Britannica Sources used in this answer

Why did the Nazis shift from mobile shooting squads to extermination camps?

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Samuel Bak: Smoke — Holocaust *Smoke*, oil on linen by Holocaust survivor Samuel Bak, 1997.

The Nazi transition from mobile shooting squads to extermination camps was driven by the desire for a more efficient, industrial-scale method of genocide that minimized the psychological and logistical burdens on the perpetrators.12

Initially, mobile killing units known as Einsatzgruppen carried out mass shootings in conquered Soviet territories. However, this process proved difficult to sustain and was disquieting to local populations. Furthermore, Nazi leadership concluded that gunfire was too slow and inefficient for the systematic murder of Europe’s entire Jewish population.12

By shifting to stationary killing centers, the Nazis could transport victims by rail to centralized locations, allowing a significantly reduced number of personnel to murder large numbers of people using poison gas. This strategy, which drew on methods from the T4 Euthanasia Program, enabled the Third Reich to implement the "final solution" with greater speed and detachment. This shift represents a profound moral failure, as the regime industrialized the act of murder to facilitate the Holocaust.12