So 15 guys walk into a villa and over drinks and a buffet lunch, they agree that the best thing would be to kill 60,000 people a day. That comes to 21,900,000 Jews a year, "if ever there were that many."
This is "Conspiracy," an HBO film about the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942. The 15 guys are players in the Third Reich. One is Reinhard Heydrich, another is Adolf Eichmann. The other 13 at dinner are brought on board in order that they come to terms with what their bureaucracy will do -- what it already is doing.
Young Rudolf Lange, barely in his 30s, speaks from experience. A couple of months before he had supervised the killing of over 27,000 Jews in Latvia over a two-day stretch and he points out that gunning down that many people in a short time is hard on the psyche of the soldiers, plus there are the disposal problems.
Adolf Eichmann, who has made the arrangements for the lunch and who will see that people get redacted copies of the minutes of the meeting, calmly notes that there is a camp called Auschwitz that has great possibilities. And, soldier, you don't throw snowballs when you are in uniform. Slap!
Reinhard Heydrich, who chairs the meeting, gets his 13 ducks lined up easily in less than two hours. Oh, there are objections and complaints, but the last order of business is to give each person there the chance to say whether he's in or out. It's unanimous and practically without reservation. Well, one guy had a physical reaction but he decided it was from someone else's cigar. And the fellow who had objections from the onset (Wilhelm Kritzinger) squelched them.
"Conspiracy" is a brilliant production, with standout performances by Kenneth Branagh (Heydrich), Stanley Tucci (Eichmann) and Colin Firth (Wilhelm Stuckart). The real brilliance of the movie is in the ordinariness of the gathering. The agenda, the introductions around the table, the posturing about seniority, the comments that the gas chamber seems like a plan and "this is an excellent wine, by the way."
Just another meeting.
This is how evil insinuates itself.
This is "Conspiracy," an HBO film about the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942. The 15 guys are players in the Third Reich. One is Reinhard Heydrich, another is Adolf Eichmann. The other 13 at dinner are brought on board in order that they come to terms with what their bureaucracy will do -- what it already is doing.
Young Rudolf Lange, barely in his 30s, speaks from experience. A couple of months before he had supervised the killing of over 27,000 Jews in Latvia over a two-day stretch and he points out that gunning down that many people in a short time is hard on the psyche of the soldiers, plus there are the disposal problems.
Adolf Eichmann, who has made the arrangements for the lunch and who will see that people get redacted copies of the minutes of the meeting, calmly notes that there is a camp called Auschwitz that has great possibilities. And, soldier, you don't throw snowballs when you are in uniform. Slap!
Reinhard Heydrich, who chairs the meeting, gets his 13 ducks lined up easily in less than two hours. Oh, there are objections and complaints, but the last order of business is to give each person there the chance to say whether he's in or out. It's unanimous and practically without reservation. Well, one guy had a physical reaction but he decided it was from someone else's cigar. And the fellow who had objections from the onset (Wilhelm Kritzinger) squelched them.
"Conspiracy" is a brilliant production, with standout performances by Kenneth Branagh (Heydrich), Stanley Tucci (Eichmann) and Colin Firth (Wilhelm Stuckart). The real brilliance of the movie is in the ordinariness of the gathering. The agenda, the introductions around the table, the posturing about seniority, the comments that the gas chamber seems like a plan and "this is an excellent wine, by the way."
Just another meeting.
This is how evil insinuates itself.