The Nazis called it the Final Solution. Historians and the public call it the Holocaust. Whatever one calls it, the intent of Germany was to exterminate the Jewish people. This is clear. But a close reading of statements Hitler made as the war against the Soviet Union began in mid-1942 reveals that Hitler's conception of the Final Solution grew out of his understanding of warfare. 

Hitler declared, “If I don’t mind sending the pick of the German people into the hell of war without the slightest regret over the spilling of precious German blood, then I naturally also have the right to destroy millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin.” The Holocaust, according to Hitler, followed based on the logic of warfare.

Hitler's argument was that if society gives national leaders the “right” to send their own soldiers to die in battle, why would society object if a leader also sent Jews to die in concentration camps? The Holocaust grew out of the logic of warfare.