The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution

Examines events leading up to the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 and the conference itself, in order to clarify the relation of the conference to the Final Solution. Examines issues such as decision-making in the Reich; power struggles between the security and police bodies (the RSHA) and various Party and government institutions; the role of the conference's "host", Heydrich, and of his assistant, Eichmann; and both foreign and domestic events, including the course of the war. Concludes that Wannsee was not the place where the decision was taken, but it was where fifteen educated and civilized bureaucrats assented to genocide. One of the issues at the conference was how to define a Jew, and whether a "Mischling" was to be treated as one, i.e. killed. Discusses the transition from deportation to murder and the inclusion of all of Europe's Jews in the Final Solution. Pp. 108-118 contain a translation of the conference's protocol, which played a role at the Nuremberg Trials.