The entire Jewish phase of the 'final solution' was placed in the hands of one Adolf Eichmann, a slender owlish failure-prone salesman of oil products, who, through a rapid rise within the Nazi hierarchy, had become a cynical, boastful, sycophantic S.S. lieutenant colonel, with a frumpy wife and a glamorous mistress. When apprehended fifteen years after the war by Israeli agents, Eichmann modestly disclaimed any credit for his achievement, but we must not underestimate the enormity of the task that faced him back in the exhilarating days when German armies were victoriously slashing their way into Russia.

The old concentration camps had to be modernized for mass murder. Additional camps, large enough to handle hundreds of thousands of Jews at a time, had to be built. Means for transporting millions of Jews from all over Eastern Europe to these camps had to be provided. New railroad spurs had to be built, as these camps were off the main arteries. Corps of special camp attendants had to be recruited and trained, records kept.

Soon, a sizable segment of the German population was diverted from the war effort for the planning, building and staffing of these murder camps. Generals on the Russian front complained that winter uniforms for the troops were arriving late because trains had been diverted; industrialists complained they were being pirated of skilled labor. But nothing was allowed to interfere with the 'final solution'.

Though there was a shortage of steel for tanks and airplanes, there was no shortage of steel to build furnaces for the disposal of the cadavers. This excerpt from a business letter from the director of the Didier Works in Berlin gives proof of the knowledge German industrialists had of the use of their products:

For placing the bodies into the furnaces, we suggest simply a metal tray moving on cylinders. Every furnace will have an oven measuring only 24 by 18 inches, as coffins will not be used. For transporting corpses from the storage points to the furnaces we suggest using light carts on wheels, and we enclose diagrams of these drawn to scale.

With German efficiency, chambers for the administration of Zyklon B gas were built to resemble large shower rooms. Arrivals were informed they would have to take a shower, were ordered to undress, and then were herded into the 'shower rooms'. Small children were often thrown in after the adults The steel doors to the gas chambers were shut. Then the amethyst-blue Zyklon B crystals were funneled through the large-holed shower nozzles into the hermetically sealed room. The hydrogen cyanide gas released from the crystals slowly rose to the ceiling, slowly gassing the people in the room, slowly turning the gasping, retching bodies into bright pink, green-spotted, convulsed corpses. 

Peepholes in the walls and ceiling, protected by safety glass, were provided for Nazi officials who had a compulsion to view the agonized writhings of naked men and women choking to death. Through these peepholes they could watch, entranced, several performances a day.

Max I. Dimont -- Jews, God and History