Combining accessible prose with scholarly rigor,The Participantspresents fascinating profiles of the all-too-human men who implemented some of the most inhuman acts in history.

On 20 January 1942, fifteen senior German government officials attended a short meeting in Berlin to discuss the deportation and murder of the Jews of Nazi-occupied Europe. Despite lasting less than two hours, the Wannsee Conference is today understood as a signal episode in the history of the Holocaust, exemplifying the labor division and bureaucratization that made the Final Solution possible. Yet while the conference itself has been exhaustively researched, many of its attendees remain relatively obscure.

From the introduction: Ten of the fifteen participants had been to university. Eight of them had even been awarded doctorates, although it should be pointed out that it was considerably easier to gain a doctorate in law or philosophy in the 1920s than it is today. Eight of them had studied law, which, then as now, was not uncommon in the top positions of public administration. Many first turned to radical politics as members of Freikorps or student fraternities. Three of the participants (Freisler, Klopfer and Lange) had studied in Jena. In the 1920s, the University of Jena was a fertile breeding ground for nationalist thinking. With dedicated Nazi, race researcher and later SS-Hauptsturmbannführer Karl Astel as rector, it developed into a model Nazi university. Race researcher Hans Günther also taught there. Others, such as Reinhard Heydrich, joined the SS because they had failed to launch careers elsewhere, and only became radical once they were members of the self-acclaimed Nazi elite order.

Hans-Christian Jasch is the Executive Director of the Memorial and Educational Site of the Wannsee Conference. He has authored the definitive study, published in 2012, of Wilhelm Stuckart, state secretary in the Reich Interior Ministry, and the role of the civil service in Jewish policy.

List of Figures

ForewordOtto Dov Kulka

Introduction:The Participants: The Men of the Wannsee ConferenceHans-Christian Jasch and Christoph Kreutzmüller

Chapter 1. Biographical Approaches and the Wannsee Conference.Mark Roseman

Chapter 2. Otto Adolf Eichmann, Reich Main Security Office: The RSHAs Jewish Expert Bettina Stangneth

Chapter 3. Reinhard Heydrich, Reich Main Security Office: The Nazi Terror Enforcer Robert Gerwarth

Chapter 4. Otto Hofmann, SS Race and Settlement Main Office. A Pragmatic Enforcer of Racial Policy?Isabel Heinemann

Chapter 5. Dr. Rudolf Lange, Reich Main Security Office: Academic, Ideological Warrior and Mass Murderer Peter Klein

Chapter 6. Heinrich Müller, Reich Main Security Office: The Archetypical Desktop PerpetratorJohannes Tuchel

Chapter 7. Eberhard Schöngarth, Reich Main Security Office: A Practitioner of Mass MurderOlaf Löschke

Chapter 8. Josef Bühler, State Secretary for the General Government. A Behind-the-Scenes PerpetratorIngo Loose

Chapter 9.Roland Freisler, Reich Ministry of Justice: Hitlers Political SoldierSilke Struck

Chapter 10. Gerhard Klopfer, Nazi Party Chancellery: A Nationalist Ideologue and a Respectable West GermanMarkus Heckmann

Chapter 11. Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, Reich-Chancellery: A Prussian Civil Servant under the Nazi RegimeStefan Paul-Jacobs and Lore Kleiber

Chapter 12. Georg Leibbrandt, Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories: An Academic RadicalStefan Paul-Jacobs and Lore Kleiber

Chapter 13. Undersecretary Martin Luther: Defender of Foreign Office PrerogativesChristopher R. Browning

Chapter 14.Alfred Meyer, Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories: From German Monarchist to Nazi Desk PerpetratorHeinz-Jürgen Priamus

Chapter 15.Erich Neumann, Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan: A Colorless, Compliant PrussianChristoph Kreutzmüller

Chapter 16. Wilhelm Stuckart (19021953), Reich Interior Ministry: A Legal PedantHans-Christian Jasch

Index