One of my contacts brought this film to my attention a few years ago, and I tracked it down on Crave. It is a complete coincidence that this movie also has Colin Firth in a supporting role (see my earlier post about the Operation Mincemeat film). Add in Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci… and I was intrigued to see what this film had to offer. I actually watched it two years ago (during the dull, dark days of Covid) but found it so disturbing that I didn’t feel I could write about it without sobbing uncontrollably. I recently watched it again and here we are.
The movie covers a few short hours on 20 January 1942 when a group of high-ranking Nazi officials met at a villa in Wannsee, on the outskirts of Berlin. The meeting had been called by Reinhard Heydrich (Kenneth Branagh), of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) to get the cooperation of various Reich ministries and organizations in implementing the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.
With the Soviet front stalled during a harsh winter, the Nazis found themselves facing shortages of food, fuel and other commodities. As Adolf Eichmann (Stanley Tucci) noted early in the meeting, there were millions of Jews in Russia, as well as Eastern Europe. The Nazi plan to ship them all to Siberia was no longer an option given the stiff resistance of the Russians. With overflowing Jewish ghettos, that were a breeding ground for diseases like cholera and dysentery, another “solution” was needed.
Heydrich laid it out quite logically and methodically. Jews still residing in Germany would be “evacuated” to the Polish ghettos. The ghettos in Poland, already overflowing, would “evacuate” their inhabitants to the East, to places like Latvia. After dancing around the issue and terminology, Heydrich confirmed that “evacuated” ultimately meant exterminated.
We learn that there have already been mass shootings of Jews in the forests around Riga in Latvia. In fact, the Jewish companion of my great aunt was deported to Riga the day before the Wannsee Conference. He would join the thousands already buried near Riga. We learn that extermination centres are being set up in the occupied east, places like Auschwitz and Sobibor. There is some resistance from a few attendees that the mass shootings of women and children is having a detrimental impact on the soldiers doing the shooting. Heydrich reassures the attendees that a new “solution” is coming, gas chambers… and ovens to dispose of the remains. The Nazis have already tested the system on the mentally infirm, and it works. Instead of being able to exterminate a few thousand Jews in a day, the new system will be able to handle tens of thousands. Every single day.
The horror of the discussion seems lost on the attendees. On my first watching, I initially cheered the officials who objected to Heydrich’s plan. But my hope, that someone saw the hideous insanity in what was being proposed, was short-lived.
Stuckart (Colin Firth), the lawyer who had drawn up the Nuremberg laws restricting the rights of Jews, objected from a legal point of view. The law needed to be followed and he advocated for the mass sterilization of the Jews, not “evacuation” and extermination. The German spouses of “evacuated” Jews would create a legal nightmare in the future when they sought a death certificate for their spouse. That’s all Stuckart was concerned about… that the legal niceties of the law be adhered to. Nothing more.
Neumann (of the Four Year Plan), objected that many industries were already short of labour and that the Jews were needed as labourers. His objections were not humanitarian or moral, simply economic. They needed Jewish workers until other workers could be found. After that, “evacuate” them.
My final hope rested with Kritzinger, State Secretary of the Reich Chancellery. In the course of the film, he makes several protestations, in his words and actions, against what is being proposed. And yet, in the end, even he agrees to the proposal, after veiled (and not so veiled) threats from Heydrich.
In the end, after a 90 minute meeting, all agreed that they would cooperate with the plan, as outlined by Heydrich. Minutes were drawn up by Eichmann and Heydrich and distributed to the participants with strict orders not to share them. Only one set of minutes survived, and formed the basis for the film.
My hope that Kritzinger, was portrayed accurately in the film, and that at least one person put up some sort of objection, crumbled. There is no record in the minutes that he spoke up, or in any way, objected to the plan. Only later, as a witness at the Nuremburg trials, did he acknowledge the criminal nature of the Wannsee Conference, and admit that Hitler and Himmler were mass murders. He, in the end, seemed to recognize the culpability of those who simply went along with the hideous insanity of the Final Solution, those who did not speak up.
As we watch these men mingle and laugh together, nibbling on delicious canapés and hors d’oeuvres, sipping stolen French wine, one can’t help but question their sanity. Were they all legitimately insane? Had they all lost their collective minds? How could well-educated men actually contemplate, discuss, plan and approve the murder of millions of people? Had they all been brain-washed? Was it mob mentality? Did any of them have even a flicker of doubt, that they quickly stifled for fear that they would be next?
The final minutes of the film give us the fates of each of the attendees. Very few were held accountable for their actions, many being released after the war due to lack of evidence. It boggles the mind.
I highly recommend this movie as it provides us with a glimpse into the ability of authoritarian regimes to rationalize the irrational. It is relevant today, more than ever, as countries seek to demonize certain groups and handle them with an iron fist. As Spanish-born American author George Santayana first write in 1905:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”