The Wannsee Conference by Mark Roseman

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The Wannsee Conference by Mark Roseman is an incredibly complex and ambiguous book. The book asks many questions, yet gives very few answers to major question. This is mostly because people do not know these answers. Conspiracy, the movie version of the book, fills in these questions, which seem to be left open by Roseman. Looking at these two works, The Wannsee Conference and Conspiracy, separately and together may help further our understanding of what really happened on January 20, 1942.

Roseman's views on the Wannsee Conference are quite evident throughout his writing. He discussed how the Conference was a place where matters were discussed about the Jews. "…preparing the final solution of the European Jewish question." This statement by Roseman makes it evident that the Jewish problem was being discussed, and they were looking for a solution. However, there is no evidence that the solution was going to be the mass killing of all Jewish people. With all this being said the realization is still that the mass killing of Jews still began to happen after this conference. Moreover, Roseman believes that the Wannsee Conference paved the way for the Holocaust. It did not cause it, but without it the Holocaust would never have existed.

Roseman does not believe that the Wannsee Conference reveals how the conference happened, but rather why it happened. The Nazi leaders all had a different idea on why the Jews needed to go, but the common assumption that they needed to be dealt with was there. By getting rid of the Jews then it would better the entire society or so they thought. "Hitler's decision on deportation was a significant radicalization of existing measures and moved him significantly closer to realizing his long-expressed desire to rid Europe of its Jews." At first it was just a deportation of the Jews, but that would not last long. The idea of just moving them was not good enough for everyone. More importantly it was not enough for Heydrich and Hitler. The deportation would soon turn into "evacuation" which was a fancier way of saying: kill all Jews. People often believe that the mass killing is horrible, which it is, but what people need to realize is that Europe truly thought they were going to improve themselves by killing the Jews.

Roseman believes that there is not a definite time in which the Holocaust started, but then the question arises: What can we take from the Wannsee Conference?

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