The Wannsee Conference Essay Sample

Before January 20, 1942, in Germany, the Jewish population was decreasing but not at a good enough rate for the Nazis. Adolf Hitler decided that the Nazis needed to do something more about the Jews. The Nazis had been wasting money on inefficient ways of murdering the Jews but they weren’t killing enough. That is when Adolf Hitler put his plan into play. He set a meeting for the Nazi generals and officials to decide what they should do with the Jews to get rid of more. That is when they made their final decision of mass-murdering the Jews, which led to the death of 6 million Jews. The Wannsee Conference relates to the theme of debate because the Nazi generals and officials debated on what the best way to get rid of the Jews would be. 

Some background information on the Wannsee conference is that there was already antisemitism in Germany. This was one main cause that made Germans want to get rid of Jews entirely. Part of the reason Germans were prejudiced against the Jews was due to the fact that Germans saw the Jews as a source of evil. This caused Germans to want the Jews out of their territories. They had already tried to get the Jews out of Europe but they did not succeed. Also, the Nazi party was a thing that was going on at this time and they and their ruler, Adolf Hitler, were the reasons that the Wannsee Conference ever happened and that the Holocaust ever happened. The last big reason the Germans were so against the Jews was that they trusted the Nazi party to restore their country. Adolf blamed the Jews so Germans agreed that they needed to get rid of them to improve their power. After World War I Germany fell weak and its economy and political power dropped. The Nazis said they would restore Germany to its old state, so many Germans believed and followed them in what they did.

Who organized and got the idea of holding the conference? Adolf Hitler organized the conference to be in Berlin, Germany on January 20, 1942. The conference was held in Lakeside Villa. The Lakeside Villa was a building that sat in the borough of Groben Wannsee. Adolf Hitler’s goal of the meeting itself was for the Nazis to find the best way to get rid of the Jews. This amazing structure actually housed the planning and the “Final Solution” of total annihilation of the Jews and one of the biggest decisions in the world's history. This house still stands and is now a museum of the Conference and the Holocaust.

The people who attended this included mostly the special Nazi generals and officials. All of these people were extremely smart and all of them even had doctorates. Even though these people that were there and needed, a lot of other big figures in Nazi society did not attend the conference. Some of these people include Adolf Hitler himself, Heinrich Himmler, Herman Goring, and Joeseph Goebbels. These people did not attend the meeting but were known in the Nazi Society as high-level citizens to the Nazi community. 

What was the outcome of the Wannsee Conference? During the Conference, there were several decisions that had been brought up on what the Germans thought they should do with the Jews. There was one decision that they chose though and the solution was called the “Final Solution”. The “Final Solution” was the total annihilation of the Jews. The German goal to completely get rid of the Jews was to make concentration camps and ghettos where they could get rid of the Jews. The camps and ghettos would be a much more efficient way of getting rid of the Jews opposed to the old ways of mass shooting and small gasses.

What were concentration camps and ghettos? A concentration camp is a place or area where large numbers of people are held for political reasons. These people were political prisoners. The prisoners in the camps were housed in small houses and were tightly kept with little room. In the day they would normally work or march and at night they would sleep on wood levels in the huts. 

When I say that the prisoners worked, this does not mean that they were working willingly or getting paid. This means forced labor and they didn’t have a choice on what they got to do. Some of the jobs that the Jews had to do on a daily basis included working in factories. The Jews did not have the right nutrition, clothes, or equipment to do the work they were forced to perform. A quote from a child’s diary that was in a concentration camp states,” “It’s sweltering. Everyone is huffing and puffing, and in this heat I have to walk everywhere. Only now do I realize how pleasant a streetcar is, but we Jews are no longer allowed to make use of this luxury; our own two feet are good enough for us.” (Frank 12) This quote shows that the Jews ,like this young girl Anne, don’t have anything and they have to work with what they have and just do what they have to do.

There were over 40,000 concentration camps stretched across the European continent. The first-ever Nazi concentration camp put to use was called Dachau. It opened in March in 1933. The largest concentration camp of all was known as Auschwitz or Auschwitz Birkenau. The camp opened in 1940 in southern Poland. This camp was also the deadliest of the Nazi camps. By the end of the Holocaust, there was a total of over one million deaths in just this camp by itself. 

What were the outcomes of the Wannsee Conference? The Wannsee resulted to more than one thing. The direct thing that occured due to the Wannsee Conference was the start of Nazi concentration camps and ghettos. The camps and ghettos led to the deaths of over one million Jews and others that were prisoners in the camps. The millions of deaths of the Jews helped cause World War II. The surrounding countries from around Germany were upset with what the Germans were doing with the Jews. They were even helping the Jews escape Germany and get to freedom. Then countries including the United States began to act and war started. If there was no Wannsee Conference then none of this stuff that happened from 1942-1945 would have ever happened, including the millions and millions of Jewish deaths.