The Participants: The Men of the Wannsee Conference

Published by Berghahn Books 2017

The Participants

The Men of the Wannsee Conference

Edited by: Hans-Christian Jasch and Christoph Kreutzmüller

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781785336348

Overview
Contents

About this book

Combining accessible prose with scholarly rigor, The Participants presents fascinating profiles of the all-too-human men who implemented some of the most inhuman acts in history.

On 20 January 1942, fifteen senior German government officials attended a short meeting in Berlin to discuss the deportation and murder of the Jews of Nazi-occupied Europe. Despite lasting less than two hours, the Wannsee Conference is today understood as a signal episode in the history of the Holocaust, exemplifying the labor division and bureaucratization that made the “Final Solution” possible. Yet while the conference itself has been exhaustively researched, many of its attendees remain relatively obscure.

From the introduction:
Ten of the fifteen participants had been to university. Eight of them had even been awarded doctorates, although it should be pointed out that it was considerably easier to gain a doctorate in law or philosophy in the 1920s than it is today. Eight of them had studied law, which, then as now, was not uncommon in the top positions of public administration. Many first turned to radical politics as members of Freikorps or student fraternities. Three of the participants (Freisler, Klopfer and Lange) had studied in Jena. In the 1920s, the University of Jena was a fertile breeding ground for nationalist thinking. With dedicated Nazi, race researcher and later SS-Hauptsturmbannführer Karl Astel as rector, it developed into a model Nazi university. Race researcher Hans Günther also taught there. Others, such as Reinhard Heydrich, joined the SS because they had failed to launch careers elsewhere, and only became radical once they were members of the self-acclaimed Nazi elite order.

Author / Editor information

Hans-Christian Jasch is the Executive Director of the Memorial and Educational Site of the Wannsee Conference. He has authored the definitive study, published in 2012, of Wilhelm Stuckart, state secretary in the Reich Interior Ministry, and the role of the civil service in Jewish policy.

Christoph Kreutzmüller is a curator at the Jewish Museum Berlin. Before joining the museum he coordinated two extensive research projects on the fate of Jewish-owned businesses in Berlin during the Third Reich and on Jews in Berlin from 1918 to 1938 at Humboldt University of Berlin. His acclaimed study Final Sale in Berlin: The Destruction of Jewish Commercial Activity 1930–1945 was published in 2015 by Berghahn Books.

Hans-Christian Jasch is the Executive Director of the Memorial and Educational Site of the Wannsee Conference. He has authored the definitive study, published in 2012, of Wilhelm Stuckart, state secretary in the Reich Interior Ministry, and the role of the civil service in Jewish policy.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Foreword Otto Dov Kulka Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction The Participants: The Men of the Wannsee Conference Hans-Christian Jasch and Christoph Kreutzmüller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1 Biographical Approaches and the Wannsee Conference Mark Roseman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
Chapter 2 Otto Adolf Eichmann, Reich Main Security Office: The RSHA’s “Jewish Expert” Bettina Stangneth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	40
Chapter 3 Reinhard Heydrich, Reich Main Security Office: The Nazi Terror Enforcer Robert Gerwarth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
Chapter 4 Otto Hofmann, SS Race and Settlement Main Office: A Pragmatic Enforcer of Racial Policy? Isabel Heinemann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
Chapter 5 Rudolf Lange, Reich Main Security Office: Academic, Ideological Warrior and Mass Murderer Peter Klein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
Chapter 6 Heinrich Müller, Reich Main Security Office: The Archetypical Desktop Perpetrator Johannes Tuchel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
Chapter 7 Eberhard Schöngarth, Reich Main Security Office: A Practitioner of Mass Murder Olaf Löschke Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
Chapter 8 Josef Bühler, State Secretary for the General Government: A Behind-the-Scenes Perpetrator Ingo Loose Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	152
Chapter 9 Roland Freisler, Reich Ministry of Justice: Hitler’s “Political Soldier” Silke Struck Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Chapter 10 Gerhard Klopfer, Nazi Party Chancellery: A Nationalist Ideologue and a Respectable West German Markus Heckmann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
Chapter 11 Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, Reich-Chancellery: A Prussian Civil Servant under the Nazi Regime Stefan Paul-Jacobs and Lore Kleiber Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Chapter 12 Georg Leibbrandt, Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories: An Academic Radical Martin Munke Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	224
Chapter 13 Undersecretary Martin Luther: Defender of Foreign Office Prerogatives Christopher R. Browning Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
Chapter 14 Alfred Meyer, Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories: From German Monarchist to Nazi Desk Perpetrator Heinz-Jürgen Priamus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	266
Chapter 15 Erich Neumann, Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan: A Colorless, Compliant Prussian Christoph Kreutzmüller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
Chapter 16 Wilhelm Stuckart (1902–1953), Reich Interior Ministry: “A Legal Pedant” Hans-Christian Jasch Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	301
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	321

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 354
Keywords: Holocaust; nazi era; hitler; Eichmann; nazi; nazi germany; third reich; genocide; German history; Germany; final solution; Wannsee Conference; second world war

eBook

Published: October 1, 2017
ISBN: 9781785336348