The
Wannsee Conference
Germany, 1984; 87 mins.
Produced by Manfred Korytowski, directed by Heinz Schirk
Cast of Characters
|
SS Reich Security Main Office |
SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich |
|
SS Race and Settlement Main Office |
SS Gruppenführer Otto Hofmann |
|
Reich Chancellery |
Ministerial Director Wilhelm Kritzinger |
|
Foreign Ministry |
Undersecretary of State Martin Luther |
|
Reich Ministry of the Interior |
Secretary of State Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart |
|
Reich Ministry of Justice |
Secretary of State Dr. Roland Freisler |
|
Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan (i.e Göring) |
Secretary of State Erich Neumann |
|
Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories |
Gauleiter Dr. Alfred Meyer |
|
Party Chancellery |
SS Gruppenführer Gerhard Klopfer |
|
Generalgouvernement |
Secretary of State Dr. Josef Bühler |
|
Security Police and SD in the Generalgouvernement |
SS Oberführer Dr. Karl Eberhard Schöngrath |
|
Security Police and SD in the Ostland (Latvia etc.) |
SS Sturmbannführer Dr. Rudolf Erwin Lange |
This film recreates the infamous meeting of January 20, 1942, at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, assembled for the purpose of establishing inter-agency cooperation in the complex matter of deporting Jews to the East for the "final solution". (The deportations had been going on for months, and the extermination program was already under way by January 1942.) The meeting, chaired by the powerful Reinhard Heydrich of the SS, was attended by high-ranking representatives of several Ministries (including Justice and the Foreign Office) along with officials from various SS and party offices and from the German civil administrations in Poland (the Generalgouvernement) and Latvia. The meeting lasted no more than a hour and a half and its business was achieved with hardly any objection from the civilian ministries, contrary to Heydrich's expectations. Minutes of the meeting (see Dawidowicz, pp. 73 - 82) were prepared by Adolf Eichmann.
Producer Korytowski supplemented the minutes with detailed research into the circumstances. He and his team then filmed a reconstruction of the conference in the same villa used in 1942; it follows the minutes and takes up about the same amount of time as the actual meeting. There is no commentary, but a lot of explanatory material is incorporated into the conversations before and during the meeting. Drama is provided by such devices as watching the young whipper-snapper Eichmann tentatively make his way among these heavyweight officials, and especially by an extended sequence where Dr. Stuckart of the Ministry of the Interior tries to defend the status quo concerning half-Jews instead of releasing nearly all of them for slaughter. There is much laughter as these men carry out their awesomely sinister task. The overall effect is memorably eerie, to say the least.