On a bitter evening early in 1942 a group of leading Nazis gathered
at a lakeside villa outside Berlin to discuss 'the Final Solution
of the Jewish question' over dinner. Reinhard Heydrich, one of the
most feared men in Germany, invited comments on what constituted a
Jew, a half-Jew and a quarter-Jew, and what should happen to each
of the categories. Then, after handing round brandy and cigars, he
proposed that 11 million Jews be exterminated from Europe, while
those of part Jewish blood should in some cases be allowed to live
but only after sterilisation. It seems Heydrich's proposals were
accepted with enthusiasm. Details of the meeting have been obscure
for many years, as only one set of minutes remains, and its
authenticity has been questioned by some historians who point out
that the extermination of Jews had begun long before 1942. Mark
Roseman, an expert on German history and author of the prizewinning
The Past In Hiding, accepts that the meeting chaired by Heydrich
could not have been the moment at which a decision to launch the
Holocaust was taken. For one thing, neither Hitler nor any of his
immediate entourage was present. But after years of research and
unearthing of archives, Roseman believes he has an answer. The
meeting, though it produced 'one of the most shameful documents of
modern history', formed only part of a murky scenario which
involved the 'Jewish question' being passed from civilian
administration to the SS. In order to reveal the full story,
Roseman goes back to 1919 and the sense of injustice in Germany
that helped propel Hitler to power years later. He details the
emergence of Hitler's anti-Semitism and how he used it to infect an
entire nation, with the co-operation of thugs such as Heydrich and
the poison of propaganda chief Goebbels. The book packs an immense
amount of detail into comparatively few pages and it makes
essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about the
mindset of those who organized the 20th century's greatest infamy.
(Kirkus UK)
On 20 January 1942, the most murderous meeting in history took place.
Chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most feared men in Germany, it summoned top Nazi officials to a grand villa on the shore of Berlin’s Lake Wannsee in order to clarify ‘the Final Solution of the Jewish question’. They ate good food, drank cognac and smoked cigars – and in less than two hours had effectively sentenced six million people to death.
Only one set of minutes from this secret meeting survived, and argument has raged over its contents. Now Mark Roseman brilliantly unravels the macabre mystery of what has been called ‘the most shameful document of modern history’.
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