House of the Wannsee Conference
- Permanent Exhibit  -  Reader -


 

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The Participants of the Conference

 

        -  Dr. Josef Bühler Dr. Georg Leibbrandt
        -  Adolf Eichmann Martin Luther
        -  Dr. Roland Freisler Dr. Alfred Meyer
        -  Reinhard Heydrich Heinrich Müller
        -  Otto Hofmann Erich Neumann
        -  Dr. Gerhard Klopfer Dr. Eberhard Schöngarth
        -  Wilhelm Kritzinger Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart
        -  Dr. Rudolf Lange

               

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Dr. Georg Leibbrandt (1899 - 1982)

Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories
Permanent Secretary (Ministerialdirektor)

Born in Hoffnungsfeld near Odessa, son of a farmer. High school in Dorpat and Odessa, Freecorps fighter in 1919, flight to Berlin. Study of theology, philosophy, history, and political economy starting in 1920. Ph.D. in 1927, thereafter three study trips to the Soviet Union. Employed in the Reich Central Archive in 1929.
Student in the USA 1931-1933; there propagandist for the Nazi Party. Leibbrandt applied for membership in the party in 1933 and became director of "Section East" in the Nazi Foreign Policy Department.
Thereafter in charge of anti-Communist and anti-Soviet Russian propaganda in the "Rosenberg Bureau." Became associate judge of the "People's Court" (Volksgerichtshof) in 1938, and director of the Main Political Department in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories in July 1941. In October 1941, Leibbrandt participated in a meeting with Heydrich on ways to include all Jews in the extermination program.
Participant in the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942. Two days later Leibbrandt called a meeting on how to define the term "Jew" in the "Eastern Territories." In February 1943, he drew up a memorandum regarding a Russian national committee and an anti-Soviet Russian "Liberation army". In summer 1943, he reported for duty in the navy.

Leibbrandt was interned in 1945; following release from detention in 1949, he became active in an American cultural institute in Munich. A preliminary investigation by the district court of Nuremberg-Fürth, begun in January 1950, was dropped in August 1950. No further attempts were made to prosecute him. He died in 1982.

 

 

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Martin Luther (1895 - 1945)

Undersecretary of State (Unterstaatssekretär)
German Foreign Office

Born in Berlin, son of a privy councilor. High school diploma, war service 1914-1917. From 1917-1919 assigned to the Prussian Ministry of War and promoted to the rank of lieutenant. Subsequently worked as a shipping agent.
Joined the Nazi Party in March 1932. In 1933-1934, served as head of the Economic Consulting Center in Berlin-Zehlendorf, where he became an honorary city councillor in 1936. Also headed the Party Consulting Center at the Office of the Representative of the Nazi Party for Foreign Political Affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop. After the latter was appointed foreign minister, Luther was appointed legation councillor first class in charge of the "Special Section on the Nazi Party" within the Foreign Office in December 1938. He was named senior legation councillor and director of "Department Germany" in 1939. Liaison between the Foreign Office and the SS, in particular to the "Section for Jewish Affairs" of the Reich Security Main Office. Became envoy first class in 1940. In December 1941, he drafted a memorandum to Ribbentrop on the killing activities of the "Special Units" in the Soviet Union.
On January 20, 1942, Luther participated in the Wannsee Conference as an assistant undersecretary. He recommended that the Nordic countries be omitted initially on account of the small number of Jews and of possible complications that might arise, and advised concentrating on southeastern and western Europe instead.
Thereafter, Eichmann and Luther cooperated closely. In February 1943, Luther was sent to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp after a joint attempt with the SS to topple Ribbentrop. He was released in April 1945 and died a month later in Berlin.

 

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Dr. Alfred Meyer (1891 - 1945)

State Secretary (Staatssekretär)
Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories

Born in Göttingen, son of a governmental councilor and building official. High school diploma, then officer cadet in 1912, company commander in 1914, subsequently battalion commander. Prisoner of war in France in 1917, discharged as a captain in 1920. Commercial employee, student of political economy. Ph.D. in political science in 1922; legal adviser to a Gelsenkirchen mining firm from 1923 to 1930. Joined the Nazi Party in 1928; local branch leader; party district leader of Emscher-Lippe, 1929-1930. Became Reichstag delegate in September 1930 and Nazi Party provincial leader (Gauleiter) of Northern Westphalia in 1931. Appointed deputy governor (Reichsstatthalter) of Lippe and Schaumburg-Lippe in May 1933 and head of the state government of Lippe in 1936. Meyer became governor of the province of Westphalia and lieutenant general in the Stormtroopers (SA) in 1938.
Meyer took over leadership of the civilian administration of an army in 1939, and was acting Reich Defense Commissioner of Defense District VI (northern Westphalia). In 1941 he was appointed an undersecretary and deputy to Minister Alfred Rosenberg in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, responsible for three main departments: politics, administration, and economy.
At the Wannsee Conference on January 20,1942, Meyer urged that "certain preparatory work" be carried out "on the spot at the places in question, yet without creating unrest among the civilian population." In July 1942, he suggested subjecting persons of "mixed blood" (Mischlinge) in the Soviet Union to the same "measures" applied to the Jews.
In 1942, Meyer was substantially involved in mass deportations of Soviet forced labourers. He was Reich Defense Commissioner of Northern Westphalia starting in November 1942. Found dead in the spring of 1945; presumably suicide.

 

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Heinrich Müller (1900 - ?)

Reich Security Main Office
Head of Department (Amt) IV

Born in Munich, son of a policeman. Elementary school, then training as an airplane mechanic. Volunteered for war service in 1917 and received flight training. Served on the western front in 1918; demobilized as a corporal in 1919. Thereafter, employee in Munich Police headquarters. Secretary with the Munich Political Police in 1929, operating against Communist organizations.
In 1933, advanced to senior police secretary and detective inspector within the Police Criminal Investigation Division. Joined the SS in April 1934, transferred to the Secret State Police Office in Berlin. Deputy chief of the Political Police Section in the Main Office of Security Police in 1936. Became an SS colonel, senior executive officer, and chief criminal investigator in 1937. Applied for membership in the Nazi Party. In 1939, became manager of the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration and SS Oberführer. Starting in early September 1939, issued instructions for "special treatment" (murder) of political prisoners. Head of Department IV (Gestapo) of the Reich Security Main Office in October 1939. Became SS brigadier general and brigadier general of police in December 1940; SS major general and major general of police in November 1941.
Participant in the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942. Issued an order in November 1942 to deport all Jews and persons of "mixed blood" from German concentration camps to Auschwitz. In 1945, Müller probably escaped from Berlin to Rome and then South America.

 

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Erich Neumann (1892 - 1948)

State Secretary (Staatssekretär)
Office of the Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan

Born in Forst (Lower Lusatia), son of a factory owner, studied law. War service 1914-1917, ultimately as first lieutenant. Legal internship 1917-1920, government assessor in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior in 1920, then at the Essen District Office. Senior executive officer in the Prussian Ministry of Commerce in 1923. District president (Landrat) in Freystadt (Lower Silesia) 1926-1928. Then returned to the Prussian Ministry of Commerce as ministerial junior assistant secretary. Head of department in the Prussian Ministry of State and in charge of administrative reforms as of September 1932.
Joined the Nazi Party in May 1933, and the SS with the rank of major in August 1934. Entered the Prussian Ministry of State at the end of 1935, becoming head of the Working Team for the Observation of the Domestic and Foreign Economic Situation. In October 1936, became director of Section 6 (foreign currency) in the Office of the Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, headed by Hermann Göring. In summer 1938 he was named undersecretary; in November, he participated in a meeting of Göring’s on the "Aryanization of the Economy" and distinguishing markings for, and isolation of, the Jews. In 1941, Neumann became deputy chairman of the board of trustees of the Continental Petroleum Corporation, entrusted with the exploitation of oil resources in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union.
At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, Neumann represented the Ministries of Economy, Labor, Finances, Food, Transportation, and Armaments and Munition. He requested that Jewish workers in firms essential to the war effort not be deported for the time being. From August 1942 until May 1945, he was general manager of the German Potassium Syndicate. After the war he was interned, but was released for health reasons early in 1948. Died soon after.

 

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Dr. Eberhard Schöngarth (1903 - 1946)

Commander in Chief of Security Police and Security Service (BdS)

Born in Leipzig, son of a construction supervisor. High school; participant in the Kapp Putsch of 1920. Joined the Nazi Party and the stormtroopers in 1922, worked as a bank employee. Doctor of law degree in June 1929; assistant judge in June 1932. Joined the SS in 1933. In November 1933 he went to work for the Reich Post Office at Erfurt, in 1935 joined the Press Section of the State Secret Police Office, and then became head of the section in charge of church affairs. Schöngarth became an administrative councilor in 1936, then head of the Gestapo in Dortmund, Bielefeld, and Münster, later of the Gestapo in Erfurt.
In 1939, he became senior administrative councilor and SS lieutenant colonel. In January 1941, he was named commander of the Security Police and Security Service in the Generalgouvernement, based in Cracow. Became a police colonel in February 1941. During July and August 1941 he led a special unit in Lvov.
Schöngarth participated in the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942; ten days later, he was promoted to SS brigadier general and brigadier general of police. In 1943 he joined the Waffen SS in Greece, and in June 1944 became commander of the Security Police and Security Service in the occupied Netherlands. In March 1945, following an assassination attempt on the local SS and police leader, SS lieutenant general Hanns Rauter, he had 250 hostages shot before taking over Rauter's duties.
In February 1946, Schöngarth was sentenced to death by a British military court in Westerland and executed.

 

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Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart (1902 - 1953)

State Secretary (Staatssekretär)
Reich Ministry of the Interior

Born in Wiesbaden, son of a railroad employee. Membership in nationalist youth groups. Joined the Nazi Party in 1922 and participated in the Hitler Putsch in 1923. Doctor of Law in 1928, judge in a lower district court in 1930. Lawyer in Stettin in 1932. Became undersecretary in the Prussian Ministry of Sciences in 1933, in the Reich Ministry of Sciences in 1934, and in the Reich Ministry of the Interior in 1935. Co-author of the Nuremberg Racial Laws. In 1940, involved in preparations to deprive Jews of their citizenship. In August 1941, he took part in a conference on the "Germanization" of parts of the Soviet Union.
As a participant in the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, Stuckart proposed compulsory sterilization of persons of "mixed blood" [Mischlinge] as well as compulsory divorces of "mixed marriages." Ten days later, he was appointed SS major general. In April 1943, he chaired a conference of undersecretaries on "police retaliation against criminal acts committed by Jews." He advanced to SS lieutenant general in 1944.
Interned in May 1945, as minister of the interior in the Dönitz Government at Flensburg. Denied in 1947 that he had participated in the Wannsee Conference. In April 1949, he received a prison sentence of three years and ten months which, because of his preceding detention, was counted as having been served. Thereafter as city treasurer in Helmstedt, then manager of the Institute for the Promotion of the Economy in Lower Saxony. In October 1951, became third regional chairman of the "League of Expellees and Disenfranchised." A denazification court classified him in 1953 as a "fellow traveller" and fined him 50.000 German Marks. Died November 15,1953 in a traffic accident.

 

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    Contents:
Dictatorship in 
Germany
Jewish Self-Assertion The Prewar Period War against Poland

The Ghettos

Mass Executions

The Wannsee Conference

Deportations

The Countries of Deportations The Transit Camps The Death Camps Auschwitz
Life in a Concentration Camp The Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising
The End of the War Liberation of the Camps

     History of the Buildung

. . .

 



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