On 20 January 1943, Heinrich Himmler sent a letter to Albert Ganzenmüller, the Under-secretary of State at the Reich Transport Ministry, requesting: "need your help and support. If I am to wind things up quickly, I must have more trains." Of the estimated six million Jews exterminated during World War II, two million were murdered on the spot by the military, Waffen-SS, Order Police battalions and mobile death squads of the Einsatzgruppen aided by and the local auxiliary police. The remainder were shipped to their deaths elsewhere.
