Germany marks 70th anniversary of Wannsee Conference

By Esteban Engel Jan 18, 2012, 2:06 GMT

Berlin - On Friday, German President Christian Wulff will recall the momentous historic events that unfolded in the House of the Wannsee Conference, in the south of Berlin, 70 years ago on January 20, 1942.

On that ominous date, 15 high-ranking Nazi officials met to plan the cold-blooded, calculated murder of all European Jews with the participation of Germany's public administration.

After a mere 90 minutes, they had reached an agreement. Reich Security Main Office (RSMO) chief Reinhard Heydrich took command of the 'Final Solution to the Jewish Question.'

The Wannsee Protocol, drawn up by SS-Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann, became the basis of the Holocaust. Eichmann was tasked with managing the logistics of the mass deportation of the Jews.

Historians remain intrigued by the alarmingly clarity of the document, which is effectively a guideline for murder.

It is largely undisputed that, before the conference, a decision had already been reached to leave no Jewish person alive in Germany's sphere of influence by the end of the war.

By the time of the conference, SS troops operating behind the Eastern Front had already killed more than half a million Jews. Government representatives then met in Wannsee to plan systematic genocide across Europe.

Fifteen pages detail the planned extermination with great clarity, fastidiously placing the number of Jews in Europe at 11 million.

The continent was to be 'combed from west to east;' the 'evacuated Jews' were to be brought to 'transit ghettos.' Those able to work would be forced to build roads, 'even though a large number would undoubtedly drop out due to natural decline.'

The order was 'extermination through work.'

Did the officials, gathered at Heydrich's invitation in the RSMO guesthouse, have the authority to make such far-reaching decisions?

The director of the House of the Wannsee Conference memorial site, Norbert Kampe, is convinced that this was impossible. The ministerial bureaucrats could not have drawn up such plans without the approval of their superiors.

'The decision was reached earlier,' he said.

Adolf Hitler never personally wrote down the genocide order. 'That was not his style. Hitler hated bureaucracy,' Kampe said.

But three days after declaring war on the United States on December 9, 1941, Hitler recalled all the regional NSDAP party leaders to Berlin.

As the war spread across the Atlantic, the Fuhrer told Nazi leaders that the pursuit of Jews should be intensified. Jews the world over should suffer for the defeat of Germany in World War I, and were also the originators of the new war, he insisted.

'Nazi leaders passed Hitler's tirades on as instructions to their subordinates,' Kampe said.

London-based historian Peter Longerich says the 'Final Solution' became the supreme objective of German occupying and alliance policy. The aim was to complete the extermination of the Jews during the war, rather than waiting until it had been won.

Army chief Hermann Goering had granted Heydrich unlimited powers at the Wannsee conference. Heydrich, who came from an upper middle-class background, was to prepare 'an overall solution to the Jewish issue in Germany's area of influence in Europe.'

Heydrich's task was to ensure that the state apparatus was on board. Officials were to be 'pinned down' by becoming co-perpetrators and confidantes, as Eichmann later testified at his trial in Jerusalem.

Heydrich also insisted on broadening the circle of victims. Several pages of the protocol detail how Jews as well as first and second-degree 'half-castes' were to be treated.

Just months later, in May 1942, Heydrich was seriously injured in a bomb attack by resistance fighters in Prague. He succumbed to his injuries a few days later.