The extermination of the Jews increased the closer the defeat came. For all time afterwards, therefore, Wannsee has stood as a grotesque symbol of this totalizing, non utilitarian, almost metaphysical ideology in the middle of Europe. Why This has been asked about in retrospect over and over again. A core question to which we shall return. Among the many misconceptions that posterity has had about what happened on this January day eighty years ago, was that the Wannsee Conference was the place where the Holocaust was enacted It s wrong. For the initiator, SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the purpose of Wannsee was above all to confirm the SS leadership in and ownership of the process going forward.
The Holocaust was planned in a series of steps, but Wannsee is one of the most important meetings for administrative coordination in the wilderness of bureaucratic institutions of the Third Reich In addition to establishing the ownership of the murders, it was also wrong for Heydrich to involve the established German civil service in the genocide making them accomplices, or at least preventing obstruction. He had every reason to be praised after the whatsapp mobile number list meeting none of the senior gentlemen had any objections to the basic outline of the scheme. Nevertheless, some had practical objections. Auswärtiges Amt s UD state secretary, Martin Luther sic. thought that the Nordic countries would present a problem, and that it was therefore wise to postpone the actions.
Given how small the Jewish communities were in these countries, it will not entail any serious curtailment of the plans as he is quoted in the minutes. On the other hand, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not expect any serious obstacles in south eastern and western Europe It was true. It is then interesting to note that those invited were not top people, but came from the ranking below, at the state secretary level. THOSE WHO DIDN T COME There were several white spots in the sound of the meeting. Goebbels propaganda ministry was not summoned not to be expected, the conference was to be held secretly From the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs came State Secretary Martin Luther, but not v. Ribbentrop or v. Weisäcker, both superiors in the AA.