Proposal & Annotated Bibliography for Contextual Analysis Essay

Assignment Prompt: _Assignment 3 Proposal & Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography: annotated bibliography (3)

Working title: Gas Vans And Their Role In The Final Solution

Object: Mobile Gas Units

• Who: First used by the Nazis in Poland and slowly began spreading throughout Germany.
• What: Vans designed to lead deadly fumes into an air-tight cargo compartment in order to kill off whatever was in the compartment.
• Where: Nazi Germany
• When: WW2 (1939-1945)

Research Question:
In what ways did the evolution of the nazis mobile gas units play a role in the build up to the final solution?

Personal Interest:
I chose this topic after I had a conversation with my English professor and she had brought up the use of gas vans in WW2. Even after all the assignments I’ve done and books I’ve read I had never heard of the use of Gas vans in WW2 and I thought it would be interesting to learn about the impact they had in leading up to the final solution. I think it’s fascinating that I’ve never heard of the first version of the gas chambers before. Gas Vans were primarily used in the beginning of the war so the lack of knowledge on them is understandable as gas vans had been pushed to the back while gas chambers and other weapons they began to use took the lead. I believe researching gas vans is important due to the fact that the creation and use of gas vans gave us evidence on how German soldiers had tried to change their methods of killing in order to be quicker and less painful for their victims.

What Will Exploring This Topic Allow You To Do:
Exploring this particular research question will allow me to learn more about gas vans and deepen my understanding on exactly why Nazi forces decided to make the switch from guns to carbon monoxide weapons in order to kill their victims. While looking into this, I’ll be able to see the mental strain that soldiers were put through as well as the health risks that soldiers had to deal with. This research question will allow me to see behind the scenes of the side of the war which isn’t normally focused on (Nazi Soldiers).

Things I Already Know:
Gas vans were originally experimented in 1940 in Kochanowska, Poland; They locked mentally ill children inside a sealed van and choked them to death with carbon monoxide. Soon, the Nazis performed further experimentation that involved piping carbon monoxide from a truck’s engine into a sealed Chamber. Gas vans made a comeback after the Einsatzgruppen (German deployment groups) complained about battle fatigue and mental anguish caused by shooting large numbers of women and children. The gas vans were used yet again due to the fact it was cheaper and a more efficient way of killing mass groups of people. The first gas vans in the Soviet Union were used in Poltava, in November 1941, and in Kharkov in December. That same month, gas vans were also used in the Chelmno extermination camp. By June 1942 there were 20 gas vans in operation, and even more were being prepared. Some of the trucks could hold up to 50-60 victims; while others could only handle 25–30 people. Fifteen vans were put at the disposal of the German special forces which were being operated in the German-occupied Soviet Union. After multiple months, the faults in using these gas vans became evident. The men who unloaded the vans suffered mental stress due to their extremely close contact with murder. In addition, the back roads these vans traveled on were very bad and this caused the vans to break down quite frequently. German soldiers came to the conclusion that the gas vans could not handle the large number of Jews that they intended to murder which led to the more effective gas chambers being developed.

Things I Didn’t Know:
-The History of Gas Vans and how they helped lead up to the final solution

Surprises:
-The Nazis were also considered victims during WW2 as they were forced to kill thousands of minorities. Their families were threatened if the Nazis tried to rebel. Due to this, they tried their best to find the most humane way to kill them.
There are many misconceptions surrounding the holocaust. One of those misconceptions is that “The Final Solution” was decided at the Wannsee Conference. While thousands of Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators or died as a direct result of discriminatory measures instituted against Jews during the initial years of the Third Reich, the systematic murder of Jews, or “The Final Solution” began with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 – killing entire Jewish communities mainly through shooting or gas vans.

-In ninety minutes, on January 20, 1942, fifteen mid-level Nazi officials met to ensure the cooperation of various administrative departments to make the killing that was already happening more efficient. It is important to note that while the “Holocaust by bullets” was inefficient and psychologically draining on its perpetrators, the killing centers did not replace the mobile killing. In fact, the Einsatzgruppen continued its actions well into 1943.

Where my research is headed:
After gathering a lot of hyperlinks, I hope to see my research show the development of gas vans (showing the reason why they chose to move from guns to gas vans and finally to gas chambers) and show the leadup to the final solution. I would like to touch on both sides of the war (Primarily the nazis who were forced to kill minorities in order to keep their family safe) and see how they tried to show some form of humanity while killing these minorities, which seems like a far stretch but looking at the different ways they’d kill minorities shows that many did not want to do it).