Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Wannsee Conference

Starting point is 00:00:00 On January 20th, 1942, one of the most infamous meetings in human history took place. Fifteen high-ranking Nazi officials gathered in the Berlin suburb of WANSI to come up with a final solution to the Jewish question. They discussed who would be eliminated and how, all without the slightest hint of emotion or remorse. In around 90 minutes, the fate of millions of people was decided. Learn more about the Wansi Conference and how the final solution was enacted on this episode of Everything everywhere daily. Did you ever hear about the selfie that solved a murder or the jury that used a Ouija board to speak to a victim? If that made you pause, you need to listen to Morning Cup of Murder. I'm Karina Bimus Durfer, and every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I tell one chilling true

Starting point is 00:00:59 crime story tied to that exact day in history. With over 2,500 episodes to binge, you'll never run out of dark stories to start your morning with. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. In 1933, Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany. And just one year later, he had consolidated enough power to become Fierer, or the leader of Germany. To understand how this led to the horrors of the Holocaust, we have to understand the beliefs that drove the Nazi party. One of Hitler's main ideological goals was Lieben's realm, or living space. The core idea of Lieben's realm is that for a nation to thrive, it needs to be a nation.

Starting point is 00:01:43 to expand its territory. In Nazi Germany's case, this expansion would be done through conquering and then colonizing other European countries. Hitler and the Nazis' eye territory primarily in Eastern Europe, particularly the Soviet Union in Poland. Leibn's Rown was highly intertwined with the racial policies of the Nazis. The Germans believed that the white Aryan race was superior to others. Leibn's Rown was designed to drastically increase the number of Aryans to ensure the race's survival. Leben's realm was the primary ideology that contributed to the outbreak of World War II, which I explored in my episode on Operation Barbarossa.

Starting point is 00:02:21 To the Nazis, the biggest threat to the Lieben's Rom policy was the Jews. And here it's essential to note that the Nazi theories on a race and their ideas of Lieben's realm were inherently intertwined. The anti-Semitic beliefs of the Nazis deem the Jews to be dangerous and evil. They were supposedly taking over Germany and had betrayed Germany in World War I. They were perceived as dirty and sneaky and would destroy German culture if left unchecked. To combat the perceived threat, the Nazis began to target the Jews. Laws were enacted to exclude Jewish people from civil service positions and limit the number of Jewish people in schools.

Starting point is 00:03:00 Race laws were established, and Jews were forced to wear a badge to publicly identify themselves. After World War II began with the invasion of Poland in 1939, anti-Semitic policies continued, as did the Liebenzram policy. By 1942, the Nazis had annexed Poland, conquered Denmark and Norway, occupied France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, and Greece, and were in the middle of their invasion of the USSR. Their policy of Lieben's round was progressing, and they were inching closer and closer to achieving their goal of conquering Eastern Europe. However, with this new land, the Nazis were having a problem. Between 1940 and 1941, Germany had faced a massive food and supply shortage. Additionally, the war situation was starting to turn against Germany. Japan had just attacked Pearl Harbor and Hitler decided to declare war in the United States. This gave Germany yet

Starting point is 00:03:53 another enemy now to deal with in the West. And to add to this, the Red Army had finally started to push back the Germans from the Soviet Union. With too many quote-unquote useless mouths to feed in Jews being perceived as the threats of the security of the Reich, Hitler finally decided that it was time to come up with a solution to what the Nazis called the Jewish question. To address this question, Hitler convened a conference of top Nazi officials at Wansy on the outskirts of Berlin on January 20th, 1942. Hiller, however, did not want his name attached to the meeting, as if the records were to ever get out, he would then be blamed. Additionally, a few other top Nazis were not present. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS,

Starting point is 00:04:36 and Hermann Garing, commander of the Luftwaffe, were also not present, although they were aware that the meeting was taking place. Various heads of ministries responsible for Jewish issues were invited to the conference. A total of 15 invitees were in attendance. The conference was led by Reinhardt Heirich, the chief of the Reich Security Office, who had created a plan for the final solution the year before. As the meeting guests arrived, Heinrich and his recording secretary, Adolf Eichmann, provided the attendees with the list of compiled numbers of Jews from both occupied and unoccupied

Starting point is 00:05:10 countries in Europe. These numbers were separated into two groups, the A group, compromising countries under direct German control, and the B countries which were either allied, neutral, or at war. The meeting opened with Hydric, who described the anti-Jewish measures already enacted by the Nazis. They then went into the number of Jews who had emigrated from Europe before discussing how many were still left on the continent. They estimated that there were 11 million Jews in Europe, and roughly half that number were under German control. Heidrich then noted that Himmler had banned Jewish emigration and that the new Jewish solution was to evacuate them to the east.

Starting point is 00:05:50 And it's pretty clear through the meeting notes that evacuate was the code for elimination or death. Heidrich stated that the meeting would be for the development of a practical execution of the final solution and that Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia would get priority in the solution of the Jewish problem. This was due to housing issues caused by allied bombing, as well as the need for space for laborers. Hydrick then went on to explain that the evacuated Jews would need to be sent to transit ghettos and then be sent east. One of the first issues that the meeting needed to discuss was what people were considered to be legally Jewish who could be sent to camps.

Starting point is 00:06:31 They ended up deciding that Jews who were over 65 or who were awarded an Iron Cross during World War I would not be executed, but sent to a separate concentration camp. However, those at the meeting were struggling with what Jewish racial percentages should be deported. They decided that those who had two Jewish grandparents would be considered Jews. However, if they married a non-Jew and had children, this would not apply, but they would be sterilized. A person with one Jewish grandparent would be German unless they married someone Jewish or to a person with two Jewish grandparents. They would also not be German if they looked or

Starting point is 00:07:08 acted Jewish. If they looked or acted that way, then they would be treated as a Jew. Mixed marriages would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. If a Jew and non-Jew were raising the child as German, the parents would not be killed. However, if they were being raised as Jewish, then they would be. However, even though these were the official racial policies, they often weren't upheld. Jews were still rounded up en masse, and it usually didn't matter what their actual background was. The meeting then moved to discuss non-German countries like France, Romania, and Hungary in what they should do about their Jews. They decided that the Jews and these countries would be forcibly deported to extermination camps. In Hungary, for example, by the end of the war,

Starting point is 00:07:53 600,000 Jews had been deported and executed. Hydrick held the initial discussion for about an hour before opening the floor to questions from the attendees. Issues were more focused on the administrative and legal issues surrounding the evacuation of the Jews rather than moral qualms. One concern was with mixed marriages, where it was suggested that the marriages simply be dissolved or that sterilization be made mandatory. Another concern was evacuating Jews who were working in vital industries to the war effort. This concern was easily negated when Hydrax said that they simply wouldn't be sent to camps

Starting point is 00:08:26 or killed. A common misconception is that the WANC conference is what started the Holocaust, but that's not true. Mass killings were occurring in both Poland and the Soviet Union, and extermination camps were already under construction. The decision to kill the Jews had already been made from higher up. This meeting was to define who would be considered Jewish, to outline the implementation process, and to make sure the various parts of the Nazi apparatus cooperated with the final solution, and that everyone was on the same page. Most, if not all of the people who attended the conference, were well aware of the mass killings already occurring in the East that the military and the police were committing.

Starting point is 00:09:09 For example, during Operation Barbarossa, the SS Einstein's Gruppen was ordered to shoot all Jews between the ages of 15 and 45. However, that system had two major drawbacks from the Nazi perspective. One was that it was a waste of ammunition and the other was a massive psychological burden on the Nazi soldiers who had to commit these atrocities. so a different solution that was less mentally taxing and wasteful was needed. One of the main things discussed at the conference was the best way to commit murder without mentally harming the troops. Though they did not formally decide on the use of poison gas, they were exploring the most efficient options to commit mass murder and poison gas was certainly suggested. Experimentation with gas had occurred before the Wansy Conference. At Helmino, a death camp located in Poland, they had already been experimenting.

Starting point is 00:10:00 with mobile gas vans. Despite not yet committing to poison gas, the policy of experimentation was clear, and they began to implement it after the meeting concluded. Following the conference, five extermination camps were built, bringing the Nazi total to six. Following more experimentation with gas, it was found that gas was the most efficient form of killing and was better mentally for troops who no longer wanted to kill women and children. Following these results, gas chambers began to be constructed in three camps in Poland, Belzac, Sobibor, and Treblinka. These chambers used carbon monoxide, which they would generate from diesel engines. To maximize efficiency and eliminate as much panic as possible,

Starting point is 00:10:40 the Germans would tell the Jews and other victims arriving in cattle cars that they were being brought to a shower. However, this was still not fast enough for the Nazis in implementing the final solution. They found that solution at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Here they experimented with a chemical called Zyklon B on 600 Soviet and 256 prisoners. They found it was fast, easy to use, efficient, and inexpensive. The successful results led to it being the main weapon in the final solution. At the end of the war, approximately 6 million Jews died in concentration camps,

Starting point is 00:11:16 and 5 million more non-Jews were also killed, leading to a total of approximately 11 million victims. Of this number, 2.7 million were killed. killed in the camps established after the Wansi Conference. At the end of the war, when it was clear that the Nazis were losing, they attempted to erase all evidence of their crimes. This was also done with the Wansy Conference papers. Of the 30 copies of the meeting minutes, all but one were destroyed. The only notes that survived were those of an attendee named Martin Luther, an undersecretary in the foreign office. This copy was used in the Nuremberg trials as proof of the genocide, and without this copy, we may never have known

Starting point is 00:11:57 that the meeting had even taken place. Overall, the impact of the Wansi conference was enormous and can't be understated. Fifteen people in a single room decided the fates of millions of people in a single day. The attendees showed no remorse or concerns about their potential victims. The lives of all these people were to them just a logistical problem. to be solved. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. Research and writing for this episode was provided by Olivia Ash.

Starting point is 00:12:37 My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. This is where everything happens that's outside of the show. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you two can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Wannsee Conference

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