Be my guest. What you choose to believe or not to believe is a matter of supreme indifference to me.And I'll gladly stack your one historian's opinion of Wannsee up against all the others who recognize it for what it was.
This is also interesting:We do not know the precise wording of the statements made at the conference. Eichmann said in 1960 in Israel that he had to edit the minutes considerably at Heydrich’s insistence, and that the participants at the conference had used far more drastic language, and had spoken about deaths, elimination and annihilation (53). Eichmann possibly wanted thereby to divert attention from himself and incriminate third parties.[my emphasis]. In my opinion, the minutes should not therefore be read as a basis for speculation about what was 'actually' said at the conference, but as the guidelines authorized by Heydrich for the RSHA's allotted task of the 'final solution'. The starting-point for any interpretation of 'Jewish policy' at the beginning of 1942 should not be the actual proceedings of the conference, but rather their quintessence, which Heydrich presented to other supreme Reich authorities as the binding resolution of that meeting (54).
So in the opinion of Longerich, as of the date of the Wannsee Conference there was not yet a plan for the physical extermination of all Jews in German power.The idea of a comprehensive deportation of the European Jews to the east had, as we have seen, been pursued by the RSHA throughout 1941. By the beginning of 1942, it was becoming ever clearer that such a programme could no longer be implemented. The deportations continued, however, mainly for the lack of any clear alternative proposals having been developed. Conspicuously, Heydrich did not explain in his speech what should happen to any Jews who were 'unfit for work', particularly children and mothers looking after them. (He merely said that any Jews over 65 should be taken to an 'old people's ghetto' – Theresienstadt).[my emphasis]. No efforts can be detected prior to the spring of 1942 indicating any general build-up of the extermination camps for such a pan-European murder programme. On the other hand, the proposal for 'road-building' work-gangs who labored 'in the east' under murderous working conditions, was no figment of the imagination, as will be shown below.Conversely, it seems extremely unlikely that, by January 1942, Heydrich was already in possession of a complete plan to murder those Jews who were 'unfit for work' in extermination camps
Longerich is of the opinion that as of the date of the Wannsee Conference, Hitler had not yet given any order to kill all the Jews in German power. Perhaps Hitler had not yet made up his mind on the issue. But if Longerich is right, then the participants at the conference could not possibly have discussed methods of killing as claimed by Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem, since they could have had no concept of a killing program that had not yet been authorised by Hitler, and they would have had no right to talk about things that had not received such authorisation.This twin perspective is evinced in the minutes. On the one hand, Heydrich spoke of the 'coming final solution', i.e. the deportation programme to be completed after the end of the war, involving 11 million Jews, including those in Great Britain, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and Turkey – all countries that would only be under German control after a victorious conclusion of the war. Heydrich made a distinction between ad hoc measures and this 'coming' solution when he described the evacuation of the Jews to the east as a 'further potential solution conditional upon the relevant prior consent of the Fuehrer'. He said these 'actions' (i.e. the deportations already started) were simply 'alternatives' by means of which 'practical experience would be gathered' which would be 'of great significance in the coming final solution of the Jewish question'. Besides, the fact that Heydrich made particular reference to the prior 'consent of the Fuehrer' for these deportations indicates that the relevant permission for the implementation of the 'coming final solution' had not by then been given [my emphasis].
If the final aim of the deportations had not been decided as of the date of the Wannsee Conference had not yet been decided, ie if it had not yet been decided that the deported Jews would be killed en masse when they arrived at their destinations, then the participants at the conference could not possibly have discussed methods of killing that had not yet been decided on.It seems perfectly possible that the final aim of the deportations within the framework of the 'coming final solution' was still undetermined at the time of the Wannsee Conference [my emphasis]. Thus it is also possible that only gradually during the ensuing months would there be acceptance of the idea of diverting the deportations originally destined for the occupied territories of the Soviet Union to the extermination centers being constructed in occupied Poland. For Heydrich, two things mattered above all others on 20 January 1942: first, the deportations had to be accepted by the decision-making authorities of the Reich (everything that happened after the deportations was a matter internal to the SS and did not have to be agreed with the other offices). Secondly, the range of those to be deported had to be decided on, thus the status of the 'Mischlinge' and of those who had married non-Jews had to be clarified (82).
The money shot is here:XII. The Wannsee minutes as snapshot of a moment in a transition stage
The Wannsee Conference marked a watershed. On one hand, the total deportation and annihilation in camps in the occupied Soviet areas ('road-building' being synonymous with forced labor under inadequate living conditions) were still being adhered to as originally intended and as already initiated in some places. On the other hand, it was already obvious that an early victory as a prerequisite for implementation of the plan could no longer be expected in the short term.
The Wannsee minutes, therefore, represent a snapshot of a moment in a process in which the senior ranks of the SS underwent a change of perspective far removed from the idea of a 'final solution' after the end of the war. The new intention was to be able to carry out larger and larger sections of the 'final solution' during the war (i.e. 'to anticipate' it). Initially, this new perspective still included the period after the end of the war, but in the critical period we have examined, deportation to the east became more and more of a fiction, and, correspondingly, mass murder in the Generalgouvernement became more of a reality. In the most serious crisis of the war thus far, the participants at the conference were given the impression that the RSHA was planning to have the mass murders started in the various occupied areas, leading to a 'total solution' ('Gesamtlösung') that was to be developed over the long term.
This twin perspective is evinced in the minutes. On the one hand, Heydrich spoke of the 'coming final solution', i.e. the deportation programme to be completed after the end of the war, involving 11 million Jews, including those in Great Britain, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and Turkey – all countries that would only be under German control after a victorious conclusion of the war. Heydrich made a distinction between ad hoc measures and this 'coming' solution when he described the evacuation of the Jews to the east as a 'further potential solution conditional upon the relevant prior consent of the Fuehrer'. He said these 'actions' (i.e. the deportations already started) were simply 'alternatives' by means of which 'practical experience would be gathered' which would be 'of great significance in the coming final solution of the Jewish question'. Besides, the fact that Heydrich made particular reference to the prior 'consent of the Fuehrer' for these deportations indicates that the relevant permission for the implementation of the 'coming final solution' had not by then been given.
The 'coming final solution' was also referred to in the proposal for a gigantic labor exploitation programme in the east. Heydrich also highlighted the fact that the 'individual major evacuation campaigns should be largely independent of any military developments', that is, they could not be carried out until the end of the winter at least. He went on to say that the entire area under German rule was to be 'combed through' from west to east 'as part of the practical implementation of the final solution'. In this process, developments in the Reich area, including the Protectorate, would have to be 'anticipated'. This sentence highlights two levels being dealt with: the large, 'coming' solution, and the ad hoc measures already introduced. When Heydrich went on to say that the 'evacuated Jews' would be 'gradually taken to so-called transit ghettos, from which they [will] be transported further east', he then openly described an interim 'solution' for this group of people during the period leading up to the 'final solution'.
It can also be seen from the Wannsee minutes that the murder of the Jews living in the Generalgouvernement and in the occupied Soviet areas had already been derived from the larger 'final solution'. While Generalgouvernement State Secretary Bühler conveyed to the conference his government’s desire to start 'with the final solution… in the General-gouvernement' because 'the transport problem [did] not play a major role' and because 'any manpower exploitation grounds would not delay the course of this action' (given that few Jews there were 'fit for work'), he nevertheless expressed the view that any Jews 'unfit for work' should be murdered on the spot, just as they had been in the USSR and in the Warthegau. Gauleiter Meyer of the Eastern Ministry took the same view: namely that 'certain preparatory work in the course of the final solution could be carried out at the same time in the areas affected themselves'. ('Kill them yourselves', as Frank had so aptly characterized the answer from Berlin). However, the time schedule for these annihilation measures remained an open matter.
According to the wording of the minutes and our analysis of the events in the spring and summer of 1942, it is clear that the 'coming final solution' did not begin until May 1942, i.e. about four months after the Wannsee Conference. Moreover, it did not get into top gear until July 1942 because of the interruption of the transport hold-up. The 'preparatory' measures in the Generalgouvernement began in March with the murder of most of the Jews from Lublin and Galicia, and were resumed in June and stepped up in July when the systematic annihilation of the Jews of the Generalgouvernement started. The murder of Jews in the Soviet Union, which had started in the summer of 1941, seems to have escalated again in the summer of 1942 (81).
It seems perfectly possible that the final aim of the deportations within the framework of the 'coming final solution' was still undetermined at the time of the Wannsee Conference. Thus it is also possible that only gradually during the ensuing months would there be acceptance of the idea of diverting the deportations originally destined for the occupied territories of the Soviet Union to the extermination centers being constructed in occupied Poland. For Heydrich, two things mattered above all others on 20 January 1942: first, the deportations had to be accepted by the decision-making authorities of the Reich (everything that happened after the deportations was a matter internal to the SS and did not have to be agreed with the other offices). Secondly, the range of those to be deported had to be decided on, thus the status of the 'Mischlinge' and of those who had married non-Jews had to be clarified (82).
The second half of the Wannsee Conference was devoted to the latter purpose. Heydrich proposed that so-called first degree Mischlinge should, with certain exceptions, be deported. Similarly, any Jews or 'first degree Mischlinge' who had married 'Aryans' should as a rule be expelled from the Reich area or be sent to an 'old-age ghetto'. The absurdly complicated classification of 'Mischlinge' under the Nazi race laws, as was made perfectly clear in Heydrich’s speech, would have made large numbers of individual case decisions necessary. In order to avoid 'endless administrative work' resulting there from, the State Secretary for Internal Affairs, Stuckart, proposed that 'forced sterilization be proceeded with'. This topic could not be fully discussed at the conference and therefore had to be dealt with in several follow-up discussions – which did not, however, yield any conclusive results either.
As a direct result of the detailed discussion of problems with 'Mischlinge' and 'mixed marriages', the representatives of the ministerial bureaucracy were made accessories to, and co-responsible for, the 'final solution'. It was precisely because of the reservations raised among their ranks about including certain peripheral groups in the deportations that the ministerial officials let it be known that they had no reservations about the principle of deporting Jews. That was the decisive result of the meeting and was the main reason that Heydrich arranged for the guidelines of the future annihilation policy to be recorded in detail in the minutes.
Longerich is thus not arguing that Wannsee was merely a discussion about deportation, but represented an important point in the implementation of an annihilation policy; what was being debated was not "if" but "when." I.e., would the final solution be implemented at the end of the war, or would it start during the war?The Wannsee minutes, therefore, represent a snapshot of a moment in a process in which the senior ranks of the SS underwent a change of perspective far removed from the idea of a 'final solution' after the end of the war. The new intention was to be able to carry out larger and larger sections of the 'final solution' during the war (i.e. 'to anticipate' it).
what Longerich actually wrote was:One historian expressed the opinion that the account given of the conference proceedings by Eichmann at his trial is not trustworthy because he was seeking to mitigate his own responsibility by accusing the other participants, eg people like Stuckart, of giving explicit consent to a program of physical extermination.
As to what he meant by this, it's clear his point wasn't the same as Michael's since longerich's last words on the subject, quoted above, are precisely that those third party participants did give such consent, by virtue of the fact that they raised no objection to what Longerich agrees was an annihilation policy:We do not know the precise wording of the statements made at the conference. Eichmann said in 1960 in Israel that he had to edit the minutes considerably at Heydrich’s insistence, and that the participants at the conference had used far more drastic language, and had spoken about deaths, elimination and annihilation (53). Eichmann possibly wanted thereby to divert attention from himself and incriminate third parties. In my opinion, the minutes should not therefore be read as a basis for speculation about what was 'actually' said at the conference, but as the guidelines authorized by Heydrich for the RSHA's allotted task of the 'final solution'. The starting-point for any interpretation of 'Jewish policy' at the beginning of 1942 should not be the actual proceedings of the conference, but rather their quintessence, which Heydrich presented to other supreme Reich authorities as the binding resolution of that meeting
Longerich, in short, doesn't challenge the notion that the "final solution'" as discussed at Wannsee was an annihilation policy as opposed to just a deportation plan--his main question has to do with whether or not that plan was actually finalized at the conference, or if was merely one stage in a lengthier process.As a direct result of the detailed discussion of problems with 'Mischlinge' and 'mixed marriages', the representatives of the ministerial bureaucracy were made accessories to, and co-responsible for, the 'final solution'. It was precisely because of the reservations raised among their ranks about including certain peripheral groups in the deportations that the ministerial officials let it be known that they had no reservations about the principle of deporting Jews. That was the decisive result of the meeting and was the main reason that Heydrich arranged for the guidelines of the future annihilation policy to be recorded in detail in the minutes
Longerich does not claim that those guidelines for a future annihilation policy were actually spelled out at the meeting to the conference participants, and he is correct in not making that claim, since we do not know for sure what was said at the meeting.That was the decisive result of the meeting and was the main reason that Heydrich arranged for the guidelines of the future annihilation policy to be recorded in detail in the minutes.
Thus, Longerich is not claiming that Heydrich told the representatives of the Departments of State that the Jews would be killed after deportation. As he says, what happened after the deportations was a matter for the SS and did not need to be agreed with other offices; since it did not need to be agreed with the other offices, there was no need to tell them about it.For Heydrich, two things mattered above all others on 20 January 1942: first, the deportations had to be accepted by the decision-making authorities of the Reich (everything that happened after the deportations was a matter internal to the SS and did not have to be agreed with the other offices). Secondly, the range of those to be deported had to be decided on, thus the status of the 'Mischlinge' and of those who had married non-Jews had to be clarified
Thus, according to Longerich, the decision to kill those Jews of the Lublin and Galicia districts of the Generalgouvernement assessed as unfit for labour, estimated at 60% of the total, was not made until March 1942, ie after the Wannsee Conference. Longerich believes that killing program to be a local affair, not something decided at a conference in Berlin.At the beginning of March 1942, a decision was again taken to arrange a mass murder of the Jews in the reception areas of the Lublin district. This decision also affected the neighboring district of Galicia, which, according to the model of the Nazi leadership, formed a kind of advance base for the planned 'new order' of 'living space' in the east. Of particular significance here is the boast made by Goebbels in his diaries that he wanted 60 per cent of the Jews living in both districts to be murdered (65). This decision, made at the beginning of March, had been preceded by the preliminary work for this campaign that had been carried out since October 1941 by SSPF Globocnik with the consent of the SS leadership. The episode displays significant parallels to the mass murder of the Jews of the Warthegau, which was also carried out in the autumn of 1941. Only in the method of murder, the use of a stationary gas chamber, did Globocnik’s modus operandi differ from Greiser’s. As in the Warthegau, however, the mass murder of the local Jews in the Lublin district was directly associated with deportations from Reich territory.
Longerich presents the development of the exterminations carried out at camps in occupied Poland, first the camps under the control of Globocnik and then at Auschwitz, as resulting from a series of separate decisions beginning in March 1942 and continuing in April and May, ie all after the Wannsee Conference. Therefore, as of the date of the Wannsee Conference, those decisions on killing non-Soviet Jews had not yet been made, so it is inconceivable that they were discussed at that meeting. And as :Longerich points out, such decisions on killing were the business of the SS alone, and did not need to be discussed with other agencies, such as those represented at the Wannsee Conference.Apparently, at the end of April or in May 1942, the Nazi regime decided to extend the murder of the Jews of Lublin and Galicia to the entire Generalgouvernement (67). At the same time, the decision must have been taken to murder en masse the Jews of Upper Silesia; in May and June, thousands were deported to Auschwitz and killed there immediately. The systematic mass murder of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement began in June, but then was broken off for a few weeks because of the transport hold-up. Those transport difficulties, caused by military developments in the east, ultimately had a radicalizing effect on the development of genocide. The deportations from the western areas was speeded up, and during the period the planners evidently had the opportunity to re-think and consolidate their ideas, so that the overall programme could be resumed in July with devastating effect. For example, at this stage, the SS took over the complex of Jewish forced labor in the Generalgouvernement, and thus took control of the prisoners who had been first excluded from annihilation as being 'capable of work'.
At about the same time as this fundamental decision about the Jews of the Generalgouvernement, and in any case before the middle of May, the major decisions on radicalizing the entire murder programme must have been taken. These involved increasing the deportations from the 'Reich' beyond the quota set in March, and murdering all or nearly all those Jews already deported from central Europe on the arrival of the transports in the eastern reception areas. This is how the Jews deported from the Reich were dealt with in Minsk from the middle of May onwards, and likewise those deported from Slovakia in Sobibor from the beginning of June (68).
In the most serious crisis of the war thus far, the participants at the conference were given the impression that the RSHA was planning to have the mass murders started in the various occupied areas, leading to a 'total solution' ('Gesamtlösung') that was to be developed over the long term.
The sentence above says that the leadership in working on the final solution without respecting geographical borders is centrally in the hands of Reichsführer SS and Chief German Police (Chief SiPo and SD).Die Federführung bei der Bearbeitung der Endlösung der Judenfrage liege ohne Rücksicht auf geographische Grenzen zentral beim Reichsführer-SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei (Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD).
You're misreading it. It's no different in form than "Secretary of Commerce (Small Business Administration)." The parenthetical portion refers to a subordinate office, as in "Secretary of Commerce's Small Business Administration."The term set into brackets this way says that one person has both functions, being Chief of police and SS and being Chief of SiPo and SD. In reality those functions are on two seperate persons: Himmler as Reichsführer SS and Heydrich as Chief of SiPo and SD.
How can this be confused?
Himmler had been given "a special mission from the Fuehrer." He delegated part of it to his subordinate, Heydrich.In the first sentence of the protocol Heydrich announced to be appointed by the Reichsmarschall to be responsible for the "Endlösung" which is the subject of this meeting. In the sentence above the responsibilty for the "Endlösung" primarily is in direct responsibility of H. Himmler, Heydrich's chief. Why didn't the Reichsmarschall appoint Himmler directly?
Are both responsible?
Is it common somewhere that the highest ranks in a hierarchy appoint subordinated lower ranks directly, bypassing the chief? In the second case they inform the subordinate that his chief was appointed for a task?
How can this part of the text be understood or explained?
The primary responsibility for the administrative handling of the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem will rest centrally with the Reich Leader SS and the Chief of the German Police (Chief of the Security Police and the SD)--regardless of geographic boundaries.
There seems to have been a pre-existing chain of command between Hitler-Göring-Heydrich since at least 1936 in addition to the Hitler-Himmler-Heydrich chain. The former was under the auspices of the 4-year plan, by which Göring was expropriating Jewish assets. There is a sequence of events here that led to Göring's famous order to Heydrich in mid-1941. This intriguing relationship, and the I think poorly elucidated role of Göring in the Holocast (overall), is discussed by Peter Longerich in his book Holocaust:murx wrote:In the first sentence of the protocol Heydrich announced to be appointed by the Reichsmarschall to be responsible for the "Endlösung" which is the subject of this meeting. In the sentence above the responsibilty for the "Endlösung" primarily is in direct responsibility of H. Himmler, Heydrich's chief. Why didn't the Reichsmarschall appoint Himmler directly?
Are both responsible?
Is it common somewhere that the highest ranks in a hierarchy appoint subordinated lower ranks directly, bypassing the chief? In the second case they inform the subordinate that his chief was appointed for a task?
How can this part of the text be understood or explained?
This is from Holocaust by Peter Longerich. It's at locations 1702-1714 in the Kindle version. He references the 1936 letter.On 7 July 1936 Göring, in his role as leader of the 'raw materials and currency team' (the group that preceded the Four-Year Plan) had already given Heydrich the task of setting up a 'Currency Investigation Office' (Devisenfahndungsamt), which was to be an authority reporting to Göring 'personally and directly'. This office was principally designed to make sure that the customs search and currency investigation authorities applied the complicated currency regulations against Jews with excessive rigour so as to secure pretexts for the financial authorities to 'secure' Jewish money. In taking on his new responsibilities Heydrich thus assumed an important function in the coordination of the efforts of the Security Police, the Four-Year Plan, and the financial management of the expropriation of the German Jews.
It was therefore both an aim and one of the functions of the Four-Year Plan to intensify the persecution of the Jews, which raises the question of whether this does not suggest new grounds for reconsidering the role of Göring in NS anti-Jewish policy development. The letter of appointment that Göring wrote for Heydrich in July 1936 was the first link in a chain of authorizations issued to the Head of the Security Police by the Reichsmarschall. It was followed by Heydrich's appointment as head of the 'Central Office for Jewish Emigration' in July 1939 and ended in the authorization given in July 1941 to make 'preparations for the final solution of the Jewish question'.
From Heinrich Himmler: A Life by Peter Longerich (also the Kindle edition)In general, Himmler left the implementation of anti-Jewish measures to Heydrich, who during the 1930s became the central figure in the Jewish policy of the Gestapo and SD. Heydrich's role was increased by the fact that Göring, in his position as head of the 'Raw Materials and Foreign Exchange Team' (the precursor of the Four Year Plan organization) assigned him the task of setting up a 'Foreign Exchange Search Office'. This new responsibility enabled Heydrich in the future to move against Jews who were under 'suspicion of emigrating' on the grounds of alleged breaches of foreign-exchange regulations. This appointment was the first of a whole series of responsibilities involving Jewish persecution which the Reichsmarschall assigned to the head of the security police and SD during the coming years. This created two competing chains of command involving Jewish policy: Hitler-Himmler-Heydrich and Hitler-Göring-Heydrich. [my emphasis] The Reichsführer-SS was thereby in danger of being excluded from the decision-making process in the event of his proving insufficiently active on the anti-Semitic front.
Heydrich’s words at the Wannsee Conference indicate that the RSHA then was still adhering to the plan that the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” would be undertaken in the occupied areas in the East, and that this “Final
Solution” could only be completed after the war. Heydrich was also clear about what the term “final solution” meant: the European Jews should be exterminated by means of a combination of forced labor and mass murder.
The minutes also reveal when the deportations would start: as soon as the military situation would allow it, i.e., spring 1942. But, the fact that the figure of 11 million Jews, which Heydrich mentioned, included Jewish minorities in Great Britain, Spain and Turkey reveals his post-war perspective.
We have no evidence to indicate that, during the course of the Wannsee Conference, there already was a plan to deport Jews from Central and Western Europe directly to extermination camps. On the contrary, the first deportations from Germany and from other countries in Central and Western Europe (from Slovakia and France), deportations that began in the spring of 1942, did not lead directly to extermination camps. The killing facilities in the extermination camps were not rapidly enlarged directly after the Wannsee Conference, but rather in late spring and summer of 1942.
At the same time, the minutes of the Wannsee Conference make it clear that participants debated a suggestion that the Jews in the Generalgouvernement and in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union be withdrawn from this general plan and killed immediately. The minutes additionally reflect discussion of how this “final solution” was to be implemented technically, i.e., the use of gassing probably was discussed. The minutes do not, however, make clear whether or not a decision was made on this point.