On January 20, 1942, 15 high-ranking Nazi Party and German government officials gathered at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to discuss and coordinate the implementation of what they called the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”
The mass murder of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators required the coordination and cooperation of governmental agencies throughout Axis-controlled Europe. The Wannsee Conference was a high-level meeting of German officials to discuss and implement the so-called “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” (mass killing). The SS envisioned that some 11 million Jews, some of them not living on German-controlled territory, would be eradicated as part of the Nazi program. (…) The “Final Solution” was the code name for the systematic, deliberate, physical annihilation of the European Jews. At some still undetermined time in 1941, Adolf Hitler authorized this European-wide scheme for mass murder. Heydrich convened the Wannsee Conference “to inform and secure support from government ministries and other interested agencies relevant to the implementation of the “Final Solution” to disclose to the participants that Hitler himself had tasked Heydrich and the RSHA with coordinating the operation”. The men at the table did not deliberate whether such a plan should be undertaken, but instead discussed the implementation of a policy decision that had already been made at the highest level of the Nazi regime.

via ushmm: Wannsee Conference and the “Final Solution”

Categories: Rechtsextremismus