gas chambers?

Question

Wouldnt it have been more humane and effective to use the bullett.How can we ever forget.Serious replys only please.

Answer 1

One of the major considerations of choosing not to shoot their prisoners was the effect it had on the Nazi soldiers who carried out the shootings. This was mentioned and discussed in some detail at the Wannsee Conference where Heydrich and Eichmann, and other notable Nazis eventually decided that mass-gassings were 'the final solution to the Jewish question'.

Answer 2

In spite of the apparent brutality of this question, and the controversy I no doubt skipped over in not reading all of the previous 36 answers, this is kind a good question.

You would think, wouldn't you, that a well placed bullet would be more humane in the "don't make them suffer" ideal, but for one, the people who ran the camps didn't really have that ideal. We know that just from the survivors that were liberated, the condition they were in, without even having to hear their stories or discover the incinerators. Not to mention the good point that bullets would be expensive when you're eliminating 12 million people, and being such a large war, the ammo was "better" used elsewhere. And I would imagine that the bowel/bladder mess would be bad enough without the addition of blood. Sure, you might ask, after all that, what's a little blood? But even if the person was starved and dehydrated with nothing to release, they still had some blood in them. Since the point was efficiency, gas was probably the way to go. Kind of like making people dig a ditch, then tying them together in pairs on the edge of that ditch (or body of water, whatever the case be) and only shooting one of the pair in order to save ammunition. It's gruesome, but when you're on a budget, it unfortunately works.

Answer 3

The Nazis had no humanity what-so-ever. Their plan was the complete annihilation of the Jews and other races whom they classified as sub-human. Among those put to death by starvation and/or the gas chambers were Catholic priests, homosexuals, the disabled, children with incurable illnesses, etc. The list is endless.

In the early days of their Deaths Head campaign, the SS did indeed shoot thousands of people, particularly during the Russian campaign.

The method was found to be slow and inefficient and many of the men who had to carry out the task would not carry on with it.

By 1942/3 the Nazis had come up with their plan for the complete destruction of the Jews in Europe.

It is too horrible to contemplate.

Holocaust Memorial day - soon - not sure when, weep for the victims of the Holocaust.

Answer 4

They gassed people because it was the most efficient way to kill large numbers. The Nazis were not concerned with being humane to those they were killing. They did not consider their victims humans. They were highly concerned about the killers. In the beginning the SS shot their victims This was a time consuming affair and very draining on the SS men. Himmler himself made a speech to the SS that commiserated with these killers for their mental anguish for although those they shot were not human they did resemble real people. He also felt that it was tiring physically for these heroes of the Reich. They did have Einsatzgruppen that travelled with the Wehrmacht forces just behind the front. They would shoot such groups of Jews,communists or Romany they found that were to small to justify transport to a death camp. We must not forget any of the horrors the Nazis inflicted on the world. What geniuses died on the battlefield or in the gas chambers. I always remember one picture. The pyramid of bodies in the gas chamber before the sonderkammando pulled them apart was terrible but what keeps me awake is the picture of a boxcar two thirds full of children's shoes. The germans believed in final recycling long before it was considered important. The clothes and shoes of the gas chamber victims, their hair and the gold from their heads was collected and sent back to Germany for redistrubution. I have often wondered how many children they had to kill to get that many shoes.

Answer 5

The Nazi's weren't a very humane group of "people" (In the broadest sense of the word).

They probably decided on the gas as it was cheap to manufacture and it was a clean way of killing. No blood and guts to clean up. The bullets were needed for the war effort too, not wasted on this. Killing people en masse with bullets would take a lot of time, too.

Answer 6

From what I understand it was too time consuming and it had such an effect on the people carrying out the attrocities that this method was stopped.
An excellent book to read is 'The Nazis and the Final Solution' by Laurence Rees as it's so well written and researched. There was also a documentary series made by the BBC on it.

Answer 7

They did use the bullet in the early months of the "final solution". It turned out to be much more cost-effective to use Zyklon-B in closed chambers. Humane? They didn't consider Jews and other non-Aryan races to be fully human and entitled to humane treatment. And in actual practice, the gas was almost as quick as the bullet. It is a sad mistake to think that every person shot with a bullet - even in the head - dies immediately and without ghastly pain and suffering. Looks good in the movies, but it does not work that way in real life.

Answer 8

Humane did not come into it.They were killing on an industrial scale.I believe in the order of 6 million people were killed.That is one million more than live in Scotland in the present day.Does that give a scale to the numbers involved?.
How can we ever forget? Ask that of the Iranian president Armadinajad or of the Muslim Council of Britain.Armadinajad says he doubts if it happened.The MCB refuse to attend Holocaust day.
Dont forget that the Nazis didnt only murder jews in the gas chambers.They also killed gays and the disabled.
And certain folk today worship the SS and Herr Hitler.Isnt the world a strange place?

Answer 9

The Nazi's developed the use of gas chambers because the members of the Einsatzgruppen in Russia killing Jews and other "undesirables" became mentally unstable (rather more mentally unstable than they already were) and became alcoholics, drug addicts and had nervous breakdowns. There was a programme on UK tv earlier this evening called Hitler's Holocaust which mentioned this.

Answer 10

Being humane wasn't an issue. Most of the bullets were sent to the soldiers at the front. It was considered more "efficient" to use gas. The gassing rooms were made to look like community showers. The prisoners were told that they had to shower and get de-loused. The prisoners removed their clothing and entered the "showers", the doors were sealed and the gas was released through the "shower heads". Other prisoners were sent in to remove the bodies and then go through the personal effects for usable items.