Wannsee Conference

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The Wannsee Conference was a high level ministerial meeting of Nazi German civilian government and SS officials convened by Reinhard Heydrich, to bring together the leaders of the German organizations whose cooperation was necessary to carry out the Nazi plan to kill the Jewish population of Europe and to make it clear to these other German ministers that this "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" was a strategic imperative of the Third Reich. The conference was held during World War II on January 20, 1942 in the Wannsee Villa overlooking the Wannsee lake in southwestern Berlin.

1 Organizing the "Final Solution"
2 The Wannsee Protocol
3 Attendees
4 Dramatization
5 External links

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Organizing the "Final Solution"

Although by the time of this meeting the Einsatzgruppen death squads were systematically executing Jews in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the Nazi regime had not yet achieved the integrated bureaucratic coordination necessary to deport and kill large numbers of people spread across a vast territory and subject to different and frequently competing ministries. In part, this failure of the Nazis to fully execute the planned Holocaust was the result of the civilian ministries not placing a priority upon the elimination of the European Jews under their control. The Wannsee Conference was called to reiterate the priority of the destruction of the Jews and to obtain the necessary high-level "buy in" from the most senior level of the relevant organizations so that the many pieces of the Nazi bureaucracy could work together to implement the "Final Solution."

Although documentary evidence detailing the Nazi state's genocidal intentions towards the Jews predates this meeting, the Wannsee Conference occupies a privileged place in our understanding of Nazi Germany's policy towards the Jews because: (i) a complete documentary record relating to the convening of the meeting and the minutes of the meeting survived the war; (ii) the representatives at the meeting were the most senior members of the key ministries and institutions needed to implement the deportation and systematic killing of the Jews; (iii) following this meeting mass deportations and systematic killings at camps designed for this purpose intensified; and (iv) the minutes of the meeting were used extensively during examinations and cross-examinations at the Nuremberg Trials.

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The Wannsee Protocol

The formal minutes of the meeting ("protocol") state that the purpose of the meeting is to coordinate the action of the concerned ministries to implement the "Final Solution." This protocol was prepared by Adolf Eichmann aided by Reinhard Heydrich, SS chief Heinrich Himmler's head deputy and head of the Reich Main Security Office. The meeting summary notes that the strategy of removing the Jews from the Nazi German state was changing from encouraging emigration to requiring deportation, forced work and systematic killing.

The combination of measures described in the protocol — deportation, forced work and systematic killing — were interrelated in the Nazi state's genocidal policy. Deportation was not an end in itself. Forcibly transportating the Jews out of the territories held or conquered by Germany and its allies was a measure taken not simply to remove Jews from Nazi controlled territory but to better facilitate organizing those deported into work brigades. The work brigades fulfilled two primary purposes simultaneously. Forced labor was to be focused upon large-scale infrastructure projects, specifically road construction, but also other forms of slave labor. This work was expected to be performed under grueling and punishing conditions and was expected to result in the deaths of "a large number of them." Those that survived these conditions were to be killed. ("Those who ultimately will possibly get by will have to be given suitable treatment..."). The protocol makes clear that "special treatment" was a synonym for "killing," as Eichmann later admitted at his trial. Within a year, as the Holocaust accelerated, most Jews would be immediately killed upon arrival at the Nazi death camps, rather than being first organized into work groups.

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Attendees

Present at the Conference were:

SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (Chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) the Reich Main Security Office and Reichsprotektor of Bohemia-Moravia)
Gauleiter Dr. Alfred Meyer (Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern territories)
Reichsamtleiter Dr. Georg Leibbrandt (Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern territories)
Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart (Reich Ministry for the Interior)
Dr. Erich Neumann (Director, Office of the Four Year Plan)
Dr. Roland Freisler (Reich Ministry of Justice)
Dr. Josef Bühler (Government of the General Government)
Dr. Martin Luther (Foreign Office)
SA-Oberführer Gerhard Klopfer (Party Chancellery)
Ministerialdirektor Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger (Reich Chancellery)
SS-Gruppenführer Otto Hofmann (Race and Settlement Main Office)
SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller (Chief of Amt VI (Gestapo), RSHA)
SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann (Reich Security Main Office (Gestapo))
SS-Oberführer Dr. Karl Eberhard Schöngarth (SS, assigned to the General Government)
SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Rudolf Lange (Commander of the SD for Latvia)

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Dramatization

The events of the Conference are dramatized in two films. A 1984 German television movie Wannseekonferenz (The Wannsee Conference) runs 85 minutes, exactly the length of the conference itself, and the script was derived from actual minutes of the meeting. 2001 saw the English-language production, Conspiracy, starring Kenneth Branagh as Heydrich and Stanley Tucci as Eichmann. Both films have received high critical acclaim.

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