The Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942 was a meeting of fifteen senior representatives of the National Socialist Reich government and the SS. Right at the very beginning I need to correct one widely held belief relating to this conference. It was not where a decision whether or not to carry out the Holocaust was made. Whereas those attending the meeting were high up in the civil service, they were not the decision makers. The decision had been taken by Hitler and then passed on down the line. The whole point of the Wannsee conference was as a sort of meeting to say what the plan was and to iron out any difficulties that may be faced in carrying out that plan - the sort of thing that happens at management levels every day in government, business and even in domestic situations.
If you want to read the Wannsee Protocol which was a summary of what was discussed, then I have provided a link below.
By the time of the Wannsee Conference, the Holocaust had already started and around one million people had already fallen victim to it. When it started is more difficult to answer, however mass shootings of people just because they were Jews had started with the invasion of the Soviet Union although tens of thousands of Jews had already been killed or allowed to die in Poland. Jews were forced to wear identification marks from October 1939, the first ghettos were set up shortly afterwards. Huge mass shootings such as that at Babi Yar occurred in September 1941 and the death camp at Chełmno nad Nerem murdered the whole Jewish population of Koło before moving onto other places in Poland as from 8 December 1941. The population of the third largest Jewish settlement in the world, that of Łódź, was subject to deportations to death as of 16 January 1942. Thus the Holocaust was well on its way before the conference.
On 31 July 1941, Reinhard Heydrich received an order from Hermann Göring to submit a plan on finding a ‘final solution to the Jewish question’. Göring was head of the five year plan although he knew nothing about economics. He was however an old fighter of the Nazi party and Hitler’s favourite, being in charge of the economy was just part of Nazi corruption and allowed him to amass vast wealth. Indeed, Heydrich may have persuaded him to give him the order as by then Goering was less interested in the task of government and more interested in getting himself even wealthier and plundering the occupied countries
Towards the end of November 1941 Heydrich sent out invitations to various ministries to meet for a conference on what they termed the Jewish question. The meeting was scheduled for 9 December 1941 at 12 noon in the office of the International Criminal Police Commission(IKPK), which was located at 16, Am Kleine Wannsee. Heydrich had been the head of the International Criminal Police Commission since August 1940. However that meeting needed to be cancelled. Hitler convened the Reichstag, now the rubber stamp parliament of the Third Reich for the 11 December 1941 in order to declare war on the United States.
As the first victims were murdered by gas at Chełmno nad Nerem and the Soviet offensive in front of Moscow gathered steam, Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor As some of those invited were also members of the Reichstag and perhaps Heydrich did not want them going fresh from the largest mass murder planning meeting in history to that talking shop, the December meeting was cancelled.
However, Hitler did tell a group of insiders that he intended to murder all the Jews in Europe at a secret meeting held in his private rooms of the Old Chancellery building on the afternoon of 12 December 1941. Four days later, Hans Frank, Governor General of the part of occupied Poland known as the General Government, stated in Kraków that the meeting which came to be known as the Wannsee Conference would soon be called, therefore it is reasonable to assume that the subject of this conference was brought up at the 12 December meeting.
So the meeting was reshelduled. Invitations were sent out on 8 January 1942 to a breakfast conference to be held at the guest house of the security police and the security service , the address of which was Am Großen Wannsee 56/58, a villa located in Berlin-Wannsee, a district to the west of the capital. I believe the change of location was due to the guest house offering better catering possibilities.
Murdering Jews has been part of the Christian tradition in Europe for hundreds of years. However Hitler intended to take this now to the extreme.
In future videos, I shall look at the consquences of this conference for the victims as well as the fate of the participants.
Wannsee Protocol : avalon.law.yal...
Please consider supporting me on Patreon. / alanheath
11 сен 2024
