Wannsee Conference

Essays and research papers on the Wannsee Conference can be custom written for any world history topic you are assigned.

The following are facts regarding the Wannsee Conference that you will want to include in your research paper:

• The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior Nazi officials
• The Wannsee Conference was held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942
• The purpose of the Conference, organized by SS head Reinhard Heydrich, was the coordination of the various government agencies in implementing the Final Solution, the extermination of Jews.
• It was at the Wannsee Conference that Heydrich outlined how European Jews would be rounded up and sent to the various extermination camps.

Wannsee Conference Invitations

On 31 July 1941, Herman Göring asked Heydrich to prepare a plan to deal with Jews in areas occupied by Nazi Germany. Heydrich sent out invitations to the Conference in November 1941. However, the meeting, originally scheduled for 9 December was postponed by the Soviet counter offensive and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which caused Nazi Germany to declare war on the United States.

The Wannsee Conference lasted about 90 minutes, the first hour of which was taken up by Heydrich's talk, followed by question and answer. It was only in retrospect that historians understood its importance to history, in marking a turning point in the prosecution of the Holocaust. However, copies of the minutes, known as the Wannsee Protocol, were burned by the various participants at the end of the war. The Nuremburg Tribunal was able to obtain a copy, which aided in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals.