Analysis Of ' The Wannsee Conference Minutes As Edited By Adolf Eichmann

Studies of the Holocaust have provoked passionate debates. Increasingly, they have become a central topic of concern for historians particularly since the early 1970s, as the Holocaust studies were generally limited. However, one of the most intense debates surrounding the role played by Hitler in the ’Final Solution’. That is, whether and when Hitler took a decision to initiate the extermination process. Of course, this issue has caused incredible controversy and naturally such a contentious topic of debate has radically produced large amounts of new data and literature. Conflicting, an interpretation has caused further disparities between historians over Hitler’s role in the Holocaust. For this

The efforts the Nazi party expended on carrying out their ‘final solution to the Jewish question in Europe’ involved changing the structure of a whole country’s economic, social, and military sectors; a mobilisation completed by many various competing and collating departments and agencies, all of which were expected by their superiors to show initiative in their operations. This mode of command lends plausibility to the theory that the ‘final solution’ of the holocaust was not necessarily a result of a direct command by the Führer (No records of any such order exist) but rather the culmination of the departments of the Nazi state vying for approval from their superiors by following the ideology to its ‘logical conclusion’ with Hitler’s approval. This could be seen to support Berghahn, as it was the confusion and rush to meet growing needs that drove the party to extermination over deportation. It also supports Kershaw, who

1.) How historically accurate was the movie you watched? How do you know? Did any inaccuracies affect your perception of history?

1. What do you think is the most important thing you learned from this documentary?

In the last few years, some publications have appeared that treats one group or another, yet the state of our knowledge about the perpetrators remains incomplete. We know little about many of the institutions of killing, little about many aspects of the perpetration of the genocide, and still less about the perpetrators themselves. As a consequence, popular and scholarly myths and misconceptions about the perpetrators abound, including the following. It is commonly believed that the Germans slaughtered Jews by and large in the gas chambers, and that without gas chambers, modern means of transportation, and efficient bureaucracies, the Germans would have been unable to kill millions of Jews. The belief persists that somehow only technology made horror on this scale possible. It is generally believed that gas chambers, because of their efficiency, were a necessary instrument for the genocidal slaughter, and that the Germans chose to construct the gas chambers in the first place because they needed more efficient means of killing the Jews. It has been generally believed that the perpetrators were primarily, overwhelmingly SS men, the most devoted and brutal Nazis. It has been held that had a German refused to kill Jews, then he himself would have been killed, sent to a concentration camp, or severely punished. All of these views, views that fundamentally shape people's understanding of the Holocaust, have been believed as though they were

4. Give your review of this documentary. What did or didn’t you like? Are there issues, opinions, or voices that are left

You can see this, in the news room. They were talking about the Jewish, were to blame and they need to be punished. Germans did not know the expectant that it was going to lead to. They thought this was a good idea, then they realised what it actually entailed, to it was late.

At the “Wannsee Conference”, which took place in Berlin, on January 20, 1942 the German regime with its main protagonists Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler planned the ‘final solution of the Jewish question. Even if massacres of about one million Jews occurred before the plans of the Final Solution, with the decision to eradicate the entire Jewish population, extermination camps were built and industrialized mass slaughter of Jews began in earnest. The scene where a train of Schindler’s workers was wrongly sent to Auschwitz shows such an extermination camp were the Nazis systematically gassed thousands of Jews. Another example for the organized genocide is the mass cremation after the mass execution during the eviction of the ghetto in Krakow.

Laws passed in 1935 and the "final solution" beginning in 1939. These actions taken by the Germans were evidence of their attempt at willing the unwillable. They were trying to will German national power and regain honor by willing the Jews, which was not a reasonable solution. The thought behind their attempt at willing the unwillable was the illogic of logic, that if they Jews were gone, the Aryan race would flourish. The

Wiesel is effective with his speech by connecting exaggeration within his revelation. He questions the guilt and responsibility for past massacres, pointing specifically at the Nazi’s while using historical facts, such as bloodbaths in Cambodia, Algeria, India, and Pakistan to include incidents on a larger level such as Auschwitz to provide people with a better idea (Engelhardt, 2002). He is effective in putting together the law and society’s need for future actions against indifference by stating, “In the place I come from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killer, the victims, and the bystanders” 7.(Wiesel 223).

Compared to our own class textbook, I feel as if the movie covered the change of East Germany well with emotional family love and a touch of comedy.

In truth however, Hitler’s Final Solution was something peculiar in the fact that few people believed that in the 20th Century, when society had reached its intellectual and ethical peak, such genocide was conceivable. Public consensus, along with the media, reassured us that we could no longer return to the Middle Ages. However, the philosophers and prophets of Berlin, with their fine manners and high society, turned into the world’s greatest murderers. The world was silent. One may add, not only silent but in whole passive, sometimes comfortable with what

"I would not think of quarreling with your interpretation nor offering any other, as I have found it always the best policy to allow the film to speak for itself."

German Attitudes Toward the Jews and the Final Solution There are those that claim that Hitler’s conscious personal hatred of the Jews, his unique and central role in the rise of Nazi Germany were fundamental in the development of the anti-Jewish policies that emerged leading to the final solution. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that the anti- Jewish feeling in Germany reflected a much stronger, widespread support amongst its people and this essay will examine the role and attitudes of the German people towards the Final Solution. On the 1st of April, 1933, the boycott of Jewish businesses reflected evidence of widespread anti Jewish feelings amongst the lower bureaucracy of the

Conspiracy is a historical reenactment of the Wannsee Conference that convened outside Berlin in January of 1942. Fifteen of Hitler’s top officials from the SS and Nazi party held a clandestine meeting to lay the groundwork for what was referred to as the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”. Among those present were: Reinhard Heydrich - Heinrich Himmler’s right hand man in the SS, Heinrich Muller – Chief of the Gestapo, Martin Luther – Foreign Ministry’s liaison to the SS, Gerhard Klopfer – lawyer from the Nazi Party Chancellery, Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinge - Deputy head of the Reich Chancellery, Wilhem Stuckart – lawyer representing the Interior Ministry and the co-author of the Anti-Semitic Nuremburg laws.