Wannsee Conference

   Following Hermann Goering’s letter to Reinhard Heydrich on 31 July 1941, that authorized the Final Solution, plans were initiated that would lead to the murder of almost six million Jews. Heydrich, on 20 January 1942, invited officials of relevant German government departments to attend a meeting for the purpose of coordinating the Final Solution. Located in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, the meeting itself lasted little more than an hour, but in this abbreviated period of time, the officials were told by Heydrich that Adolf Hitler had decided on solving the so-called Jewish problem.

   Heydrich outlined the new policy that called for using Jews, at first, for forced labor. Those who survived the rigors of labor would be “treated accordingly,” a euphemism for their murder. Heydrich, in effect, stated that the 11 million Jews living in continental Europe and in the British Isles were now targets for extermination. The most heated aspect of the meeting, however, did not deal with the moral questions surrounding the decision to murder an entire people but focused on the fate of “mixed Jews,” or Mischlinges. Heydrich’s preference was to have half-Jews killed but to consider quarter-Jews as Germans provided that their appearance and behavior did not betray Jewish characteristics. Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart of the Interior Ministry argued that half-Jews be sterilized rather than be murdered. Ultimately the issue was deferred to later meetings.

   From Heydrich’s perspective, the meeting was a huge success. As Adolf Eichmann, who was Heydrich’s second-in-command, later remembered, “During the conversation they minced no words. . . . They spoke about methods of killing, about liquidation, about extermination.” Given the intense rivalries that characterized the bureaucracy of the Third Reich, Heydrich had every reason to expect difficulty in acquiring the support of the assembled government and party officials for coordinating the Final Solution. To his surprise, he found the assembled officials enthusiastic about the “project” and committed to doing their part in the extermination of European Jewry.