Wannsee revisited

Germany grapples with the toxic pull of Nazi nostalgia.

By DAVID PARSONS
Neo Nazis march in Remagen_521 (photo credit: Reuters)
Neo Nazis march in Remagen_521
(photo credit: Reuters)
This January 27th, numerous events will be held worldwide to observe the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day established by the European Union and United Nations to coincide with the date of the liberation of Auschwitz.
This month will also mark the 70th anniversary of the infamous Wannsee Conference at a lakeside villa outside Berlin where, on January 20, 1942 a small group of top Nazi bureaucrats set in motion the implementation of the “Final Solution.”
The passing of 70 years since Wannsee comes at a time when Germany has been shocked by news of the arrest of a militant neo-Nazi terror cell which is suspected of a string of racist murders and bank robberies across the country over the past decade. Chancellor Angela Merkel has described the exposure of the radical right-wing gang as a “disgrace” which has brought “shame” on the nation.
This begs the question why any German would want to return to the abhorrent evil of Nazism represented by the cold and calculating decision taken at Wannsee to systematically murder not just those Jews under Nazi occupation but all of the estimated 11 million Jews of Europe and northwest Africa.
In approaching this quandary, we first revisit the ominous proceedings at Wannsee and then examine the current rise of neo-Nazi groups in Germany.
The dark legacy of Wannsee
The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of 15 senior Nazi officials held at a plush villa on Lake Wannsee just outside of Berlin on 20 January 1942.
The meeting was convened by Reinhard Heydrich to inform the administrative heads of various government departments with some level of jurisdiction over the Jews that he had been appointed as the chief executor of the “final solution to the Jewish question.”
In the course of the meeting, Heydrich presented a plan, presumably approved by Adolf Hitler, for the deportation of the Jewish populations of Europe and French North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) to German-occupied areas in eastern Europe, and the use of the Jews fit for labor on road-building projects, in the course of which they were expected to eventually die. According to the recorded minutes of the Wannsee Conference, any surviving remnant would be annihilated after completion of the road projects.
This plan was soon altered as subsequent events unfolded during the war. When Soviet and Allied forces began pushing back the German lines, most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe were sent to extermination or concentration camps, or killed where they lived. Nonetheless, the Wannsee Conference stands as the clearest single evidentiary proof on which the entire Nazi leadership can be indicted for a collective genocidal plot to eradicate all of European Jewry.
In the months leading up to Wannsee, German forces invading the Soviet Union had advanced rapidly to the gates of Moscow and a euphoric Nazi leadership began to discuss how to deal with the four million Jews of Eastern Europe which had fallen under German control. Shedding any moral restraints, Hitler and his chief lieutenants, Herman Göring and Heinrich Himmler, deliberated over the most practical “solution” to the “Jewish question.”
Although no written order by Hitler to exterminate all Jews has ever been found, certain comments he made around this time made it clear he wanted to rid his realm of them. Based on this understanding, Göring gave written authorization to Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Main Security Office, to “make all necessary preparations” for a “total solution of the Jewish question.”
At that moment Heydrich was directing the Einsatzgruppen, the roving Nazi death squads which were already slaughtering tens of thousands of Jews in the newly conquered Soviet territories. He viewed his task as ascertaining and then overseeing a more efficient method for exploiting Jewish labor on the way to working and starving them to death.
But then in late 1941, the Soviets launched an effective counterattack outside Moscow, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States joined the fray, and the Nazi hierarchy realized the war would last longer than expected. There would not be enough supplies to feed everyone in the conquered Soviet territories, so discussions turned from the “evacuation” of Jews to their “extermination.”
It is likely that a decision was made at around the time of the stall outside Moscow. On December 18, Himmler met with Hitler and noted in his appointment book “Jewish question – to be exterminated as partisans.”
Heydrich had originally invited the administrative heads to a meeting on December 9 to discuss the logistics of his plan for deporting Jews to forced labor camps. But the summit had to be postponed, as several invitees were called away at the last minute to a symbolic gathering of the Nazi party’s top echelons to formally declare war on America.
Now armed with different marching orders, Heydrich rescheduled the meeting for January 20, 1942 at a lakeside estate in a suburb of Berlin.
His primary aim was to bring together representatives of all affected departments to explain the mechanics of a revised plan he was personally commissioned to oversee by the highest authority of the Third Reich. Heydrich’s six-week postponement gave him an opportunity to broaden the original objective from deportations to one fixed on carrying out the “Final Solution.”
The ministries represented included Interior, Justice, the Four Year Plan and Occupied Eastern Territories, as well as the Foreign Office, the Reich Chancellery, and the head of the Gestapo. Heydrich’s right-hand man Adolf Eichmann was to take the minutes.
In preparation for the conference, Eichmann had drafted a list with the estimated numbers of Jews in the various European countries, both those under direct Reich control or occupation and those countries that were allied or client states, neutral, or at war with Germany. In total, Heydrich’s plan targeted an estimated 11 million Jews in Europe and parts of northwest Africa under the control of the Vichy French.
Heydrich opened the conference by explaining that “after appropriate prior approval by the Führer, emigration as a possible solution has been superseded by a policy of evacuating Jews to the East.” But he added that this would only be a “provisional” solution, as “practical experience” was already being collected for the “future final solution of the Jewish question.”
Holocaust deniers claim that the Wannsee Conference decided on no more than the “evacuation” of the Jewish population of Europe to the east, with no reference to killing them. In fact, Heydrich made clear the ultimate fate intended for the evacuees: “The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival.”
Heydrich’s meaning would have been obvious to the conference attendees, as they were all educated men well versed in Nazi terminology.
At least eight of the 15 participants held doctorate degrees. No one raised any moral objections. At most, several sought clarification on whether mixed Jews were to be included.
Heydrich went on to say that in the course of the “practical execution of the final solution,” Europe would be “combed through from west to east.”
Afterwards, Eichmann sent copies of the conference minutes, styled the “Wannsee Protocol,” to all the participants. It was not until 1947 that a copy of the minutes was found by an American prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials.
The Wannsee minutes, however, do not mention killing. These omissions were not fully understood until the interrogation and trial of Eichmann in Israel in 1962. Eichmann told his questioners that toward the end of the meeting cognac was served, and that after that the conversation became less restrained.
“The gentlemen were standing together, or sitting together,” he said, “and were discussing the subject quite bluntly, quite differently from the language which I had to use later in the record. During the conversation they minced no words about it at all... they spoke about methods of killing, about liquidation, about extermination.”
In his recorded minutes, Eichmann summed up these chilling words in one bland sentence: “In conclusion the different types of possible solutions were discussed.”
Given such a dark and diabolical legacy, it is astounding that anyone would pine away for the Nazi epoch. But apparently, some in Germany still do.
Germany shocked by festering neo-Nazism
In November, authorities in eastern Germany stumbled by chance onto a group of at least three fanatical neo-Nazis called the “National Socialist Underground” who investigators now believe murdered eight Turks, a Greek and a German policewoman. The discovery of the hate cell in the eastern town of Zwickau has been a wake-up call for the entire nation.
Investigators are looking into links with other violent crimes and unsolved murder cases, including a 2004 bomb attack in Cologne and the slaying of a rabbi in Zurich, Switzerland. While searching the homes of the NSU gang, German authorities found a list of 88 names of politicians and Muslim community representatives believed to be potential targets of the gang.
In an NSU member’s garage, German police also found bomb-making equipment, unused nail bombs, and a macabre home-made version of the board game Monopoly in which Nazi death camps were substituted for the traditional railroads. The game, called “Pogromly,” featured a swastika on the start square and offered players the chance to land on squares marked with the SS emblem. The board also included pictures of Hitler and grotesque-looking Jews.
The gang reportedly sold the game sets to raise revenue over the past decade. The game is believed to be based on the events of Kristallnacht, the November 1938 Nazi pogrom against German Jews.
The discovery of the Zwickau cell, which carried out the racially motivated murders across the country between 2000 and 2007, as well as 14 bank robberies, has triggered accusations that German authorities have turned a blind eye to the threat of right-wing radicalism.
“The problem has been vastly underestimated… These 10 deaths could have been prevented if someone had listened to our warnings,” Anetta Kahane, head of the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung anti-racism group, told Reuters. “I lie awake at night asking if I could have done more. But no one listened.”
Much of problem centers around youths in eastern Germany, where the former Communist regime did not instill a sense of national guilt about the Nazi era in the schools, as the government did in West Germany.
Instead, the Soviet satellite focused on railing against the evils of capitalism, leaving a door open for the Hitler cult to reemerge. There was also less exposure to foreigners in communist East Germany.
East German youths are now faced with a dearth of job opportunities and a swell of immigrants, and many end up in gangs that turn to crime and violence aimed at “foreigners.” This makes them easy targets for rabid neo- Nazi groups bent on even more violent attacks on outsiders.
Yearning for a sense of belonging, radicals wear military-style clothes and have their own Internet radio stations featuring music by bands with names like “12 Golden Years” – a reference to the 12-year Third Reich.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a German intelligence agency responsible for monitoring threats such as Muslim fundamentalists and the far left and right, estimates the country has 25,000 right-wing extremists, 9,500 of them violent.
Experts say neo-Nazis infiltrate whole communities, run sports clubs and summer camps, participate in voluntary fire brigades and even manage nurseries. Neo-Nazi newspapers are stuffed into mail boxes, and the local townspeople are largely silent to the brewing hatred.
In the area where the NSU cell was arrested, unemployment is nearly 20 percent and the native population has shrunk by a third in the last 20 years.
Right-wing radicals have moved in and forced outsiders away.
Politicians from all parties have been quick to condemn the murders and vowed to step up action against the right wing. The government has also said it will look at banning the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), which many experts believe had at least informal links to the Zwickau cell.
The party, which says the German constitution is a diktat imposed by victorious Western powers after World War Two, is more radical than populist, anti-immigration parties elsewhere in Europe. German authorities say it is inspired by Nazism.
A recent poll revealed that 74% of Germans want the NPD outlawed, but an attempt to do that in 2003 failed on constitutional grounds. There is skepticism over whether a second attempt will be successful.
Meanwhile in a related development, Israel and Germany are cooperating in a new legal campaign to locate and put on trial thousands of suspected Nazi war criminals, according to Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The joint project is the result of a recent precedent-setting ruling in Germany in the case of John Demjanjuk, who was convicted last spring – at age 91 – as an accessory to murder at the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland. There are about 4,000 names on a list of possible defendants still at large.
Yet it should come as little solace that while some Nazi war criminals have reached old age without ever paying a price for their crimes, a new generation of Germans is longing to emulate their deeds. On the 70th Anniversary of Wannsee, we should all take note.