Wannsee: The Road to the Final Solution

by Peter Longerich, Lesley Sharpe, Jeremy Noakes

Overview

The complete story of the Wannsee Conference, the meeting that paved the way for the Holocaust.

On 20 January 1942, fifteen men arrived for a meeting in a luxurious villa on the shores of the Wannsee in the far-western outskirts of Berlin. They came at the invitation of Reinhard Heydrich and were almost all high-ranking Nazi Party, government, and SS officials. The exquisite position by the lake, the imposing driveway up to the villa, culminating in a generously sized roundabout in front of the house, the expansive, carefully landscaped park, the generous suite of rooms that opened on to the park and the lake, the three-level terrace that stretched the entire garden side of the house,
and the winter garden with its marble fountain, all give today's visitor to the villa a good idea of its owner's aspiration to build a sophisticated, almost palatial structure as a testament to his cultivation and worldly success.

But the beauty of the situation stood in stark contrast to the purpose of the meeting to which the fifteen had come in January 1942: the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question'. According to the surviving records of the meeting, items on the agenda included the precise definition of exactly which group of people was to be affected, followed by a discussion of how upwards of eleven million people were to be deported and subjected to the toughest form of forced labour, and following on from this a discussion of how the survivors of this forced labour as well as those not capable of it were ultimately to be killed. The next item on the agenda was breakfast.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198834045
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/03/2022
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	40,701
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Peter Longerich was until 2015 Professor of Modern German History at Royal Holloway University of London, and was a founder of the College's Holocaust Research Centre. An internationally renowned authority on the Nazis, his previous publications include Holocaust: The Nazi Murder and Persecution of
the Jews (OUP 2010), Himmler (OUP 2012), and Hitler: A Life (OUP 2019).

Table of Contents

Prologue
1. The Background to the conference: the 'Removal of the Jews', 1933-1941
2. The Wannsee Conference
3. The 'final solution' becomes a reality
4. Conclusion: The Wannsee Conference in historical context
Appendix
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"a detailed, scholarly account... Mr. Longerich's in-depth deconstruction yields unparalleled insight into the Nazi regime's blood-soaked goals." — Diane Cole, Wall Street Journal

"... Longerich's latest book offers the opportunity to examine differences of interpretation of the Wannsee Conference and the wider background of Nazi Germany's last steps to the extermination of the Jews of Europe." — Christopher R Browning, New York Review of Books

"This scholarly account of a handful of Nazi murderers goes as far as it can in exposing the kind of thing that happens when the moral structure collapses, and in its fine and unstated way it is also a penance." — David Pryce-Jones, National Review

"Longerich's book provides context and analysis to that important document to plausibly explain the convergence of diverse decisions by components of the Nazi regime into the enormity of a radical solutionâthe Holocaust." — Janet Levy, American Thinker

"... an austerely sober, concise, yet comprehensive account... painstakingly precise" — Sheldon Kirshner, The Times of Israel

"... it's a difficult intellectual task to place Wannsee in the context of the overall development of the Holocaust. But Longerich... a world-renowned historian of the Nazi period — succeeds brilliantly... Skilfully translated from the original German by Lesley Sharpe and Jeremy Noakes, Longerich's
Wannsee is a masterful crash-course on the decision-making process of the Holocaust." — Laurence Rees, Daily Telegraph

"Debate about the meaning of Wannsee will doubtless continue, but Longerich's contribution is remarkable in its detail and depth. His book will remain indispensible to anyone interested in the topic." — Alun David, Jewish Chronicle

"Wannsee is a useful, thorough overview of small but significant slice of history, and should certainly be of interest to anyone who wants to learn more about the obscenity that was the Nazi effort at a 'final solution'." — , Complete Review

"For Holocaust scholars, this a must-read. A well-researched study of the meeting that determined many major decisions about the Holocaust." — Kirkus Reviews

"The mere fact that Peter Longerich ...has thoroughly investigated a most disgraceful period in Germany's history, and brought this book to bear to begin with, is resoundingly commendable." — David Marx, DavidMarxBookReviews.com

"A brilliant interpretation of the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi leaders hatched one plan among others for the 'final solution'." — Robert Gellately

From the Publisher

2021-09-29
The renowned scholar of Nazi history chronicles the 1942 conference at which the Nazis formed their plans for the mass murder of European Jews.

On Jan. 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Head Office, called a meeting at Wannsee, outside Berlin. German historian Longerich, author of acclaimed biographies of Hitler and Himmler, puts the conference in the context of the Holocaust as a whole. At the time, the Germans had already systematically murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews in territory overrun in the course of the war. The attendees at Wannsee, all high-ranking officials, showed no compunctions about committing their resources to a “final solution” involving the outright extermination of the remaining European Jews. The author puts considerable emphasis on the minutes of the conference, a single copy of which has survived, in a chapter analyzing that record and including a translation; the book also includes the complete minutes in German. One issue was how to deal with those who only had one Jewish parent, which the planners argued could be handled by sterilization. For the most part, however, the plan was to transport Jews to Eastern Europe, where those fit enough would be worked to death on projects like road construction. Women, children, and the infirm or elderly would be killed immediately. The planners originally assumed that the war against Russia would be won swiftly, opening up ample territory for the relocations. When the U.S. entered the war, they accelerated the schedule. “The spectre of a Jewish world conspiracy that dominated Hitler’s vision of the world and that of the Nazi leadership was now increasingly dictating their political actions,” writes Longerich. The author’s academic approach does not lessen the gravity of the often horrific subject matter, though it may reduce the interest for general readers. For Holocaust scholars, this a must-read.

A well-researched study of the meeting that determined many major decisions about the Holocaust.

Kirkus Reviews