WANNSEE

The renowned scholar of Nazi history chronicles the 1942 conference at which the Nazis formed their plans for the mass murder of European Jews.

On Jan. 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Head Office, called a meeting at Wannsee, outside Berlin. German historian Longerich, author of acclaimed biographies of Hitler and Himmler, puts the conference in the context of the Holocaust as a whole. At the time, the Germans had already systematically murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews in territory overrun in the course of the war. The attendees at Wannsee, all high-ranking officials, showed no compunctions about committing their resources to a “final solution” involving the outright extermination of the remaining European Jews. The author puts considerable emphasis on the minutes of the conference, a single copy of which has survived, in a chapter analyzing that record and including a translation; the book also includes the complete minutes in German. One issue was how to deal with those who only had one Jewish parent, which the planners argued could be handled by sterilization. For the most part, however, the plan was to transport Jews to Eastern Europe, where those fit enough would be worked to death on projects like road construction. Women, children, and the infirm or elderly would be killed immediately. The planners originally assumed that the war against Russia would be won swiftly, opening up ample territory for the relocations. When the U.S. entered the war, they accelerated the schedule. “The spectre of a Jewish world conspiracy that dominated Hitler’s vision of the world and that of the Nazi leadership was now increasingly dictating their political actions,” writes Longerich. The author’s academic approach does not lessen the gravity of the often horrific subject matter, though it may reduce the interest for general readers. For Holocaust scholars, this a must-read.

A well-researched study of the meeting that determined many major decisions about the Holocaust.