Wannsee Conference

A meeting of senior Nazi officials held on 20 January 1942 at a villa in Berlin-Wannsee. It coordinated administrative cooperation in the deportation and murder of Europe’s Jews.

Wannsee Protocol: The surviving record of the Wannsee Conference, summarizing its discussion of the deportation of Europe’s Jews. Its bureaucratic language documents the meeting’s coordination and euphemisms.
Holocaust: The genocide of approximately six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the Second World War. The conference belongs to the wider history of this genocide, which was already underway.
Hermann Göring: A leading Nazi official who headed the Four Year Plan and was a close associate of Adolf Hitler. His written authorization empowered Heydrich to prepare plans for the Final Solution.
Nuremberg trials: A series of postwar trials that prosecuted major Nazi leaders and other defendants for wartime crimes. Documents about Nazi administration, including the conference record, informed postwar investigations.
Intentionalism and functionalism: Two broad approaches to explaining how Hitler’s antisemitic aims and Nazi institutions shaped the Holocaust. The conference bears on debates about how policy developed, but does not settle them alone.
Final Solution: The Nazi plan and policy of murdering Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust. The conference addressed coordination of this broader genocidal policy.
Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, launched on 22 June 1941. The invasion opened vast territories where German forces began mass shootings of Jews.
Martin Luther (diplomat): A German Foreign Office official and Nazi Party member who attended the Wannsee Conference. He represented the Foreign Office and supported diplomatic cooperation in deportations.
Eichmann trial: The 1961 trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann, an organizer of Nazi deportations and mass murder. Eichmann’s role in preparing the protocol became part of the record of his career.
Holocaust historiography: The study of how historians have interpreted the Holocaust using documentary, material, and testimonial evidence. Scholars assess the protocol alongside other sources to establish the meeting’s significance.

Linked from 18 pages