Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Wannsee by Peter Longerich - Available

Wannsee

The Road to the Final Solution

by Peter Longerich
Lesley Sharpe
ebook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Read a sample Read a sample
1 of 1 copy available
The complete story of the Wannsee Conference, the meeting that paved the way for the Holocaust. On 20 January 1942, fifteen men arrived for a meeting in a luxurious villa on the shores of the Wannsee in the far-western outskirts of Berlin. They came at the invitation of Reinhard Heydrich and were almost all high-ranking Nazi Party, government, and SS officials. The exquisite position by the lake, the imposing driveway up to the villa, culminating in a generously sized roundabout in front of the house, the expansive, carefully landscaped park, the generous suite of rooms that opened on to the park and the lake, the three-level terrace that stretched the entire garden side of the house, and the winter garden with its marble fountain, all give today's visitor to the villa a good idea of its owner's aspiration to build a sophisticated, almost palatial structure as a testament to his cultivation and worldly success. But the beauty of the situation stood in stark contrast to the purpose of the meeting to which the fifteen had come in January 1942: the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question'. According to the surviving records of the meeting, items on the agenda included the precise definition of exactly which group of people was to be affected, followed by a discussion of how upwards of eleven million people were to be deported and subjected to the toughest form of forced labour, and following on from this a discussion of how the survivors of this forced labour as well as those not capable of it were ultimately to be killed. The next item on the agenda was breakfast.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 14, 2021

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780192570758

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780192570758
      • File size: 6052 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      October 15, 2021
      The renowned scholar of Nazi history chronicles the 1942 conference at which the Nazis formed their plans for the mass murder of European Jews. On Jan. 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Head Office, called a meeting at Wannsee, outside Berlin. German historian Longerich, author of acclaimed biographies of Hitler and Himmler, puts the conference in the context of the Holocaust as a whole. At the time, the Germans had already systematically murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews in territory overrun in the course of the war. The attendees at Wannsee, all high-ranking officials, showed no compunctions about committing their resources to a "final solution" involving the outright extermination of the remaining European Jews. The author puts considerable emphasis on the minutes of the conference, a single copy of which has survived, in a chapter analyzing that record and including a translation; the book also includes the complete minutes in German. One issue was how to deal with those who only had one Jewish parent, which the planners argued could be handled by sterilization. For the most part, however, the plan was to transport Jews to Eastern Europe, where those fit enough would be worked to death on projects like road construction. Women, children, and the infirm or elderly would be killed immediately. The planners originally assumed that the war against Russia would be won swiftly, opening up ample territory for the relocations. When the U.S. entered the war, they accelerated the schedule. "The spectre of a Jewish world conspiracy that dominated Hitler's vision of the world and that of the Nazi leadership was now increasingly dictating their political actions," writes Longerich. The author's academic approach does not lessen the gravity of the often horrific subject matter, though it may reduce the interest for general readers. For Holocaust scholars, this a must-read. A well-researched study of the meeting that determined many major decisions about the Holocaust.

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading