20 January 1942. A villa above the Wannsee lake outside Berlin. Fifteen senior officials of the SS, the party and the ministries spend about ninety minutes on the murder of Europe's Jews. They do not rant. They discuss categories, half-Jews and mixed marriages, and the order in which a continent will be 'combed through'. Then brandy.
Why then
The killing is already under way: SS squads have shot hundreds of thousands of Jews in the occupied Soviet Union since June, and the first gassings began at Chełmno in December. The meeting exists to bring the ministries into line behind one programme for the whole continent.
What they wanted
Heydrich, who chairs it, wants the state united behind that programme under SS control. The civil servants defend their jurisdictions and argue about definitions. The people being defined have no voice in the room.
What changed
Wannsee is where the ministries sign on. In the months that follow, the death camps at Bełżec, Sobibor and Treblinka open and trains roll from across Europe. 1942 becomes the deadliest year of the Holocaust.
Still argued
Was the decision taken here, months earlier in the east, or in Hitler's head long before? Most historians now see Wannsee as coordinating a decision already made. The one surviving copy of the minutes records the bureaucracy, not the moment.