THE WANNSEE CONFERENCE

The Wannsee Conference

This is the concise documentary evidence that there was an extermination program the German policy was to evacuate the Jews to the East. Furthermore, it was necessary to capture the German documents to learn this fact. It was well known during the war, and during the beginning of the resettlement program was said and discussed countless times in the Allied press. In the case of Viennese Jews deported to Poland in early 1941, the New York Times even said, "they found their new homes much more comfortable than they expected or never dared to expect." Further news about the resettlement program will not describe it so well, but at least the press was saying about what was happening.

The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of a group of representatives, the police and military government of Germany, which had as its central theme the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” (Final Solution of the Jewish Question). It was held in Berlin on January 20, 1942.

The Wannsee Conference has a relation with Weber's concept of bureaucracy. He gave the concept of bureaucracy as the institutional form of rational-legal authority. Bureaucracy does not involve public officials dominating government. It requires only that full-time, professional officials are responsible for the everyday affairs of the state. Elected politicians might formulate policy, but officials implement it. Many aspects of bureaucracy derive, in Weber's analysis, from its rational-legal setting. The dominance of legal authority entails an impersonal rule in which abstract rules are applied to particular cases. Similarly, the dominance of rationality appears in the division of an organization into specialized functions carried out by experts.

At the beginning of the Wannsee Conference, Reinhardt Hedrick reminded everyone that the newly appointed official to the preparation of the Final Solution of the question Jews in Europe (Final Solution of the Jewish question in Europe). It will henceforth be responsible for all necessary measures for the Final Solution of the Jewish question without regard to geographic boundaries.

Hedrick then resume anti-Jewish policy led until then:

The exclusion of Jews outside of the vital areas of the German people.

The exclusion of Jews outside the living space of the German people.

In fact after the German army's lightning advance on the Eastern Front (Soviet Union) Hedrick therefore operates according to this new situation: With the prior approval of the Fuehrer, migration has given way to another possible solution: the evacuation of Jews to ...