The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration

Rating:
Summary: Through a glass, darkly
Review: Ever since its discovery in 1947 by Robert Kempner, the American Nuremberg prosecutor, this record of a meeting held in Berlin on 20 January 1942 has been considered to be virtual proof of the determination of the Nazis to murder each and every Jew that came within their reach. Roseman presents a much more critical view of the matter.

His book is full of remarks which modify, question, or refute past interpretations. He quotes the German historian Eberhard Jäckel who wonders why this meeting was ever convened, he notes that the documentation concerning this event is far from comprehensive and that we can only speculate on many aspects, he states that there is no single unambiguous document ordering the annihilation of all Jews (David Irving will have noted this with some satisfaction), he deplores the general lack of official documents, and he stresses the absence of important agencies or institutions which should have been present at any sort of decisive meeting of this kind: the German Railways, the Wehrmacht, or the Führer Chancellery. Somehow, though, he manages to overlook the curious lack of Heydrich's name on the list of the persons attending.

In spite of the general vagueness surrounding the gathering, Roseman concludes that from the time of the meeting onward, the word „Endlösung" came to signify the death of all European Jews, because the „Protokoll" expresses this, albeit in a round-about, bureaucartic fashion. It is important to stress, though, that „death", here, is not necessarily identical to „killing". The considerations regarding the fate of various groups of Jews bear this out, one half of the 15 pages are devoted, after all, to the fairly difficult question of deciding how Jews and their descendants were to be classified. When all is said and done, Roseman comes to the conclusion that the conference cannot be regarded as a moment of decision; for him, it is merely an indication that something had changed in the political landscape.

The „Protokoll" itself has, for decades now, occupied centre stage, obscuring other important aspects of the matter. We must remember that the meeting had been convened by Heydrich on the grounds that Göring had asked him, half a year earlier, in July of 1941, to draw up a comprehensive plan for the final solution of the Jewish question, „in the near future". The January meeting was to lay the groundwork for the plan, others were to follow; Roseman mentions two more such dates, March and October 1942 but does not discuss them in detail. In view of the six months which Heydrich let go by before calling a first meeting, one cannot but admire Göring's patience in the matter, or Himmler's lack of concern when the Reichsmarschall intervened without respecting the line of command. In the end, after Heydrich's assassination in May of 1942, no comprehensive plan was ever presented to Göring - nor to anyone else, for that matter.

In this context, Roseman mentions, in a footnote, the so-called „Schlegelberger Document" which states that Hitler had rejected the „Final Solution" as we perceive it today. He refers the reader to David Irving's homepage for more information while remaining himself quite sceptical in this regard.

The German edition of Roseman's book contains an additional chapter in which Norbert Kampe, the director of the Wannsee Memorial Institute in Berlin, discusses the differences among the reproductions of the various documents that form the basis of our assessment of this event. Kampe strongly crticizes mistakes and unwarranted alterations that appear in every single one of the documents presented by Kempner, but states that the text of these reproductions is always in accordance with the originals. This is not, strictly speaking, a material analysis of the documents themselves. In view, however, of a number of questions concerning the authenticity of some of these papers, that have never been scientifically investigated, a thorough review of these points is still highly desirable.

Aside from this aspect, one should mention a further difficulty which makes an appreciation of the conference cumbersome for the average layman - the problem of the language. The „Urtext" is in German, obviously, and in a particularly obscure and bureaucratic lingo at that. Normally, this ought not to make a translation impossible to accomplish, but here we have to fend with the risk that the choice of words, and hence the reader's mind, is influenced by a - possibly unconscious - partiality of the translator. A case in point is the rendering of the German word „erfassen" on p. 9 of the original (regarding the Jews in France). The official English version on the Wannsee website (www.ghwk.de) has „rounding-up", but this shows that the translator has jumped to a conclusion which is unjustfied, although attractive, because in German bureaucratic language „erfassen" quite simply - and innocently - signifies something like identifying and seizing in a list. In connexion with a document which is couched in a very much veiled language, such liberties should not be tolerated.

The „Protokoll" has, by now, become public property, as it were, and has served as a basis for two films. A German one, produced in 1984, is a well-made feature, responding nearly 100 % to the traditional requirements of unity in time, place, and action. It is being shown quite regularly both in Germany and abroad. Unfortunately, in the US and possibly elsewhere, it has been made an instrument of what Norman Finkelstein has called the marketing of the Holocaust: even though no verbatim transcript of the conference has ever been found, the film is distributed in those countries with the firm assertion that it is indeed the word-for-word rendering of the meeting. The historian, it would seem, counts for nothing in the global market economy.

Rating:
Summary: Terrific !!! A MUST for any avid reader of Reich literature
Review: In just barely 125 pages, this short volume looks Hitler's final solution squarely in the eye to provide new perspectives. Roseman successfully, I think, argues that the concept of genocide developed much later in the war than one would believe and that such was not initally part of the Third Reich's master plan for the elimination of the Jews. Rather, official policy seems almost to have just "drifted" in the direction of genodice without it---of much of anything else---having been planned for.

His premise is that all of Hitler's rhetoric, and even his actions, up to Wannsee were aimed at just getting the Jews completely out of Germany in any way possible, seeking to accomplish this not through mass murder but rather through combinations of the failed Madagascar and Jews-to-Palestine plans, making conditions so miserable for the Jews that they would leave on their own, and finally to begin shipping them further east as the Reich expanded. This resettlement would have continued toward harsh, unsurvivable Sibera, once he brought Stalin's armies to its knees. But his early military successes ultimately both smothered this plan and doomed the Jews.

True, the elimination of "undesirables" began early in the war. But the scale was relatively small and was limited on the homefront to the short-lived euthanasia program which ended quickly enough from adverse public opinion, and in the newly conquered eastern territories to the overzealous actions of their Reich governors to whom Berlin gave virtual free rein to secure the area for precious lebensraum. While the number of deaths were considerable by any standard, it pales in comparison to the staggering final total.

But the ever-expanding Greater Germany which was being created as Hitler successfully moved east took on not only the Jews already living there but also those continuously deported from the west---many more than could be eliminated or moved further along quickly enough under all previously assumed methodologies (which in the text are referred to by Reinhard Heydrich himself as "provisional, until something better came along", further supporting Roseman's "drift" proposition).

Roseman points out that these deportees were literally dumped out in the open, left on the hands of the territorial governors who were provided with no comprehensive plan for dealing with a population increased by those banished from Berlin. Even with their unlimited authority, the governors could not keep up with elimination necessities. Obviously, something had to be done, and fast.

All the previous vagaries of policy quickly coalesced to form the final solution. The inefficiently crude, hands-on methods of the early liquidations (firing squads, beatings, etc.) were replaced by impersonalized, production-line mass murder, providing the Nazis with a twisted means of separating, distancing themselves from personal blame or responsibility.

The race to genocide thus began not merely in the ravings of the lunatic himself, although Hitler certainly provided the emotional map to it, but rather in an academic exercise by supposedly enlightened individuals thinking their way through just another production problem.

Rating:
Summary: Terrific !!! A MUST for any avid reader of Reich literature
Review: In just barely 125 pages, this short volume looks Hitler's final solution squarely in the eye to provide new perspectives. Roseman successfully, I think, argues that the concept of genocide developed much later in the war than one would believe and that such was not initally part of the Third Reich's master plan for the elimination of the Jews. Rather, official policy seems almost to have just "drifted" in the direction of genodice without it---of much of anything else---having been planned for.

His premise is that all of Hitler's rhetoric, and even his actions, up to Wannsee were aimed at just getting the Jews completely out of Germany in any way possible, seeking to accomplish this not through mass murder but rather through combinations of the failed Madagascar and Jews-to-Palestine plans, making conditions so miserable for the Jews that they would leave on their own, and finally to begin shipping them further east as the Reich expanded. This resettlement would have continued toward harsh, unsurvivable Sibera, once he brought Stalin's armies to its knees. But his early military successes ultimately both smothered this plan and doomed the Jews.

True, the elimination of "undesirables" began early in the war. But the scale was relatively small and was limited on the homefront to the short-lived euthanasia program which ended quickly enough from adverse public opinion, and in the newly conquered eastern territories to the overzealous actions of their Reich governors to whom Berlin gave virtual free rein to secure the area for precious lebensraum. While the number of deaths were considerable by any standard, it pales in comparison to the staggering final total.

But the ever-expanding Greater Germany which was being created as Hitler successfully moved east took on not only the Jews already living there but also those continuously deported from the west---many more than could be eliminated or moved further along quickly enough under all previously assumed methodologies (which in the text are referred to by Reinhard Heydrich himself as "provisional, until something better came along", further supporting Roseman's "drift" proposition).

Roseman points out that these deportees were literally dumped out in the open, left on the hands of the territorial governors who were provided with no comprehensive plan for dealing with a population increased by those banished from Berlin. Even with their unlimited authority, the governors could not keep up with elimination necessities. Obviously, something had to be done, and fast.

All the previous vagaries of policy quickly coalesced to form the final solution. The inefficiently crude, hands-on methods of the early liquidations (firing squads, beatings, etc.) were replaced by impersonalized, production-line mass murder, providing the Nazis with a twisted means of separating, distancing themselves from personal blame or responsibility.

The race to genocide thus began not merely in the ravings of the lunatic himself, although Hitler certainly provided the emotional map to it, but rather in an academic exercise by supposedly enlightened individuals thinking their way through just another production problem.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant précis of the Holocaust
Review: On the surface, this short, brilliant study deals primarily with the notorious Wannsee Conference of January 1942, at which top Nazi officials decided on crucial modalities of the Holocaust.

But below the surface, the book does much more. The greatest of its many virtues is that it brings us up to date on the the most recent scholarship concerning the whole of the Nazi persecution of Jews, including the historical roots of the policy. But the devil, as always, is in the details. Roseman gives them to us: who did what and when and how. It is the details that tell us how the previously unthinkable -- the cold-blooded murder of six million Jews -- was accomplished by the highly educated elite of the Nazi state.

In the past historians have argued about the precise personal responsibility of Hitler. Some have insisted that this responsibility was overwhelming, others have held that the main motive force came from the workings of the Nazi bureaucracy. Roseman shows that the most recent findings give credence to both factors: without Hitler's very personal involvement, there would have been no Holocaust; nor could it have been carried out without the enthusiastic complicity of hundreds of major Nazi officials.

It is in the nature of this kind of book that it will perhaps be of greatest interest to those who have already read other, more general works, for instance Wistrich's equally brilliant but more introductory "Hitler and the Holocaust." Nevertheless, Roseman's volume can be recommended even to beginners in this area.

Among the facts shown by Roseman that may be new to many readers are the the following: the greatest responsibility for the mass murder, after Hitler, belongs to Heinrich Himmler; the Nazis planned to kill eleven million European Jews, almost twice as many as they ultimatelymore than half of the Holocaust victims perished succeeded in reaching; more than half of the Holocaust victims perished between March 1942 and February 1943; and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the titular head of the Arab Palestinians at the time, visited Hitler in November of 1941 and was given assurance by Hitler that he would "solve" the problem of Jews.

Rating:
Summary: Cigars, cognac and Genocide. A chilling read.
Review: This compelling, chilling study reveals how the SS, Nazi Party officials and top Civil Servants of the Third Reich, calmly sat down together to plan the Final Solution - the systematic genocide of the Jewish people from Europe.

Read how these representatives of the Nazi regime, sat drinking cognac & smoking cigars, while calmly and in a businesslike manner, discussing & arranging the ethnic cleansing and genocide of an entire people.

The cold blooded efficiency of the Nazi plan, described here as the Wannsee Protocol, will shock many readers who will see the apparatus of genocide being planned to run like a well machine. A machine that would even proceed to see the commercial utilisation of the victims through their hair, body-fat, teeth etc.. Shocking!

The cruelty and indifference of these officials in debating the forthcoming slaughter is likely to send chills down the spines of many whenever the Jewish people are discussed behind closed doors. This extraordinary book looks in detail at the effective procedures decided upon which aimed to murder every single Jew from Ireland to the Urals & from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. A total of some eleven million Jews. Six million of whom would fall victim to the horrific agenda before the war's end.

The author discusses how the rhetoric and propaganda against the Jews throughout the Third Reich provided a fertile ground to facilitate the operation of the machinery of death which the Nazis chose to implement. The political and social climate having been made ready for when the murder of Jews was regarded as a legitimate means of `political struggle' to further the Reich. The book also discusses why this meeting was in itself necessary, with the slaughter of the Jews having already started.

Recommended read on the Holocaust.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Monograph
Review: This is a readable, thoughtful monograph on the origins and historical significance of the Wannsee conference, the notorious January 1942 meeting where Nazi officials finalized plans to exterminate European Jewry. Noting that the decision on genocide was probably taken by Hitler in late 1941, author Roseman concludes that Wannsee's real purpose was to assert Reinhard Heydrich's control over Jewish policy and to sort out bureaucratic disagreements about the treatment of half-Jews and Jews married to German gentiles. Roseman writes well, has a full command of the secondary literature, and understands the nuances and grotesqueries of bureaucratic politics (I'm a career State Department official). Highly recommended for readers interested in World War II or the Holocaust.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Essay
Review: This is an interesting, thoughtful, and well written essay on the dynamics of the Holocaust. Roseman's preoccupation is with inferring the processes by which the Nazis ultimately reached the decision to exterminate the Jews of Europe, as opposed to removing Jews from Germany. To a considerable extent, this essay is about historiography as much as the events themselves because there has been considerable debate on this issue among historians of the Holocaust. Roseman analyzes and summarizes a good deal of recent scholarship. He discusses explicitly the role of the notorious Wannsee conference but this is not a detailed discussion of that event, which would be impossible given the scanty documentation available, but uses the Wannsee conference as a hook for his general discussion of the decisions to proceed with extermination. Roseman makes a number of important points. There was no plan for extermination of Jews prior to the War. The Nazis initially wanted to remove Jews from Germany but expulsion seems to have been the preferred method. Several factors seems to have propelled the Nazi decision makers along their murderous path. There is no question that Hitler himself came to prefer extermination. The War itself acted as a radicalizing element. Competition among different sectors of the Nazi state was common and there seems to have been a race to see who could achieve murder the fastest. Finally, Roseman is careful to point out the importance of ideology in the motivations of all the major actors. This was not a group of simple functionaries executing orders blindly. Racist ideologies permeated the Civil Service. An important aspect that Roseman may be overlooking in his discussion of the radicalizing effects of the war is the sense of triumphalism that infected the Nazis. In the winter of 1942, they were the masters of Europe, occupying most of France and the eastern Soviet Union, and controlling the major industrial assets of the continent. Perhaps they felt that anything was possible, including the extermination of the European Jews and other perceived racial enemies. This is a good book but really an extended essay rather than a regular monograph. Perhaps best read by individuals with some knowledge of the Holocaust and its historiography.