2022-01-24 07:34:03 • ID: 2297
The Wannsee Conference: 80 Years Later
This is not my first post about the role of the German and Austrian University Intellectual Milieu during the Interwar years and during the "Third Reich"- with a particular emphasis on Prehistory- see: 1083 , 1701 , 1276 , 1106 , 1418 , and 2234 .
80 years ago, the National Socialist genocide in Eastern Europe was already a daily reality, when high-ranking representatives of the SS and the ministerial bureaucracy, at the invitation of Reinhard Heydrich, met in a "guest house of the SS" (Figure 1) at the Wannsee in Berlin in order to achieve a "convergence of the operational guidelines" - i.e. an agreement on the practical procedures of the genocide of all Jews in the German area of influence - the Endlösung“ (Final Solution).
Here, in contrast to other posts, I would like to make a few personal remarks about my family background and its thematic relation to the Politics of the Nationalsocialistic party.
I come from an Austrian National Socialist family, whose oldest witnesses of the years after the so-called "Anschluss" in 1938, died only recently, and who, in their majority, defended Nazi-ideology well into the 2020s.
The majority of my family, on my father's side, was part of the right-winged Viennese university milieu since the beginning of the 20th century.
After the lost First World War, these people, all deeply offended to have lost the war, their influence and their money searched for scapegoats outside their personal moral breakdown, had still a significant influence on politics of the Austrian first Republic. Unfortunately, in most cases, their descendants do not behave differently in terms of their "Weltanschauung".
I feel no guilt but shame and anger to be born into such a family since my youth. This clan had brought out SS doctors and was befriended with physicians who were involved in infant euthanasia at the "Spiegelgrund "- a children hospital in Vienna- used as a part of the deadly "T-4 program".
Austrian and German prehistorians were significantly involved in the fact that Jews and "community strangers" ("Gemeinschafts-Fremde") were persecuted, marginalized and finally murdered. They were guilty in the anti- Semitism, and the idolatry of an Aryan master race, social Darwinism that justified euthanasia and eugenics, totalitarianism and the rejection of democracy.
Worldwide there is a revival of National Socialist ideas. These people do not deny the genocide on the Jews-but they eventually think that it was justified.
They are of any age, many of them adhere to different monotheistic religions, they are smart and hip and have now arrived in the mainstream of the political establishment with great success. An Avantgarde with a great future....
Let us resist these new Beginnings with all our knowledge, courage and creativity. On a very basic intellectual level, we should no longer be willing either to allow the use of contaminated words and thoughts to pass without comment.
Action begins with the everyday use of words.
Suggested Readings:
Ch. Browning: Die Entfesselung der „Endlösung“. Nationalsozialistische Judenpolitik 1939–1942; 2003.
Ch. Browning: Ganz normale Männer. Das Reserve-Polizeibataillon 101 und die „Endlösung“ in Polen, 1993
P. Longerich: Wannseekonferenz: Der Weg zur "Endlösung"; 2016
N. Kampe and P. Klein (Eds.): Die Wannsee-Konferenz am 20. Januar 1942. Dokumente - Forschungsstand - Kontroversen; 2013
P. Klein: Die „Wannsee-Konferenz“ am 20. Januar 1942 - Eine Einführung; 2017
Resources and images in full resolution:
- Image: 2022-01-24_Haus_der_Wannsee_Konferenz.jpg
- Extern Link: www.fritz-bauer-institut.de…Einsicht-2018.pdf
- Extern Link: www.ghwk.de…protokoll-januar1942_barrierefrei.pdf
- Extern Link: www.ghwk.de…protokoll-und-dokumente
- Extern Link: www.bmi.bund.de…antisemitismus-in-deutschland-bericht.pdf;jsessionid%3D63fEB945946A4607C4B1057EBDA70D1C.1_cid295%3F__blob%3DpublicationFile%26v%3D3
- Extern Link: werkstattgeschichte.de…WG18_007-044_GERLACH_WANNSEE-KONFERENZ.pdf
- Extern Link: www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com…LP_978-3-412-21070-0.pdf
- Extern Link: www.ghwk.de…viten-dt.pdf
- Extern Link: biografia.sabiado.at…
- Extern Link: rotespuren.at…
- Extern Link: www.google.de…QvhHBAAAQBAJ?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=inauthor:%22Roman+Pfefferle%22&printsec=frontcover
- Extern Link: www.aerzteblatt.de…Kinder-Euthanasie-Endstation-Spiegelgrund
- Extern Link: www.czernin-verlag.com…hochburg-des-antisemitismus