How unique was the Wannsee Conference?

How unique was the Wannsee Conference?

  • It was unprecedented

    Votes: 22 59.5%
  • Somewhat unique

    Votes: 8 21.6%
  • Not unique at all

    Votes: 7 18.9%

  • Total voters
    37

Wendigo

Banned
How unique in historical terms was the Wannsee Conference where top Reich officials discussed and implemented plans to exterminate every last Jew in Europe under their control in a methodical and efficient manner?

Have other genocides began with the same level of calculated/emotionless planning to eradicate every member of a particular group as the Jewish Holocaust IOTL?

I mean they literally kept minutes of it and were discussing the extermination of an entire 11 million strong ethnic group in blunt terms and when they finished they relaxed and drank Cognac. They had the numbers down for every nation in Europe (X Jews in France, Y Jews in Poland etc.) Mass murder was a matter of paperwork to them, requiring as much emotion and thought as filing taxes. The fate of an entire race of people was decided in a few hours which to me seems unprecedented in history but I could be wrong.
 

Cook

Banned
Have other genocides began with...

The Wannsee conference may have been a lot of things, but the beginning of the genocide it was definitely not; the Einsatzgruppen began operating in Soviet territory within days of the beginning of Barbarossa, fanning out across the Baltic states, Belorussia and occupied Ukraine. In September they'd begun mass shootings at Babi Yar, and by December the Nazi authorities had exterminated the Jewish population of Estonia and declared the protectorate Judenfrei. The Wannsee conference simply brought together the various administrative branches to improve coordination and the efficient implementation of a policy that had been maturing for at least six months, if not since the occupation of Poland in 1939.
 
Wendigo have you ever seen the very good film about the Wannsee Conference? Its called Conspiracy and is well worth a look.


As for how unique it was, I would say in the way it was, its singular. Genocides are very rarely (thankfully) sat down and discussed at a table. But the Nazi's were already carrying out mass exterminations, as Cook said this basically was an admin meeting to bring it all together and lay out who was doing what and where.
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
The coordination and bureaucratization of mass murder on that scale was indeed unprecedented. Turning Poland into one big murder factory was something that I don't think was ever seen before.

The decision to go for genocide, however, was not, and the idea that government officials laid out a policy of genocide was not at all unique.
 
The Wannsee conference may have been a lot of things, but the beginning of the genocide it was definitely not; the Einsatzgruppen began operating in Soviet territory within days of the beginning of Barbarossa, fanning out across the Baltic states, Belorussia and occupied Ukraine. In September they'd begun mass shootings at Babi Yar, and by December the Nazi authorities had exterminated the Jewish population of Estonia and declared the protectorate Judenfrei. The Wannsee conference simply brought together the various administrative branches to improve coordination and the efficient implementation of a policy that had been maturing for at least six months, if not since the occupation of Poland in 1939.

That's true. For instance, Chelmno was also already in operation by late 1941, and Belzec was also starting to do some gassings. Construction of the other Operation Reinhard camps had already started. Wannsee was more of a coordination effort than anything else. Still it was an unprecedented coordination effort IMO, to try settle something of this scale, in one fell swoop. While the Soviet purges, and the gulag system we just as, if not more massive than the undertaking of the Holocaust, they were done sort of hodge-podge. Things were done when Stalin said they would be done (over a period of time), and the gulags had been around since the czars.
 
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Deleted member 1487

I'm unaware of any event like that in modern history, unless someone can provide a counter example, I'd say that gives it it's uniqueness.
 
My understanding of Wansee was that it came about as a response to the inefficiency of techniques employed by the Einsatzgruppen, the Gustapo, etc in territories occupied in the east.
For instance, one of the topics discussed IIRC was the cost of bullets used in firing squads in the east and how it was a net drain on war resources.
So rather than it being a Council of Evil type situation where the top brass met to agree on genocide, it was called to help solve various issues with the conduct of Barbarossa. (I tend to agree with the Banality of Evil hypothesis btw)

Now obviously because of the nature of Nazi ideology, mass organized genocide was the most likely conclusion, but I don't think Wansee itself was all that unique.
 
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The conference was where they decided to, due to economic, personnel, and cultural reasons, go from what was basically individualized methods to mass production killing. The Soviets for all they had done was still basically in a individualized system. The Germans seeing what was going on with the war and its economy and troops decided to bring everyone together and have a single plan to deal with the problems that were coming up, and make sure that it was done in the most efficient and economic manner possible.
 

Deleted member 1487

The conference was where they decided to, due to economic, personnel, and cultural reasons, go from what was basically individualized methods to mass production killing. The Soviets for all they had done was still basically in a individualized system. The Germans seeing what was going on with the war and its economy and troops decided to bring everyone together and have a single plan to deal with the problems that were coming up, and make sure that it was done in the most efficient and economic manner possible.
That and the expansion into formalized planned genocide of Europe's Jews. To that point there was mass murder of Soviet Jews, but AFAIK no plan yet to extend that fully outside of the USSR until Wannsee was organized to carry out the 'Final Solution' which had been ordered in 1941.
 

Deleted member 1487

What about in history period?
There were multiple exterminations of people carried out, which I assume included some planning, so that would be equivalent even if not 'modern' in terms of industrial methodology and planning. The Mongols wiped out quite a few civilizations and carried it out according to plan, so whatever planning that took would be roughly similar. But when you want to compare yourself to Mongol genocides in the 20th century you're flat out evil.
 
What about in history period?

There have been various administrative decisions where high-level government or military figures have sat down and planned a genocide (Japan's Operation Sanko and Genghis Khan's premeditated extermination of a certain northern Chinese culture (can't remember the exact name ATM) are examples of this), but in terms of planning on that scale Wannsee is probably unique. The closest comparison would be the Japanese, and while their body count was similar to the Nazis their actual, planned killing campaigns were separate from each other and not particularly tied to any single document or conference.
 
The conference was where they decided to, due to economic, personnel, and cultural reasons, go from what was basically individualized methods to mass production killing. The Soviets for all they had done was still basically in a individualized system. The Germans seeing what was going on with the war and its economy and troops decided to bring everyone together and have a single plan to deal with the problems that were coming up, and make sure that it was done in the most efficient and economic manner possible.

The Soviets had to use that kind of system, it worked with the kind of totalitarianism they were creating. It wasn't meant to be about whether you were Russian enough, but if you followed the party line enough (in Germany they may have been the same thing), and you had to make at least a perfunctory effort to give them personalized charges; it wasn't enough to say 'Jew', they had to be read a list of political crimes before they were executed, a copy had to be sent to their relatives. When you think about it, it may have been more about keeping the guards in line than the general population.
 

Redbeard

Banned
The Ottoman decision to send the Armenian captives on death marches is a step high up on the ladder of genocide as is the Soviet extermination of the Kulaks or the Culture revolution in China. But still, they all lack the absurd bureaucratization of Holocaust as do the big crimes when big scale incompetence and cynicsm are combined.

But what is (also) scary is that practically none of the planners at Wannsee or the guards at Auswitch went around grinning "How evil I am today!" Someway that would have made it much easier, but actually they thought they were doing a favour and that the rest of us really should pity them for the doing the hard work!!! One of the reasons for gaschambers and extermination camps was that all that shooting people 24-7 destroyed the morale of the men and/or turned them into alcoholics!

We might say that human creativity is endless but so is apparently also the ability to pity yourself...
 

Wendigo

Banned
But what is (also) scary is that practically none of the planners at Wannsee or the guards at Auswitch went around grinning "How evil I am today!"

This is the case with pretty much every genocide/atrocity in history. The perpetrators are sane, rational and all around normal individuals who become adherents to an ideology that allows them to kill and abuse people for some greater good. If you believe that group X is a threat to you, your family and your country or race or tribe or whatever, then violence becomes a matter of opportunity.

The men at the Wannsee conference genuinely believed that Jews were evil subhuman parasites who dominated the world and were trying to destroy and enslave the Aryan Race. To Reich officials gassing Jews by the thousands on a daily basis wasn't murder it was a preemptive strike, a calculated means of "pest removal."

You don't need to be insane or a psychopath to kill specific groups of people. You just need to believe in a worldview or ideology that gives you sufficient reason to do so all while having a clear conscience because you believe that what you are doing is morally right or justified or necessary.
 
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Wendigo have you ever seen the very good film about the Wannsee Conference? Its called Conspiracy and is well worth a look.


As for how unique it was, I would say in the way it was, its singular. Genocides are very rarely (thankfully) sat down and discussed at a table. But the Nazi's were already carrying out mass exterminations, as Cook said this basically was an admin meeting to bring it all together and lay out who was doing what and where.

having seen the movie at least a dozen times I can only agree... there is also a German version
 
While the slaughter had already begun (which is addressed in the movie by the way), the fact that a meeting of mid level and senior administrators got to together and formally planned to put mass murder on an assembly line basis with the goal of complete murder of all the Jews in Europe is what makes this without question to be the unique event that started it all. Previous mass murders were generally ad hoc (like the Terror) designed to frighten off the target population as much as kill them, or as in the case of the Mongols and Timur the Lame, those slaughters made a point to retain those with valuable skills or knowledge (or physically attractiveness). The genocide of the Native American populations was more by act of god (germs) than intent, and for the most part later periods of de facto genocide in the Americas were meant more as acts of ethnic cleansing than of cold blooded murder. Although I suppose the Native Americans would have different views (and did and do for that matter).

We have only seen a couple similar episodes since... in Cambodia and in Rwanda but they lacked the sheer cold blooded organization. Even Stalin and Beria made a point to get ever ounce and scrap of labor from their targets (although they had similar effective organization).

Wannsee was a corporate meeting and designed just like any other major meeting. It was organized to effect efficient organization and that is what makes it the most chilling meeting that I am ever heard of.
 

tenthring

Banned
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Fields

3253310688.jpg
 
The uniqueness of the Wannsee conference is the the development of an integrated system of bureaucracy to carry out a total extermination without exception. It was at this conference that the decision was made that extermination was the answer to the Jewish problem. Prior to that while killings were carried out in the east, primarily in the USSR in an organized process, the total extermination of the Jews was not seen as the answer. expelling them, the Madagascar Plan, etc were all considered at one time or another. I'm not sure there was a previous decision to kill all of a given group of people, certainly not one where there was a bureaucratic group sitting down and going over rationale and techniques. Previous genocides yes, and mass exterminations of political opponents (cf: Cambodia, Russian/Ukrainian Kulaks, etc) - this sort of decision making just did not happen.
 

Wendigo

Banned
The uniqueness of the Wannsee conference is the the development of an integrated system of bureaucracy to carry out a total extermination without exception. It was at this conference that the decision was made that extermination was the answer to the Jewish problem. Prior to that while killings were carried out in the east, primarily in the USSR in an organized process, the total extermination of the Jews was not seen as the answer. expelling them, the Madagascar Plan, etc were all considered at one time or another. I'm not sure there was a previous decision to kill all of a given group of people, certainly not one where there was a bureaucratic group sitting down and going over rationale and techniques. Previous genocides yes, and mass exterminations of political opponents (cf: Cambodia, Russian/Ukrainian Kulaks, etc) - this sort of decision making just did not happen.

This is why I believe the Reich was evil incarnate and the worst nation state to ever exist. They were malevolence personified. To them killing millions of people for being "subhuman" was a matter of paperwork and stale bureaucratic processes.

The fact that they were the first in history to create literal MURDER FACTORIES alone puts them a cut above Stalin, Mao, Genghis Khan, and Leopold ll in terms of pure evil/nastiness.
 
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