The “Wannsee Conference” was a high-level meeting of Nazi officials that took place in Berlin on January 20, 1942, to discuss the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.
Called by Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the Reich Security Main Office which controlled both the Gestapo and the SD, the conference was originally called for December 9, 1941, but fallout from the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor and a temporary worsening of the situation on the Eastern Front led to its postponement. The gathering of 14 senior SS officers, Nazi Party officials and civil servants finally convened on January 20 at a splendid villa on the shores of Berlin’s Lake Wannsee.
At his war crimes trial Adolf Eichmann, one of Heydrich’s subordinates, said the meeting was divided into two parts. During the first, everyone sat and listened. In the second part “everyone spoke out of turn and people would go around, butler, adjutants, and would give out liquor.” After the meeting, Heydrich stayed around, according to Eichmann, and “gave expression to his great satisfaction” and drank cognac to celebrate because the meeting did not have the “stumbling blocks and difficulties” he expected.
