The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration - Hardcover

Roseman, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805068104 ISBN 13: 9780805068108

Publisher: Metropolitan Books, 2002

Synopsis

A groundbreaking investigation into the mysterious gathering where the Nazi plan for genocide was reputedly decided.

In early 1947, American officials in Germany stumbled across a document. Entitled "Secret Reich matter," it summarized the results of a meeting of top Nazi officials that took place on January 20, 1942, in a grand villa on the shore of Berlin's Lake Wannsee.

On one level, this document offered clarity: known as the Wannsee Protocol (and included here in full), it tallied up the Jews in Europe, carefully classified half and quarter Jews, and above all laid the groundwork for a "final solution to the Jewish Question." Yet the Protocol, among the most shameful documents in history, remains deeply mysterious. How can we understand this businesslike discussion of genocide? And why was the meeting necessary? Hundreds of thousands of Jews had already been shot in Russia or gassed in the camp at Chelmno. Test murders had been carried out in Auschwitz. Indeed, the most remarkable thing about the Wannsee Conference, is that we do not know why it took place.

Mark Roseman, author of the acclaimed A Past in Hiding, seeks to unravel this double mystery and to explain how it was that on a snowy January day in 1942, a group of educated young men met to discuss the systematic slaughter of a people.

About this title

About the Author

Author of A Past in Hiding and winner of the Fraenkel Prize in contemporary history and Wingate Literary Prize for nonfiction, Mark Roseman teaches at the University of Southampton and has published widely on German history. He lives in Southampton, England.

Review

"Roseman's book is a lively contribution to work on a terrifying period in history. It is no simplistic account--chaos and uncertainty are the very 'stuff' of history--but, throughout the book, we are forced to recognise the very ordinariness of these men as we follow, step by step, the diverse routes they followed in their will to destroy."—Joanna Bourke, author of The Second World War: A People's History, The New Statesman

"There is, to my knowledge, no book that brings together more masterfully in less than 200 pages the daunting problems and massive research on the Holocaust than Mark Roseman's account of the notorious Wannsee Conference. Concise and very accessible, yet also comprehensive in its contextualization of the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question' and its origins, I found this a most illuminating study of the cold-blooded planning and execution of the most horrific crime of the twentieth century."—V.R. Berghahn, Seth Low Professor of History, Columbia University

"A cool, judicious and well informed guide to the meeting whose minutes were described by the war crimes prosecutors at Nuremberg as 'perhaps the most shameful document of modern history.'"—Richard J. Evans, author of Lying About Hitler

"This is the best analysis in existence of the fateful Wannsee Conference and its place in the fateful events that culminated in 'The Final Solution.'"
—Ian Kershaw, author of Hitler

"Roseman's account is an excellent introduction to this immensely complex story . . . A highly-readable, concise and thorough account not only of the conference itself—about which very little documentation ever survived—but of the whole debate on the timing and nature of the Holocaust. Convincing."—Richard Overy, author of Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, in The Sunday Telegraph (London)

"Well-researched and subtly argued . . . Roseman's grasp of every detail of the Wannsee Conference is impressive . . . Equally important is the document translated here in full: the minutes of the meeting, known as the Wannsee Protocol . . . Roseman's book is also a contribution to the question of how far Hitler was personally responsible for the extermination program."—Hyam Maccoby, The Evening Standard (London)

"An up-to-date analysis . . . Succinct, closely argued, free of academic jargon. Engrossing and chilling, it helps our understanding of Wannsee's place on the twisted path to genocide."—Theo Richmond, author of Konin: A Quest, in The Sunday Times (London)

"Mark Roseman has succeeded in a brief 150 pages to write not one, but two standard works: one on Wannsee itself, the other on Germany's road to the Holocaust."—Berlin Tagespiegel

Edition details

• Publisher: Metropolitan Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0805068104
• ISBN 13: 9780805068108
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192