Wannsee: The Road to the Final Solution

The complete story of the Wannsee Conference, the meeting that paved the way for the Holocaust

On January 20, 1942, fifteen men arrived for a meeting in a luxurious villa on the shores of the Wannsee in the far-western outskirts of Berlin. They came at the invitation of Reinhard Heydrich and were almost all high-ranking Nazi Party, government, and SS officials.

The exquisite position by the lake, the imposing driveway up to the villa, culminating in a generously sized roundabout in front of t...