‘… I therefore invite you to a meeting …’ A little about the Wannsee Conference, 20 January 1942

Richard Maddox

NOON, 20 JANUARY 1942 and fifteen senior military and civilians officials – members of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP or National Socialist German Workers Party) – have assembled at a pretty villa used as a Schutzstaffeln (SS or ‘Protection Squad’) guest house for senior officials on the side of the Wannsee Lake in a suburb of Berlin.

They are there for an important meeting to be chaired by SS General Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the  Reichssicherheitshauptamt-RSHA, the Reich Security Main Office.

Of the fifteen men present, six were from various departments of the RSHA. The other nine were senior civil servants from and ministers from various German State agencies and Ministries.

Invitations had been sent out between 29 November and 1 December 1941.

The meeting had been originally been set for 9 December, and then rescheduled following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor two days earlier.

With the invitations Heydrich enclosed – or rather his assistant Lieutenant Colonel Adolph Eichmann did – a copy of a certificate signed by Reichsmarschall des Großdeutschen Reiches (Reichs Marshall of the Greater German Reich) Hermann Göring naming him as the coordinator of the implementation of the topic they were to discuss.

That topic was the general policy concerning the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’. ^{(1) (2)} 

Perhaps knowing that a good and plentiful buffet lunch would be served, or simply that some of the measures and apparatus to be used was already in place or about to be – the meeting lasted around ninety minutes.

In less than two hours of discussion 15 men had reached an agreement  that would seal the fate of six million fellow human beings.

More Information

The Wannsee Villa is now a national memorial, museum and education centre dedicated to documenting the conference and associated material. See https://www.visitberlin.de/en/house-wannsee-conference – and https://www.museumsportal-berlin.de/en/museums/haus-der-wannsee-konferenz

Much has been written in print and online about the conference and those who participated; below are just two of many links available.

https://www.berghahnbooks.com/downloads/intros/JaschParticipants_intro.pdf

https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/the-wannsee-conference/

Some of the measures and apparatus in place at the time of the Conference:

• Jewish emigration from Germany and its occupied territories had been prohibited since 23 October 1941, the use of Einsatzgruppen in the east, to the construction of Belżec extermination camp –
• Following the start of Unternehmen Barbarossa (Operation BARBAROSSA) some German army units were engaged in mass shootings. For more information, see https://digitalcommons.usmalibrary.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1074&context=usma_research_papers and https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-military-and-the-holocaust
• Operations at Chelmno extermination centre began on 8 December 1941. See  https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/chelmno
• Mobile gas trucks – where the exhaust fumes were fed into a closed and sealed space to kill those held there – were first used in the Nazi euthanasia programme. See https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/the-horrific-nazi-gas-vans-the-mobile-gas-chambers.html
• Einsatgruppen had been formed in 1938 and by 1941 were being used to follow regular German army units into what Germany saw as its Eastern Territories and murder ‘undesirables’ Jews, communists, Roma and Slavs. More can be found at https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/einsatzgruppen

As part of events to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2022, people across the UK will be invited to place a lighted candle in their window on 27 January at 8pm (UK time) to remember those murdered for they were.

More about the Light the Darkness event and registering to live-stream  the UK Ceremony for Holocaust  Memorial Day 2022 that starts at 7pm (UK time) on the same day can be found at https://www.hmd.org.uk/take-part-in-holocaust-memorial-day/ukhmd

Sources

⁽¹⁾ https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/wannsee-conference-and-the-final-solution – retrieved 7 December 2021

⁽²⁾ https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-jewish-question – retrieved 7 December 2021

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