Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE WANNSEE CONFERENCE
The conference at the
Wannsee villa
on January 20, 1942, was held at the instigation of
Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of Reich Security Head O
ce, who had been ordered by Göring to
submit plans for rounding up, deporting and destroying all Jews in Reich territory. Heydrich
summoned SS and government o
cials, including Adolf Eichmann and Roland Freisler, who
later gained infamy as the judge at the Volksgerichthof (see p.101). Eichmann kept a complete
set of minutes of the meeting, and these documents, discovered after the war - despite the
fact that all recipients had been requested to destroy their copies - played an important part
in the Nürnberg trials of war criminals.
The problem Heydrich delineated was that Europe contained eleven million Jews: the “Final
Solution” to the “Jewish Question” was that these people should be taken to camps and
worked to death, if they were able-bodied, or murdered on arrival if not. Those who survived
would eventually be executed, since, under Nazi principles of natural selection, they would be
the toughest, and in Heydrich's words could be “the germ cell of a new Jewish development”.
In these early stages systematic killing machines like Auschwitz and Treblinka were not yet fully
operational. More discussion was spent on how the Jews should be rounded up: deception
would prevent panic and revolt, so the pretence that Jews were being moved for
“resettlement” extremely important. Heydrich charged Eichmann with this task, which
eventually cost him his life when he was sentenced to death for war crimes in Israel in 1960.
At no time during the conference were the words “murder” or “killing” written down; careful
euphemisms shielded the enormity of what was being planned. Reading the minutes, it's di
cult
not to be shocked by the matter-of-fact manner in which the business was discussed, and the
way in which politeness and e
ciency absorb and absolve all concerned. When sterilization was
suggested as one “solution” it was rejected as “unethical” by a doctor present, and there was much
self-congratulation as various o
cials described their areas as “Judenfrei” (free of Jews).
Heydrich died following an assassination attempt in Prague a few months later; some of
the others present did not survive the war either, but, in contrast to the millions who were
destroyed by their organizational ability, many of the Wannsee delegation lived on to gain a
pension from the postwar German state.
eastern front had already brought home the fact that Germany was not invincible
- that Berlin suffered its first heavy raids. he British bombed by night, the Americans
by day, establishing a pattern that would relentlessly reduce Berlin to ruins. “We can
wreck Berlin from end to end if the USAAF will come in on it. It will cost us between
400 and 500 aircraft. It will cost Germany the war”, the head of Bomber Command,
Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, had written to Churchill in 1943. he first buildings to
go were the Staatsoper and Alte Bibliothek on Unter den Linden. On December 22,
the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche was reduced to a shell. By the year's end, daily
and nightly bombardments were a feature of everyday life.
During the 363 air raids until the end of the war, 75,000 tons of high-explosive or
incendiary bombs killed between 35,000 and 50,000 people and rendered 1,500,000
Berliners homeless. Yet despite the colossal destruction that filled the streets with 100
million tons of rubble, at the war's end seventy percent of the city's industrial capacity
was still functioning.
Apart from chipping away at Nazi power, the destruction also intensified
underground
resistance
. Despite the Gestapo stranglehold some groups managed
1936
1938
The Olympic Games are held in Berlin.
Jewish shop windows are smashed and businesses
attacked throughout Germany on Kristallnacht, also
called the Night of Broken Glass.
