Is the Final Solution the same thing as the Holocaust?

Answer 1

1. They were the same thing. The word the Holocaust only came into general use around 1980. The Final Solution was the Nazis' own term and was short for Final Solution of the Jewish Question (Endloesung der Judenfrage).

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2. The Holocaust also refers to the other programs run to incriminate minorities. Action T4, for example, was an order to exterminate those with disabilities. The Marxists and homosexuals were similarly killed, just not under the title of Final Solution.

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Definition 2 is at odds with that used by most professional historians of the Holocaust. See, for example, the definition of the Holocaust provided by Rciahrd J. Evans, Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge:

'The standard work by the distinguished Canadian historian Michael Marrus, TheHolocaust in History, focused on, to use his own words, 'the Holocaust, the systematic mass murder of European Jewry by the Nazis'. Similarly, Sir Martin Gilbert, in his documentary compilation, The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy( London, 1986), concurred in referring to 'the systematic attempt to destroy all European Jewry - an attempt now known as the Holocaust'. Another author, Ronnie S. Landau, put forward a similar definition in his book, The Nazi Holocaust: 'The Holocaust involved the deliberate, systematic murder of approximately 6 million Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe between 1941 and 1945.'

Richard J. Evans, Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial, Verso, London and New York, 2002, pp. 113-4

In the US the term the Holocaust is used loosely, possibly in an attempt to justify Federal funds for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
What Hitler called the 'Final Solution' was (later called) the Holocaust. It involved imprisoning millions of Jewish people, separating the families, experimenting on them surgically with no anaesthetic, and so on. Certain groups of German soldiers were allowed to kill Jews anytime that they saw them, (and they killed a huge number, as well).

Answer 2

It is not. The full name of the solution was the"Final Solution of the Jewish Question". It was discussed at the Wannsee Conference to really figure out what they were to do with the Jews in Europe. The "Holocaust" was the systematic murder of eleven-million people. The main target were Jews but there were many other victims of this event. There is a huge difference between these two subjects.

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The two expressions mean the same thing. The difference is that the expresssion Final Solution of the Jewish Question is a translation of the Nazis' own term (German Endloesung der Judenfrage). It was widely regarded as offfensive and replaced by the term Holocaust, which gained widespread acceptance from the late 1970s.

Professional historians regard the two as exactly the same thing. See, for example:

"The standard work by the distinguished Canadian historian Michael Marrus, TheHolocaust in History, focused on, to use his own words, 'the Holocaust, the systematic mass murder of European Jewry by the Nazis'. Similarly, Sir Martin Gilbert, in his documentary compilation, The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy( London, 1986), concurred in referring to 'the systematic attempt to destroy all European Jewry - an attempt now known as the Holocaust'. Another author, Ronnie S. Landau, put forward a similar definition in his book, The Nazi Holocaust: 'The Holocaust involved the deliberate, systematic murder of approximately 6 million Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe between 1941 and 1945."

Richard J. Evans, Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial, Verso, London and New York, 2002, pp. 113-4.

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If you are still skeptical, it may be useful to ask yourself what the Holocaust deniers deny. You'll find that they don't give a monkey's about the extermination of the Roma ('gypsies'), for example ... They are only interested in denying the mass murder of the Jews.

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It is also worth looking at what the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) has to say about the subject. It states, quite clearly and unambiguously that:

"The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators".

(See link below for source).

The USHMM then goes on to say that at the same time (not as part of the same process) other groups were also targeted:

"During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists ..."

(Same source)

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It may be the case that in popular usage in the US the term Holocaust has been expanded, possibly in order to justify public spending on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). One result of this has been an unexpected revival of the term Final Solution - at least in popular usage in the US.

Peter Novick, in The Holocaust in American Life, claims that Simon Wiesenthal persuaded a horrified Elie Wiesel to accept an expansion of the term Holocaust for essentially political reasons and to counter possible allegations of Jewish 'exclusiveness'. The resulting confusion is still with us, and in many places one hears claims, for example, that homosexuals were exterminated on racial grounds and so on in the Holocaust! It looks to me as if there may be some sort of quarrel regarding 'ownership' of the Holocaust - and it is pretty squalid.

All sort of groups are merrily trying to jump on the Holocaust bandwagon.

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Incidentally, the idea that the Wannsee Conference decided on the Final Solution is about 40 years out of date and mistaken: the decision had already been taken and the Holocaust was already in full swing by January 1942. Please see the related question.