May 1945: With the end of the war and the surrender of the Third Reich, the world discovered the full horror of a genocidal system on a scale never before seen in the history of humanity. The elimination of millions of individuals had been meticulously planned by a regime whose organization and methods were just beginning to be understood.

It took less than 10 years for Hitler to set up the concentration camps, many of which became centers for mass killing. As research and archaeological exploration continue, this documentary dives into established historiographical elements to explain how a system of concentrating populations became the rationalized apparatus of genocide.