On 18 January 2002, German “Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder vowed ‘never again' in a somber statement marking the 60th anniversary Sunday of the Nazi Wannsee conference which adopted extermination as the final solution for Europe's Jews,” - this according to a press report sent out by the Deutsche Presse Agentur, and repeated faithfully throughout the world’s press services.
The DPA article went on: “Schroeder said the Wannsee Protocol from the 20 January 1942 meeting remained a crucial historic document because it showed the Holocaust was not just due to the murderous will of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.”
“‘In order to make the murder of millions of Jewish men, women and children state policy a broad organization was needed which went far beyond the SS and included large parts of the state apparatus which willingly served the dictator,’” said Schroeder.”
And so the story of the Wannsee Conference is repeated once again, and millions are told that this conference marked the Nazis’ plan to murder all the Jews they could get their hands on.
Witness this description, so typical of the average, from the Simon Wiesenthal Center:
“The Wannsee Conference was a meeting held at a Villa in Wannsee, Berlin, on January 20, 1942, to discuss and coordinate the implementation of the Final Solution. This conference is noteworthy because it was there that Adolf Hitler's decision to solve the so-called Jewish question through systematic mass murder was officially sanctioned.” (http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/pages/t083/t08339.html)
THE REAL WANNSEE CONFERENCE - NO MASS MURDER PLANS
But what did really happen at the Wannsee Conference? This now infamous suburb outside Berlin was indeed the venue for a gathering of top ranking Nazi leaders, but a reading of the minutes of that meeting, which are freely available for anyone to obtain, reveal a dramatically different purpose!
For in reality, the Wannsee conference only decided to put forward a plan which entailed the evacuation of Jews to territory recently opened by the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which had started the previous June.
Nowhere in the Wannsee conference, or the minutes of that meeting, was a plan for the mass murder of all Jews discussed.
Incredibly, exactly the opposite was discussed: amongst other things, the Wannsee meeting:
- took an interest in saving Jewish lives by warning of the ‘dangers’ of emigrating during wartime;
- ordered that ALL Jews aged over 65, NOT be evacuated East;
- ordered that ALL German Jews who were decorated or wounded World War I veterans NOT be evacuated East;
and
- ordered that ALL Jews working in critical munitions and other factories NOT be evacuated East.
Only in one place do the minutes of the Wannsee meeting suggest (quote) “appropriate action” for a small number of Jews - but, given the context of the quote, the evidence is overwhelming that it was meant that these Jews were to be sterilized so that they could not reproduce.
WANNSEE CONFERENCE MINUTES REVEAL THE TRUTH: JEWISH EMIGRATION AND EVACUATION TO THE EAST
The real purpose of the Wannsee conference is best gained by a simple reading of the minutes of that meeting (all quotes are from the actual Wannsee Minutes, a full copy of which can be found here).
In its own words, the purpose of the conference was to attend to the “expulsion of the Jews from every sphere of life and living space of the German people”.
This aim was to be achieved as follows: “In carrying out these efforts, an increased and planned acceleration of the emigration of the Jews from Reich territory was started, as the only possible present solution.”
As a result of this enforced emigration, “537,000 Jews were sent out of the country between the takeover of power and the deadline of 31 October 1941.” (The “country” in question was Germany).
This emigration was financed by the Jews themselves: “The Jews themselves, or their Jewish political organizations, financed the emigration. In order to avoid impoverished Jews' remaining behind, the principle was followed that wealthy Jews have to finance the emigration of poor Jews; this was arranged by imposing a suitable tax, i.e., an emigration tax, which was used for financial arrangements in connection with the emigration of poor Jews and was imposed according to income.”
NAZI CONCERN FOR JEWISH SAFETY
The Wannsee minutes then show concern for Jewish safety: by placing a ban on emigration during wartime:
“In the meantime the Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police had prohibited emigration of Jews due to the dangers of an emigration in wartime and due to the possibilities of the East.”
Nowhere in the Wannsee Meeting or its minutes is the murder of Jews discussed; only their emigration and evacuation - forced - to the eastern territories opened up after the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
The Wannsee minutes state this aim quite openly:
“III. Another possible solution of the problem has now taken the place of emigration, i.e. the evacuation of the Jews to the East, provided that the Führer gives the appropriate approval in advance.”
It is alleged that the term “evacuation” as used at Wannsee, meant extermination. There is, simply put, no evidence to support this supposition, and a wealth of evidence to indicate the opposite. For example:
NO JEWS OVER 65 TO BE EVACUATED
The Wannsee conference minutes say:
“It is not intended to evacuate Jews over 65 years old, but to send them to an old-age ghetto--Theresienstadt is being considered for this purpose.”
NO GERMAN JEWISH WORLD WAR ONE VETERANS TO BE EVACUATED
The Wannsee minutes then go on to make special mention of German World War One Jewish veterans in this way:
“In addition to these age groups--of the approximately 280,000 Jews in Germany proper and Austria on 31 October 1941, approximately 30% are over 65 years old--severely wounded veterans and Jews with war decorations (Iron Cross I) will be accepted in the old-age ghettos. With this expedient solution, in one fell swoop many interventions will be prevented.”
NO JEWS WORKING IN “VITAL” INDUSTRIES TO BE EVACUATED
The Wannsee conference also noted that Jews working in industries vital to the war effort are also not to be evacuated:
“With regard to the issue of the effect of the evacuation of Jews on the economy, State Secretary Neumann stated that Jews who are working in industries vital to the war effort, provided that no replacements are available, cannot be evacuated.”
The Wannsee minutes then record that Reinhard Heydrich, often fingered as the mastermind behind the conference, agreed and was recorded so in the minutes:
“SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich indicated that these Jews would not be evacuated according to the rules he had approved for carrying out the evacuations then underway.”
So, instead of a “blueprint to murder all Jews,” the Wannsee meeting actually took specific steps to protect certain groups of Jews from harm.
NUMBER OF JEWS UNDER GERMAN CONTROL IDENTIFIED
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The Wannsee conference then discussed exactly how many Jews would be involved in their planned emigration program. For this purpose, they divided Europe up into two sections - “A” and “B”.
The “A” territories included Germany and all those countries under direct German occupation: these lands were (with numbers of Jews in parenthesis) : Germany, (131,800); Austria (43,700); Eastern territories (420,000); General Government (2,284,000); Bialystok (400,000); Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia (74,200); Estonia (0); Latvia (3,500); Lithuania (34,000); Belgium (43,000); Denmark (5,600); France /occupied territory (165,000)/ unoccupied territory (700,000); Greece (69,600); Netherlands (160,800); Norway (1,300).
This gives a total of 4,536,500 Jews under German control. This is an important figure, as will be seen presently.
The “B” category countries were those with Jewish populations NOT under German control. These were: Bulgaria (48,000); England (330,000); Finland (2,300); Ireland (4,000); Italy including Sardinia (58,000); Albania (200); Croatia (40,000); Portugal (3,000); Rumania including Bessarabia (342,000); Sweden (8,000); Switzerland (18,000); Serbia (10,000); Slovakia (88,000); Spain (6,000); Turkey (European portion)(55,500); Hungary (742,800); USSR (5,000,000, including as subdivisions the Ukraine (2,994,684) and Byelorussia (446,484).)
This gives a total of 6,755,800 Jews in Europe NOT under direct German control.
These two figures, when added together, give a total of 11,292,300 Jews, of which, by the Nazis own estimates, only 4,536,500 were under German control.
CATEGORY “B” COUNTRIES EXCLUDED FROM GERMAN CONTROL
Of the “B” category countries, the following can be excluded from all calculations: England; Finland; Ireland; Portugal; Sweden; Switzerland; Spain; and Turkey; as none of these countries ever came under German occupation, nor in any way entered the German sphere of influence.
The other “B” category countries were either at some stage allied to Germany or parts thereof were occupied by German troops in combat, mostly against the Soviet Union. The former included Bulgaria; Italy; Croatia; and Rumania; the latter included Serbia; Slovakia; Hungary; parts of the USSR; Ukraine; and White Russia.
NOT ALL JEWS UNDER GERMAN CONTROL
It is however incorrect to assume that because a country was allied to the Germans, that those countries’ Jews were handed over to the Nazis. The most famous example of this is Bulgaria, whose entire Jewish population was protected by that country’s government, as recounted in Jewish historian Martin Gilbert’s Book “The Holocaust” (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1985):
....."Also lucky were forty-eight thousand Jews of Bulgaria: those living within the pre-war borders of the state. At first, it seemed that they too would be deported, as had those from the Bulgarian- occupied zones of Thrace and Macedonia. Following German insistence, the Bulgarian government had indeed ordered the deportation of all Jews from Bulgaria proper, some of whom had already been interned. But the deportation order led to such an outcry from the Bulgarian people, including many intellectuals and church leaders, that the government rescinded the order, and Jews already taken into custody were released. The release of the Jews, which took place on March 10, came to be known in Bulgaria as a 'miracle of the Jewish people'."
(http://www.b-info.com/places/Bulgaria/Jewish/Holocaust.shtml)
The Yad Vashem - Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, itself claims on its website that Denmark only lost 60 Jews dead; that Finland lost 7 Jews dead, that of all Italy’s 58,000 Jews (by Nazi estimates) were reduced by only 7,600 and so on. (Yad Vahsem, http://212.143.122.31/about_holocaust/faqs/answers/faq_4.html)
RUSSIAN JEWS FLEE INVADING GERMANS
The German invasion of the Soviet Union, which started on 21 June 1941, would not have captured all the 5 million Jews which the Wannsee minutes calculated were present in this region.
Millions upon millions of Jews were evacuated by the Soviets themselves, or fled the advancing German troops.
Those Jews who stayed behind became the subject of German “Einsatzgruppen” or Special Action Group units. These Einsatzgruppen were sent in behind German lines with the express orders of fighting partisans, and then killing what remained of the Communist party infrastructure in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union.
EINSATZGRUPPEN EXAGGERATIONS
Due to the high number of Jews in the Soviet Communist party infrastructure (the Wannsee minutes actually make mention that over 23 percent of all Soviet Jews were employed by the state) this of course meant that many Jews became the target of the Einsatzgruppen.
Although a final figure of Jews killed by the Einsatzgruppen has never been presented, the most extreme estimates by Yad Vashem and others say that between 900,000 and 1.25 million people - Jews and others - were killed by the special action units.
This figure is without doubt a gross exaggeration, considering that the Einsatzgruppen never had more than 3,000 men in total serving in its units at any one time, and furthermore spent most of their time fighting partisans.
But even if this grossly exaggerated figure is accurate - and all evidence is that it is not - this grandiose figure is still nowhere near the 5 million Jews the Nazis estimated were in the Soviet Union’s territory.
ONLY 4.5 MILLION JEWS UNDER NAZI CONTROL
The point of this is that of the 6.7 million Jews estimated by the Nazis themselves to be in the category “B” countries; almost none actually fell into Nazi hands.
The category ‘A” country figure of 4.5 million Jews can therefore be taken as the most reliable estimate of the number of Jews who actually fell into Nazi hands, give or take a few hundred thousand.
4.3 MILLION JEWS CLAIM COMPENSATION FROM POST WAR GERMAN GOVERNMENT
And this is where the figures get interesting: this figure of 4,536,500 Jews is important when it is considered that, until the end of 1987, some 4,384,138 individual claims for compensation had been made by Holocaust survivors against the post war German government. (This figure is provided by the German government itself on its official website, (http://www.bundesregierung.de/en/dokumente/-,10001.14155/Artikel/dokument.htm).
This means, by the Nazis’ own reckoning, that of the estimated 4.5 million Jews directly under their control in 1942, at least 4.3 million had claimed compensation from the German government for persecution by 1987.
These figures by themselves speak volumes about the true number of Jewish casualties during the war.
WANNSEE MINUTES DETAIL JEWISH FORCED LABOR
The Wannsee minutes do not end there though: they go on to specifically state what is to be done with able bodied Jews once they have been evacuated and resettled in the Eastern territories:
“Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.”
This is the first mention of Jews dying - not by execution, but by “natural causes” be it disease or whatever.
“APPROPRIATE ACTION” FOR SURVIVORS OF FORCED LABOR
Then comes the only part of the Wannsee minutes which could be interpreted in a sinister fashion. Following directly on the remark that a large portion of able bodied Jews will be eliminated by natural causes, the relevant sentence reads:
“The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival (see the experience of history.)”
What the minutes say here is that those Jews who are put to hard, forced labor on building roads in the East, and who survived the ardors of such forced labor, will represent the strongest elements of the Jews. These will have to be “treated accordingly” because if released, would act as the seed of Jewish revival.
It is alleged that this sentence means that these Jews - who, important to note, are not all the Jews, but only a small select group - were meant to be killed.
Read in context of the entire document, this conclusion is spurious.
“APPROPRIATE ACTION” MEANT STERILIZATION
Firstly, elsewhere in the Wannsee minutes, as already pointed out, specific mention is made of saving Jews from the ‘dangers of wartime emigration’ and even not evacuating certain classes of Jews.
To kill Jews on the one hand, and save whole groups on the other - was obviously not the intention of the Wannsee meeting or its minutes. It is lunacy to even suggest so.
The reference to “appropriate treatment” clearly means that these Jews are to be sterilized so that they cannot have children, a fact which becomes obvious when the very next section of the Wannsee minutes is read.
The next section - in fact one of single longest sections of the entire minutes - deals with which Jews should be evacuated, and how persons of mixed Jewish - German ancestry are to be handled, with the answer being to sterilize certain highly mixed groups rather than evacuating them.
To quote this section of the Wannsee minutes:
“Persons of mixed blood of the first degree who are exempted from evacuation will be sterilized in order to prevent any offspring and to eliminate the problem of persons of mixed blood once and for all. Such sterilization will be voluntary. But it is required to remain in the Reich. The sterilized "person of mixed blood" is thereafter free of all restrictions to which he was previously subjected.”
And
“SS-Gruppenführer Hofmann advocates the opinion that sterilization will have to be widely used, since the person of mixed blood who is given the choice whether he will be evacuated or sterilized would rather undergo sterilization.”
And
“State Secretary Dr. Stuckart maintains that carrying out in practice of the just mentioned possibilities for solving the problem of mixed marriages and persons of mixed blood will create endless administrative work. In the second place, as the biological facts cannot be disregarded in any case, State Secretary Dr. Stuckart proposed proceeding to forced sterilization.”
Read in this context, the meaning of the “appropriate action” remark becomes plain: by this it was meant to sterilize those Jews who had survived the forced labor in the East.
CONCLUSION – WANNSEE CONFERENCE WAS NOT A PLAN FOR MASS MURDER
In conclusion then, the following can be said:
1. The Wannsee meeting and its minutes do not contain a master plan to kill Jews;
2. Nowhere in the meeting’s minutes is genocide discussed, planned, proposed or even suggested;
3. The number of Jews under Nazi control was estimated by the Nazis themselves to be in the region of 4.5 million (yet 4.3 million Jewish compensation claims have been lodged against the post war German government);
4. The Wannsee meeting was a planning meeting on how Europe’s Jews should be deported, via transit camps, to the East; with able bodied Jews being forced to build roads and other labor intensive tasks in those regions;
5. The most “sinister” part of the Wannsee minutes suggests that appropriate action, which, in the context of the document, clearly means sterilization, be applied to those able bodied Jews who survive the forced labor in the East;
6. The Wannsee conference also made allowance for specific exceptions to Jewish evacuation, such as Jewish German World War One veterans; ALL Jews over the age of 65; and ALL Jews working in industries vital to the German war effort, to be released from the threat of evacuation and be allowed to stay in Germany.
To allege that the Wannsee conference was anything else than this, is a pure fabrication at best, and an outright lie at worst.