The Wannsee Conference (1984)

So much average

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

If you have ever wanted to see an autopsy into true and pure evil, this is it. Without gore or special effects, this is a study in the planning of one of the largest mass murders in the history of mankind.It's a truer and purer horror story than Freddy Krueger and Hannibal Lecter ever could possibly dream up. This is the horror created by seduction. It tells how the few create consensus among the weak, greedily upwardly mobile bourgeoisie who let themselves be pulled along down into darkness.While the particulars describe one particularly well documented episode of evil, the players and actions could unfold anywhere and any time. Just look at the actions of our own government today.

I was able to see this film at a film festival, where the director spoke afterward about how the film was created. As I had suspected while watching the film, the source for the script was not just the minutes of the meeting, which mention very little of the detailed discussions which occurred that day, but as well what the director called the "Eichmann protocol," that is, transcripts of the interviews conducted by the prosecutors at Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem. Grupenfeurher is correct when he says that the minutes of the conference never mention extermination. But Eichmann's later, extensive, comments prove that that is precisely what was being discussed. For a detailed look at the conference, the best place to begin is Mark Roseman's book, "The Villa, the Lake, and the Meeting: Wansee and the Final Solution." But there are also comments noted in Goebels' diary, and interdepartmenal memos from those who were invited to the conference itself, and much other evidence besides. A good discussion of the process leading to the genocide can be found in Christopher Browning's "Origins of the Final Solution," and a more abbreviated discussion in volume two of Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler, "Nemesis."

This meeting in January, 1942, of 14 Nazi officers and bureaucrats was chaired by Himmler's golden Aryan and arrogant SS protégé, Reinhard Heydrich. The conference took place in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. In 84 minutes, the mechanics and coordination of the final solution, the murder of millions of Jews, men women and children, was agreed upon. The film is based on records and minutes kept of the conference, spoken by unnervingly convincing actors in carefully reconstructed surroundings and wearing meticulously authentic uniforms. The film runs 84 minutes, the exact time of the conference. It captures the bantering and pleasantries and casual racist jokes, and the bureaucratic trade-offs. The buffet lunch is excellent and the cigars and brandy are prime. The bullies, the bean counters, the bureaucratic time servers, the power brokers, the slightly worried, the professional toadies, the back-slappers and the paper shufflers are there, representing their key departments of the Nazi party, the SS and the government. The orders, Heydrich tells them, have been given. Now the organizers and expediters must agree and take appropriate action...how do we mobilize sufficient transport...what are minimum feeding requirements...what methods should be employed that will yield the most efficiencies? It is clear that Heydrich is a leader to be reckoned with, and that he is expecting results. It is equally clear that he will get his results. For those at this conference, the final solution is a problem of logistics and disposal, to be dealt with crisply and solved with German thoroughness. And if a Nazi faints during a mass execution of Jews? "It shows we Germans are human," says Heydrich with a pleasant smile. This German television reenactment of the Wannsee Conference, directed by Heinz Schirk with a disturbing performance of charm and calculation by Dietrich Mattausch as Heydrich, is horrifying. Don't mistake this for the film, Conspiracy, which covers the same meeting but with a sheen of "this is meaningful drama" about it, especially with Kenneth Branagh's Heydrich. The Wannsee Conference is central to the plot of that fascinating thriller, Fatherland, by Robert Harris. Here, Germany won the war. It's 1964 and President Joseph P. Kennedy will visit Berlin to celebrate Adolph Hitler's 75th birthday. An honest German cop and an American news reporter are going to make a terrible discovery. The book is first-rate. The television adaptation of Fatherland is less so, but it has its moments.

The one really horrifying film about Shoah. None of the rest, especially Schindler's List, comes anywhere close. In this movie, nobody visibly dies; a roomful of bureaucrats chatters for an hour or so about the most efficient ways to go about the final solution. The ones who seem the worst (Eichmann, Heydrich) meet briefly to talk about co-opting the suckers; the one who seems the best horrifies us by dragging us in to cheering for him when he haggles about saving 70,000 "half-Jews." We are in the depths of Hell when we watch men in clean suits pencil in the details of every horror, pausing only for light refreshment and a bit of shagadelic banter with the babes.