Wannsee Conference
The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior members of the Nazi German government. It was held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The conference was to tell leaders of government departments that dealt with Jews, that Adolf Eichmann had been put in charge of the "Final Solution to the Jewish question" (in German: 'die Endlösung der Judenfrage'). They were expected to give the plan their full support. Heydrich presented a plan for removing the Jewish population of Europe and French North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) to German-occupied areas in eastern Europe. Those people that were fit, would be put to work on road building projects. It was expected that they would be worked to death. The survivors would be executed when the projects were finished. The plan was never carried out as planned, as it was based on the continued German occupation of Polish and Soviet lands. Instead, as the Soviet army gradually pushed back the German lines, most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe were sent to concentration or death camps, or killed where they lived. Because of the effort of historian Joseph Wulf, the Wannsee House, where the conference was held, is now a Holocaust Memorial.
Wannsee Conference Media
Besprechungsprotokoll Wannseekonferenz – Minutes of the Wannsee Conference – Berlin, 20 January 1942. Click to view PDF.
1935 chart shows racial classifications under the Nuremberg Laws: German, Mischlinge, and Jew.
Letter from Heydrich to Martin Luther, Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, notifying him that the conference would be delayed.
Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1969-054-16, Reinhard Heydrich
Picture of SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller, the chief of Gestapo, the secret state police of the Nazi Germany.
Bundesarchiv Bild 119-06-44-12, Gerhard Klopfer
SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962), head of Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA, Reich Security Central Office) Department IV B4 (Jewish affairs), who organized the depor
Georg Leibbrandt, head of the Political Department of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO)
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