It’s impossible to explain the Holocaust in a single episode, but the History Channel’s Episode 7, “Darkness Falls,” from the documentary series “World War II with Tom Hanks,” attempts to do just that.
Hanks notes that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill referred to what was happening as “the crime without a name.” The episode also features chilling footage of Adolf Hitler addressing the German Reichstag on January 30, 1939, when he declared: “If international Jewish financiers inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a World War, then the result will not be victory of the Jews, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”
The documentary traces the roots of Nazi antisemitism, including Hitler’s virulent hatred of Jews as expressed in “Mein Kampf,” where he portrayed Jews as an inferior race and an obstacle to Germany’s future. It also examines the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which stripped Jews of citizenship and prohibited marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews.
Here are five lesser-known facts highlighted in the episode.
1. During Kristallnacht, police disguised themselves as civilians
Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass,” took place on November 9-10, 1938. Across Germany and Austria, Nazis destroyed Jewish businesses, looted and burned synagogues, murdered more than 90 Jews, and arrested approximately 30,000 Jewish men, many of whom were sent to concentration camps.
Daniel Greene, an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, explains in the episode that police officers were instructed to remove their uniforms before participating in the violence. The goal was to make the attacks appear spontaneous, creating the impression that ordinary German citizens had risen up against their Jewish neighbors rather than carrying out a state-directed campaign of terror.
2. The Nazis relied on local collaborators to identify Jews in parts of the Soviet Union
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 as part of Operation Barbarossa, mobile SS killing squads known as the Einsatzgruppen followed behind the advancing German army.
In Poland, many Jews could often be identified through religious dress, language, or communal life. But in many parts of the Soviet Union, Jews were more assimilated and often indistinguishable from their non-Jewish neighbors.
Despite Nazi racial theories, German forces frequently struggled to identify who was Jewish. They often relied on local residents, some of whom volunteered information out of antisemitism or self-interest, while others were coerced into assisting.
Jews were rounded up, marched to execution sites, and forced to dig mass graves. Victims were often required to undress before being shot. At Babi Yar, outside what is now Kyiv, Ukraine, more than 33,000 Jews were murdered over two days in September 1941, making it one of the largest single massacres of the Holocaust.
3. Zyklon B was originally developed as a pesticide
As mass shootings continued across Eastern Europe, Nazi officials sought methods they believed would be more efficient for carrying out genocide.
Germany had already experimented with gas killings through its so-called euthanasia program, which targeted people with disabilities and mental illnesses. At the Chelmno extermination camp in occupied Poland, victims were murdered using carbon monoxide pumped into sealed trucks.
Zyklon B, a pesticide that released cyanide gas, was later adopted for use in extermination camps. The substance consisted of pellets stored in sealed metal canisters. According to the episode, experiments conducted by Auschwitz deputy commandant Karl Fritzsch helped convince Nazi officials that Zyklon B could be used to kill large numbers of people.
At camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, pellets were dropped into specially designed gas chambers, where the released cyanide gas murdered victims within minutes.
4. The Wannsee Conference was about coordination, not deciding whether to kill Jews
Many people mistakenly believe the Nazi regime decided to implement the Final Solution at the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942.
In reality, mass killings were already underway. The purpose of the conference was to coordinate the bureaucracy of genocide and discuss how Nazi agencies would cooperate in carrying out the extermination of Europe’s Jews.
The participants reviewed estimates of Jewish populations across Europe and discussed how deportations and killings would be organized. While six million Jews would ultimately be murdered, Nazi planners envisioned a far larger extermination campaign that extended to Jewish communities throughout Europe, including countries that Germany had not yet conquered.
The episode underscores the chilling normalcy with which participants approached the meeting, discussing genocide over food and drinks.
5. Nazis used elaborate deceptions to keep victims calm before murder
One of the most disturbing details highlighted in the episode involves the lengths Nazis went to conceal what awaited victims at extermination camps.
Just before entering gas chambers, Jews were often told they were going to take showers. According to the documentary, they were even given fabric ties and instructed to tie their shoes together so they could supposedly find them more easily afterward.
The deception helped prevent panic and resistance during the final moments before mass murder.
Witnesses later described horrific scenes inside the gas chambers, where family members clung to one another in their final moments. At many extermination camps, those selected for immediate death were murdered within hours, and sometimes within minutes, of arriving.
The episode also explores how information about the Nazi extermination campaign slowly reached the outside world.
Gerhart Riegner of the World Jewish Congress was among the first to relay reports of the Nazi plan to systematically murder European Jews. His warnings were initially met with skepticism by some government officials who struggled to comprehend the scale of the allegations.
Once the reports were confirmed, Rabbi Stephen Wise publicly informed the American Jewish community. Synagogues held days of mourning and prayer, while pressure mounted on governments to respond.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt ultimately concluded that the fastest way to save Europe’s remaining Jews was to defeat Nazi Germany as quickly as possible. The Allies did not bomb the rail lines leading to Auschwitz or the extermination camps themselves, a decision that remains the subject of historical debate.
