Wannsee Conference in 100 Facts

[RolandVT]

Пока что получается "... in 157 facts". Думаю, примерно так оно и будет в конечном итогею

[RolandVT]

Nazi leaders, to be more precise – and perpetrators of the Holocaust and other serial mass murders, to be precise completely. Serial mass murderers, sure – but still serial killers. Textbook mission-oriented serial killers.

Now the existential (for four million Jews and millions of other Nazi victims) question is: How on bloody (literally) earth did smart, talented, well-educated (mostly) individuals, well-integrated into German society, with normal loving families become serial mass murderers??? What the hell (literally) happened?

To answer this genuinely existential question, we must turn to the studies performed on such well-known serial killers as Ted Bundy, Westley Allen Dodd, Arthur Gary Bishop, Keith Jesperson, and Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber).

It turned out that these individuals acquired at some point in their lives (usually in childhood or youth) a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In other words, they received either one colossal emotional trauma – or s series of powerful such traumas over weeks, months or even years. It was not limited to men – infamous Aileen Wuornos was diagnosed with PTSD that likely stemmed from her abusive childhood and continued traumas in adulthood.

One of the consequences of PTSD is “fight-or-flight response”; another is the development of various phobias. In religious terms, it means that victims of PTSD often develop a lethal combination of rage and fear – two in this case literally deadly sins. In extreme cases, PTSD can make its victims deadly aggressive.

It appears that this is exactly what happened to Nazi leaders, other Nazis… and lots of other Germans (the latter could be rightfully called the “PTSD nation”). Hardships of war (first and foremost, hunger caused by Blockade of Germany), humiliating defeat in First Great War; grossly unfair terms of a criminal Treaty of Versailles, hyperinflation, Great Depression; constant fear of being invaded from the West (by France) and from the East (by the USSR) … no wonder they got PTSD.

As all these highly emotionally traumatic events were directly or indirectly associated with Jews, it is no surprise that Nazi leaders (as well as other Nazis and ordinary Germans) developed acute Judeophobia: fear of and hatred for the Jews.

Which – combined with the “slabs” in the “slab stack” – ultimately transformed Nazi leaders into serial mass murderers and triggered the “Holocaust Avalanche” that killed four million Jews. Obviously, it does not absolve Nazis of their crimes – it only explains them.

[RolandVT]

The sad truth is that even today, after all these years, we still do not know for sure what was said and done during these fateful ninety minutes (Wannsee Conference lasted only that long).

Just about all our knowledge about Wannsee Conference stems from two sources: Wannsee Protocol and what Adolf Eichmann said when interrogated in Jerusalem and later at his trial. Neither source is particularly trustworthy.

Shorthand notes for the Wannsee Protocol were taken by Eichmann’s secretary, Ingeburg Werlemann, and the protocol proper was written by Eichmann (and subsequently edited by Reinhard Heydrich – CEO of the “Holocaust Project”).

The latter gave the former instructions about what was to appear – and what was definitely NOT to appear in the protocol. And for good reason – the whole thing was totally illegal according to the laws of the Third Reich (according to the Criminal Code in effect at that time, serial mass murder of Jews was a capital offence punishable by death).

True, Hitler could have made it completely legal by issuing a written order – he did it for Aktion T4… but he never did it. So, Heydrich and Eichmann made sure nothing that illegal made its way to the minutes (which was obviously a lot).

Eichmann’s statements made in Jerusalem were not particularly trustworthy because his trial was not about truth (or justice for that matter) at all – it was all about politics. Holocaust politics, to be more precise.

More specifically, about getting the Holocaust into the center of attention worldwide – and about making German legal system getting serious about prosecuting Nazi war criminals. Both were highly noble objectives (IMHO).

However, we do know for sure that Wannsee Conference (and the whole “Holocaust Project”) were illegal according to the laws of the Third Reich – and that Wannsee House was never owned by a Jew.

We also can surmise (from what we do know) that Wannsee Conference was all about team building (“Holocaust by Gas” team, to be more precise); that it operationally defined who was a Jew; that it authorized extermination trough labor – and the “Holocaust by Gas”.

And that the Wannsee Protocol – despite all omissions – was more than sufficient to indict, try and sentence to death by hanging all attendees. Which was not done.

[RolandVT]

In both “Holocaust by Bullets” and “Holocaust by Gas”, to be more precise. According to official estimates, Order Police battalions involved in direct killing operations were responsible for at least one million murders by shooting.

Using the “Nebe adjustments” (Order Police was no better than Einsatzgruppen in inflating their murderous “accomplishments”), this number is reduced to something like 350,000… which is also a lot (and thus does not change much).

Starting in 1941, the regional Order Police units (battalions) helped transport Jews from ghettos in both Poland and the USSR (and elsewhere in occupied Europe) to concentration and extermination camps; they also participated in operations to hunt down and murder Jews outside the ghettos.

The Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) were the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1945. After SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler was appointed Chief of German Police by Hitler in 1936, he immediately reformed the Order Police and incorporated it into the SS.

The top and upper leadership positions of the Orpo were filled by police officers who belonged to or had joined the SS. Orpo was established as a centralized organization based in Berlin uniting the municipal, city, and rural uniformed police that had been previously organized on a state-by-state basis (as it is now).

Himmler and Kurt Daluege, chief of the Orpo, transformed Orpo into militarized formations ready to serve the regime’s aims of conquest and existential racial war. Police troops were first formed into battalion-sized formations right before the invasion of Poland, where they were deployed for security purposes, taking part in executions and mass deportations.

During World War II, Orpo was tasked with policing the civilian population of the occupied territories. After the invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941, its activities in no time escalated to genocide.

Over 11,000 members of the Order Police entered the Soviet Union after the Nazi invasion. Orpo battalions attached to Wehrmacht security divisions and Einsatzgruppen independently and in collaboration with those units, became heavily involved in the “Holocaust by Bullets”. The first mass-murder of 3,000 Jews by Orpo occurred in occupied Białystok on July 12, 1941.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, the role of Orpo units in mass murder was obscured both by the lack of evidence (and reliable witnesses) and by deliberate obfuscation, while most of the focus was on far more visible SS Einsatzgruppen.

[RolandVT]

The comprehensive “Final Solution” mandate issued by Hermann Göring (actually, by Adolf Hitler) to RSHA Chief Reinhard Heydrich on July 31, 1941, not only made the latter the CEO of the “Holocaust Project” but ordered ALL agencies and organizations in the Third Reich to basically what Heydrich tells them to do.

Including (theoretically) the mighty SS… which inadvertently led to the situation “tail wags the dog” – of sorts. “Wags the dog” because (1) RSHA was part of the SS – not vice versa; (2) Heydrich reported to SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler – not the other way around; and (3) the key resources needed to implement the chosen method of the “Final Solution” were in the SS – but outside RSHA.

In fact, RSHA by itself had only very limited resources: Einsatzgruppen to commit some serial mass murders in the “Holocaust by Bullets” (many were committed by Order Police controlled by Himmler, not Heydrich) and “Jewish” Referat IV B4 that coordinated some activities in “Holocaust by Gas”.

Only some, because Operation Reinhard was managed by Odilo Globocnik – Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) in Lublin, reporting directly to Himmler (RSHA had nothing to do with that) and Chelmno death factory was under command of Wilhelm Koppe – HSSPF in Reichsgau Wartheland (Polish territory annexed into German Reich after occupation). Who also reported directly to Himmler.

Auschwitz and Majdanek killing centers were built and run by Concentration Camps Inspectorate – subsequently incorporated into WVHA (SS Main Economic and Administrative Office), which also managed Jewish slave labor and controlled the flow of valuables taken from murdered Jews to coffers of the Third Reich.

Identification of the Jews (according to criteria established in Nuremberg Laws and subsequently at the Wannsee Conference) was done by experts of RuSHA – SS Race and Settlement Main Office – that also reported directly to SS-Reichsfuhrer.

Hence the real (“shadow”) lead agency in the “Holocaust Project” was the SS, not RSHA and the real (“shadow”) CEO of this diabolical endeavor was Heinrich Himmler, not Reinhard Heydrich.

Officially, the former was ordered to provide the latter all necessary resources (by the “Göring Mandate” that conveyed the order from Hitler) … but it appears that the “tug of war” was going on for nine months between highly ambitious Heydrich and his boss over the management of the “Holocaust Project”.

It is possible that the latter got tired of fighting with the former – and ordered first to let British commandos attack Heydrich – and then his physician to kill him.

[RolandVT]

Surprisingly few are aware of the fact that Operation Reinhard death factories (Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka) and Chelmno killing center were run not by RSHA (or WVHA) but by local HSSPF.

In other words, not by Reinhard Heydrich (or Oswald Pohl) but by Higher SS and Police Leaders (Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer) of Lublin District and Reichsgau Wartheland Odilo Globocnik and Wilhelm Koppe respectively. Both reported directly to SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler.

The title of SS and Police Leader (SS und Polizeiführer) designated a senior Nazi Party (and SS) official who commanded various components of the SS and the German uniformed police (Ordnungspolizei), before and during World War II in the German Reich proper and in the occupied territories.

Initially, this office had a purely military function. he office of Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer (Higher SS and Police Leader, HSSPF) was authorized by a decree of November 13, 1937, signed by Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick (the nominal boss of Himmler in latter’s capacity as Chief of German Police).

This decree authorized the creation of HSSPF in each of the thirteen German armed forces Wehrkreise (Military Districts) in the German Reich, but only in the event of mobilization (i.e., of war).

At that time, the HSSPF would serve as deputies under the jurisdiction of Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police, for the purpose of leading, coordinating and integrating all local and regional SS and police formations into the defense organization of the Reich.

The first HSSPF activated were those appointed in the Wehrkreise bordering Austria during the Anschluss crisis in March 1938, and Czechoslovakia during the summer and fall of the same year.

The purpose of the Higher SS and Police Leader was to be a direct command authority for every SS and police unit in these given geographical regions, answering only to Himmler and, through him, to Adolf Hitler. They were to act as Himmler’s chief liaison to, and unifier of, all SS and police components in a region.

In all other occupied territories, no Wehrkreise were established, so the HSSPF were independent commands with several subordinate SS- und Polizeiführer (SS and Police Leader, SSPF) commands reporting to them. These positions were created beginning in November 1939 to assist the HSSPF in administering the large areas under their jurisdiction.

The SS and Police Leaders directly commanded a headquarters staff with representatives from almost every branch of the SS and the police. This typically included the Orpo, the SiPo (security police), including the Gestapo (secret police), Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV; SS concentration camps), SD (intelligence service), and certain units of Waffen-SS.

The HSSPF served as commanding SS generals for Einsatzgruppen operating in their area (in reality, the latter were under dual command – from HSSPF and RSHA). In addition, they launched anti-partisan operations and directed police units to acquire forced labor for war-related projects.

The SS and Police Leaders were the overseeing authority of the Jewish ghettos in Poland and directly coordinated deportations to killing centers. They had direct command over Order Police battalions and SD regiments that were assigned to guard the ghettos.

The HSSPF regularly provided SS and police guards and other support personnel for the transports to the death factories, and also negotiated with the agencies and ministries of the Reich for rolling stock, supplies and provisions, rail schedules, and an array of other requirements necessary to keep the roundups and the death trains moving efficiently.

And, in the satellite and client states, the HSSPF negotiated directly with the puppet or collaborationist governments to hand over their Jews for deportation to the East (although Foreign Office was involved as well).

Finally, the HSSPF (Koppe and Globocnik) were also directly involved in the construction and operation of killing centers in Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka (Auschwitz and Majdanek were run by WVHA via its Concentration Camps Inspectorate).

[RolandVT]

SS-WVHA (SS-Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt – SS Main Economic and Administrative Office) was created on February 1, 1942 (ten days after Wannsee Conference) to manage finances, supply systems and business projects of the SS).

It also ran the concentration camps and two death factories (Auschwitz and Majdanek) and thus was instrumental in the implementation of the Final Solution through Concentration Camps Inspectorate and SS camp guards (SS-TV).

WVHA Chief Oswald Pohl worked with Walther Funk, Reich Minister of Economics, to oversee financial aspects of the Final Solution, Valuables such as gold watches, rings, even tooth fillings, glasses, and currency were taken from the inmates on arrival at the death factories and then sent to Berlin in WVHA-marked crates for processing at the Reichsbank (it was a major source of income for the Reich ultimately accounting for about 15% of financing of German war effort).

A major source of income for the SS was slave labor supplied to just about every major production facility in the Reich. The number of slave laborers the WVHA had available increased steadily from 21,400 in 1939, to 524,286 by August 1944.

WVHA created evaluation tables that calculated the value of labor camp inmates as farmed-out wage earners (minus the depreciation of food and clothing), their profit intake from valuables remaining after their deaths (minus crematoria expenses), and any costs recovered from selling their bones and ashes.

In total, the average labor camp inmate had a life-expectancy of nine months and was valued at 1,630 marks. WVHA was heavily involved in “extermination through labor” mass murder project (a part of the Holocaust).

Which meant that some labor camp inmates were deliberately worked to death, even when it conflicted with production. This practice was a compromise between Nazi ideological imperatives and the practical needs of German war effort.

Organizationally, the WVHA was made up of five main departments (Amtsgruppe). The key operational departments were Amts C, D and W. Amtsgruppe C, among other duties was tasked with construction and maintenance of concentration camps, killing centers (Auschwitz and Majdanek) and POW camps.

Amtsgruppe D, which prior to March 1942 was known as the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, was responsible for the administration of the concentration camps and of the death factories. Amtsgruppe W was responsible for the operation and maintenance of various industrial, manufacturing, and service enterprises throughout Germany and the occupied countries.

[RolandVT]

RuSHA (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt – SS Race and Settlement Main Office) played a critical role in the Holocaust because its experts made a critical determination: who was and who was not a Jew.

Who will die – and who will live. Although initially, there was no indication at all that RuSHA would ever be involved in serial mass murder of ultimately four million human beings.

RuSHA was formed in 1931 – as an internal agency of the SS. Its stated objective was to “safeguard the racial purity of the SS”. One of its duties was to oversee the marriages of SS personnel to make sure they adhere to its racial policy.

After Heinrich Himmler introduced the “marriage order” on December 31, 1931, the RuSHA would only issue a permit to marry once detailed background investigations into the racial fitness of both prospective parents had been completed and proved both of them to be of Aryan descent back to 1800.

Four years later, RuSHA began to radically expand: it was ordered to establish the (in)famous Lebensborn network of maternity homes, whose purpose was “to accommodate and look after racially and genetically valuable expectant mothers.” Then it got involved genealogy, “racial-biological” investigations and the social welfare services of SS members (including pensions – believe it or not).

Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the RuSHA formed partnership with VOMI (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle) – Nazi Party agency founded to manage the interests of the Volksdeutsche – ethnic Germans living outside the Reich.

It got involved in the “germanization” of captured territory, monitoring of settler welfare, and the plantation of ethnic Germans in areas designated for settlement by the SS, particularly in occupied Ukraine. This involved in part, the resetting of Germans in the Nazi occupied Eastern territories and ejecting the native families from those lands. Ethnic cleansing, to put it simply.

But its most devastating (genuinely murderous) component was its advisory and executive office for all questions of racial selection. Racial examinations were performed by Rasse und Siedlungs (RUS) leaders or their racial examiners (Eignungsprüfer) in relevant cases… including the Final Solution (identification of Jews to be ultimately shipped to killing centers).

Interestingly, RuSHA employed Josef Mengele for a short time from November 1940 to early 1941, in Department II of its Family Office, where he was responsible for “care of genetic health” and “genetic health tests”.

[RolandVT]

Which was kinda ironic because this office was headed by the same Hermann Göring who in July of 1941 tasked Reinhard Heydrich with designing and implementing the “final solution to the Jewish question” and approved extermination of all Jews under German control.

The Nazi Four-Year Plan (commenced in 1936) was inspired by Soviet Five-Year Plans (commenced in 1929) and had the same objective: to create (in this case, re-create) the military-industrial monster capable of conquering and occupying sufficient Lebensraum in the East (the Soviet one was to be in the West) for ultimate self-sufficiency of Germany… in everything. Making sure that the horrors of Blockade of Germany never, ever happen again.

According to the plan, Germany had to be ready for a Second Great War in four years. It was ready in three. The basic premise of the Four-Year Plan was that the war with Russia was inevitable. Which was true – whether Hitler wanted it or not – and whether he liked it or not (he did).

Hitler placed Hermann Göring (his second-in-command) in charge of these measures, making him a Reich Plenipotentiary whose jurisdiction cut across the responsibilities Minister of Economics, the Defense Minister, Minister of Agriculture. Which made complete sense – otherwise it would not have been possible to overcome bureaucratic ineptitude and red tape.

The Four-Year Plan was part of the highly efficient “alternative governmental structure” created by Hitler, which included entities such as Organisation Todt and the unification of the SS and the German police forces (Order Police, Gestapo and Kripo) under SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler.

However, it also had very ambitious civilian objectives: reduce unemployment; increase synthetic fiber production, undertake public works projects under the direction of Fritz Todt, increase automobile production, initiate numerous building and architectural projects and further develop the Autobahn system.

In other words, both guns and butter were planned. The German state, through under the industrial conglomerate Reichswerke, began building refineries, aluminum plants, and factories for the development of synthetic materials.

In his memo on this plan written in August of 1936, Hitler called for Germany to have the world’s first army in terms of fighting power within the next four years (it did) and that the extent of the military development of our resources cannot be too large, nor its pace too swift and the role of the German economy was simply to support Germany’s self-assertion and the extension of her Lebensraum.

Hitler extended to Göring the power to make law simply by publishing decrees, which enabled him to create other plenipotentiaries in overall charge of various German industries. The Four-Year Plan technically expired in 1940, but the “Office of the Four-Year Plan”, a cabinet-level agency, had grown so powerful that the plan was extended indefinitely.

Göring constantly expanded the scope of the plan until he became (through the Office of the Four-Year Plan) the de facto master of the German economy (and subsequently economies of annexed and occupied territories).

After the Anschluss, the Reichswerke absorbed Austrian heavy industries, including those owned by private German investors. After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Reichswerke absorbed between 50% and 60% of Czech heavy industries.

The pattern was repeated in occupied Poland, France and the Soviet Union. The Reichswerke operated captured assets as far from its Berlin base as Liepāja in Latvia and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

In February 1938 Göring pumped up the Reichswerke capital from 5 to 400 million ℛ︁ℳ︁, starting a chain of mergers and acquisitions. In April the Reichswerke moved into weapons production by absorbing Rheinmetall. In a few following months the Reichswerke consolidated most of Austrian heavy industries, from extraction of ore to production of advanced weapons.

After the outbreak of the war, the Reichswerke abandoned peacetime formalities and simply took over all assets it found attractive. It declared itself “a trustee for the German state” for the duration of the war, a “white knight” saving occupied countries from “colonialism” of big business. Settlements and compensations, when recognized, were delayed until the end of the war

By the end of 1941 the Reichswerke became the largest company in Europe and probably in the whole world, with a capital of 2.4 billion ℛ︁ℳ︁ and about half a million workers.

Such an enormous industrial monster required a lot of labor – first and foremost, highly skilled labor. Which was very good news for the Jews as Göring was sufficiently powerful to spare from gas chambers any Jew he needed.

Which ultimately saved thousands of Jewish lives.

[RolandVT]

Nazi Führerstaat was run by four powers: civilian government (administration), the Party (NSDAP), SS and police and Wehrmacht. For the Final Solution to proceed smoothly, all four had to be involved – and all had to work together (with maximum synergy) towards the same goal – total extermination of all Jews under German control.

This was especially important in Wartheland and other administrative districts created after annexation of Polish territories taken from Germany at gunpoint and given to Poland by Versailles criminals.

A new type of administrative unit was introduced called a Reichsgau. In these territories the Gauleiters also held the position of Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) thereby formally combining the spheres of both party and state offices.

The establishment of this type of district was carried out for any further territorial annexations of Germany both before and during World War II. Even the former territories of Prussia were never formally re-integrated into what was then Germany’s largest state after being re-taken in the 1939 Polish campaign.

In addition, Martin Bormann (who in his capacity of head of the Party Chancellery practically controlled NSDAP practically controlled NSDAP) got himself heavily involved in the Final Solution being invariably the advocate of extremely harsh, radical measures against the Jews.

Hence, Heydrich (who did not like the Party very much, to put it mildly), had to invite to Wannsee Conference one Gerhard Klopfer. Who as the State Secretary in the Party Chancellery, was Martin Bormann’s chief deputy.

Conveniently, he was also the SS-Gruppenführer – which made him an ideal liaison between the Party and the SS.

NSDAP provided vital support for the Holocaust by using its structured to provide additional ideological motivation for all Holocaust perpetrators to be even more committed, energetic and efficient in murdering Jews.

True, unlike in the USSR, where Bolshevist party controlled everything, in the Third Reich NSDAP was roughly equal in power to civilian administration – and less powerful than the SS. However, it still had enough power to make a difference.