An hour and a half
The Wannsee Conference only lasted about ninety minutes. Heydrich started by giving an account of anti jewish measures that have been taken since 1933. He also produced reports on Jewish emigration since the Nazis siezed power in Germany and Austria. Heydrich moved on to the present and summarized the" jewish problem" and shared his vision of the "final solution". "Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival" Heydrichs words are clear; he wanted them dead one way or the other.The method that was to be used was not yet clear,but the fate of millions of people were sealed on that day.
The Wannsee Conference
The Wannsee
Conference held at The villa on Wannsee, (January 20, 1942,
during World War II) was a high level ministerial meeting of
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 for the extermination of the entire 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.
He also had to make it clear why he needed so many vital resources that could other wise used for the German war effort.
The participants of the Conference (click on image for information)
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SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Adolf Eichman. Gauleiter Dr Alfred Meyer. SS-Oberfuhrer Dr Karl Eberhard Schongarth SA-Oberfuhrer Dr Gerhard Klopfer |
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Reichsamtleiter Dr Georg Leibbrandt Dr Wilhelm Stuckart Ministry for the Interior Dr Roland Freisler Ministry of Justice SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Dr Rudolf Lange |
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Dr Josef Buhler Erich Neumann Director of Four Year Plan SS-Gruppenfuhrer Heinrich Mller RSHA Dr Martin Luther Foreign Office |
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SS-Gruppenfuhrer Otto Hofmann RuSHA SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich Ministerialdirektor Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger.
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Himmler's Revelation in 1943
Almost two years after the Wannsee Conference Himmler gave a speech, here is an exert :
Gentlemen, it is much easier in many cases to go into combat with a company than to suppress an obstructive population of low cultural level, or to carry out executions or to haul away people or to evict crying and hysterical women.'One principle must be absolute for the SS man: we must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to no one else. What happens to the Russians, what happens to the Czechs, is a matter of utter indifference to me.
Such good blood of our own kind as there may be among the nations we shall acquire for ourselves, if necessary by taking away the children and bringing them up among us. Whether the other peoples live in comfort or perish of hunger interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our Kultur. Whether or not 10,000 Russian women collapse from exhaustion while digging a tank ditch interests me only in so far as the tank ditch is completed for Germany. We shall never be rough or heartless where it is not necessary; that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude to animals, will also adopt a decent attitude to these human animals, but it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and to bring them ideals.
I shall speak to you here with all frankness of a very grave matter. Among ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and yet we will never speak of it publicly. I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have stuck it out and at the same time - apart from exceptions caused by human weakness - to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written.'
Eichmann's list
This document is a copy of the original used at the wan see conference.It is a list of European countries and estimates the jewish population of each of those countries.
The plan drawn up at Wannsee was for the murder of eleven million Jews.
The people who attended this meeting were highly educated. Eight of them had PhD's and almost all came from a privileged middle or upper class background. They treated the "Final solution" as a complex logistical problem that was dealt with in a cold "matter of factly way".
The language that was used in the meeting was also very interesting. "Transportation", "Resettlement " etc. They never used works such as kill, execute or wipe out the jewish population of Europe which was of course the real purpose of the meeting.
