Prelude to the Wannsee Conference. Hitler's secret meeting of 12 December 1941.
On 7 December 1941, Japanese bombers struck at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii whilst also attacking Dutch and British targets. Japan was now at war with the US, the Netherlands and the UK as well as having an on going war against China. The US, although neutral, had been supporting the UK for some time – what was Hitler now to do. Roosevelt had the same problem – should he declare war or not. Hitler solved the problem for him. He conveyed a special meeting of the rubber stamp parliament, the Reichstag, on 11 December 1941 and there declared war on the US.
The war was now global. In his speech declaring war he stated that Jewish agitators had been behind Roosevelt.
Almost three years earlier, in the very same building Hitler had declared : “If the world of international financial Jewry, both in and outside of Europe, should succeed in plunging the nations into another world war, the result will not be the Bolshevization of the world and thus a victory for Judaism. The result will be the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe.”
Two other events had occurred at the time the Japanese bombers were attacking Pearl Harbor. In front of Moscow, the German front was beginning to collapse signifying that the war in the east would not end quickly. And in a small village in Poland called Chełmno nad Nerem, the ancient Jewish population of the town of Koło was brought and in batches were gassed in specially designed vehicles in a manor house next to the village church. From there the lorries took the bodies to the nearby Rzuchów forest where they were buried.
With the US entry into the war, Hitler now had his excuse to murder the Jews of Europe, he could now do what he had threatened in January 1939. He could intensify the murders that had been going on in the east since the beginning of the war, and above all after the attack on the Soviet Union. Now he could tell his inner circle precisely what he intended to do.
It is often claimed that the Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942 is the conference where a decision to carry out the Holocaust was made. That is not true. It was a conference to smooth out organisational difficulties and to carry out measures Hitler had already explained to the Nazi hierarchy. Whereas the Wansee Conference is well known, what is not so well known is the meeting at which Hitler explained what he wanted from his inner circle.
On the day after the Reichstag speech, in the afternoon of 12 December 1941, whilst many of his henchmen were still in Berlin, Hitler called them together. The meeting was held in Hitler’s private rooms in the Old Reich Chancellery, rooms that were not used for official business. But this was not official business. This was a meeting of party comrades. What was discussed here was not in the name of Germany but in the name of the Nazi party. It was Nazi business and in view of the Fuehrer principle, what the leader wants is an order and is not subject to discussion except on how that desire will be implemented. One of the attendees, Hinrich Lohse later said that Hitler’s address to the Reichsleiter and Gauleiter was confidential and as a general policy the participants at such meetings were not to discuss them. No minutes of the meeting were recorded, we do not know the full list of who was there but we do have Goebbels’ diary and a letter by Hans Frank that describes what was said as well as communications between Nazi leaders referring to what was discussed. Those present at this meeting were those who were in the Nazi party apparatus and government as well as those who would be responsible for seeing that deportations were carried out. They included Himmler who was responsible for seeing that the victims were murdered, Hitler’s secretary Martin Bormann and Chief of the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP Philipp Bouhler.
Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories Alfred Rosenberg was present with his deputy, Alfred Meyer who was also the Gauleiter in Westfalia.
Hans Frank, the governor of the rump area of occupied Poland; the Gauleiter in Warthegau Arthur Greiser, Hinrich Lohse Reich commissar for Ostland which was a geographical area including the Baltic States parts of what had been eastern Poland and Belarussia and Reich Commissar for Ukraine Erich Koch
Goebbels was there in his capacity as Gauleiter of Berlin.
Upper Silesia Gauleiter Fritz Bracht, and the Gauleiter for Thuringia Fritz Sauckel;
The Gauleiter of Hamburg Karl Kaufmann; the Gauleiter of Vienna Baldur v. Schirach, the Gauleiter of Saxony Martin Mutschmann, Gauleiter of Gau Weser-Ems Carl Roever
Hermann Goering was not there as he was having meetings with Keitel and General Osterkamp at his estate at Carinhall and it appears that Reinhard Heydrich was also not present although his boss Himmler was.
Goebbels made a diary entry on this meeting.
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