Wannsee Conference

At the Wannsee Conference, fifteen high-ranking representatives of the National Socialist Reich government and the SS authorities met on January 20, 1942, in a villa on the Great Wannsee in Berlin. Under the chairmanship of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, in his function as Chief of the Security Police and the SD, they organized the details of the Holocaust against the Jews that had begun and coordinated the cooperation of the participating authorities.

Contrary to widespread opinion, the main purpose of the conference was not to decide on the Holocaust - this decision had in fact already been made with the mass killings taking place in territories occupied by the German Reich since the attack on the Soviet Union (22 June 1941) - but to organise the deportation of the entire Jewish population of Europe to the East for extermination and to ensure the necessary coordination. The participants determined the timetable for the further mass killings, increasingly expanded the groups of victims designated for them, and agreed to work together under the direction of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), which Heydrich led.

Heydrich had been charged by Hermann Göring on July 31, 1941 with the overall organization of the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". In December 1941, Heydrich invited to the top-secret conference, which was attended by state secretaries from various Reich ministries and the General Government, a ministerial director of the Reich Chancellery as well as senior officials of the Security Police (SiPo), the Security Service (SD) and the Party Chancellery. The person taking the minutes was SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, Heydrich's referent for "Jewish affairs".

The term "Wannsee Conference", which was only coined after the Second World War, derived from the conference venue, the guest house of the Security Police and Security Service, Am Großen Wannsee 56/58. The former Villa Marlier in Berlin-Wannsee had been built in 1914/1915 according to plans by Paul Otto August Baumgarten. Today the house is a Holocaust memorial.

The conference

Participant

The following 15 officials and functionaries of National Socialist organizations and ministries attended the conference:

• Reinhard Heydrich (SS-Obergruppenführer, keynote speaker and chair)
• Adolf Eichmann (SS-Obersturmbannführer, Recording Secretary)
• Josef Bühler (State Secretary in the Office of the Governor General in Krakow)
• Roland Freisler (State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Justice, later President of the People's Court)
• Otto Hofmann (SS-Gruppenführer, Chief of the Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS)
• Gerhard Klopfer (Ministerial Director in the NSDAP Party Chancellery, Head of the State Law Department III)
• Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger (Ministerial Director in the Reich Chancellery)
• Rudolf Lange (SS-Sturmbannführer, Commander of the Security Police and SD for Latvia, representing his commander Walter Stahlecker)
• Georg Leibbrandt (Reich Office Director, Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories)
• Martin Luther (Undersecretary of State at the Federal Foreign Office)
• Alfred Meyer (State Secretary in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories)
• Heinrich Müller (SS-Gruppenführer, Chief of Office IV (Gestapo) of the Reich Security Main Office)
• Erich Neumann (State Secretary in the Office of the Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan)
• Karl Eberhard Schöngarth (SS-Oberführer, Commander of the Security Police and the SD in the Generalgouvernement)
• Wilhelm Stuckart (State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of the Interior)

In addition, other representatives of Reich ministries and so-called Supreme Reich Authorities had been invited. However, some of them had cancelled their participation, e.g. Leopold Gutterer, State Secretary in the Reich Ministryfor Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. He gave scheduling reasons for his cancellation, but asked to be informed of any follow-up appointments.

Contents

At the conference, the responsibilities for the deportation and extermination actions that had begun were to be clarified, the measures for their implementation coordinated, and their spatial and temporal sequence determined. Finally, the groups of those Jews were defined here who were destined for deportation and thus for extermination. This required the cooperation of many institutions that had not previously been informed about the "Final Solution".

In the minutes of the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich stated that he had been appointed by Göring as "Commissioner for the Preparation of the Final Solution of the European Jewish Question" and that the "Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German Police", i.e. Himmler, was in charge. At this meeting he wanted to coordinate with the central authorities directly involved.

Heydrich reported on the emigration of about 537,000 Jews from the "Old Reich", Austria, and Bohemia and Moravia, which was to be replaced by the evacuation of the Jews to the East after "prior approval by the Führer". About eleven million Jews were to be considered for the "final solution of the European Jewish question". This number also included "Jews of faith" from the unoccupied part of France, from England, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and other neutral or enemy states outside the German sphere of power. The protocol went on to say:

In carrying it out, "Europe would be scoured from West to East"; this was to begin in the Reich territory because of "socio-political necessities" and to free up living space. Initially, German Jews were to be transported to transit ghettos and from there on to the East. Jews over the age of 65 and Jews with war disabilities or holders of the Iron Cross I would be sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto. This would "eliminate the many interventions at one stroke".

After mentioning possible difficulties in the "evacuation action" in the "occupied or influenced European territories", the question was turned to how to deal with "Jewish half-breeds" and "mixed marriages". According to the protocol, the Nuremberg Laws were to form the basis "to a certain extent". But in fact, Heydrich's proposals went far beyond this:

• As a rule, "Mischlinge of the 1st degree" ("Halbjuden") were to be treated like "Volljuden" ("full Jews") regardless of their religious affiliation. Exceptions were only foreseen for those "half-Jews" who had married a "German-blooded" partner and had not remained childless. Other exemptions were to be granted only by the highest party authorities.
• Every "Mischling 1st degree" who was allowed to remain in the German Reich was to be sterilized.
• "Mischlinge of the 2nd degree" ("Vierteljuden") were generally to be put on an equal footing with "Deutschblütige" ("German-blooded"), unless they were to be classified as Jews through conspicuous Jewish appearance or poor police and political evaluation.
• In the case of existing "mixed marriages" between "full Jews" and "German-blooded people", the Jewish part was to be either "evacuated" or also sent to Theresienstadt, if resistance was to be expected from the German relatives.
• Further provisions were addressed for "mixed marriages" where one or both spouses were "mixed race".

These detailed proposals were rejected as impracticable by Secretary of State Stuckart, who had been involved in drafting the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. He suggested that the compulsory divorce of "mixed marriages" be prescribed by law and that all "Mischlinge of the first degree" be sterilized. Since no agreement could be reached on these points, these detailed questions were postponed to subsequent conferences.

Josef Bühler, Hans Frank's State Secretary in the Office of the Governor General, urged Heydrich at the conference to begin the measures on Polish territory in the "Generalgouvernement" because he saw no transport problems here and wished "to solve the Jewish question in this area as quickly as possible". In any case, the majority of these Jews were not fit for work and were "an eminent danger as carriers of epidemics".

Wannsee minutes: The first sheet of the list of participants

Follow-up conferences

On 29 January 1942, nine days after the Wannsee Conference, the first follow-up conference took place. Sixteen participants came to this meeting in the rooms of the RMfdbO at Rauchstraße 17/18 in Berlin, with the RMfdbO represented by a total of 8 participants, including Otto Bräutigam, Erhard Wetzel and Gerhard von Mende. In addition, subordinate representatives of ministries (RSHA, Ministry of Justice), the Party Chancellery, and the OKW took part, including Friedrich Suhr (RSHA), Bernhard Lösener (Ministry of Justice), Albert Frey (OKW), and Herbert Reischauer (Party Chancellery). The meeting was chaired by Otto Bräutigam. The aim of this meeting was to flesh out the content of the decisions taken at the Wannsee Conference and to make them legally more precise. The central theme of this conference was who was henceforth to be considered a "Jew," and thus to determine exactly who was to be exterminated. The RMfdbO did not want the term "Jew" to be defined "too narrowly" under any circumstances and stressed that the regulations in force in the occupied territories up to now would not be sufficient anyway and would have to be "tightened up" to the extent that in future "half-breeds" would also have to be regarded as "full Jews". These proposals were carried through at the end of the meeting. The conferees agreed that in all occupied territories all members of the Jewish religion would have to be considered "Jews" in the future, as well as legitimate and illegitimate children from unions in which one part was Jewish (i.e. children from so-called mixed marriages), and also non-Jewish wives of Jews. The necessary decisions on the spot were to be made, according to the decision, by the "political-police organs and their experts in racial matters". This conference took place just as the first deportations to the Theresienstadt concentration camp were beginning; and one day before Hitler announced in his speech at the Berlin Sportpalast: "We are thereby clear that the war can only end with either the extermination of the Aryan peoples or the disappearance of Jewry from Europe."

Two further follow-up conferences were held on March 6 and October 27, 1942, in Adolf Eichmann's Department IV B 4 at 115/116 Kurfürstenstrasse in Berlin.

According to a note by the "Judenreferent" in the Reich Foreign Ministry, Franz Rademacher, Stuckart's proposal was discussed on March 6. The latter had pleaded for the forced sterilization of all "Jewish half-breeds of the first degree" as well as for the forced divorce of all "mixed marriages". Since sterilization in hospitals was not feasible at the moment, this measure was to be postponed until the end of the war. General legal objections as well as "propagandistic" reasons were put forward against a forced divorce. This meant foreseeable resistance, especially on the part of the Catholic Church, and an intervention by the Vatican. It was also difficult to assess the reactions of the "Jewish-inclined" spouses. As it turned out in 1943 on the occasion of the factory action at the Rosenstrasse protest, the supposedly threatening deportation of Jewish spouses actually led to public expressions of solidarity by the "German-blooded" relatives.

On October 27, 1942, the demand for forced divorce of "mixed marriages" was dealt with again. Apparently, however, there were indications from the Reich Chancellery that the "Führer" did not want to make a decision during the war. In October 1943, Otto Thierack of the Ministry of Justice agreed with Himmler not to deport "Jewish half-breeds" for the time being. Such consideration for the mood of the population was not demanded of the SS in the occupied eastern territories: Jewish spouses from "mixed marriages" and the "Jewish half-breeds of the first degree" were included in the genocide there.

The assessment of the role Stuckart took with his proposals has remained controversial. According to his subordinates Bernhard Lösener and Hans Globke, Stuckart made the compromise proposal for mass sterilization with the background knowledge that this was not feasible, at least during the war. In this way he had prevented the deportation and murder of the German "Mischlinge of the first degree". On the other hand, his proposal of a forced divorce for "mixed marriages", which would have resulted in the death of the Jewish partner, would have been quickly realizable.

Heydrich's intention, mentioned in the minutes, to prepare a "draft on the organizational, factual and material concerns with regard to the Final Solution of the European Jewish Question" and to forward it to Göring, was not realized.

List of participants in the meeting on the Final Solution of the Jewish Question at the Reich Security Main Office on 6 March 1942


Invitation to the follow-up conference on 6 March 1942