final solution
1
9.9
- noun
- Offensive
:
solución final
- That the final solution was Nazi policy is not in dispute and is well documented.
- Hitler's final solution
Examples
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Long after Western populations were presented with detailed reports about the "final solution," they were generally reluctant to accept them as truthful.
Academic text (2000) -
For what they called the Jewish problem, the Nazis decided upon the final Solution, mass murder.
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Eichmann is credited with organizing the "Final Solution."
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Germany implemented the "final solution" of its "Jewish Problem" as a textbook exercise in instrumental reasoning.
Academic text (2003) -
Would the Nuremberg Trials have let Adolf Eichmann off the hook if he had apologized for engineering the Final Solution?
Academic text (2000) -
22 Academe is filled with professors who wonder how cultivated Germans could have acquiesced to Hitler and his final solution for their fellow Germans who were Jewish.
Academic text (1993) -
In 1942, the Nazis implemented their horrific final solution, which aimed to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe.
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The phrase final solution is infamously associated with the systematic genocide carried out by the Nazis during World War II.
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Many historians study the chilling details of the final solution to understand the depths of human cruelty during the Holocaust.
Synonyms
151
5.7
A mass killing of Jews and other groups by the Nazis during World War II
Planned killing of a whole racial or cultural group
Surface Forms
Morphology
final + solution
Although the constituents 'final' and the common sense of 'solution' suggest a last answer or remedy, the historical phrase 'Final Solution' is a euphemistic, culturally specific label for the Nazi policy of systematic extermination and this genocidal meaning cannot be predicted from the parts. A B1 learner who knows the literal words would not infer the historical/political sense without prior exposure, so the expression is idiomatic and opaque.
Etymology
Final solution was a cold official name used by the Nazis in World War II to hide their plan 'to kill' millions of Jewish people. The words final and solution normally mean 'last' and 'an answer', so using them made the mass killing sound like a final 'answer' to a supposed problem, and today final solution refers specifically to that Nazi plan of mass murder.