Heydrich convened the conference to discuss “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question” on 20 January 1942 at a columned official residence set amid gardens on the Wannsee, a popular public lake outside Berlin. Present, Gerlach says, summarising, “were five representatives from the Security Police and the SD, eight politicians and functionaries from the civil administration, and two representatives from the party, one from the party chancellery and one from the Race and Resettlement Office of the ϟϟ.” Eichmann and Müller, now fully informed, were among them. “We called it the Conference of State Secretaries,” Eichmann told Avner Less. It has come to be known as the Wannsee Conference.
Masters of Death (285)
Its purpose was to announce the launching of the “final solution” of the Jewish question in Europe to leading government and party bureaucrats and to secure their cooperation in this project. Historians have not been able to determine with absolute certainty just when Hitler made the decision for systematic genocide. On July 31, 1941, six weeks after the ϟϟ Einsatzgruppen began murdering Soviet Jews in coordination with “Operation Barbarossa,” Heydrich was delegated the task of drawing up plans for “a total solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe”. It seems almost certain that he was given the green light to implement these plans by October 1941, when Jewish emigration was prohibited throughout Europe and preparations for the deportation of German Jews were put into place. Euthanasia “experts” had already been transferred to occupied Poland to set up the facilities for mass killings by poison gas. The ruthless racial and ideological war against the Soviet Union provided the conditions under which a systematic extermination program could be launched without generating wide publicity.
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| During my first visit in 2007 |
The Conference had originally been called for December 8, but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and the launching of the Soviet offensive against the German siege of Moscow forced a postponement. The minutes do not openly describe the killing programme, but none of the high-ranking participants from the various government ministries could have been in any doubt what Heydrich meant when he said that the remnant of Jews who survived forced labour would have to be “appropriately dealt with.” Adolf Eichmann, the specialist on the “Jewish question” in the Reich Security Main Office run by Heydrich, provided the population statistics, which overstated the number of Jews in Europe by some two million. Much of the conference was taken up by the question of whether Jews of mixed ancestry (Mischlinge) and Jews in mixed marriages were to be included in the “final solution.” The ϟϟ was forced by considerations of public morale to respect these distinctions in Germany itself. In the occupied areas, however, the Nazis made no exceptions for part-Jews or Jews in mixed marriages.
Stackelberg & Winkle The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts (345-346)
By the time of the conference, important preliminary decisions had been made on individual points discussed at the meeting. Hinrich Lohse had asked in a letter "Subject: Jewish executions" on November 15, 1941 from Berlin:
Should this be done regardless of age and gender and economic interests [for example, the Wehrmacht in skilled workers in armaments factories]? It goes without saying that the purification of Jews from the East is an urgent task; but their solution must be brought into harmony with the needs of the war economy . So far, I have not been able to take such an instruction from the orders on the Jewish question in the 'brown folder' or from other decrees.
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| During my 2020 senior class trip |
The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories replied on December 18, 1941 that in the meantime, oral discussions had clarified and that economic issues should be "fundamentally disregarded in the settlement of the problem". On December 16, 1941, at a government meeting, Hans Frank spoke of the intention to make the General Government "free of Jews" and referred to the upcoming "big meeting in Berlin" at Heydrich's. It is not clear why the conference was postponed by about six weeks. The historian Christian Gerlach in his book Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord… interprets Hitler's declaration of December 12, 1941, that the extermination of the Jews must be a necessary consequence of the world war that has now begun, as a decision on the Holocaust resulting in a new situation that required fundamental changes to the plans proposed by Heydrich. Such an interpretation however is shared only by a few specialist historians.
At the
memorial and educational site "House of the Wannsee Conference"
my students conduct self-guided tours to their peers over roughly two hours where, in small groups, they gather information on the topic of a chosen room, supervised and supported by the site's educators before presenting their findings to the whole cohort. The main theme they are presented with involves the widespread assumption that the Europe-wide genocide was
decided as an "almost irreversible error in historiography and
journalism" although the conference itself remains of great historical
importance: Here the ongoing genocide was coordinated and brought to the
attention of the highest officials of all important ministries, in
which numerous people subsequently provided organisational support as “desk perpetrators." Through the site's programme they address
the persecution and murder of European Jews, the history of National
Socialism, the events that led up to this history and its aftermath. A number of my students managed to use the experience to write successful research papers for the IBDP's Extended Essay and Internal Assessment in History.
On the ground floor of the house, the permanent exhibition "The Wannsee Conference and the Genocide of European Jews" provides information about the process of exclusion, persecution, expulsion, ghettoisation and extermination of Jews in the German sphere of influence between 1933 and 1945. When we visited in October 2020 the permanent exhibition was revised again and now bears the heading “The meeting at Wannsee and the murder of European Jews”. It was here at the conference that the responsibilities for the deportation and extermination campaigns started were clarified with the measures for their implementation coordinated and their timings determined. Finally, the groups of those Jews who were destined for deportation and thus for extermination were defined here. This required the cooperation of a multitude of institutions that had not previously been informed about the “final solution”.
The contents recorded in the minutes of the Wannsee Conference include Heydrich's announcement that he had been appointed by Göring as “Commissioner for the preparation of the final solution to the European Jewish question” and that the Reichsführer ϟϟ and Chief of the German Police- Himmler- was responsible who wanted to use the conference to coordinate with the central authorities directly involved. Heydrich reported on the emigration of around 537,000 Jews from the "Altreich", Austria, as well as Bohemia and Moravia, which were to be replaced by "the evacuation of the Jews to the East" after "prior approval by the Führer". Around eleven million Jews would be considered for the “final solution to the European Jewish question”. This number also included "religious Jews" from the unoccupied part of France, England, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and other neutral or opposing states outside the German sphere of influence.
The protocol further stated that In large labour columns, with separation of the sexes, the able-bodied Jews are being led into these areas to build roads, although a large part will undoubtedly be lost through natural reduction. Any remaining stock will have to be treated accordingly, since this is undoubtedly the most resilient part, since this, representing a natural selection, is to be addressed as the nucleus of a new Jewish construction when released.
In the process, "Europe from west to east" would be combed through because of “socio-political necessities” and to free up living space in the Reich territory. First, the German Jews were to be transported to transit ghettos and from there further to the east. Jews over the age of 65 and Jews with war invalidity or bearers of the Iron Cross I would be sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto which would "turn off the many interventions in one fell swoop". After possible difficulties in the “evacuation operation” in the “occupied or influenced European territories” had been addressed and discussed, the question of how to deal with “Jewish mixed race” and “mixed marriages” was addressed.
The protocol further states that the Nuremberg Laws should "to a certain extent" form the basis for discussions. In fact, Heydrich's suggestions went far beyond that: As a rule, "mixed race 1st degree" ("half-Jews") were to be treated like "full Jews" regardless of their religious affiliation. Exceptions were only made for those “half-breeds” who were married to a “ German-blooded ” partner and who had not remained childless. Other exemptions could only be granted by the highest party authorities. Every "1st degree hybrid" who was allowed to remain in the German Reich was to be sterilised . "Mixed race 2nd degree" ("quarter Jews ") were as a rule to be put on an equal footing with the "German-blooded", unless they were classified as Jews due to their conspicuous Jewish appearance or poor police and political record. In the case of existing "mixed marriages" between "full Jews" and "German-blooded" people, the Jewish part should either be "evacuated" or sent to Theresienstadt if resistance from German relatives was to be expected. Further regulations were addressed for “mixed marriages” in which one or both spouses were “mixed race”. These detailed proposals were rejected as impractical by State Secretary Stuckart, who had been involved in drafting the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. He suggested that the compulsory divorce of "mixed marriages" be made mandatory and that all "first-degree mixed race" be sterilised. Since no agreement could be reached on these points, these detailed questions were postponed to the follow-up conferences. Josef Bühler, Hans Frank's State Secretary in the Office of the Governor General, urged Heydrich at the conference to start the measures on Polish territory in the so-called "General Government" because he saw no transport problems there and "to solve the Jewish question in this area as quickly as possible." In any case, the majority of these Jews were considered unable to work and "as carriers of the disease are an eminent danger."
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Standing in front of a display containing the minutes of the conference in 2017, and the room recreated for the outstanding BBC documentary series Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution' (2005). Of
the fourteen participants invited and sat around a table in this room
discussing the logistics of mass murder, eight held doctorates or
comparable university degrees. The minutes of the Wannsee Conference,
copies of which were displayed within the glass of the table I'm
standing over (since changed after a recent refurbishment post-Wuhan
'flu) were used in the opening speech in the trial against the Race and
Settlement Main Office and quoted a few weeks later in the indictment
for the Wilhelmstrasse trial. Although there was not yet an
implementable overall plan for the “final solution”, the protocol is
considered to be the key source for the organisation of genocide which
Holocaust deniers therefore claim is fake, usually by referring to a
book by Robert Kempner in which he mixed images of facsimiles with
copies despite nevertheless correctly reproducing the text itself.
Historians Norbert Kampe and Christian Mentel have refuted these false allegations.
that at the end of this Wannsee Conference, Heydrich, Muller and my humble self, settled down comfortably by the fireplace, and that then for the first time I saw Heydrich smoke a cigar or cigarette, and I was thinking: today Heydrich is smoking, something I have not seen before. And he drinks cognac - since I had not seen Heydrich take any alcoholic drink in years. After this Wannsee Conference we were sitting together peacefully, and not in order to talk shop, but in order to relax after the long hours of strain.
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| 2020 Bavarian International School class trip |
The text of the protocol documents the intention to murder all European Jews, the agreement in principle and the effective participation of the Nazi state apparatus in the genocide. The phrase “treated accordingly” in Eichmann's rendering of Heydrich's introductory speech is seen by some historians as a typical cloak for the murder of Jews who survived forced labour, as the context does not allow any other conclusion. Hans Mommsen does contradict this by asserting that it was by no means a blank phrase; Heydrich actually planned to exterminate a large part of the Jews through labour, but the final solution to the Jewish question was only a long-term goal, before which the surviving Jews would still be transported further east. Here the settlement or reservation solution was renewed, as in the Nisko and Madagascar plans considered from 1939 to 1941 which "can hardly be viewed as a more humane alternative." According to Eichmann's own testimony in his trial, the actual language was unmistakable: "It was spoken of killing and eliminating and exterminating." .gif)
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Among specialist historians, most deduce from the extermination campaigns that had already started and the minutes of the conference itself that it had previously been decided by the highest authorities to expand the murder campaigns into a systematic genocide, to which all European Jews without distinction should fall victim. The figures for the overall planning included the Jews from England and Spain: their inclusion was unrealistic in view of the unfavourable development of the war for the Nazis at the time. Peter Longerich comes to the conclusion that, even after the conference, there was no fixed plan as to how long and by what means the genocide should be carried out. However, it can be proven that afterwards “the deportations were extended to the entire German area” and a “comprehensive forced labour program” began to take effect. 
Thomas Sandkühler points out that the decisive effect was that up to the conference in Eastern Galicia, Jews classified as “unable to work” were murdered; only then did the murder order apply to all Jews except for the very few Jews who had been declared indispensable in the oil industry. The Wannsee Conference was thus a bureaucratic clarification of the responsibilities of the agencies involved and the group of people to be murdered. Such a decision could in no case be made by subordinate persons, but only at the very highest level and only then could the leadership of the Reich Security Main Office be established and cooperation and coordination between the agencies involved ensured.
When it was over, Heydrich was relieved and satisfied. “Happily,” he would write a month later, “[the conference] has settled the basic outlines for the practical implementation of the Final Solution of the Jewish question.” His intention had been to establish his ultimate authority over the Final Solution. His colleagues in the government and the party had been more than willing to accede responsibility for the mass murder of eleven million people to the ϟϟ. “After the conference,” Eichmann says in his memoir, “as I recall, Heydrich, Müller and your humble servant sat cozily around a fireplace. I noticed for the first time that Heydrich was smoking. Not only that, but he had a cognac. Normally he touched nothing alcoholic. The only other time I had seen him drinking was at an office party years before…. [So] we sat around peacefully after our Wannsee Conference, not just talking shop but giving ourselves a rest after so many taxing hours.”Masters of Death (288)
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| 2016 class trip |
A third of the conference participants ended up not surviving the war. Heydrich died on June 4, 1942 as a result of an assassination attempt in Prague as related on my page about Nazi-era Prague. Roland Freisler was killed in a British bombing attack. Both Rudolf Lange and Alfred Meyer committed suicide. Martin Luther died in the spring of 1945 as a result of his imprisonment in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Heinrich Müller was considered dead by the post-war authorities. Before the minutes of the Wannsee Conference were discovered, two participants were already executed for war crimes committed- Eberhard Schöngarth was sentenced to death and executed by a British military tribunal in 1946 for personally ordering the shooting of a prisoner of war. Josef Bühler was sentenced to death in Kraków in 1946. Wilhelm Kritzinger died in 1947 before the opening of the Wilhelmstrasse Trial; Erich Neumann died in 1948. Georg Leibbrandt and Gerhard Klopfer were both released from custody in 1949. Otto Hofmann was sentenced to 25 years in prison in the follow-up trial of the ϟϟ Race and Settlement Main Office in Nuremberg in 1948, but was released from Landsberg correctional facility in 1954. Wilhelm Stuckart was sentenced to a sentence of three years and ten months in the Wilhelmstrasse Trial, but was released in 1949 as internment detention was taken into account. After the war as already related above, Adolf Eichmann fled to Argentina, but was kidnapped by the Israeli secret service Mossad, brought to Israel and executed in Jerusalem in 1962 after his sensational trial.
The Wannsee Conference is often regarded as the determining factor for the development of the Final Solution, reflected in Longerich’s argument that the scope of deportation, (i.e. defining “who was Jewish, who was Mischling,”) was a prerequisite for determining “who (if anybody) should be spared.” Thus Wannsee significantly broadened the scope of genocide involving Mischlinge, particularly in occupied territories, de jure bearing historical responsibility. Additionally, both Heydrich’s invitation letter and the protocol's opening convey the message of “a genocidal programme only now taking shape”. Wannsee's controversial purpose leaves room for interpretation on its overall. Lannahan argues genocide had been decided earlier and the concept of a “coming Final Solution” part of Heydrich’s self-aggrandisement plan and “love of the political limelight.”] Eichmann’s testimony supports the argument that Heydrich’s focus was “to extend the scope of his influence.” Eichmann’s testimony does serve to mitigate his personal role and portray Heydrich as the authority figure. Rees however, considers Wannsee a larger attempt on behalf of the ϟϟ to establish their “control of the whole deportation process.” The difficulty in understanding Wannsee's purpose frames the greater debate on its significance, though the protocol and invitation suggest that Himmler and his emissary considered it significant in determining the Holocaust. 
However, if Wannsee was an administrative meeting for planning the coordination of previous initiatives and government cooperation, why ignore the pressing issues of finding destinations for transport? Claims that Wannsee significantly shaped deportation arraignments, can be effectively disregarded when studying the list of attendees and the lack of any transport specialist or member of the Financial Ministry. Hence, Wannsee was not fully significant in determining the practical aspects of committing genocide but rather to the development of the Final Solution, by determining the scope of deportation, and planning government and policy cooperation for the Final Solution.
Whilst Wannsee has been described as “the single most important event in the history of the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’,” this is, Rees argues, an epithet “it does not quite merit” given that the bureaucracy of genocide was “decided elsewhere,” though precisely where, when and by whom is subject to debate. Rees, taking a quasi-intentionalist stance, asserts Hitler’s discussions in December 1941 were most significant to the decision making process given Hitler’s agentive control “made all this suffering enter the world.” Göbbels’s diary supports the intentionalist argument. However, Overy and Roseman have examined Wannsee’s role in the wider context of genocide, limiting it to “one of many stepping stones in the middle of a long messy process of turning vicious anti-Semitic discrimination into stark mass murder.” Nevertheless, Eichmann’s testimony in which he claims the preparatory work (prior decisions and genocidal activity and gassing) were already “known to the participants of the Wannsee Conference”, support the conclusion that genocide and its means were conceptualised elsewhere.  |
| 2017 School trip |
After the the war, the Red Army and later the American Army used the property. From 1947 the SPD moved in and used the house as a school camp. In 1966 the historian Joseph Wulf , who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp , founded an association for research into National Socialism. The building was to be rededicated as a documentation centre and used by the association. The plan remained controversial for a long time; it was not until 1988 that the villa and garden were reconstructed according to historical preservation criteria and for use as a memorial. In 1992 the memorial and educational centre that would become the House of the Wannsee Conference opened in the rooms of the villa; it bears the name of Joseph Wulf. Deeply traumatised by his camp experiences, lonely after the death of his wife and disappointed by the lack of interest in the Holocaust or seeking justice, Wulf killed himself on October 10, 1974. In his last letter to his son David on August 2, 1974, he wrote down a list of his disappointments, for example “9. I know that after 1945 Ilya Ehrenburg wrote an 'In memoriam' for the murdered Jews and the Soviet Union did not allow the book to appear” and “I published 18 books here about the Third Reich, and none of them had any effect. You can document yourself utterly with the Germans, it can be the most democratic government in Bonn - and the mass murderers go around freely, have their houses and grow flowers."
My students in the Joseph Wulf Library, located on the building’s second floor and which has remained part of the memorial’s educational concept from the start. The collection focuses on the history of the Jews in Europe, anti-Semitism, persecution and genocide, National Socialism, racism, neo-Nazism, remembrance culture, treatment of Nazi history after 1945 and memorial site educational studies. The book collection currently includes some 40,000 monographs and 18,000 periodical volumes. In addition the library holds a large collection of documentary and feature films and a considerable set of periodicals and documents on microfilm and microfiche. My students were able to search through various databases for their IBDP internal assessments in History.
The Wannsee Conference is the subject of two feature films. Here is the start of the 1984 German television production Die Wannseekonferenz which presents the conference in real time. Directed by Heinz Schirk based on the play by Paul Mommertz. It shows a disturbing performance of charm and calculation by Dietrich Mattausch as Heydrich with Gerd Böckmann as Eichmann. In 1987 the cinema version followed which was filmed at the conference venue and was based on records and minutes kept of the conference, spoken by unnervingly convincing actors in carefully reconstructed surroundings and wearing meticulously authentic uniforms. In it however, Kritzinger is portrayed as a skeptic which does not correspond to the
historical facts that have been handed down. Here is the entrance as shown in the film and from the same position during my 2021 class trip: 
The film won numerous international prizes, including the Adolf Grimme Prize. in his review for Der Spiegel, Heinz Höhne was unimpressed:
Screenwriter Paul Mommertz, 54, is delighted: 'An optimal film, on a remarkable level.' The praise goes above all to the director Heinz Schirk, and rightly so: he understood it with a squad of proven actors, above all Dietrich Mattausch in the role of Heydrich and Gerd Böckmann as Eichmann, the Mommertz play that atmosphere of racist mania for cleansing and callous bureaucratic perfection that made the Wannsee Conference the most horrific Hitlerite in Germany. But what is presented here as a document-safe reconstruction of contemporary history, on closer inspection, proves to be a product of televised fabulous fabulousness and combination. Because: This is not the Wannsee Conference as historians know it. It's the Wannsee Conference a la Paul Mommertz.
Wannseekonferenz appears to be the better movie with Conspiracy coming across as a flashy imitation, although watching both films is instructive. Both have the same people attending the conference, but how each attendee is portrayed at the conference is strikingly different. Most of the attendees in Conspiracy (except for Dr. Klopfer) are viewed as flawed intellectuals, but full of grace, charm and manners (which makes a nice stark comparison with what they are discussing). Almost all of the attendees in Die Wannseekonferenz (except for the female secretary) are shown as crude, corrupt pigs that differ with each other only as to how to divide their 'power'. It would be interesting to research the 'real' Major Lange. The crude drunken Major Lange of Die Wannseekonferenz seems more likely to be butchering the Jews of Riga than the soft spoken, charming, well-mannered Major Lange of Conspiracy.
During my 2017 visit and the same site as it appears in the German made-for-television film Die Wannseekonferenz of 2022, directed by Matti Geschonneck on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the conference. Wolfgang Höbel praised the film in Der Spiegel as a "strict, grimly determined masterpiece" depicting "with icy meticulousness a bureaucratic meeting with breakfast, which served to arrange the murder of millions and to organise it as efficiently as possible". The Lexikon des internationalen Films praised it as a “depressing documentary about the cold-blooded strategists of the Holocaust” that “recreates the events, which last just over an hour, almost in real time, free of staging flourishes and with a top-class cast.” That said, Andreas Kilb criticised the film's acting in which the actors sometimes speak "the language of comics", as they play "with their faces turned to the audience". The only exception is Jakob Diehl, who plays his Gestapo character Müller largely "in stubborn silence": "Fifteen men decide on the genocide, but only one gives it away on his face." By meticulously reconstructing the sets and the historical details, Geschonneck exacerbated the "dilemma of historical television", which consists in being all too easily mistaken for an authentic historical source. Timo Niemeier dissented, stating that the film "demands a lot from the audience" and is therefore "a must-see". The film "breaks with established film mechanisms and makes the Nazis' perfidious plan and their mentality all too clear. The way the mass murder of millions of people is discussed here as if it were a completely normal major project of the administrative apparatus, in which only details and competencies are at stake is simply breathtaking." Finally, in a detailed review Peter Kümmel praised the film in Die Zeit as "great" and wrote how the production "has the effect of making its viewers ask themselves: 'Are circumstances conceivable under which I would have attended this conference?' One is so spellbound that one does not miss a word", concluding that "[t]elevision cannot be better than this".
In his most recent work, The European Civil War, 1917–1945, Ernst Nolte comes dangerously close to validating the deniers. Without offering any proof, he claims that more “Aryans” than Jews were murdered at Auschwitz. According to Nolte this fact has been ignored because the research on the Final Solution comes to an “overwhelming degree from Jewish authors.” He described the deniers’ arguments as not “without foundation” and their motives as “often honorable.” The fact that among the core deniers were non‑Germans and some former inmates of concentration camps was evidence, according to Nolte, of their honorable intentions. Nolte even advanced the untenable notion that the conference may never have happened, disregarding the fact that participants in that meeting have subsequently attested to it and that a full set of minutes survived. This suggestion implies that if Wannsee was a hoax, many other Holocaust‑related events that we have been led to believe actually happened may also be hoaxes. He suggests, in an argument evocative of Butz’s analysis, that the Einsatzgruppen killed numerous Jews on the Eastern Front because “preventive security” demanded it since a significant number of the partisans were Jews. While he acknowledges that the action may have been carried to an extreme, it remains essentially justified. Another of his unsubstantiated charges was that the documentary film Shoah demonstrates that the ϟϟ units in the death camps “were victims in their way too.”
The Wannsee Conference was a secret meeting on January 20, 1942 in a villa on theGreat WannseeinBerlin. Fifteen high-ranking representatives of theNational Socialist Reich governmentand theSS authoritiescame together under the chairmanship ofSS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrichin his function as chief of theSecurity Police(SiPo) and theSecurity Service of the Reichsführer SS(SD) to organize theHolocaustof the Jews in detail and to coordinate the cooperation of the authorities involved. Villa of the Wannsee Conference,Am Grosser Wannsee56/58 (2014) Hermann Göring's order to Reinhard Heydrich dated July 31, 1941 Secret Reich matter: Minutes of the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, Berlin A document from the Wannsee Conference; Here is the prepared list of the Jewish population in Europe. Contrary to popular belief, the main purpose of the conference was not to decide on the Holocaust – this decision had already been made with the mass murders that had been taking place in areas occupied by the German Reich since thenattack on the Soviet Union(22 June 1941) – but to organize the deportation of the entire Jewish population of Europe to the East for extermination and to ensure the necessary coordination. [ 1 ] The participants set the timetable for further mass killings, increasingly expanded the groups of victims to be targeted and agreed on cooperation under the leadership of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), which was led by Heydrich. Heydrich was commissioned byHermann Göringon July 31, 1941, to organize the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question ." In December 1941, Heydrich invited secretaries of state from various Reich ministries and the General Government, aministerial directorof theReich Chancellery, and senior officials from theMain Office of the Security Police, the Security Service, and theParty Chancelleryto the conference. The scribe was SS-ObersturmbannführerAdolf Eichmann, Heydrich'sadvisor for "Jewish affairs. " The term "Wannsee Conference", which was only coined after theSecond World War, came from the venue of the conference, the guest house of the Security Police and Security Service ,Am Grossen Wannsee56/58. The former Villa Marlier inBerlin-Wannseewas built in 1914/1915 according to plans byPaul Otto August Baumgarten . Today the house is a memorial to the Holocaust. Table of contents prehistory National Socialist “Jewish policy” Anti-Semitismwas one of the central components of National Socialist ideology, which determined Nazi policy. In his workMein Kampf, Adolf Hitlerpropagated ideas aimed at the extermination of the Jews. On January 30, 1939, Hitler announced for the first time in a Reichstag speech that “the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe” would be the result of war. Propaganda MinisterJoseph Goebbelsreferred to this in an article forDas Reichon 16 December 1941: [ 2 ] "We are currently witnessing the fulfillment of this prophecy and Judaism is fulfilling a fate that is hard but more than deserved. Pity or even regret is completely inappropriate." In 1942, Hitler spoke publicly five times about his threat and its realization, most recently on November 8, 1942: [ 3 ] "You will still remember the Reichstag session in which I declared: If Jewryimaginesthat it can bring about an international world war to exterminate the European races, then the result will not be the extermination of the European races, but the extermination of Jewry in Europe. You have always laughed at me as a prophet. Of those who laughed then, countless numbers no longer laugh today, and those who are still laughing now will perhaps not do so in a while either." The intended goals and results of National Socialist policy towards the Jews were therefore obvious. Nevertheless, details of the decision-making process that ultimately led to the Holocaust are insufficiently documented. The exact course of this process within the Nazi regime is still unclear in many details and continues to be intensively discussed inHolocaust research. The decision on the Holocaust Among the documents that have been preserved is Göring's order to Heydrich to draw up an "overall plan" regarding costs, organization and implementation for the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". It was issued on July 31, 1941, five weeks after thatattack on the Soviet Unionon June 22, which brought millions of Jews within the reach of the National Socialist regime. [ 4 ] In the first months of theGerman-Soviet War,leading officials of the Nazi regime made several statements that suggested thatgenocidewas being planned. This is seen as an indication that the final decisions that led to the Holocaust must have been made in the autumn of 1941. On December 12, 1941, Hitler gathered theReich and Gau leadersof theNSDAPin his private rooms in the Reich Chancellery. Goebbels noted this in his diary: “With regard to the Jewish question, the Führer is determined to come clean. […] World War is here, the annihilation of Judaism must be the necessary consequence.” [ 5 ] Four days later, on December 16, 1941, Goebbels published the above-quoted article in Das Reich . [ 6 ] Some historians consider the Gauleiter meeting with Hitler on December 12th to be the latest date on which the decision to systematically exterminate the Jews was made. [ 7 ] Others doubt that there was even a specific point in time at which such a decision was made and a correspondingFührer orderissued. They cite a quote from the minutes of the Wannsee Conference: Instead of forcing people to emigrate, "the evacuation of the Jews to the East, after prior approval by the Führer" was the possible solution. This did not constitute a formal decision for genocide, the murder of all Jews; Hitler was reluctant to commit himself and was only a "legitimizing authority" in a radicalization process that was still progressive gradually and which accumulated through local initiatives, self-inflicted supposed constraints and eliminatory anti-Semitism. [ 8 ] However, most historians conclude from the sources that a decisive step in the decision-making process for genocide was taken in late autumn 1941. [ 9 ] At that time, the failure of the war against the Soviet Union, which had been started asa blitzkrieg , was becoming apparent. This shattered the last half-baked plans to deport the Jews far to the east, after the resettlement projects to NiskoandMadagascarhad already been shelved as unfeasible. A clear written order from Hitler to murder all Jews in the German sphere of influence has not yet been found. It is probable that no such formal order existed. However, letters and orders from high-ranking Nazi leaders refer several times to verbal orders from the leader to exterminate the Jews. These orders were apparently mostly heavily worded, as were Heydrich's orders for specific mass murder operations. What was actually ordered only became clear when the measures were implemented. However, these could only be initiated and carried out with Hitler's express consent. On this point, all specialist historians agree, despite all other different interpretations. [ 10 ] Based on the public statements of Hitler, Goebbels,Himmlerand other high-ranking Nazi officials, any commander - for example theSD task force- could assume this consent for murder operations against Jews. Deportations and mass murders until the end of 1941 The National Socialist approach against the Jews became more radical after 1933 through exclusion, disenfranchisement, forced emigration, physical persecution and expropriation. Since the beginning of the war, ghettoization, deportations and mass murders were added in militarily occupied areas of Eastern and Southeastern Europe. However, these steps did not take place everywhere in a chronological and planned sequence, but in some cases in constant alternation and sometimes chaotically alongside one another. With theinvasion of Poland in 1939, mass murders of civilians in Poland began. A task forceformed "for special purposes" underUdo von Woyrschshot around 7,000 Jews by the end of the year, [ 11 ] [ 12 ] but was strongly criticized by some army commanders, such as the commander-in-chief of the General Government,Johannes Blaskowitz. In 2002, the historianHans Mommseninterpreted these murders as haphazard individual initiatives. [ 13 ] From June 22, 1941, four task forces set up in May systematically and on a large scale shot state officials,partisansand - preferably Jewish - "hostages" behind the entireEastern Frontof the GermanWehrmacht. Partly with them, partly without them, units of theOrdnungspolizeiand theWaffen-SSunderHans-Adolf Prützmann,Erich von dem Bach-ZelewskiandFriedrich Jeckelnmurdered Jews in large numbers in the same area. [ 14 ] With the massacre of Hungarian and Ukrainian Jews inKamenets-Podolsk at the end of August 1941, mass shootings affected tens of thousands for the first time and thus reached a new dimension. The Babyn Yar massacrein September/early October 1941, in which more than 33,000 Jewish residentsof Kievwere murdered, is the best known of such mass shootings. The mass murders increasingly moved towards the indiscriminate murder of all Jews. In the overcrowded ghettosset up by the National Socialists, Jews died every day from malnutrition, infectious diseases and arbitrary violence by their guards. The "extermination through forced labor," which the conference protocol called a method of the "final solution," had already taken place: for example, during the construction of an important "through road IV" fromLembergto the Ukraine. [ 15 ] In October,mass deportations of German Jewsfrom the Reich began. On Himmler's orders of September 18, signed byKurt Daluege , 20,000 Jews and 5,000 " gypsies" were deported toŁódźby November 4. [ 16 ] On October 23, 1941, Himmler banned all Jews in the German sphere of influence from emigrating. [ 17 ] "At the Führer's request", another large concentration camp was to be built nearbyRiga . [ 18 ] On 8 November 1941,Hinrich Lohse,Reich Commissionerfor the occupied Baltic states, learned that 25,000 "ReichandProtectorate Jews" were to be deported toMinskand Riga. In order to accommodate the latter, Jeckeln had a total of 27,800 residents of the Riga ghetto shot on Himmler's personal orders from 29 November to 1 December and on 8 and 9 December 1941. [ 19 ] [ 20 ] Among the victims was the first transport of 1,053Berlin Jews, who were shot immediately after their arrival on November 30th. Himmler's veto against this on the same day came too late. The historianRaul Hilbergsuspects that it was only intended to appease Lohse's expected protests anyway. [ 20 ] According to Dieter Pohl's interpretation , Himmler feared that a lack of news from the deportees would quickly lead to rumors in Germany about their liquidation. [ 21 ] On 25 and 29 November, 5,000 Jews from the Reich and the Protectorate who were actually destined for Riga were shot nearbyKaunas. [ 22 ] TheBelzec extermination camphad been under construction since November 1941; its firstgas chambers,with a small capacity, were intended for the murder of Jews who were unable to work. Preparations for construction also began for theSobibor extermination campand theMajdanek concentration camp in the Lublindistrict . From the beginning of December 1941, gas vans were used to kill Jews inKulmhof (Chelmno) . All four task forces now had access to them. By the time the Wannsee Conference was convened, the murderers, with Hitler's approval, had killed around 900,000 Jews from Germany,Polandand the Soviet Union in the areas occupied by the Wehrmacht. [ 23 ] Now, as a final escalation stage, the systematic murder of all Jews in the German sphere of influence was to be organized. Conference preparations On January 8, 1942, Heydrich invites Undersecretary of StateLutherfor January 20, 1942. The Wannsee Conference was originally scheduled for 9 December 1941 at 12 noon at the office of theInternational Criminal Police Commission (ICPK), Am Kleiner Wannsee No. 16. [ 24 ] Since August 1940, Heydrich had served as chairman of the IKPK. A few days later, Heydrich's office corrected the meeting location to the guest house of the Security Police and the SD, Am Grosser Wannsee 56–58. Heydrich's invitation to a "meeting followed by breakfast" was sent by Adolf Eichmann on November 29th. He emphasizes the "extraordinary importance" of a comprehensive solution to the Jewish question and enclosed Göring's authorization letter to Heydrich dated July 31. He also confirmed that Jews from the Reich territory, Bohemia and Moravia had been "evacuated" since October 15, 1941, meaning that the deportations had long been underway. As head of Gestapo Department IV B 4, Eichmann was responsible for "Jewish and evacuation matters" and later organized most of the deportations of Jews from Germany, France, the Netherlands, Hungary and other occupied territories to the labor and extermination camps. He also provided Heydrich with templates and figures for his introductory speech and prepared the minutes of the conference. Other Nazi ministries also prepared the meeting. On December 8, Undersecretary of StateMartin Lutherreceived a compilation of the "wishes and ideas of theForeign Officefor the proposed overall solution to the Jewish question in Europe". This recommended the deportation of all Jews of German nationality living in the German Reich, as well as Serbian,statelessand Hungarian Jews. The governments of Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia should be offered the deportation of Jews living in their countries to the East. Furthermore, pressure should be put on all European governments to enact Jewish laws based on theNuremberg Laws . [ 25 ] After Japan'sattack on Pearl Harboron December 7, 1941, Hitler invited the Reichstag to meet on December 9 to announce thedeclaration of war against the USA . Some of those invited to the Wannsee Conference and Heydrich himself were members of the Reichstag; therefore, Heydrich had the conference cancelled at short notice. [ 26 ] A note from the meeting, which spoke of a postponement "because of the Reichstag session", confirms his reason for cancellation. [ 27 ] On January 8, 1942, he had new invitations sent out for January 20, 1942. [ 28 ] By then, important preliminary decisions had already been made on individual points discussed at the conference. Hinrich Lohse had askedGeorg Leibbrandtin a letter to theReich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories(RMfdbO) “Subject: Execution of Jews” on November 15, 1941: "Should this be done without regard to age and gender and economic interests (eg the Wehrmacht's interest in skilled workers in armaments factories)? Of course, the cleaning of theEastof Jews is a priority; however, its solution must be brought into line with the needs of thewar economy . I have not been able to find such an instruction either in the orders on the Jewish question in the ' brown folder' or in other decrees." [ 29 ] Otto Bräutigamof the RMfdbO replied on 18 December 1941: "The Jewish question should now be clarified through oral discussions. Economic concerns should not be taken into account in the settlement of the problem . In addition, any questions that arise are requested to be settled directly with thesenior SS and police leader. On behalf of the groom." [ 30 ] On 16 December 1941 , Hans Frankspoke at a government meeting of the intention to make the General Government "free of Jews" and referred to the upcoming "big meeting in Berlin" with Heydrich. [ 31 ] It is unclear why the conference was postponed for a full six weeks. The historianChristian Gerlachinterprets Hitler's declaration of December 12, 1941, that the extermination of the Jews was a necessary consequence of the World War that had now broken out, as a decision for the Holocaust. This created a new situation that required fundamental changes to the plans proposed by Heydrich. [ 32 ] This interpretation is shared by only a few professional historians. The conference Participant Wannsee Protocol: The first page of the list of participants At Heydrich's invitation, 15 people attended the conference: members of the SS, who had already begun the mass murder in organizational and practical terms, as well as high-ranking representatives of the NSDAP, the civil administration in the occupied territories of Poland and the Soviet Union, and some Reich ministries: [ 33 ] Reinhard Heydrich(SS-Obergruppenführer, keynote speaker and chairman) Adolf Eichmann(SS-Obersturmbannführer, Secretary of the Minutes) Josef Bühler(State Secretary in the Office of theGovernor GeneralinKrakow) Roland Freisler(State Secretary in theReich Ministry of Justice, later President ofthe People's Court) Otto Hofmann(SS-Gruppenführer, Chief of theRace and Settlement Main Office of the SS) Gerhard Klopfer(SS-Oberführer, Ministerial Director in the NSDAPParty Chancellery , Head of Constitutional Law Department III) Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger(Ministerial Director in theReich Chancellery) Rudolf Lange(SS-Sturmbannführer, Commander of the Security Police and SD for Latvia in representation of his commanderWalter Stahlecker) Georg Leibbrandt(Reich Office Director,Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories) Martin Luther(Under Secretary of State in the Foreign Office) Alfred Meyer(State Secretary in theReich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Gauleiter Westphalia-North) [ 34 ] Heinrich Müller(SS-Gruppenführer, Head of Office IV (Gestapo) of the Reich Security Main Office) Erich Neumann(State Secretary in the Office of the Commissioner for theFour-Year Plan) Karl Eberhard Schöngarth(SS-Oberführer, Commander of the Security Police and the SD in the General Government) Wilhelm Stuckart(State Secretary inthe Reich Ministry of the Interior) In addition, other representatives of ministries and authorities were invited, but they declined to attend.Leopold Gutterer, Secretary of State in theReich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, for example, cited scheduling reasons, but asked to be informed of all subsequent appointments. [ 35 ] The only woman present at all meetings was Eichmann's stenographer and secretary,Ingeburg Werlemann, but her name is not mentioned in the minutes. [ 36 ] Because of their shared responsibility for the Holocaust, only six of these people were prosecuted after the war: Schöngarth was executed in theBritish occupation zonein 1946 , Buehler inPolandin 1948, and Eichmann in 1962 after histrial in Israel. Kritzinger and Stuckart were imprisoned for a short time, Hofmann for several years, but he was released early in 1954. Five other participants died before the end of the war: Heydrich just a few months after the conference in anassassination attempt in Prague, Freisler and Müller as a result of the war, Lange and Meyer by suicide. Luther died immediately after the end of the war. Klopfer, Leibbrandt and Neumann remained largely unmolested. Klopfer, the last living active participant, died in 1987, and his secretary Werlemann died in 2010. [ 36 ] Contents The conference was intended to clarify who was responsible for the deportation and extermination operations that had already begun, to coordinate the measures for their implementation and to determine the spatial and temporal sequence of events. Finally, the groups of Jews who were to be deported and thus exterminated were defined here. [ 37 ] This required the cooperation of many institutions that had not previously been informed about the “Final Solution.” In the minutes of the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich had noted that he had been appointed by Göring as "Commissioner for the Preparation of the Final Solution to the European Jewish Question" and that the lead role lay with the "Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German Police", i.e. Himmler. At this meeting, he wanted to coordinate with the central authorities directly involved. Heydrich reported on the emigration of around 537,000 Jews from the “Old Reich”, Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, which was to be replaced by the “evacuation of the Jews to the East” after “prior approval by the Führer”. Around eleven million Jews would be considered for the “final solution to the European Jewish question”. This number also included “religious Jews” from the unoccupied part of France, England, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and other neutral or enemy states outside the German sphere of influence. [ 38 ] The protocol continued: "In large work columns, separated by gender, the Jews who are able to work will be led to these areas to build roads, whereby a large proportion will undoubtedly die out through natural attrition. The remaining stock, as it is undoubtedly the most resilient part, will have to be treated accordingly, since it represents a natural selection and, when released, will be seen as the nucleus of a new Jewish development." When it was implemented, "Europe would be combined from west to east"; this would begin because of "socio-political necessities" and to free up living space in the Reich. First, the German Jews would be transported totransit ghettosand from there further east. Jews over the age of 65 and Jews with war injuries or recipients of theIron Cross Iwould be sent to theTheresienstadt ghetto. This would "eliminate the many interventions in one fell swoop." After mentioning possible difficulties in the "evacuation operation" in the "occupied or influenced European territories", the question of how to deal with "Jewish half-breeds" and "mixed marriages" was addressed. According to the protocol, the Nuremberg Laws were to form the basis "in a sense". But in fact, the proposals put forward by Heydrich went far beyond this: As a rule, “first-degree mixed-race people” (“half-Jews”) were to be treated like “full Jews” regardless of their religious affiliation. Exceptions were only made for those “mixed-race people” who were married to a partner of “German blood” and who were not childless. Other exceptions were to be granted only by the highest party authorities. Every “first-degree half-breed” who was allowed to remain in the German Reich was to besterilized. “Mixed-race people of the second degree” (“quarter Jews”) were, as a rule, to be treated the same as “German-blooded people”, unless they could be classified as Jews due to their conspicuous Jewish appearance or poor police and political assessment. In the case of existing “mixed marriages” between “full Jews” and “German-blooded people,” the Jewish part was to be either “evacuated” or sent to Theresienstadt if resistance from the German relatives was to be expected. Further regulations were addressed for “mixed marriages” in which one or both spouses were “mixed race”. These detailed proposals were rejected as impractical by State Secretary Stuckart, who had been involved in drafting the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. He proposed making compulsory divorce of "mixed marriages" mandatory by law and sterilizing all "first-degree half-breeds." Since no agreement could be reached on these points, these detailed questions were postponed to subsequent conferences. Joseph Buehler,Hans Frank'sSecretary of State in the Office of the Governor General, urged Heydrich at the conference to begin the measures on Polish territory in the "General Government" because he saw no transport problems there and wanted to "solve the Jewish question in this area as quickly as possible." In any case, the majority of these Jews were unable to work and "posed an eminent danger as carriers of disease." Follow-up conferences Invitation to the follow-up conference on March 6, 1942 List of participants in the meeting on the final solution to the Jewish question in the Reich Security Main Office on March 6, 1942 The first follow-up conference took place on January 29, 1942, nine days after the Wannsee Conference. 16 participants came to this meeting in the rooms of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO) in Berlin's Rauchstrasse. The RMfdbO itself was represented by a total of 8 participants, includingOtto Bräutigam,Erhard Wetzel,Hermann WeitnauerandGerhard von Mende. [ 39 ] In addition, subordinate representatives of ministries (RSHA, Ministry of Justice), theParty Chancelleryand theOKWtook part, includingFriedrich Suhr(RSHA),Bernhard Lösener(Ministry of Justice), Albert Frey (OKW) andHerbert Reischauer(Party Chancellery). The meeting was chaired by Otto Braut. [ 40 ] The aim of this meeting was to flesh out the resolutions made at the Wannsee Conference and to make them legally more precise. [ 40 ] The central theme of this conference was who should henceforth be considered a "Jew" and thus to determine exactly who should be exterminated. The RMfdbO did not want the term "Jew" to be defined "too narrowly" and stressed that the regulations in force up to that point in the occupied territories were not sufficient anyway and would have to be "tightened" so that in future "mixed-race" people would also have to be considered "full Jews". These proposals were implemented at the end of the meeting. The conference participants agreed that in future all members of the Jewish religion would be considered "Jews" in all occupied territories, as well as legitimate and illegitimate children from relationships in which one partner was Jewish (ie children from so-called mixedmarriages), as well as non-Jewish wives of Jews. [ 40 ] The necessary decisions on the ground should, according to the resolution, be made by the "political-police organs and their experts in racial issues". [ 40 ] This conference took place when the first deportations to theTheresienstadt concentration campbegan; [ 41 ] and one day before Hitler announced in his speech in the Berlin Sportpalast: "We are clear that the war can only end with either the extermination of the Aryan peoples or the disappearance of Judaism from Europe." [ 42 ] Two further follow-up conferences took place on March 6 and October 27, 1942 in Adolf Eichmann'sDepartment IV B 4 at Kurfürstenstrasse115/116 in Berlin. According to a note by the "Jewish Advisor"in the Reich Foreign Ministry,Franz Rademacher, Stuckart's proposal was discussed on March 6. [ 43 ] He had argued for theforced sterilizationof all "first-degree Jewish half-breeds" and for the forced divorce of all "mixed marriages". Since sterilization in hospitals was not currently feasible, this measure was to be postponed until the end of the war. General legal objections and "propaganda" reasons were put forward against a forced divorce. [ 44 ] This meant foreseeable resistance, particularly from theCatholic Church,and an intervention by theVatican. It was also difficult to assess the reactions of the "Jewish-related" spouses. As it turned out in 1943 during thefactory actionat theRosenstrasse protest, the supposed threat of deportation of Jewish spouses actually led to public expressions of solidarity from "German-blooded" relatives. On October 27, 1942, the demand for forced divorce of "mixed marriages" was discussed again. [ 45 ] However, there were apparently indications from the Reich Chancellery that the "Führer" did not want to make a decision during the war. [ 46 ] In October 1943,Otto Thierackfrom the Ministry of Justice agreed with Himmler not to deport "Jewish half-breeds" for the time being. [ 47 ] The SS in the occupied eastern territories were not required to show such consideration for the mood of the population: Jewish spouses from "mixed marriages" and "Jewish half-breeds of the first degree" were included in the genocide there. [ 48 ] The assessment of the role that Stuckart played with his proposals remains controversial. According to his subordinatesBernhard LösenerandHans Globke,Stuckart made the compromise proposal for mass sterilization with the background knowledge that this would not be feasible, at least during the war. In doing so, he prevented the deportation and murder of German "first-degree half-breeds". On the other hand, his proposal for a forced divorce for "mixed marriages", which would have resulted in the death of the Jewish partner, could have been quickly implemented. [ 49 ] Heydrich's intention, mentioned in the protocol, to prepare a “draft on the organizational, factual and material concerns with regard to the final solution of the European Jewish question” and to submit it to Göring, was not realized. [ 50 ] Historical processing Discovery history The minutes of the meeting, which were written by Eichmann using shorthand, were revised several times by Müller and Heydrich. A total of 30 copies of the final version were issued, which were stamped as "Secret Reich Matters" and then sent to the participants or their departments. [ 51 ] Of these, only the 16th copy, that of conference participant Martin Luther, has been found to date. Apparently it only escaped destruction because Luther had been imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for an intrigue against foreign ministersJoachim von Ribbentrop, which is why his department was dissolved and the files were stored away. [ 52 ] Parts of the archive were initially taken to Marburg Castle by Americans , and then further examined in February 1946 at the Telefunken factory in Berlin-Lichterfelde , where the Wannsee documents were also microfilmed for the first time. [ 53 ] In the summer of 1948, the entire collection was brought to safety at Whaddon Hall in Buckinghamshire , where it was filmed again and returned to the Political Archives of the Foreign Office in Bonn at the end of the 1950s; [ 54 ] the document has been in Berlin since the Political Archives moved. [ 55 ] It is accessible on the Internet. [ 56 ] Robert Kempner(deputy of the American chief prosecutorRobert H. Jackson) states that the discovery of the minutes of the Wannsee Conference was reported to him by an employee in March 1947 during the preparations for the "Wilhelmstrasse Trial ". [ 57 ] The invitation letter forOtto Hofmannhad already been found in August 1945 and it was therefore known that a conference on the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was planned. [ 58 ] The protocol as a source Theminutes of the Wannsee Conferencewere used in the opening statement in thetrial against the Race and Settlement Main Officeand were cited a few weeks later in the indictmentWilhelmstrasse trial. [ 59 ] Although there was no implementable overall plan for the "Final Solution" at this time, the protocol is considered a key document for the organization of the genocide.Holocaust denierstherefore claim that it is a forgery. To do this, they often resort to a book by Robert Kempner, in which he mixesfacsimileswithtranscriptsin a questionable manner , but nevertheless reproduces the text itself correctly. [ 60 ] The historiansNorbert Kampeand Christian Mentel have refuted these allegations of forgery. [ 61 ] On August 7 and 13, 1941, Eichmann asked theReich Association of Jews in Germanyto provide statistical information on the Jews in Europe. [ 62 ] His department IV B 4 compared these figures with information from the occupation authorities and subtracted the victims of theHolocaust in Lithuania,LatviaandEstonia, which was described as "free of Jews". The obviously inflated number for the unoccupied part of France, which led to speculation about the inclusion of the Jews of North Africa in the extermination plans, [ 63 ] was explained byDan Michmanas a typo; [ 64 ] Ahlrich Meyertraced it back to an estimateby Theodor Dannecker. [ 65 ] According to Eichmann's statements at histrialinJerusalemin 1961, the conference minutes are an "accurate representation of the content of the conference". Heydrich was keen to ensure that all essential details were recorded so that the participants could later rely on them. Only the discussion after the conference, which was also recorded in shorthand, was not recorded. Eichmann contradicted the minutes on some points at the time, particularly with regard to his own importance at the conference. However, the total duration of the conference recorded in the minutes, around one and a half hours, as stated by him, is undisputed. Classification The surviving text of the minutes documents the intention to murder all European Jews, the agreement in principle and the effective participation of the National Socialist state apparatus in the genocide. The phrase "treated accordingly" in Eichmann's reproduction of Heydrich's introductory speech is seen by some historians as a typical cover phrase for the murder of Jews who survived forced labor, as the context allows no other conclusion (cf.special treatment).Hans Mommsencontradicts this : it was by no means a cover phrase; Heydrich had actually planned to exterminate a large proportion of the Jews through work, but the final solution to the Jewish question was only a long-term goal, and before it could be achieved the surviving Jews would still have to be transported further east. Here the settlement or solution was renewed, as it had been shown in the years 1939 to 1941, among others in theNiskoandMadagascar plans, which "can hardly be seen as a more humane alternative". [ 66 ] According to Eichmann's testimony at his trial, the actual language was unambiguous: “They spoke of killing and eliminating and destroying.” [ 67 ] Which killing variants were discussed is a matter of dispute among professional historians. From the extermination campaigns that had already begun and the conference protocol itself, most people deduce that a decision had been made at the highest level to expand the killing campaigns into a systematic genocide, to which all European Jews were to fall victim without distinction. [ 68 ] The figures for the overall included planning Jews from England and Spain: their inclusion was unrealistic given the unfavorable development of the war at the time for the National Socialists. The historianPeter Longerichconclusions that even after the conference there was no fixed plan as to when and by what means the genocide was to be carried out. However, it can be proven that after that "the deportations were extended to the entire German area" and a "comprehensive forced labor program" began to take effect. [ 69 ] Thomas Sandkühlerpoints out that the decisive effect was that up until the conference inEastern Galicia, Jews who were classified as “unfit for work” were murdered. Only after that did the murder order apply to all Jews except for the very few Jews who were declared indispensable in the oil industry. [ 70 ] The Wannsee Conference was a bureaucratic clarification of the responsibilities of the bodies involved and the group of people to be murdered: This already required some kind of decision on the "final solution to the Jewish question". Such a decision could not be made by subordinate persons, but only at the highest level. Only then was the leadership of the Reich Security Main Office to be established and cooperation and coordination of the bodies involved to be ensured. According to the British historianMark Roseman,the Wannsee Conference was not very important for the actual course of the Holocaust. In retrospect, it was of outstanding importance only because its minutes were preserved. His text provides insight into a moment "in which continent-wide murder had already emerged as a political goal, the possibility of worldwide extermination was at least being considered, and the exact balance between direct extermination and short-term exploitation through forced labor had not "yet been established." [ 71 ] The memorial and educational center “House of the Wannsee Conference” describes the widespread assumption that the Europe-wide genocide was decided here as “an almost irreversible error of historiography and journalism”. Nevertheless, the conference is of great historical importance: it was here that the ongoing genocide was coordinated and brought to the attention of the highest officials of all important ministries, where numerous people subsequently provided organizational support as “desk criminals ”. [ 72 ] Criminal prosecution after 1945 A third of the conference participants did not survive the war. Heydrich died on June 4, 1942 as a result of anassassination attempt in Prague, Roland Freisler was killed in abombing raid, Rudolf Lange and Alfred Meyer commit suicide. Martin Luther died in the spring of 1945 as a result of his imprisonment in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Heinrich Müller was considered missing. Even before the Wannsee Conference minutes were discovered, two participants were executed forwar crimes. Eberhard Schöngarth was sentenced to death by theBritishmilitary court in 1946 and executed because he had personally ordered the shooting of a prisoner of war. Josef Bühler was sentenced to death inKrakowin 1946. Wilhelm Kritzinger died in 1947 before the Wilhelmstrasse Trial began, and Erich Neumann died in 1948. If there were any convictions at all, then other facts than participation in the conference were cited in the verdict. The cases of Georg Leibbrandt (1950) and Gerhard Klopfer (1962) were dropped. Both were released from custody in 1949. Otto Hofmann was sentenced to 25 years in prison in theNuremberg follow-up trial against the SS Race and Settlement Main Officein 1948, but was released fromLandsberg Prisonin 1954. Wilhelm Stuckart was sentenced to three years and ten months in the Wilhelmstrasse trial, but was released in 1949 because his time in internment was taken into account. Adolf Eichmann fled to Argentinaafter the war , but was kidnapped there by a commando of the Israeli secret serviceMossad, brought to Israel and executed in 1962 after asensational trial in Jerusalem. The conference building as a memorial Logo of the “Memorial and Educational Site – House of the Wannsee Conference” The Berlin architectPaul Baumgartenplanned and built the upper-class villa, then Große Seestraße 19a, in 1914–1915 for the manufacturerErnst Marlier. [ 73 ] The building was considered his most luxurious construction and belonged to thecommunity of Wannsee, today a district of theSteglitz-Zehlendorf district. In 1921 Marlier sold the property toFriedrich Minoux, then general director of theStinnes Group(hence the name "Minoux Villa"). In 1929, when the street was renumbered, it was given the house number 56/58. Since April 8, 1933, the street has been calledAm Großen Wannsee. Minoux was arrested for fraud in May 1940. [ 74 ] From prison, he sold the villa and the property at the then market price of 1.95 millionReichsmarksto theNordhav Foundation, which handled property transactions for the SS Security Service (SD). [ 75 ] From 1940, the SS had the villa's grounds maintained byforced laborersin a "closed Jewish labor force" or later byEastern European forced laborers . The house was used as a guest house for the security police; high-ranking SS officers, leaders of task forces or friendly foreign intelligence chiefs stayed here. At the beginning of February 1943, the Nordhav Foundation sold the property to the German Reich (Security Police Administration) with the contractual agreement (§4) to "continue to use it as a comradeship and leader's home for the security police". [ 76 ] In October 1944, the domestic SDunderOtto Ohlendorfand, towards the end of the war, Gestapo chiefHeinrich Mülleralso moved its headquarters to the villa. [ 76 ] After the end of the war, according to unconfirmed reports, the property was temporarily used by theRed Armyand later by theUS Army . It stood empty for a time, so the furnishings have not been preserved. In 1946, the property became the property of the Greater Berlin magistrate. In December 1946, the magistrate rented it to the BerlinSPD, which housed an educational and recreational center there, as well as a library of the "August Bebel Institute" foundation, which had been founded in March 1947 by five social democratic publishers. [ 77 ] After the decision was made in autumn 1951 to give up the house for financial reasons, the property was leased to theNeukölln districtin January 1952, which used the villa asa school camp. [ 78 ] In 1966 the historian Joseph Wulf, who had survived theAuschwitz concentration camp, founded the association "International Documentation Center for the Study of National Socialism and its Aftermath". The building was to be converted into a documentation center and used by the association. Wulf was able to attract donors and prominent support from abroad, for example fromNahum Goldman . Initially, Governing Mayor Willi Brandtwas also in favor of the project, but after his departure for Bonn it lost the goodwill of the Berlin Senate. Brandt's successor,Klaus Schütz(SPD), was opposed to the establishment of a memorial, citing concerns that it could encourage anti-Semitism. In general, German society in the 1960s lacked awareness of the guilt it had arisen under National Socialism. Accordingly, Wulf's initiative was received primarily as an internal Jewish project. Preventing the memorial would thus make it possible to repress one's own guilt. After the Senate approved the establishment of a memorial on December 20, 1967, but rejected the use of the villa on the Wannsee for this purpose, numerous donors withdrew. The association finally dissolved in 1973. [ 79 ] It was not until 1988 that the villa and garden were reconstructed according to monument preservation principles and for use as a memorial site. In 1992, the memorial and educational center - House of the Wannsee Conference was opened in the rooms of the villa; it bears Joseph Wulf's name. On the ground floor of the house, the permanent exhibition "The Wannsee Conference and the Genocide of the European Jews" informs about the process of exclusion, persecution, expulsion, ghettoization and extermination of the Jews in the German sphere of influence between 1933 and 1945 . After reconstruction and revision, a new permanent exhibition was opened in January 2006. In 2020, the permanent exhibition was revised again. It now bears the title "The Meeting at Wannsee and the Murder of the European Jews". [ 80 ] Artistic processing Novels In Fever,Leslie Kaplan describes the significance of the conference for Eichmann's rise in fictional form. According to her, Eichmann imagined that sitting down with Heydrich was a career boost for him. In the novel, the hopes-for professional advancement is an important reason why Eichmann participated in the mass crimes of the Holocaust. These were therefore murders without any real motive. In his novelFatherland,Robert Harris paints a vision of Germany winning the Second World War and ruling over all of Europe. The Jews have disappeared from the entire sphere of influence and their existence is a fading, unspoken memory among the population. A few days before Hitler's 75th "Führer birthday", a series of murders of former Nazi leaders begins. Little by little, the investigatingpolice officeruncovers that the murder victims are the surviving accomplices to the hushed-up disappearance of the Jews. The novel particularly sheds light on the secrecy of the conference and the few remaining pieces of evidence. Acting Paul Mommertzwrote the play The Wannsee Conference in 1984. He used the Eichmann Protocol, statements made by Eichmann during his trial and written documents to create dialogues that were as realistic as possible. The play lasts - like the conference - 90 minutes and derives its effect from the technocratic coldness with which those involved negotiate the planned mass murder of 11 million people as a purely logistical problem. The play premiered at theVolkstheater in Vienna; further performances were given, for example, under the direction ofPeter SodanninHalle (Saale) . In September and October 2003, the play was staged by Isolde Christine Wabraas part of the state exhibition "Value of Life" and was performed ten times in theHartheim Castle learning and memorial site. The play also served as the screenplay for the film of the same name. Feature films The Wannsee Conference is the subject of several feature films. In 1984, a television version of the play by Paul Mommertz was first released under the direction ofHeinz Schirk:The Wannsee Conference.Dietrich Mattauschplayed Heydrich andGerd Böckmannplayed Eichmann. The film won numerous international awards, including theAdolf Grimme Prize. The cinema version followed in 1987. [ 81 ] Frank Piersondirected the English-language film Conspiracy (USA/GB, 2001, in German asThe Wannsee Conference). Like the historic meeting, this feature film also lasts 85 minutes and is based on its minutes. However, as these do not reproduce verbatim speech, the dialogues are reconstructed and therefore not historically verified. The documentary character originally intended by Pierson's production was not achieved because the implementation was dramaturgically revised. References to unsubstantiated details by the memorial, which had the script before filming began, were not used. In the film adaptation, which was shot at the location of the conference, Kritzinger is portrayed as a doubter: This does not correspond with the historical facts handed down. In addition to these film adaptations, the Wannsee Conference was depicted in a scene in the four-part TV seriesHolocaust – The Story of the Weiss Family, but only with the participants Heydrich and Eichmann. On January 24, 2022,ZDF broadcast the 105-minute film The Wannsee Conferenceby directorMatti Geschonneck,which has won multiple national and international awards and featuresPhilipp HochmairasHeydrich. Documentaries On January 27, 2018, from 8:15 pm to 9:00 pm, Phoenix broadcast a film entitled Mysterious Places - At Wannsee about the history of the villas at Wannsee. The house of the Wannsee Conference is discussed in this film. The documentary film The Wannsee Conference. The Documentary. was shown onZDFon January 24, 2022 following the feature filmThe Wannsee Conference; Holocaust survivorMargot Friedländerwas among those featured. literature Hans-Christian Jasch, Christoph Kreutzmüller (eds.): The Participants. The Men of the Wannsee Conference . Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86331-306-7 . Memorial and Educational Center House of the Wannsee Conference (ed.): The Wannsee Conference and the Genocide of the European Jews. Catalog of the permanent exhibition. Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-9808517-4-5 ; (Facsimile of all exhibits and commentary). English version, ibid. The Wannsee Conference and the Genocide of the European Jews , ISBN 3-9808517-5-3 . Christian Gerlach: The Wannsee Conference, the fate of the German Jews and Hitler's fundamental political decision to murder all of Europe's Jews. In: the same: War, nutrition, genocide. German extermination policy in the Second World War . Pendo, Zurich / Munich 2001, ISBN 3-85842-404-8 , pp. 79-152 (first published inWerkstatt GeschichteH. 18, 6th year, November 1997), review by Götz Aly. Michael Haupt: The House of the Wannsee Conference. From the industrialist's villa to the memorial. Bonifatius, Paderborn 2009, ISBN 978-3-9813119-1-4 , 200 pages with 131 - partly colored - photos/documents. Wolf Kaiser: The Wannsee Conference. SS leaders and ministerial officials agreed on the murder of European Jews. In:Heiner Lichtenstein, Otto R. Romberg (ed.): Perpetrators - Victims - Consequences. The Holocaust in History and the Present. 2nd edition, Bonn 1997, ISBN 3-89331-257-9 , pp. 24–37. Norbert Kampe,Peter Klein(both editors): The Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942. Documents, state of research, controversies. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-21070-0 , 481 pp. (Anthology, table of contents (PDF; 24 kB) available from the publisher). Gerd Kühling: School camp or research center? The debate about a documentation center in the house of the Wannsee Conference (1966/67) , in: Zeit historical research/Studies in Contemporary History 5 (2008), pp. 211–235. Peter Longerich: The Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942. Planning and beginning of the genocide of the European Jews. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-89468-250-7 . Peter Longerich: Wannsee Conference. The Road to the “Final Solution” . Pantheon-Verlag, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-570-55344-2 . Kurt Pätzold,Erika Schwarz: Agenda for the Murder of the Jews. The Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942. Metropol, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-926893-12-5 . Mark Roseman: The Wannsee Conference. How the Nazi bureaucracy organized the Holocaust. Ullstein, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-548-36403-9 . Johannes Tuchel: Am Großer Wannsee 56–58. From the Villa Minoux to the House of the Wannsee Conference (Series: Publications of the Memorial “House of the Wannsee Conference” Vol. 1), Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-89468-026-1 . Peter Klein: The Wannsee Conference at Zeitgeschichte-online. The participants. The Men of the Wannsee Conference, Memorial and Educational Center House of the Wannsee Conference (ed.) Metropol Verlag Berlin, 2024
In 1874, a zinc copy of the monument was erected here in Wannsee in a public park near the Colonie Alsen association of war veterans. This monument was paid for by banker Wilhelm Conrad. A path leading up to the statue was fittingly dubbed the Straße zum Löwen, i.e. the Road to the Lion. This copy has replaced the reliefs of the four Danish officers with a single image of the German officer Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia, in effect reversing the meaning of the original monument. In 1938, the Danish press reported the existence of the copy of the historic monument and, after the Danish embassy complained about the poor condition of
the lion which by then had become overgrown by trees and bushes, it was
moved to its present location on Heckeshorn (right next to the memorial
site where it can be seen behind my 2017 cohort sitting in the garden of the Haus der Wannsee-Konfernz, looking at towards the lake). Since then, the "Straße zum Löwen", which ended at the old location, no longer leads to the memorial.
 |
| Franz Alfred Six (1909 - 1975) |
After the war the villa became part of the Wannsee Hospital together with other neighbouring villas until it was closed in 1971. From 1990 to 2009 the Tannenhof Berlin-Brandenburg association operated the villa as a drug therapy centre. The International Montessori School is now using the building since a renewed renovation in accordance with its status as a listed building.
Disguised as a "broadcast technical research institute", special antennae were installed and the largest and most important radio monitoring system in Germany was built. Strictly shielded from the public as listening to "enemy broadcasts" was forbidden under threat of death, the "Special Service Seehaus" recorded broadcasts in 36 languages from 1941 onwards and employed around five hundred people. To the annoyance of Reich Propaganda Minister Goebbels, who was also sitting in the Sweden pavilion with his "Interradio" staff, the reports from the Propaganda Ministry were exposed as lies by the information it gathered on the war situation. Therefore efforts were made to keep the messages received there as secret as possible. The monitoring system gained an important strategic importance especially towards the end of the war. Today there are apparently apartments in the house, which has been renamed the Sweden Pavilion again after renovation and remodeling.
Waldhof am Bogensee, former weekend retreat of Josef Goebbels north of Berlin near Lanke. It was a gift to Goebbels from the city of Berlin back in 1936 for his 39th birthday. “What a jewel the house has become, so idyllic, romantic, and peaceful,” he would later write of it, using it as an illicit 'love nest.'
With the Russians now so close, on the last day of January 1945, Goebbels had sent Schwägermann out to Lanke, his lakeside mansion on the Bogensee, to evacuate Magda, their six children and two governesses into the air raid shelter at Schwanenwerder. The next day he declared Berlin a ‘fortress city.’ Surrounded by her brood, Magda was in a world of self-delusion. From Berthe the milliner’s she purchased a green velvet hat, a black turban, and a brown hat trimmed with fur; she mentioned that ‘when things calmed down’ she’d like to have a brown hat remodelled. ‘The news you’ll be hearing isn’t rosy,’ she wrote to Harald, now in British captivity, on February 10. ‘We’re all sound in heart and health; but as the whole family belongs together at times like these we’ve shut down Bogensee and we’ve all moved back into Berlin. Despite all the air raids our house is still standing and everybody here—including your grand-mother and the rest of the family—is well housed. The children find it splendid that there’s no school and, thank God, they’ve noticed nothing of the seriousness of the hour.’ ‘Papa and I,’ she concluded, ‘are full of confidence and we’re doing our duty as best we can.’
Irving (885-886), Goebbels, Mastermind of the Third Reich
Tempelhof aeroport
The Nazi eagle, shorn of its swastika, still remains. Amongst the first projects the Nazis undertook
with the
reconstruction of Berlin was the planned renovation of Berlin's Tempelhof International Airport, which
began in 1934. Tempelhof was dramatically redesigned as the gateway to
Europe, and became the forerunner of today's modern airports. Indeed,
the airport halls and the neighbouring buildings are still known as the
largest built entities worldwide, and Tempelhof has been described by
British architect Sir Norman Foster as "the mother of all airports". The
building complex was designed to resemble an eagle in flight with
semicircular hangars forming the bird's spread wings. A mile long hangar
roof was to have been laid in tiers to form a stadium for spectators at
air and ground demonstrations. However, although under construction for
more than ten years, it was never finished because of the war. Tempelhof
was one of Europe's three iconic pre-war airports, the others being
London's now defunct Croydon Airport and the old Paris–Le Bourget
Airport. It acquired a further iconic status as the centre of the Berlin
Airlift of 1948–49.
The
Nazi enlargement of Berlin's Tempelhof aeroport grandiosely
demonstrated their aims at enlarging Germany's influence in Europe. The
airport's eagle design clearly conveys that "the Eagle of Germany" would
again take to the skies, to fly higher than ever before. Coupled with
other Nazi architectural accomplishments, like the 1936 Olympic Stadium,
and Nuremberg Zeppelin Tribune, were assuredly profound propaganda
victories for the Nazi regime.
In the 1930s, Tempelhof was at the forefront of European air traffic with its traffic volume, ahead of Paris, Amsterdam and even London. The limits of the technical possibilities were soon reached, and in January 1934 the first planning work for a new building for a large airport on the Tempelhofer Feld began. In July 1935, the architect Ernst Sagebiel received the planning order for the new building from the Reich Aviation Ministry, which reflected both the new urban planning ideas and the monumental architecture under the Nazis and had to anticipate the development of aviation for a longer period of time. The airport was planned to handle up to six million passengers a year. The facility was intended not only for air traffic, but also serve for events such as the Reichsflugtag and provide a seat for as many aviation-related agencies and institutions as possible. This new building also met all the requirements of a military airfield at the time.  |
| Hitler and Göring at Tempelhof, 1932 |
The early Nazi concentration camp Columbia, which was opened on December 27, 1934, was located directly at the new building and had operated until November 5, 1936 and demolished in 1938. A 1994 memorial designed by Georg Seibert and the Friends' Association for the commemoration of Nazi crimes on and around the Tempelhofer Flugfeld eV commemorates the existence of the Columbia concentration camp since 1994.
From January 1940 until early 1944, Weser Flugzeugbau assembled Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bombers; thereafter, it assembled Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter planes in the still unfurnished main hall and hangars 3 to 7 of the new terminal, which were supplied by a railway and trucks via a connecting tunnel.[16] Hangars 1 and 2 were not used to assemble aircraft as these were already used by Luft Hansa for its own planes. Aircraft parts were brought in from all over the city while complete aircraft engines were trucked to Tempelhof. Once the airframes were complete and the engines had been installed, the finished aircraft were flown out. The Luftwaffe did not use Tempelhof as a military airfield during the war, except for occasional emergency landings by fighter aircraft.
A decapitated reichsadler in front of the aeroport with how it originally appeared on the roof with victorious Red Army soldiers, May 1945 below. 
When the front approached at the end of April 1945, the airport was to be defended. The airport commander at the time, Colonel Rudolf Böttger, and some senior Lufthansa employees circumvented this order, however, by having the weapons provided and setting up a field hospital. This did not lead to a defence of the airport, which could have led to its complete destruction. According to Wikipedia, Böttger evaded Adolf Hitler's extermination order to blow up the entire complex by suicide. However, according to other sources he was called upon by an officer of the Waffen ϟϟ for insubordination and shot. In fact, the concrete floor of the main hall was blown up, so that it fell onto the luggage level below and the main hall became unusable. On April 29 1945 Red Army troops occupied the Tempelhof district and the airport. The new buildings were largely spared from destruction, but there were several fires that also severely damaged the steel structure of the hall buildings. The buildings of the old airport were completely destroyed and the airfield was littered with impacts. The underground bunker with the film archive also burned down completely, and all films were destroyed in the process.
When the front approached at the end of April 1945, the airport was to be defended. The airport commander at the time, Colonel Rudolf Böttger, and some senior Lufthansa employees circumvented this order, however, by having the weapons provided and setting up a field hospital. This did not lead to a defence of the airport, which could have led to its complete destruction. According to Wikipedia, Böttger evaded Adolf Hitler's extermination order to blow up the entire complex by suicide. However, according to other sources he was called upon by an officer of the Waffen ϟϟ for insubordination and shot. In fact, the concrete floor of the main hall was blown up, so that it fell onto the luggage level below and the main hall became unusable. On April 29 1945 Red Army troops occupied the Tempelhof district and the airport. The new buildings were largely spared from destruction, but there were several fires that also severely damaged the steel structure of the hall buildings. The buildings of the old airport were completely destroyed and the airfield was littered with impacts. The underground bunker with the film archive also burned down completely, and all films were destroyed in the process. On July 2, 1945, the Red Army left the airfield so that it could be taken over by the Americans (473rd Air Services Group) before their official arrival on July 4.
The airport was given a new meaning in 1948 when, along with the Gatow airfield and later Tegel Airport, it served to transport food and goods for Berlin by plane during the blockade of West Berlin through the valiant efforts of the RAF and USAAF. A large part of the cargo consisted of fuel. The vital supply through the Berlin Airlift between various West German cities and Berlin lasted from June 26, 1948 to May 12, 1949. In Tempelhof, the planes took off and landed at roughy ninety-second intervals. The American pilot Gail Halvorsen popularised the dropping of candy during the approach to Tempelhof with parachutes made of handkerchiefs from the cockpit windows, which was adopted by other pilots and gave the aircraft the legendary name of raisin bombers. The southern runway was built for the smooth operation of the airlift.
Tempelhof Airport closed all operations on October 30, 2008, despite considerable protest. The former airfield has subsequently been used as a recreational space known as Tempelhofer Feld. In September 2015 it was announced that Tempelhof would also become an emergency refugee camp.
The swastikas return to allow Tom Cruise to make his movie Valkyrie
Nearby, Volkssturm along Hermannstrasse. Beevor (302) writes of how
The remnants of his `Norge' and `Danmark' regiments were waiting impatiently by the canal for motor transport, which was having difficulty getting to them through the rubble-blocked streets. Just as the trucks finally arrived, a cry of alarm was heard: `Panzer durchgebrochen!' This cry prompted a surge of `tank fright' even among hardened veterans and a chaotic rush for the vehicles, which presented an easy target for the two T-34s that had broken through. The trucks that got away even had men clinging on to the outsides. As they escaped north up the Hermannstrasse, they saw scrawled on a house wall `SS traitors extending the war!' There was no doubt in their minds as to the culprits: `German Communists at work. Were we going to have to fight against the enemy within as well?Treptower Park
During my 2021 Bavarian International School class trip and as it appeared in a photograph taken in 1955 by Estella Burket, a teacher at Deseronto Public School, Deseronto, Ontario, in the Dominion of Canada. After
the war, four Soviet memorial sites were
created by the Red Army in the urban area of Berlin.
These sites are not only monuments to the victory over Germany, but also serve as Soviet war grave sites in Germany. The
central monument is this, the complex in Treptow Park. The memorial in
the Schönholzer Heide, the memorial in the Tiergarten and the
memorial at Bucher castle grounds were also built for this purpose.
A contest had been organised by the Soviet Command for the design of the
memorial in Berlin-Treptow, to which 33 drafts were submitted. From
June 1946, the proposal of a Soviet creator collective, designed by the
architect Jakov S. Belopolski, the sculptor Yevgeny Wuchetich, the
painter Alexander A. Gorpenko, and the engineer Sarra S. Walerius, was
implemented. The sculptures and reliefs were manufactured in 1948
by the Lauchhammer art foundry. The memorial was built on the site
of a large play and sports meadow in the area of the "New Lake", which
was created during the Berlin trade exhibition of 1896 and completed in May 1949. 
The
construction of the monument was marked by the beginning of the Cold
War. Although there was a lack of living space in post-war Germany and
the construction sector had almost come to a standstill due to the lack
of planning, labour and material shortages, Soviet propaganda demands
took priority over housing construction. This site was to express two
ideas: on the one hand, an appreciation of Soviet occupation power so
that the scale of the area should be "a witness of the greatness and the
insuperable power of Soviet power." East German politicians like Otto
Grotewohl, on the other hand, saw in the memorial on May 8, 1949, the
fourth anniversary of the end of the war, a sign of gratitude to the
Soviet army as a liberator. In the following decades, the Treptower site was the scene of mass events and state rituals of the DDR, which sometimes completely superimposed the original intention of being the victory mark and cemetery of the Second World War. In 1985, on the 40th anniversary of the end of the war, the representatives of the youth movement of the DDR organised a torchlight procession at the Treptower Memorial. There they took the "oath of the youth of the DDR" on their behalf. 
At the site with my students holding one of my wartime Soviet flags and the same spot on May 8, 1956 with an honorary formation of the National People's Army in front of the Soviet memorial. The
entrance, 200 metres long and an hundred metres wide leads to six
bronze-cast wreaths measuring around ten metres in diameter. During the fall of the Wall on December 28, 1989, strangers smeared the stone sarcophagi and the base of the crypt with anti-Soviet slogans. The SED-PDS suspected that the perpetrator or perpetrators came from the right-wing extremist scene and organised a mass demonstration on January 3, 1990, in which 250,000 citizens of the DDR took part. Party chairman Gregor Gysi took this opportunity to call for “protection of the constitution” for the DDR. He was referring to the discussion of whether the Office for National Security, the successor organisation to the Stasi, should be reorganised or wound down. The historian Stefan Wolle therefore considers it possible that behind the graffiti were Stasi employees who feared for their posts. The Soviet war memorials were an important negotiating point on the Russian side for the two-plus-four treaties for German reunification. 
The Federal Republic therefore undertook in 1992 in the agreement of December 16, 1992 between the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Government of the Russian Federation on War Graves Care to permanently guarantee their existence, to maintain and repair them. Any changes to the monuments require the approval of the Russian Federation.On August 31, 1994, the military ceremony for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Germany was held at the Soviet Memorial in Treptower Park. After a ceremony in the Schauspielhaus on Gendarmenmarkt, 1,000 Russian soldiers from the 6th Guards Mot.-Rifle Brigade and six hundred German soldiers from the Guard Battalion at the Federal Ministry of Defense came together to commemorate the dead. They formed the framework for the wreath-laying ceremony, accompanied by short speeches, by Chancellor Helmut Kohl and President Boris Jelzin. Since 1995, a memorial rally has been held at the memorial every year on May 9th with the laying of flowers and wreaths, which is organised by the “Bund der Antifaschisten Treptow e. V. "is organised. The motto of the event is “ Liberation Day ” and corresponds to Victory Day, the Russian holiday. On the night of May 8-9 1945 in Berlin-Karlshorst the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht by three leading German military men, that of the last Reich President Karl Dönitz in the special area Mürwikwere authorised to do so, and signed by four Allied representatives. On May 9, 2015, around 10,000 people visited the memorial to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of the war - among them were members of the Night Wolves, a Russian motorcycle and rocker club. The bikers' trip to Berlin caused a sensation when some members were initially refused entry to Germany. On September 2, 2015, the inscriptions on a memorial plaque were destroyed by arson. On May 4, 2019, there was another incident in which the statue "Mother Homeland" was doused with a dark liquid.In October 2003, the statue of the Red Army
soldier was restored in a workshop on Rügen, brought back to Berlin via ship and has been on its base since May 4, 2004.
One enters the memorial either coming from Puschkinallee or from Am Treptower Park , each through a triumphal arch made of grey granite shown here on July 12, 1957 when members of the district association of Greater
Berlin, together with the delegations from the CSR, from China, North
Korea and Vietnam, attended the 7th party congress and during one of my class visits An inscription on this honours the soldiers “who died for the freedom and independence of the socialist homeland”. Following the path you come to a kind of forecourt with a three metre high statue of a woman, an allegory of the “Mother Homeland” mourning for her fallen sons. From here the line of sight of the main monument opens up. A broad, gently sloping path lined with sloping birch trees leads along the central axis to the main field of the complex. This is marked by two large, stylised flags made of red granite, which lean towards the path on either side. At the front of each is the sculpture of a kneeling soldier in full gear and armed with a machine gun. There is an older soldier on the left and a younger soldier on the right. From here a few stairs lead down to the symbolic burial ground, which forms the centre of the complex. These graves, greened with grass and small hedges, are marked by five square stone slabs, each with a laurel wreath (the real graves are more likely to be found on the sides of the complex under the plane trees and under the burial mound).
In the following decades, the Treptow site was at times completely superimposed on mass events and state rituals of the DDR. In 1985, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the end of the war, the representatives of the DDR's youth movement organised a torchlight procession at the Treptow Memorial.
There, they represented
the "oath of youth of the DDR". In the time of the invasion on 28
December 1989 strangers smeared the stone carcass and the base of the
crypt with anti-Soviet slogans. The SED-PDS suspected that the
perpetrators would come from the right-wing extremist scene and
organised a mass demonstration on January 3, 1990, involving 250,000
citizens of the DDR. On this occasion, Gregor Gysi, party chairman,
demanded "constitutional protection" for the site; historian Stefan
Wolle therefore considers it possible that Stasi employees were behind
the vandalism, fearing their positions upon re-unification.
In the following decades, the Treptow site was at times completely superimposed on mass events and state rituals of the DDR. In 1985, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the end of the war, the representatives of the DDR's youth movement organised a torchlight procession at the Treptow Memorial.
There, they represented
the "oath of youth of the DDR". In the time of the invasion on 28
December 1989 strangers smeared the stone carcass and the base of the
crypt with anti-Soviet slogans. The SED-PDS suspected that the
perpetrators would come from the right-wing extremist scene and
organised a mass demonstration on January 3, 1990, involving 250,000
citizens of the DDR. On this occasion, Gregor Gysi, party chairman,
demanded "constitutional protection" for the site; historian Stefan
Wolle therefore considers it possible that Stasi employees were behind
the vandalism, fearing their positions upon re-unification. The Soviet
war memorials were an important point of negotiation on the Russian side
for the two-plus-four treaties on German reunification. The Federal
Republic therefore committed itself in 1992 in the agreement of December
16, 1992 between the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and
the Government of the Russian Federation on war grave security to ensure
its existence permanently, and to maintain and repair it. Any changes
in monuments require the approval of the Russian Federation. In 1994,
the military ceremonial was held for the withdrawal of Russian troops
from East Germany at the Soviet Memorial. Since 1995 a memorial service has
been held every year on the 9th of May with flowers and wreaths,
including the "Union of Antifascists Treptow e. V." The event is under
the motto "Day of Liberation" and corresponds with the day of the
Victory , the Russian holiday. On May 9, 2015, about 10,000 people
visited the memorial to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the war.
I'm standing beside one of sixteen
white sarcophagi of limestone that stand along the outer boundary of
the field leading to the statue. They display war scenes
and historical moments through reliefs from the history of the Great Patriotic War
of the Soviet Peoples on the two long sides. On each of these is a quote from Stalin on the narrow side facing the central field; in Russian on
the left (northern) and in German on the right (southern). This one shows Lenin on a red banner
that flies behind the Soviet Red Army with a quote on the side embossed in
gold by Stalin. These sarcophagi are marked on the two longitudinal
sides with reliefs from the history of the Great Patriotic War of the
Soviet Peoples, bearing quotations from Joseph Stalin in Russian on the
left and in German on the right. The individual sarcophagi have specific
themes: the attack by the Germans, the destruction and suffering in the
Soviet Union, the sacrifice and abandonment of the Soviet people and
support of the army, the suffering of the army, victory, and heroic
death. Oaulk Stangle (225) writes More problematic is the portrayal of Soviet innocence, which lacks validity due to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact's program for the future division of Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union, subsequent Red Army participation in the invasion of Poland in 1939, and the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939-1940. Claims that the German invasion disrupted the Soviet Union's peaceful development ignored the forced collectivisation of agriculture and the Great Purge in which 19 million Soviet were arrested, a majority of whom either were executed or died in labour camps. Stalin, responsible for these atrocities and the disastrous lack of preparedness for the German invasion, was omitted from the narrative.Geographical Review , Apr., 2003, Vol. 93, No. 2
The
last two sarcophagi dedicated to the heroic dying stand in line with
the central location of the complex, an artificially created burial
mound. This is dominated by the sculpture “The Liberator” by Yevgeny
Wutschetich standing on a double conical base. 
The figure shows a
soldier who carries a sword in his right hand and a protective child on
his left arm; a swastika is bursting under his boots. This memorial to the liberator as
part of geographic memorial triptych with his
mother on Mamayev Hill in Volgograd (1967) and the worker behind the
front in Magnitogorsk (1979) a showing the forged sword in
Magnitogorsk, the raised sword in Volgograd and the lowered sword in
Berlin. Here it serves as a mausoleum on which a ten to
twelve metre high bronze statue is placed depicting a bareheaded,
heroic, Soviet soldier wielding a sword and standing on a smashed
swastika, into which the sword is deeply cut. On his left arm he is
carrying a child while staring out over the plaza. This sculpture, "Der
Erreer" by Jewgeni Wuchetich, stands on a double conical base 12 metres
high and weighing 70 tonnes. The statue rises above a walk-in
pavilion built on a hill. In the dome of the pavilion is a mosaic with a
circulating Russian inscription and a German translation. This mosaic
was one of the first important orders in the post-war period for the
August Wagner company which
combined workshops for mosaic and glass painting in Berlin-Neukölln .
The hill itself is modelled after a "Kurgan" (mediæval, Slavic tombs on
the Don plain), often found in Soviet memorials such as those at
Volgograd, Smolensk, Minsk, Kiev, Odessa and Donetsk. On top marks the
outstanding endpoint of the 10-hectare complex. The sculptor himself
emphasised in several interviews that the representation of the soldier
with a child saved had a purely symbolic meaning and not a precise
incident. However, in the DDR the narrative of sergeant Nikolay
Ivanovich Massov, who had brought a little girl near the Potsdamer
bridge to safety on April 30, 1945 during the storming of the
Reichskanzlei, was widely circulated. In his honour, a memorial plaque
was erected on this bridge over the Landwehrkanal and for a long time he
was regarded as the model of the Treptow soldier. The model for the
bronze figure was the Soviet soldier Ivan Odartschenko. Another version
claims that the monument is modelled on the heroic deed of the Soviet
soldier and former worker of the Minsker Radiowerkes T. A. Lukyanovich,
who paid for the salvation of a little girl in Berlin with his life. The
source for this version is the book Berlin 896 km by Soviet journalist and writer Boris Polewoi.
The figure shows a
soldier who carries a sword in his right hand and a protective child on
his left arm; a swastika is bursting under his boots. This memorial to the liberator as
part of geographic memorial triptych with his
mother on Mamayev Hill in Volgograd (1967) and the worker behind the
front in Magnitogorsk (1979) a showing the forged sword in
Magnitogorsk, the raised sword in Volgograd and the lowered sword in
Berlin. Here it serves as a mausoleum on which a ten to
twelve metre high bronze statue is placed depicting a bareheaded,
heroic, Soviet soldier wielding a sword and standing on a smashed
swastika, into which the sword is deeply cut. On his left arm he is
carrying a child while staring out over the plaza. This sculpture, "Der
Erreer" by Jewgeni Wuchetich, stands on a double conical base 12 metres
high and weighing 70 tonnes. The statue rises above a walk-in
pavilion built on a hill. In the dome of the pavilion is a mosaic with a
circulating Russian inscription and a German translation. This mosaic
was one of the first important orders in the post-war period for the
August Wagner company which
combined workshops for mosaic and glass painting in Berlin-Neukölln .
The hill itself is modelled after a "Kurgan" (mediæval, Slavic tombs on
the Don plain), often found in Soviet memorials such as those at
Volgograd, Smolensk, Minsk, Kiev, Odessa and Donetsk. On top marks the
outstanding endpoint of the 10-hectare complex. The sculptor himself
emphasised in several interviews that the representation of the soldier
with a child saved had a purely symbolic meaning and not a precise
incident. However, in the DDR the narrative of sergeant Nikolay
Ivanovich Massov, who had brought a little girl near the Potsdamer
bridge to safety on April 30, 1945 during the storming of the
Reichskanzlei, was widely circulated. In his honour, a memorial plaque
was erected on this bridge over the Landwehrkanal and for a long time he
was regarded as the model of the Treptow soldier. The model for the
bronze figure was the Soviet soldier Ivan Odartschenko. Another version
claims that the monument is modelled on the heroic deed of the Soviet
soldier and former worker of the Minsker Radiowerkes T. A. Lukyanovich,
who paid for the salvation of a little girl in Berlin with his life. The
source for this version is the book Berlin 896 km by Soviet journalist and writer Boris Polewoi.
The Heereswaffenmeisterschule dating from 1935 at Treptower Park then and now
Schöneweide
During the Nazi era, Niederschöneweide in Treptow developed quickly into an important location for the armaments production thanks to its metal and chemical industry. A new building was built for Hasselwerderstraße in the Hasselwerderstraße, where, among other things, the departments of inheritance and race care, infant care, Schularzt and Schulzahnklinik were housed. At the end of the Sedanstraße (today: Bruno-Bürgel-Weg), a building was built for the SA-Stand 5 "Horst Wessel", which at the same time served as an HJ-Heim for Niederschöneweide. In 1933, the crossing area in front of Schöneweide train station was redesigned and the main road system was expanded. Because of the intensified consignments from 1941 personnel shortages in the factories arose. In order to maintain production, more and more forced labourers were employed. In 1943 Albert Speer erected a barrack camp for more than 2,000 forced labourers between the Britzer, Sedan and Grimaustrae. The barrack camp is now under monument protection. A partial area of this was made available to the public in the summer of 2006 as a documentation centre for Nazi forced labour under the sponsor "Topography of Terror". On April 16, 1945 the last great battle of the war in Europe began around Berlin. On April 24, just after German rear groups had blown the Kaisersteg and the Treskow Bridge, Niederschöneweide was in the hands of the 8th Garde Army of the First Belarusian Front.
At the last well-preserved former Nazi forced labour camp is located in Schöneweide, located at Britzer Straße 5, Berlin-Schöneweide. During the war it served as one of the more than 3,000 mass housing sites dispersed throughout the city for forced labourers. The camp was ordered to be built for two thousand workers by the “General Building Inspector for the Reich capital” (Generalbauinspektor für die Reichshauptstadt) in close proximity to large armament industries. It included thirteen stone barracks for housing. Civil forced labourers and forced labourers of various nationalities, Italian military internees as well as female concentration camp prisoners lived here. A well-preserved residential barrack referred to as ”Barrack 13” has been open for tours since the end of August 2010. In 2000 a compensation program was set up to help out the 2.3 million surviving forced labourers, which is probably both too little and too late.
Website: http://www.ns-zwangsarbeit.de
Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen
The camp was used between 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in 1945, and then used by Russians in the Soviet Occupation Zone as an NKVD camp until 1950. It now operates as a museum. The camp was established in 1936 and was located 22 miles north of Berlin, giving it a primary position amongst the German
concentration camps: the administrative centre of all concentration
camps was located in Oranienburg, and Sachsenhausen became a training
centre for Schutzstaffel (SS) officers (who would often be sent to
oversee other camps afterwards). Originally planned to accommodate six thousand inmates, Sachsenhausen generally had a population of between ten and fifteen thousand, rising to about thirty-five thousand in the final months of the war. The blocks were arranged in a fanlike configuration in a semicircle around the Appellplatz, which had a radius of about a hundred meters. The camp as a whole therefore was similar to an isosceles triangle: at the base, the semicircle of the parade ground, then the blocks in four concentric rings, and at the apex the nursery and pigpen. Executions took place at Sachsenhausen,
especially of Soviet prisoners of war. Among the prisoners, there was a
"hierarchy": at the top, criminals (rapists, murderers), then
Communists (red triangles), then homosexuals (pink triangles), Jehovah's
Witnesses (purple triangles), and Jews (yellow triangles). During the earlier stages of the camp's existence the executions
were done in a trench, either by shooting or by hanging. A large task
force of prisoners was used from the camp to work in nearby brickworks
to meet Albert Speer's vision of rebuilding Berlin. Sachsenhausen was
originally not intended as an extermination camp—instead, the
systematic murder was conducted in camps to the east. In 1942 large
numbers of Jewish inmates were relocated to Auschwitz. However the
construction of a gas chamber and ovens by camp-commandant Anton Kaindl
in March 1943 facilitated the means to kill larger numbers of
prisoners.
At the main entrance. The Main gate or Guard Tower "A", with its 8mm Maxim machine gun, the type used by the Germans in the trenches of World War I, housed the offices of the camp administration. On the front entrance gates to Sachsenhausen is the infamous slogan Arbeit Macht Frei ("work makes (you) free"). About 200,000 people passed through Sachsenhausen between 1936 and 1945. In Sachsenhausen,
some 6,500 were confined at the outbreak of the war. Shortly thereafter, in September 1939, 900 Polish and stateless Jews from the Berlin area were taken to the camp; at the beginning of November, 500 Poles were interned. At the end of that month, 1,200 Czech students were added, and approximately 17,000 persons, mainly Polish nationals, were admitted as inmates in the period from March to September 1940. Despite the high number of new inmates, the camp population here too stabilised at the level of roughly 10,000 prisoners. That was because of the high mortality rate as well as the transfer of large numbers of Poles to Flossenbürg, Dachau, Neuengamme (in the Bergedorf section of southeastern Hamburg), and Groß-Rosen.
Sofsky (35)
Observation points then and now; since the torching of a barracks by neo-Nazis, security cameras have been installed throughout the site. Despite this, the site has been vandalised by Neo-Nazis several times. In September 1992 for example, barracks 38 and 39 of the Jewish Museum were severely damaged in an arson attack. The perpetrators were arrested, and the barracks were reconstructed by 1997.
The mortuary and infirmary, showing the autopsy table. The brick pathology building with a large basement mortuary was constructed in spring 1941 and was involved in the storage, examination, abuse and disposal of the bodies of deceased prisoners. Before this the bodies of deceased prisoners were stored in a wooden shed and in the cellars underneath barracks R I and R II of the sickbay. The growing number of inmates exposed to the increasingly unhuman conditions led to a rapidly rising death rate, especially after the outbreak of war in September 1939. The relevant ϟϟ administration body therefore approved construction of a mortuary and pathology department on November 12, 1940. On this day alone, eight prisoners died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. According to Harry Naujoks a former political prisoner in the camp,
In 1941 Dr. Lewe came to Sachsenhausen from the Buchenwald camp to take charge of the pathology department. Being camp senior, I was told that blocke seniors had to report inmates with unusual tattoos. This report was passed onto the roll call leader. Eventually, each of the tattooed inmates was ordered to come to the sickbay. Soon after we'd receive a death notice. Several times I went to the pathology department while Dr. Lewe wasn't there and in his room saw pieces of skin and body parts with these tattoos, which were kept in jars of alchol lining the walls. In the drawers too, prepared sections of skin were kept. I have held such sections of skin with my own hand.
The Russians, accompanied by Polish soldiers, chanced upon Sachsenhausen concentration camp as they moved to invest Berlin. The camp was in Oranienburg, and the fall of that former royal borough brought it home to Hitler that his days were numbered. There were just 5,000 prisoners left in Sachsenhausen of a population that had reached 50,000. The rest had been taken on 'death marches.’(58) After the Reich - The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation
More and more Berliners had been taking the risk of listening to the BBC on the wireless and even dared to discuss its news. But power cuts were now creating a more effective censorship of foreign broadcasts than the police state had ever achieved. London had little idea of the great Soviet offensive, but its announcement that Sachsenhausen- Oranienburg concentration camp had been liberated just north of Berlin gave a good idea of Red Army progress and its intention to encircle the city. The indication of the horrors found there was also another reminder of the vengeance which Berlin faced. This did not stop most Berliners from convincing themselves that the concentration camp stories must be enemy propaganda.
Beevor (274)
The 140-metre tall Tower of Nations behind me during my 2011 Bavarian International School class trip and in the 1970s, representing what Caroline Wiedmer describes as an
“antithesis of the Nazi architecture of the camp” and a “design in
which the triumph of anti-fascism could be made visible.” At the top of
each of the three sides of the obelisk are eighteen red triangles
representing the ones political prisoners were forced to wear on their
uniforms to designate their identities in the camps. This arrangement
of triangles suggests the multinational political prisoner population at
the camp.
This representation speaks to the importance of international unity — a cornerstone of communist ideology — but lacks regard for any victim groups that were persecuted so harshly at the camps. There is no implied or overt reference to Jews, Sinti or Roma, homosexuals, Slavs, women, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, though all of these groups suffered explicit mass murders in the camp at Sachsenhausen based singularly on these identities. Indeed, many of these captives may have been Communists, but unless they identified as such, they were excluded from memory at the Tower of Nations.
Directly
in front of the tower is Rene Graetz’s Liberation, added to the site in
1961, consisting of three figures standing atop a stone block.
Inscribed on the face of the block are the countries from which
prisoners at the camp came from, serving as a written representation of
the implied meaning of the red triangles on the obelisk. Certainly, the
communist struggle was important to the East German regime as a defining
point in the shaping of a new national identity and to promote the idea
of the ideological and moral victory of the communists that had
recently chased fascism from not only the borders of Germany, but also
the entire the European continent.
In front of Professor Waldemar Grzimek's bronze sculpture, Pietá,
depicting three figures who are supposed to symbolise resistance and
awareness of victory, mourning and death and as it appeared in 1961
before being given an English inscription. This memorial was limited to
the area of the former prisoner camp and only covered around five
percent of the area of the former concentration camp. Only “Station Z”
and the firing trench, originally part of the industrial courtyard,
were integrated into the memorial by relocating the camp wall. The
figures are notably more skeletal in nature than those at the obelisk, offering a much truer
representation of what inmates would have looked like after significant
time in the camp. Two of the prisoners are helping a fallen comrade, carrying him in a
blanket. The bronze cluster still speaks to the GDR message of
camaraderie, but in a more subdued and less overtly nationalist tone.Station
Z is a relevant place for mourning, and the
statue group reflects this, but allowed for a distinct and deliberate
division between areas of celebration and sorrow at the memorial site.
This is where the cremation ovens were located, where around 13,000 to
18,000 Soviet prisoners of war were murdered in the shot in the neck and
their corpses were then cremated. Grzimek’s Pietá is not, however, without its limitations on historical representations. Though all the figures clearly are prisoners, and do depict a more historically accurate prisoner representation than those in Liberation, the man in the rear of the cluster, though wearing a look of grief on his face, stands tall, gaze fixed on a far off point, chest out and prideful. This is in contrast with many traditional representations of Pietá in which Mary is shown cradling the dead body of Jesus. Generally, the Pietá form is undeniably sorrowful. Mary has her head down, or tilted slightly up in supplication, and does not evoke any sense of physical strength or pride. Grzimek’s Pietá represents quite a different take on the classic form.
Bookheimer (15)
Stalin's son Yakov Dzhugashvili served as an artillery officer in the Red Army and was captured on 16 July 1941 in the early stages of the German invasion of the USSR at the Battle of Smolensk. The Germans later offered to exchange Yakov for Friedrich Paulus, the German Field Marshal captured by the Soviets after the Battle of Stalingrad, but Stalin turned the offer down, allegedly saying "I will not trade a Marshal for a Lieutenant". According to some sources, there was another proposition as well, that Hitler wanted to exchange Yakov for his nephew Leo Raubal; this proposition was not accepted either. Until recently, it was not clear when and how he died. According to the official German account, Dzhugashvili died by running into an electric fence in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was being held. Some have contended that Yakov committed suicide at the camp, whilst others have suggested that he was murdered. Currently, declassified files show that Dzhugashvili was shot by a guard for refusing to obey orders. Whilst Dzhugashvili was walking around the camp he was ordered back to the barracks under the threat of being shot. Dzhugashvili refused and shouted, "Shoot!" The guard shot him in the head.
The NKVD’s interrogation of the camp commander Colonel Kainel confirmed that Senior Lieutenant Dzugashvili had been held three weeks in the camp prison and then, at Himmler’s directive, was transferred to the special camp, consisting of three barracks surrounded by a brick wall and high-voltage barbed wire. The inmates of barrack number 2 were allowed to walk in the early evening in the area outside their barracks. At 7:00 p.m., the ϟϟ guards ordered them to return to their barracks. All obeyed except Dzhugashvili, who demanded to see the camp commander. The guard’s repeated order went unheeded. As the ϟϟ guard telephoned the camp commander, he heard a shot and hung up. Dzhugashvili, in a state of agitation, had run across the neutral zone to the barbed wire. The guard raised his rifle ordering him to stop, but Dzugashvili kept on going. The guard warned that he was going to shoot; Dzhugashvili cursed, grabbed for the barbed-wire gate, and shouted at the guard to shoot. The guard shot him in the head and killed him. Clearly the unauthorised shooting of none other than Stalin’s son set off great apprehension in Sachsenhausen. He had been transferred in by Himmler himself, who hoped to use him as a pawn of some sort. Now, Stalin’s son was dead, and no one knew what the consequences would be. Dzhugashvili’s body lay stretched across the barbed wire for twenty-four hours while the camp awaited orders from Himmler. The Gestapo sent two professors to the scene who prepared a document stating that Dzhugashvili was killed by electrocution and that the shot to the head followed. The document stated that the guard acted properly. Dzhugashvili’s body was then burned, and the urn with his ashes was sent to the Gestapo headquarters. Indeed, it seemed irrelevant whether Yakov was killed by electrocution or by the bullet. Either way, it was he who committed suicide.Paul Gregory (65-66) Lenin's Brain
Inside the ruins of the crematorium. The first crematorium at Sachsenhausen was built at Station Z in April 1940 and construction on the new crematorium began on January 31, 1942; it was completed and opened for use on May 29, 1942. It had two rooms where Russian POWs, who were Communist Commissars, were executed with a shot to the neck.
Station Z included a Genickschußanlage, a shooting pit, a gas chamber, and a multiple gallows with block and tackle. The structures had been kept low intentionally so as to block visibility and prevent anyone from looking in over the wall. The first provisional gas chambers in Birkenau were outside the camp, set up in former farmhouses. But the modern crematoria were built in close proximity to the camp. They were surrounded by barbed-wire fences and shielded from view by barriers of willow trees. Flower beds lent the facilities an innocuous air. The zones of death were disguised areas beyond the round of everyday camp routine. No one had access to them except the Sonderkommandos—the corpse carriers and oven stokers. The zone of death was taboo, a place of mystery where the power to kill could unfold unhindered.
In 1953, the crematorium building was deliberately blown up by the East German government, and today nothing is left except the ruins of the ovens. When the former Sachsenhausen camp was made into a Memorial Site in 1961, the brick wall separating the Industrial Yard from the camp was moved so that Station Z could be located inside the memorial.
Hitler and Goebbels visiting UFA's Neubabelsberg studios in 1935 during the making of the film
"Barcarole." As a result of the nationalist German spirit that already dominated the company, UFA was perfectly suited to serve the goals of Nazi propaganda in film. Hugenberg had been named Reich Minister of Economics immediately following the Nazi takeover of January 30, 1933, and made UFA openly available for Joseph Goebbels' propaganda machine, even though Hugenberg was removed from his post shortly thereafter (June 1933) under pressure from Hitler. In an act of anticipatory obedience to the Nazi regime, UFA management fired several Jewish employees on March 29, 1933. In the summer of 1933, the Nazi regime created the Film Chamber of the Reich, which adopted regulations officially excluding Jewish filmmakers from all German studios.
In March 1937, using precisely the methods that he had previously branded as Jewish, Goebbels took over the major Ufa film company for the Reich. As a warning to Ufa he had instructed the press to trash its latest production; the film flopped disastrously, and the company agreed to sell out. ‘Today we buy up Ufa,’ recorded Goebbels, ‘and thus we [the propaganda ministry] are the biggest film, press, theatre, and radio concern in the world.’ Dismissing the entire Ufa board, he began to intervene in film production at every level, dismissing directors, recommending actresses (like the fiery Spaniard, Imperio Argentina), forcing through innovations like colour cinematography, and rationalising screen-test facilities for all three major studios, Ufa, Tobis, and Bavaria. Depriving the distributors of any such in such matters he created instead artistic boards to steer future film production. Suddenly the film industry began to surge ahead. Blockbuster films swept the box offices. With a sure touch, Goebbels stopped the production of pure propaganda and party epics, opting for more subtle messages instead—the wholesome family, the life well spent.Irving (414-415) Goebbels
In late April 1945, the UFA ateliers in Potsdam-Babelsberg and Berlin-Tempelhof were occupied by the Red Army. After Germany's unconditional surrender the following month the Military Government Law No. 191 initially halted and prohibited all further film production. On July 14, 1945, as a result of Military Government Law No. 52, all Reich-owned film assets of UFI Holding were seized. All activities in the film industry were placed under strict licensing regulations and all films were subject to censorship. The Soviet military government, which was in favour of a speedy reconstruction of the German film industry under Soviet supervision, incorporated the Babelsberg ateliers into DEFA, subsequently the DDR's state film studio, on May 17, 1946. Murderers Among Us was the first German feature film in the post-war era and the first so-called "Trümmerfilm" ("Rubble Film"). It was shot here in Babelsberg. Additionally, the Soviets confiscated numerous UFA productions from the Babelsburg vaults and dubbed them into Russian for release in the USSR; and simultaneously began importing Soviet films to the same offices for dubbing into German and distribution to the surviving German theatres. In contrast, the main film-policy goal of the Allied occupying forces, under American insistence, consisted in preventing any future accumulation of power in the German film industry. Here I'm beside the statue based on the Portaprima Augustus for the execreble 1997 film Prince Valiant.
Fort Hahneberg
After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, four forts were planned to protect the Spandau Armaments Center as part of the citadel at Spandau. In the end only one of them was built, as the development of artillery, especially the introduction of explosive grenades, made such types of fortification useless. Fort
Hahneberg was thus completed in 1886 and put to use two years later serving, among other things, as a barracks and central archive for military medicine until 1945. In 1903 it served as a training center for the infantry. During the so-called Buchrucker putsch on October 1, 1923 when an attempt by the Black Reichswehr to overthrow the German government after it had ended passive resistance to the occupation of the Ruhr on September 26, 1923 occurred, the fort and the Spandau Citadel were briefly occupied by putschists who had to surrender to regular Reich defence units. From 1924 to 1934 the Flugtechnische Verein Spandau used some structures of the fort in order to build gliders there. 
With the establishment of the Wehrmacht in 1935, the fort became a training location again and was expanded. After the war parts of the brick walls and structures were broken up to make the fort unusable as a military
installation by blowing up the moat defences. The rubble was transported away as building material for the reconstruction of Berlin as residents
were given permission to demolish the Escarpemauer and other components
for material extraction for the repair of destroyed buildings or for the
construction of new houses. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the fort was located at the border crossing point on Heerstraße and was only been accessible to the public again since 1990. The Nazi eagle above the entrance has been allowed to remain.
With the establishment of the Wehrmacht in 1935, the fort became a training location again and was expanded. After the war parts of the brick walls and structures were broken up to make the fort unusable as a military
installation by blowing up the moat defences. The rubble was transported away as building material for the reconstruction of Berlin as residents
were given permission to demolish the Escarpemauer and other components
for material extraction for the repair of destroyed buildings or for the
construction of new houses. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the fort was located at the border crossing point on Heerstraße and was only been accessible to the public again since 1990. The Nazi eagle above the entrance has been allowed to remain. 
The fort and area around were used as the hideout forest for the Inglorious Basterds.
As an aside, the title of the movie has to have the swastika removed
because the display of Nazi iconography is illegal in Germany. The
"Offizielle deutsche Website"
has been censored too. Under the German law there are exceptions which
allow the use of "unconstitutional symbols" for artistic and
educational purposes but Universal Pictures obviously didn't find it
worth the effort.
