On 20 January 1942, leading Nazi officials met at the Wannsee Conference Villa in Wannsee, a south-western suburb of Berlin.

On 20 January 1942, leading Nazi officials met at the Wannsee Conference Villa in Wannsee, a south-western suburb of Berlin.

The conference had been called to discuss and coordinate a cheaper, more efficient, and permanent solution to the Nazis’ ‘Jewish problem’. The conference was attended by senior government and SS officials, and coordinated by Reinhard Heydrich.

In July 1941, Hermann Goering, writing under instructions from Hitler, had ordered Reinhard Heydrich, SS general and Heinrich Himmler’s number-two man, to submit “as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative, material, and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question.”

Heydrich met with Adolf Eichmann, chief of the Central Office of Jewish Emigration, and 15 other officials from various Nazi ministries and organizations at Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin.

The agenda was simple and focused: to devise a plan that would render a “final solution to the Jewish question” in Europe. Various gruesome proposals were discussed, including mass sterilization and deportation to the island of Madagascar.

Heydrich proposed simply transporting Jews from every corner Europe to concentration camps in Poland and working them to death. Objections to this plan included the belief that this was simply too time-consuming.

What about the strong ones who took longer to die? What about the millions of Jews who were already in Poland?

Although the word “extermination” was never uttered during the meeting, the implication was clear: anyone who survived the egregious conditions of a work camp would be “treated accordingly.”

The final plan for the eleven million Jews in remaining in Europe, as laid out by Heydrich, was to utilise them for work in the east on road works.

Those who could not work, or became unable to work after a period of time, would be subject to special treatment. The Nazis used the term ‘special treatment’ as a euphemism for murder.

At the conference, there was also some discussion on the methods of mass murder, although concrete plans were not established.

Experiments in using gas as a method of mass murder had already taken place at Chełmno in December 1941, but this was not mentioned and no one method was agreed upon within the meeting..

Following Heydrich’s monologue, several other participants made comments. The only issue over which actual discussion and disagreement occurred was the fate of German half Jews and German Jews in mixed marriages.

Heydrich favored deporting half Jews; the secretary of state for the Interior Ministry, Wilhelm Stuckart, favored sterilization of half Jews and compulsory dissolution of mixed marriages.

Ultimately none of these proposals was adopted; Hitler, who was more cautious than any of the conference participants about the complications that might arise from killing or sterilizing half Jews so connected to non-Jewish society or dissolving their parents’ marriages and killing the Jewish partner, left policies toward half Jews and mixed marriages (especially exemption from compulsory wearing of the Jewish star and deportation) unchanged.

The meeting lasted approximately two hours.

Whilst the exact methods of mass murder were not laid out in this meeting, it played a significant role in coordinating the Nazis’ genocidal actions.

The policy of annihilation to be taken against Jews was made extremely clear by the Nazi leadership. By the end of 1942, six extermination camps were in operation

The minutes of this conference were kept with meticulous care, which later provided key evidence during the Nuremberg war crimes trials.