Wannsee: Reinhard Heydrich’s Power Play

Wannsee.

It’s a word that’s unfamiliar to many.  Who is it?  What is it?  How do I say it?  And what does it have to with history?  All are good questions, and we’ll address each of them this evening…we’re going to have all kinds of lessons.

First, some foreign language study.  Wannsee is pronounced von-zay, and rhymes with…well…vonzay (I’m only responsible for the quality of the history lesson).

Off to geography class, because Wannsee is a place in (as you probably guessed from the grammar lesson) Germany.  Officially, it’s a part of the Steglitz-Zehlendorf borough in southwestern Berlin, Germany’s capital.  There are also a couple of lakes right there, called Greater Wannsee and Little Wannsee.

Ok, it’s history time.  Wannsee was also the place of a conference, the Wannsee Conference, held by Reinhard Heydrich, chief deputy to Heinrich Himmler, head of the German SS.  Convened on January 20, 1942, the meeting’s purpose was to reveal “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question” to more than a dozen non-SS government leaders, including the secretaries of the Foreign Ministry and Justice.

The invasion of the Soviet Union had opened vast territories to Germany’s Nazi government, and initial successes in the war zone had given rise to the idea that millions of Jews could be transported east and essentially worked to death building the expanding Third Reich’s infrastructure.  But then came the Soviet counteroffensive at Moscow, and the entry of the United States into the war.  Prospects for a quick victory against Bolshevism began to evaporate, and Nazi leadership decided that, with the problem of potential food shortages, it would be more expedient to simply kill the Jews rather than trying to feed them as they slaved away.

But the meetings at Wannsee didn’t last more than a couple of hours, and no real important decisions were made.  All “hard-and-fast” policy on the Final Solution came from Adolf Hitler himself.  Furthermore, as we have seen, Jewish innocents were already being brutally treated and slaughtered all over eastern Europe.  So what was the Conference’s purpose?

Experts (not me) have speculated that it was held for a couple reasons.  First, Heydrich actually needed the help of these people in order to carry out Hitler’s wishes.  Second, the Conference was a way for Heydrich to assert his control over Jewish matters as they related to the ministries represented there.  Third, and just as likely, was that Heydrich needed accomplices.  Even though the war was still going pretty well for Germany, Heydrich was smart enough to know that eventually, their knowledge of the Jewish massacres could be used against them.

Recommended Reading: Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 – The second of Friedlander’s Nazi Germany and the Jews books.

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Liquidation at Lidice

It was an ugly day in Lidice.  In a World War that spanned nearly 2,200 days, there were bound to be a fair share of ugly days, but June 10, 1942 was particularly nasty for the small town located just a few miles from Prague.  At 7:00am, when preparing for work or eating breakfast was the normal activity, the town was quiet, but all was not well.

Lidice’s entire population had been rounded up by a German Einsatzgruppe and taken to a farm.  There, all the men 16 years or older, 173 in total, were lined up and shot.  The 184 women were placed on a train and set to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where most would die.  The remaining 106 children were sent into forced labor and, within months, most had been gassed at Chelmo.

Meanwhile, every building in Lidice was burned to the ground by the Germans, then bulldozed over.  The bodies in Lidice’s cemetary were exhumed and burned.  When the town had been razed, trees were planted over the site.  All traces of Lidice were erased.  This was repeated two weeks later in the village of Lezaky.

But why?!?  In 1939, Germany had taken over Czechoslavakia and divided it among its allies, but made “The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” a part of Germany.  Reinhard Heydrich was installed as its leader.  Called “the Butcher of Prague”, it’s obvious that he was greatly disliked by many Czechs.  On May 27, 1942, Heydrich was attacked while riding in his car.  Though grievously wounded, he would live until June 4th, when he died of blood poisoning from his wounds.

Receiving the news of Heydrich’s death, Adolf Hitler went ballistic and ordered any village suspected of housing the killers to be completely destroyed.  There isn’t any strong evidence that Heydrich’s assassins ever stayed in Lidice, but the town had definite anti-Nazi leanings and had harbored Czech partisans in the past and, this time, that was all it took.  The German dictator always demanded an outrageous price as retribution, and it usually involved innocent people with little or no connection to the event in question.

And so, while Heydrich’s two assassins would be cornered and killed, Hitlerian justice cut a much wider path.  And what’s more, Germany did little to keep Lidice’s destruction a secret.  It was filmed for posterity and news of the event was broadcast by the Germans themselves, a brazen and audacious move even for Germany at this time.

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