Wannsee Conference A Level Revision Notes

Lesson Snapshot:

Wannsee Conference
• On January 20, 1942, fifteen high-ranking Nazi party and German government leaders gathered for an important meeting. They met in a wealthy section of Berlin at a villa by a lake known as Wannsee. Reinhard Heydrich, who was SS chief Heinrich Himmler’s head deputy, held the meeting for the purpose of discussing the “final solution to the Jewish question in Europe” with key non-SS government leaders, including the secretaries of the Foreign Ministry and Justice, whose cooperation was needed.
• The “final solution” was the Nazis’ code name for the deliberate, carefully planned destruction, or genocide, of all European Jews. The Nazis used the vague term “final solution” to hide their policy of mass murder from the rest of the world. In fact, the men at Wannsee talked about methods of killing, about liquidation, about “extermination.”
• The Wannsee Conference, as it became known to history, did not mark the beginning of the “Final Solution.” The mobile killing squads were already slaughtering Jews in the occupied Soviet Union. Rather, the Wannsee Conference was the place where the “final solution” was formally revealed to non-Nazi leaders who would help arrange for Jews to be transported from all over German-occupied Europe to SS-operated “extermination” camps in Poland. Not one of the men present at Wannsee objected to the announced policy. Never before had a modern state committed itself to the murder of an entire people.
• The “Final Solution” was the Nazis’ code name for the deliberate, carefully planned destruction of European Jewry. The Wannsee Conference determined the way in which Hitler’s decision to solve the “Jewish Question” through systematic mass murder was to be transmitted to the appropriate ministries and bureaucracies. Invitees to the conference did not deliberate whether such a plan should be undertaken, but instead discussed the realisation of a decision that had already been made.

Worksheet Task:

• Aimed at Students studying across AS/A2 or equivalent
• Premium resource
• Use as you wish in the classroom or home environment
• Revision notes on the Wannsee Conference.
• Use with other Holocaust worksheets & resources.
• Includes challenging questions.