Berlin Trip : House of Wannsee (Part 3)

The museum opened in January 1992 on the 50th anniversary of the meeting, although the media noted that the political situation was still complex.

The whole process of opening a museum had been long and complex, with the plan to use this property being controversial. Joseph Wulf, a survivor of Auschwitz and a prominent historian, was one of the proponents of the house being used and when the inept Klaus Schütz made politically explosive comments on the matter, it led to Wulf having to have protection for his own safety. Wulf committed suicide in 1974, saddened by how so many people involved in the Second World War were still free and held unaccountable for their actions, living almost normal lives.

After the Second World War, the building was used as a school and Wulf would have hopefully been delighted that his wish for the building to be used as a museum came to pass.

The exterior of the building.

If Heydrich hadn’t had his meeting here, or even if the single document that was found with the details of that meeting, then this would likely be a rather lovely country house with views over the lake today, the details of what happened in 1942 would have been unknown.

The exterior is calm and pristine.

The attendees of the fateful meeting were:

SS and Police Officials:

• Reinhard Heydrich: Chief of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), chaired the meeting.
• Heinrich Müller: Chief of the Gestapo (Secret State Police).
• Adolf Eichmann: Head of the Jewish Affairs office, responsible for the logistics of deportation.
• Eberhard Schöngarth: Commander of the Security Police in the General Government (occupied Poland).
• Rudolf Lange: Commander of Einsatzkommando 2, responsible for mass killings in Latvia.
• Otto Hofmann: Chief of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office.

Government Representatives:

• Roland Freisler: State Secretary in the Ministry of Justice.
• Wilhelm Kritzinger: Ministerial Director in the Reich Chancellery.
• Alfred Meyer: State Secretary in the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories.
• Georg Leibbrandt: Ministerial Director in the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories.
• Martin Luther: Undersecretary in the Foreign Office.
• Wilhelm Stuckart: State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior.
• Erich Neumann: State Secretary in the Office of the Four Year Plan.
• Josef Bühler: State Secretary in the Office of the Government of the General Government.

Other:

• Gerhard Klopfer: Permanent Secretary in the Nazi Party Chancellery.

They were mostly younger men, there were only two men over fifty and no women. Heydrich died during the war, as did Lange, with Müller disappearing in Berlin in 1945 and so likely suicide or killed in action. Schöngarth was executed in 1946 for killing an allied airman, whilst Hofmann was sentenced to 25 years in prison and served 10 years. Stuckart was sentenced to three years in prison and died in 1953, whilst Klopfer was arrested but died due to lack of evidence. Neumann was held in custody and died in 1951, whilst Alfred Meyer committed suicide in 1945. Luther was arrested by the Gestapo for plotting against Hitler and died in custody in 1945, whilst Eichmann escaped to Argentina but was executed in Israel in 1962. Kritzinger was arrested but released and died in 1947, whilst Leibbrandt was sentenced to three years in prison and lived until 1982. Bühler was executed in Poland in 1948 for crimes against humanity and Friesler was killed in an allied air raid in 1945. In the main, the collapse of the German regime brought nearly all of these figures down and led to early deaths or looking over their shoulders after the war.

I can’t offer much commentary on the entire Holocaust, but at the time of this meeting it looked like Germany might well win the war and that these men were seeing themselves as doing a job that needed doing whilst ensuring they and their families were well looked after. Most of these men were already senior officials that had navigated the politics of the Nazi Party so they were likely to be able to continue doing that. As for the millions they killed, I can only assume they just pictured them as enemies of the state, deserving of death as much as soldiers from other countries who were fighting Germany. By the time of this conference, it was all too late, none of those attending could really individually stop all that was happening, they were just facilitators in a sprawling officialdom. The death camps must have felt a long way from Wannsee, just numbers of pieces of paper, all just too easy to say yes to all the decisions that Heydrich made to kill millions. Hannah Arendt published a book on Eichmann titled “A Report on the Banality of Evil”, referring to how he declared himself as a functionary of the state and how he saw the German people starting to agree more with this campaign of terror and murder, but that simply made his morally responsibility further lessened.

But many of these attendees were respected by their juniors or, at least, their views were respected. If any of them had started to question Heydrich, then that would have had a trickle-down effect of more people in the German war machine starting to question the Holocaust. There is evidence of this in Denmark, where most Jews were saved because not only did the Danish population questions the Nazis, so did the junior members of the military and then even more senior ones. The orders came down to kill and arrest Jews, but the levers of power didn’t work, the orders were frequently ignored. And that could have happened with Wannsee, there seems to have still been a chance to have lessened the Holocaust even if the general direction was unstoppable, there was opportunity for any of those present to try to redefine what was happening. Anyway, I digress with my random thoughts, but I’m glad I went to Wannsee and to see where such a fateful decision was made, it’s a calm environment and the displays were thoughtfully and carefully laid out.