Wannsee Conference
Senior Nazi officials met to coordinate the "Final Solution," the systematic murder of all European Jews.
On January 20, 1942, fifteen senior Nazi officials gathered at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. Chaired by SS-General Reinhard Heydrich, the meeting lasted only about 90 minutes. Its purpose was to coordinate the logistics of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question," the Nazi plan to murder all 11 million Jews in Europe. The conference did not decide on the genocide (mass killings were already underway), but it organized the bureaucratic cooperation needed to carry it out on an industrial scale. The meeting minutes, discovered after the war, became a key piece of evidence at the Nuremberg Trials.
Key Takeaways
Coordinated the bureaucratic machinery of genocide across Nazi-occupied Europe
The Nazis planned to murder all 11 million Jews in Europe
The meeting minutes became key evidence at the Nuremberg Trials