Reaching a ‘Final Solution’

Read for discussion in class: Bergen, War & Genocide, chapters 4-5; and
• Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness, part I
• Protocol of the Wannsee Conference, 20 January 1942

I. From Eugenic Sterilization to Euthanasia
A. The Legacy of “Racial Hygiene”
B. Operation T4: The First Systematic Killings

II. Discussion: Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness, part I

III. The Decision to Commit Genocide
A. An Act of Enraged Frustration?
B. An Act of War Euphoria?
C. What Was the Significance of the Wannsee Conference?

Image: Hartheim Castle

Image: "Qualitative Population Decline" (c. 1938)
Image: "Balast Beings" (Balastexistenzien)
Image: "Hier trägst Du mit"
Text: Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (1933)
Chart: Volume of Compulsory Sterilizations, 1934-1936
Chart: Grounds for Compulsory Sterilization, 1934-1936
Image: An African-German girl

Image: Tiergartenstrasse 4
Image: Smoke Rising from Hartheim Castle, 1940
Image: A Condolence Letter, 16 August 1940

Map: German Territorial and Military Expansion to 1942
Graphic: The Pace of Executions in Lithuania

Image: Reinhard Heydrich, a former Naval Counter-Espionage officer who under the tutelage of SS Chief Heinrich Himmler rose to command of the national Security Police, formed in 1939, which included the Gestapo, the Criminal Police, and the SS Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD). It was Heydrich who summoned the Wannsee Conference in December 1941. Heydrich died of blood poisoning from wounds sustained in an assassination attempt on 27 May 1942. Image source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

With this “Euthanasia Decree,” back-dated to 1 September 1939, Hitler authorized the systematic killing of life “deemed unworthy of life.”

Smoke rising from the crematorium of the Hadamar clinic, where some 14% of the 'euthanasia' killings were carried out in 1941. Image source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.