The SS: Layman's Guide sample chapter. Das Konferenz: Wannsee

The villa at 56–58 Am Großen Wannsee could’ve been the backdrop for any Jane Austen novel. Lakeside views. Polished floors. A grand staircase and a cozy fire crackling in the grate. On 20th January 1942 there was also fresh coffee on offer, with snacks, cognac, and a decent lunch laid out for guests. It looked like any up-market conference facility ready to host a group of well-heeled business executives.

But on this particular day, the guest list and the topic of conversation were slightly different.

During that morning, fifteen men arrived at the Wannsee lakeside property. But many of the men taking their seats for the meeting weren’t household names, even in Nazi circles. The top boys of the NSDAP – personalities such as Himmler, Bormann, Göring, Frick, Lammers, Schlegelberger, von Ribbentrop, and of course, AH himself - were all conspicuous by their absence.

In their place were senior-yet-anonymous civil servants, each representing their more famous boss: Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart from the Ministry of the Interior; Dr. Gerhard Klopfer from the Party Chancellery; Martin Luther from the Foreign Office; Erich Neumann from the Office of the Four-Year Plan; Roland Freisler from the Ministry of Justice; Friedrich Kritzinger from the Reich Chancellery, Dr. Josef Bühler from the General Government (Polish Occupation); Alfred Meyer and Georg Leibbrandt from the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories.

In addition to these suits, Heydrich also invited a number of SS men from various functions. These included SS-Sturmbannführer Rudolf Lange, Commander of the SiPo and the SD for Latvia as well as head of Head of Einsatzkommando 2; SS-Oberführer Karl Eberhard Schöngarth, Commander of the SiPo and the SD in the General Government (Poland); SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller, Head of the Gestapo; Otto Hofmann from the Race and Settlement Office, and, of course, SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, Heydrich’s ever-efficient fixer.

Before the meeting convened, the delegates stood around in groups and chatted for a while. No doubt the situation in Russia and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour were the main topics du jour. The actual meeting itself was relatively short (between 60-90 minutes) with no formal agenda. We do not know exactly what was said during this time as there are no surviving minutes or transcript of the conversation.

What we do have, however is the Protocol.

This is Eichmann's summary of the minutes – which he later claimed at his trial was heavily edited by Heydrich. The Protocol is therefore, some distance from a verbatim account but, if Eichmann is to be believed, it is a record of what Heydrich wanted from the meeting. The Protocol was issued to each delegate after the event – so this is what Heydrich wanted each man to take away from the meeting.

Heydrich kicked off proceedings with a bit of a lecture, reminding his guests that he had been entrusted by Göring to prepare the Final Solution of the European Jewish question and the purpose of the meeting was to establish clarity on a number of key and fundamental logistical challenges that still needed ironing out.

The proposal was blunt. The original Jewish policy of emigration was no longer feasible. Eichmann had done the numbers, and there were around eleven million Jews across Europe that needed dealing with. Relocating that little lot would be too much work and effort. A new approach was needed, and approval had now been given to 'evacuate' the Jews instead.

In reality, this meant their forced relocation and extermination. From France, the Netherlands, Hungary, and beyond, Jews would be transported to the East, where they would be “processed.” This would be a temporary solution – a step on the journey towards The Final Solution.

Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labour in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival.

The language of the discussion was carefully chosen. Words like 'evacuation', 'treated accordingly,' and “natural reduction” replaced more direct terminology. The word kill was carefully avoided, as was anything that might suggest the brutality of what was being planned. Instead, the killing was framed as a necessary measure, something to be executed with order and efficiency, just like any other bureaucratic task.

Eichmann later admitted that the attendees understood perfectly what was being said. The language may have been softened, but the intent was crystal clear. No one batted an eye. No one stormed out. Some even raised helpful suggestions.

When it came to evacuation priorities, Heydrich made it clear that Germany was top of the list, followed closely by Heydrich's new home – the Czech Protectorate. Europe would then be combed from west to east. Bit by bit, the Jews would be corralled into transit ghettos from where they would then be dispatched further east to meet their fate. Concessions were discussed. Jews over 65, those with serious war injuries, and those who had won the Iron Cross First Class in the First World War, would be sent to holding camps such as Theresienstadt just outside Prague.

There then followed a lengthy discussion on the topic of mixed marriages and half-Jews, specifically around the option for forced sterilisation.

As the meeting went on, the Protocol suggests that the attendees started to ask a few more questions, maybe the cognac had loosened their tongues a bit. Dr Bühler requested that evacuations begin in Poland, since transport and manpower was not an issue:

The Jews must be removed from the territory of the General Government as quickly as possible because of the particular danger there of epidemics being brought on by Jews. Jewish black-market activities were persistently destabilising the region's economy. The 2.5 million Jews in the region were in any case largely unable to work.

To this, Heydrich repeated his desire to ensure Germany and his Protectorate were Jew free first. Dr Bühler had no choice but to acquiesce, but did reiterate his request that 'the Jewish question be solved as quickly as possible.'

After about ninety minutes, Heydrich wrapped up the formal part of the meeting with a final request to all those present for co-operation and assistance in carrying out his tasks. And with that, he ended the meeting. Some attendees left. Others stayed for drinks and small talk. There was no urgency. No tension. Just civilised men in a lakeside villa, having agreed, calmly and consciously, to industrial-scale mass murder.

Did Heydrich view the Wannsee Conference as a success? The point of the meeting was not to decide if the Jews should be wiped out – that had already been decided and rubber-stamped. This meeting was for Heydrich to assert his dominance in the process over the various government agencies – it was he who had been given the mandate from Göring after all - and to extract agreement and promises of co-operation from these agencies, with whom the SS and SD had previously had fraught relationships.

We don't have any direct record of Heydrich's reaction or behaviour after the conference. But in a post-war interview in Argentina, Eichmann paints a picture of a happy Heydrich:

I remember that at the end of this Wannsee Conference, Heydrich, Müller, and my humble self settled down comfortably by the fireplace and that then for the first time I saw Heydrich smoke a cigar or cigarette, and I was thinking: today Heydrich is smoking, something I have not seen before. And he drinks cognac – since I had not seen Heydrich take any alcoholic drink in years… And after this Wannsee Conference we were sitting together peacefully, and not in order to talk shop, but in order to relax after the long hours of strain. I cannot say anymore about this.

At Wannsee there were no gunshots, no shouting, no blood on the parquet floors. Just coffee, a nice lunch, and a roomful of educated men calmly agreeing on the logistics of genocide. But from this meeting, the machinery of the Holocaust accelerated into its deadliest phase. Within weeks, the first gas chambers at Bełżec were operational. Deportation trains began rolling with greater frequency, carrying Jews from Germany, France, the Netherlands, Slovakia and beyond to their deaths in newly constructed extermination camps like Sobibór and Treblinka. The Final Solution had moved from concept to reality in double-quick time.

What the Wannsee Conference shows us is that evil isn't always delivered with a gun or a tank. Sometimes, it comes in the form of a meeting invite, an agenda, and a polite nod and wink over cognac and canapés.

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This chapter is taken from The SS: A Layman's Guide. Released on 23rd July on Amazon sites worldwide for the very special Kindle launch price of 99p / 99c.

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