Section 1: Introduction

For decades, those who have propagated the alleged extermination thesis of the Jews by Nazis in World War II, have more often than not started their theory with the assertion that the mass murder of Jews was planned in detail by the National Socialist government at a conference in 1942.

This conference, the Wannsee Conference, named after the resort in the woodlands lying to the south west of Berlin, and its minutes, known as the Wannsee Protocol, have become pivotal for many exterminationist  believers, as evidence of the methodical planning and  ruthlessness of the alleged Nazi plot.

For example, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington DC, one of the largest resources for exterminationist propaganda outside of Yad Vashem in Israel, has the following to say about the Wannsee Conference:

The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: On January 20, 1942, fifteen high-ranking Nazi party and German government leaders gathered for an important meeting. They met in a wealthy section of Berlin at a villa by a lake known as Wannsee. Reinhard Heydrich, who was SS chief Heinrich Himmler’s head deputy, held the meeting for the purpose of discussing the “final solution to the Jewish question in Europe” with key non-SS government leaders, including the secretaries of the Foreign Ministry and Justice, whose cooperation was needed.

The “final solution” was the Nazis’ code name for the deliberate, carefully planned destruction, or genocide, of all European Jews. The Nazis used the vague term “final solution” to hide their policy of mass murder from the rest of the world. In fact, the men at Wannsee talked about methods of killing, about liquidation, about “extermination.”

The Wannsee Conference, as it became known to history, did not mark the beginning of the “Final Solution.” The mobile killing squads were already slaughtering Jews in the occupied Soviet Union. Rather, the Wannsee Conference was the place where the “final solution” was formally revealed to non-Nazi leaders who would help arrange for Jews to be transported from all over German-occupied Europe to SS-operated “extermination” camps in Poland. Not one of the men present at Wannsee objected to the announced policy. Never before had a modern state committed itself to the murder of an entire people.” (1)

      

The Wannsee Conference has also been the subject of a major film, jointly produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the American-based Home Box Office (HBO) company. The film, Conspiracy, was scripted by the Jewish author Loring Mandel.

In this dramatization, conference leader Reinhard Heydrich steers the discussion in the direction of the wholesale elimination of Jews, specifically using gas chambers.

This causes consternation among many of the attendees, notably Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, deputy head of the Reich Chancellery, who objects that Hitler had given him personal guarantees that extermination of the Jews was not being considered, and representatives of the Polish administration, who are shocked to discover that the SS have been building camps and making preparations for the “Final Solution” under their noses and in secret. (2)

      

The Wannsee Protocol, and the meeting itself, have therefore, taken on iconic status within the Holocaust story. The actual villa where the conference took place is still in existence, has been turned into a museum where one can read the minutes of the meeting, on public display there.

The villa now has the atmosphere of a church about it, as the event has been built up into what has become the very founding cornerstone of the entire Holocaust story. Yet, like everything else associated with the alleged Holocaust story, once studied openly, the facts of the Wannsee Conference are considerably at odds with the propaganda.

In fact, it is not exaggeration to say that almost everything that is said about the Wannsee Protocol to date by the exterminationists, is a bare faced lie, predicated upon the–until now–successful hope that no-one would actually take the time to study the text of the Protocol itself, and instead rely purely on the “interpretation” given to them by the exterminationists.

The Wannsee minutes are kept under glass at the Wannsee Villa Museum, creating an atmosphere of sanctity to unsuspecting visitors who never actually read the document in full.

Section 2: Participants

Despite the Wannsee Conference having assumed giant proportions in the ongoing Holocaust story, the meeting was in fact unknown until the chance discovery of a copy of the minutes in 1947.

This was surprising, given the list of attendees, who were:

- Gauleiter Dr. Alfred Meyer and Reichamtsleiter (Chief Officer).

- Dr. Georg Leibrandt - Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories

- State Secretary Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart - Reich Ministry of the Interior

- State Secretary Dr. Erich Neumann - Office of the Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan

- State Secretary Dr. Roland Freisler - Reich Justice Ministry

- State Secretary Dr. Josef Bühler - Office of Governor General [Poland] representing Hans Frank

- Under State Secretary Martin Luther - Foreign Office

- SS Senior-Colonel Gerhard Klopfer - Party Chancellery representing Martin Bormann

- Ministerial Director Friedrich Kritzinger - Reich Chancellery

- SS Major-General Otto Hofmann - Race and Resettlement Main Office

- SS Major-General Heinrich Müller - Reich Security Main Office

* SS Lt-Colonel Adolf Eichmann - Reich Security Main Office

- SS Senior-Colonel Dr. Eberhard Schöngarth - Commander of the Security Police and the SD in the General Government [Poland]

- SS Major Dr. Rudolf Lange - Commander of Security Police and Security Service for General Commissariat Latvia, as Deputy of Commanding Officer of Security Police and Security Service for Reich Commissariat Ostland [Baltic States and White Russia] Security Police and Security Service.

The meeting itself was also relatively brief, and only lasted an hour and a half at the most. The minutes were found in the files of Under State Secretary Martin Luther in 1947 and have since then been boosted to almost mythical status as one of the turning points in Nazi policy towards the Jews.

In reality, the Wannsee Conference was actually just a planning meeting to facilitate shipping Jews out of Germany to the newly-occupied territories in Russia, and nothing more. This is evidenced from a close reading of the minutes, as detailed below.

Section 3: The Real Wannsee Protocols

In reality, the Wannsee Protocol never talked about extermination, gas chambers or even suggests, in any way, mass murder of any sort.

The Wannsee Conference only discusses a plan which entails the evacuation of Jews to territory recently opened by the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which had started the previous June. It is worth repeating: 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.

Section 4: 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 the quotes below are directly from the Wannsee Protocol, on public display at the Wannsee Villa to this day.

Appendix A to this paper contains a full English translation of the Wannsee Protocol; this can be compared to the full German text found in Appendix B; which in turn can be compared for accuracy to a full set of the original Protocol in Appendix C.

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.”

Wannsee Protocol Expressed Concern for Jewish Safety

Far from expressing a desire to murder Jews, in fact the Wannsee Protocols 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 absolutely no evidence to support this assumption, and a wealth of evidence to indicate the opposite. In fact, the Wannsee Protocols go into detail on which groups of Jews should NOT be evacuated.

Section 5: No Jews over 65 to be Evacuated to the East

Instead of plotting the mass murder of all Jews, the Wannsee conference minutes actually talk about keeping large numbers of Jews in Germany.

For example, with regard to Jews over the age of 65, the Protocol specifically says:

“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.”

Section 6: No Jewish World War I Veterans to be Evacuated East

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.”

Section 7: 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 discussed specific steps to protect entire groups of Jews from harm of any sort.

Section 8: The Number of Jews under German Control Identified

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”.

Section 9: Only 4.5  Million Jews Ever Under Direct German Control

       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. It is worth once again stating that by the Nazi’s own estimates, only 4,536,500 Jews were under direct German control.

Section 10: 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. Their Jewish numbers can therefore be completely removed from any calculations.

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.

It is however incorrect to assume that these countries were 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’.” (3)

The Yad Vashem— Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, itself claims 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. (4)

The breakdown of the number of Jews in Europe, including the Soviet Union, as outlined in the Wannsee Minutes. Only 4,5 million were ever under German control, making a mockery of the “6 million dead” claim, particularly in the light of the 4.3 million “Holocaust survivor” claims made by Jews against the post-war German state.

Section 11: Russian Jews Flee Advancing 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.

Section 12: 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 Soviet 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, some of 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.

In fact, at least two Einsatzgruppen commanders were killed in action fighting partisans, which in itself shows the true nature of the work of those units.

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.

Section 13: 4.5 Million Jews Under Direct German Control–Yet 4.3 Million Claim Compensation

As detailed above, of the 6.7 million Jews estimated by the Nazis themselves to be in the category “B” countries; almost none actually fell into German 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.

This is where the figures get interesting: the 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. (5)

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.

Healthy-looking prisoners, freed by the Soviet Army at Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. Pictures such as these are rarely shown because they give lie to the tales of ill-treatment and mass extermination.

Section 14: Wannsee Protocol Details Forced Jewish 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.”

Section 15: “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.)”

       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.

Section 16: “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 allege that the Wannsee Protocol was to “kill Jews” on the one hand, and save whole groups of Jews on the other is clearly impossible.

       The reference to “appropriate treatment” 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 Protocol:

“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.

Nazi Germany was not the only country to practice sterilization. This poster, from a 1936 edition of the German magazine Neues Volk, was titled Wir stehen nicht allein or “We do not stand alone”. On the shield is the name of the German 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, which allowed compulsory sterilization. Around the picture are flags of nations which had enacted (to the left) or were considering (bottom and to the right) similar legislation. The countries which had enacted compulsory sterilization laws were: United States, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland while the countries where sterilization laws were being considered were Hungary, the United Kingdom,  Switzerland, Poland, Japan, Latvia and Lithuania. In this context, references in the Wannsee minutes to sterilization are not that unusual for the time.

Section 17: Conclusion – The Wannsee Conference Was a Discussion about the Mechanics of Moving Certain Groups of Jews to the East, and Never Mentioned Mass Murder in Any Form

       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 Wannsee meeting never discussed gas chambers, shootings or any of the fantasies propagated by the exterminationists;

4) 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);

5) 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;

6) The most “sinister” part of the Wannsee Protocol 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;

7) 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.

       There is therefore, no justification for alleging that the Wannsee Conference was a ‘master plan for mass murder’ and the Western media, Holocaust institutions and reference books are simply lying.

       This lie becomes even more sinister when it is considered that no-one who actually reads the Wannsee Protocol, could come to any other conclusion except that outlined above.

            To suggest that the Wannsee Conference was anything else, shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that those propagating this lie, do so shamelessly, in direct contradiction of the facts, to try and prop up the rest of the Holocaust fabrication.

References:

(1) The Wannsee Conference and the “Final Solution, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 10 October 2006.

 (2) Conspiracy (2001), Directed by Frank Pierson, Writing credits Loring Mandel. BBC/HBO

(3) The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1985

 (4) Yad Vahsem, Israel, Holocaust FAQS.

 (5) West German FederalIndemnification Law-BEG (“Wiedergutmachung”). German Finance MinistryLeistungen der öffentlichen Hand auf dem Gebiet der Wiedergutmachung Stand: 31.Dezember 2009.