The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration - Hardcover

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In January 1942 a group of top Nazi officials met in a villa on the shore of Lake Wannsee, near Berlin, for the purpose of planning the "final solution" of the "Jewish question." This Wannsee Conference and the document emanating from it, the Wannsee Protocol, are usually regarded as the moment when German policy toward the Jews departed irretrievably from systematic persecution and deportation and turned toward a deliberate policy of genocide. Holocaust deniers and others sometimes contend that, because Hitler was not present at this meeting and because the genocidal nature of the Final Solution was not spelled out explicitly, somehow this means that there was no deliberate policy from the top of genocide against the Jews. In this short, well-reasoned book, Roseman (contemporary history, Univ. of Southampton; A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany) presents a very clear exposition of the reasons behind the Wannsee meeting, what happened there, and its significance in the destruction of the Jews of Europe. Roseman's is the first thorough treatment in English devoted solely to this pivotal event. It should be in all four-year academic and larger public libraries. Libraries may also want to consider a chilling video reenactment, Heinz Schirk's The Wannsee Conference. Barbara Walden, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Although the publisher promises a "groundbreaking investigation," little if any new light is shed on the overture to the Holocaust by English historian Roseman (A Past in Hiding). The notorious 1942 meeting, in a villa in a posh Berlin suburb overlooking Lake Wannsee, reviewed, rather than approved, the "final solution of the Jewish question." Assent was a given. Heinrich Himmler's chief deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, chaired and dominated the conference, which dealt in coded euphemisms with the genocide already underway in occupied Poland and Russia. The protocol, or minutes, printed here as an appendix the most valuable part of this small book makes clear in a single sentence who bore authoritative responsibility: "Instead of emigration, the F�hrer has now given his approval for a new kind of solution, the evacuation of the Jews to the East." All 15 participants understood what "evacuation" meant, says Roseman. Working Jews to death would not eliminate "the most resistant elements" in the "final remnant," Heydrich coldly told those present, for by "natural selection" these would "form the germ cell of a new Jewish revival." That line more than any other, Roseman feels, mandated the murders without exception. Beyond that, he wanders, page after page and often repetitiously, through the bureaucratic Nazi pseudo-legal arguments about how many Jewish grandparents made one a Jew and how to deal with mixed marriages. Even the absolutist Himmler complained, "We tie our hands with all these stupid definitions." As ultimate Nazi racial policy, the Wannsee minutes, despite chilling ambiguities, were a "rhetorical canopy" behind which Roseman sees Hitler's "licensing." (May 7)Forecast: Because the Wannsee conference has attained iconic status since the protocol was discovered in 1947, a book with Wannsee as its focus may draw many curious readers beyond history specialists.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

In January 1942, 15 high-ranking Nazi officials met in a villa on the shore of Berlin's Lake Wannsee. The purpose of the meeting was to intensify and streamline plans already underway for the "Final Solution," which was designed to exterminate European Jewry. Despite the use of coded terms such as evacuation, the goal of genocide was clear. Yet, the significance of the conference is still disputed by historians. Was this the final irrevocable decision to physically destroy the Jews or simply a meeting to monitor the progress of a policy decision that had already been made? Were the participants fulfilling only the vague sentiments and threats of Hitler or operating under his explicit (but unwritten) instructions? Although historian Roseman cannot provide definitive answers to these questions, he utilizes a variety of sources to support several credible, but still speculative, assertions. The verbatim recounting of the words of such men as Heydrich and Eichmann as they calmly discuss mass murder is riveting and a cogent reminder that evil once embraced easily becomes bureaucratized. Jay Freeman
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