The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior government officials of Nazi Germany and Schutzstaffel (SS) leaders, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference, called by the director of the Reich Security Main Office SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, was to ensure the co-operation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to occupied Poland and murdered. Conference participants included representatives from several government ministries, including state secretaries from the Foreign Office, the justice, interior, and state ministries, and representatives from the SS. In the course of the meeting, Heydrich outlined how European Jews would be rounded up and sent to extermination camps in the General Government, where they would be killed.
The villa Am Großen Wannsee 56–58, where the Wannsee Conference was held, is now a memorial and museum.
1935 chart shows racial classifications under the Nuremberg Laws: German, Mischlinge, and Jew.
Letter from Heydrich to Martin Luther, Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, notifying him that the conference would be delayed.
The conference room at the Wannsee Conference House (2003).
The Schutzstaffel was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II.
Image: Bundesarchiv Bild 183 H04436, Klagenfurt, Adolf Hitler, Ehrenkompanie
Image: Bundesarchiv Bild 101III Lerche Stereo 046 03, Metz, Sepp Dietrich bei Ordensverleihung
Image: Himmler besichtigt die Gefangenenlager in Russland. Heinrich Himmler inspects a prisoner of war camp in Russia, circa... NARA 540164
Image: Bundesarchiv Bild 183 R97512, Berlin, Geheimes Staatspolizeihauptamt