Conference Finals

The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration
$15.00
This is more a book on historiography than on history. It tries to put in chronological order the different steps that were taken that lead to the Final Solution: the extermination of European Jewry, decision that seems to have been taken in Wannsee.

It gets entangled in the effort, and therefore never moves on with the Conference, which is what made me by this book in the first place. If there are no documents to exactly know what was the purpose of the conference, and what were the personal stands of the people gathered there on the issue, we should have been warned in the title.

Discussing over dates and the proper chronology of decisions regarding the Holocaust seems to me like discussing security measures when the thiefs are already in the building. Who cares? The author never gets there, I mean, to the Conference. It was aggravating.

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$79.99
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Conference Call / Final Answer
$6.99

The Wannsee Conference ( Hitler's Final Solution: The Wannsee Conference ) ( Wannseekonferenz ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.4 Import - Australia ]

This meeting in January, 1942, of 14 Nazi officers and bureaucrats was chaired by Himmler's golden Aryan and arrogant SS prot���g���, Reinhard Heydrich. The conference took place in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. In 84 minutes, the mechanics and coordination of the final solution, the murder of millions of Jews, men women and children, was agreed upon. The film is based on records and minutes kept of the conference, spoken by unnervingly convincing actors in carefully reconstructed surroundings and wearing meticulously authentic uniforms.

The film runs 84 minutes, the exact time of the conference. It captures the bantering and pleasantries and casual racist jokes, and the bureaucratic trade-offs. The buffet lunch is excellent and the cigars and brandy are prime. The bullies, the bean counters, the bureaucratic time servers, the power brokers, the slightly worried, the professional toadies, the back-slappers and the paper shufflers are there, representing their key departments of the Nazi party, the SS and the government. The orders, Heydrich tells them, have been given. Now the organizers and expediters must agree and take appropriate action...how do we mobilize sufficient transport...what are minimum feeding requirements...what methods should be employed that will yield the most efficiencies? It is clear that Heydrich is a leader to be reckoned with, and that he is expecting results. It is equally clear that he will get his results. For those at this conference, the final solution is a problem of logistics and disposal, to be dealt with crisply and solved with German thoroughness. And if a Nazi faints during a mass execution of Jews? "It shows we Germans are human," says Heydrich with a pleasant smile.

This German television reenactment of the Wannsee Conference, directed by Heinz Schirk with a disturbing performance of charm and calculation by Dietrich Mattausch as Heydrich, is horrifying.

Don't mistake this for the film, Conspiracy, which covers the same meeting but with a sheen of "this is meaningful drama" about it, especially with Kenneth Branagh's Heydrich. The Wannsee Conference is central to the plot of that fascinating thriller, Fatherland, by Robert Harris. Here, Germany won the war. It's 1964 and President Joseph P. Kennedy will visit Berlin to celebrate Adolph Hitler's 75th birthday. An honest German cop and an American news reporter are going to make a terrible discovery. The book is first-rate. The television adaptation of Fatherland is less so, but it has its moments.

The Wannsee Conference, as far as I can tell, is available only in DVD in this Region 4 from Australia. At one time there was a VHS tape of the production commercially available. It still can be found but will require a substantial investment to purchase.