The Wannsee Protocol (January 20, 1942) On July 31, 1941, Hermann Göring (1893-1946), acting on Hitler’s instructions, ordered Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942), head of the Reich Security Main Office, to draw up a complete plan for the “final solution of the Jewish question.” Heydrich’s so-called Special Operations Units [Einsatzgruppen] had already been working for weeks to “cleanse” the conquered territories through mass shootings of Jews and other designated enemies of the people. Although these mass shootings were supposed to continue up to the end of the war, the SS leadership sought to develop more efficient methods for carrying out the planned annihilation of Europe's approximately 11 million Jews. Therefore, in December 1941, experiments with exhaust-fume poisoning started in mobile trucks in Chelmno in occupied Poland; the first annihilation camp opened there the same month. To accelerate the future deportation and murder of the European Jews and to coordinate the efforts of the state and party offices involved, Heydrich hosted a secret conference on January 20, 1942. It was held in Berlin at a Wannsee villa used by the Reich Security Main Office as a guest house and conference center. The fifteen participants, high-ranking representatives of the SS, the NSDAP, and the government, approved a program of annihilation that was actually already well under way. According to the plan, Europe’s Jews would be deported to the Eastern territories and murdered there. The protocol of the conference was recorded by Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962), who concealed the planned genocide behind a series of euphemisms. Eichmann’s linguistic obfuscations notwithstanding, the protocol represented incontrovertible evidence of the Nazi’s “final solution” – which is now understood, to quote historian Christopher Browning, as “the systematic attempt to murder every last Jew within the German grasp.” The protocol was discovered in Berlin in 1947 by Robert Kempner, assistant U.S. chief counsel in the Nuremberg Trials. A year later, it was used as important piece of evidence in the trial against the leading officials of the ministries.
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page 1 of 9 Stamp: Top Secret 30 copies 16th copy Minutes of discussion. I. The following persons took part in the discussion about the final solution of the Jewish question which took place in Berlin, am Grossen Wannsee No. 56/58 on 20 January 1942. Gauleiter Dr. MEYER and Reichsamtsleiter Dr. LEIBBRANDT Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern territories Secretary of State Dr. STUCKART Reich Ministry for the Interior Secretary of State NEUMANN Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan Secretary of State Dr. FREISLER Reich Ministry of Justice Secretary of State Dr. BUEHLER Office of the Government General Under Secretary of State LUTHER Foreign Office SS-Oberfuehrer KLOPFER Party Chancellery Ministerialdirektor KRITZINGER Reich Chancellery SS-Gruppenfuehrer HOFMANN Race and Settlement Main Office SS-Gruppenfuehrer MUELLER SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer EICHMANN Reich Main Security Office SS-Oberfuehrer Dr. SCHOENGARTH Chief of the Security Police and the SD in the Government General Security Police and SD SS-Sturmbannfuehrer Dr. LANGE Commander of the Security Police and the SD for the General-district Latvia, as deputy of the Commander of the Security Police and the SD for the Reich Commissariat "Eastland". Security Police and SD
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