The Wannsee Conference

On January 20, 1942, fifteen senior Nazi officials met at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to coordinate implementation of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." Chaired by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the 90-minute meeting did not debate whether mass murder would occur — systematic shootings had already killed some 900,000 Soviet Jews by late 1941. Instead, attendees coordinated logistics for deporting Europe's Jewish population to occupied Poland. The SS estimated 11 million Jews fell within the plan's scope. The sole surviving copy of the protocol was found in 1947.