Conspiracy (2001), Kritzinger's Warning.
The Wannseekonference took place on January 20, 1942. The conference lasted about 2 hours, and was conducted as a lunch meeting. It was held to plan the murder of the Jews of Nazi occupied Europe, and discussed plans for the murder of Jews in countries that had not yet been conquered by Germany, Great Britain, for instance.
The participants were highly educated and efficient men.
The conference was organized by Reinhard Heydrich, a talented musician, skilled athlete who was educated at a German Naval Institute. He later became the "protector" of Moravia and Bohemia, where he was assassinated by British trained Czech partisans several months after the Wannsee conference. Heydrich is considered by historians to have been one of the purest embodiments of pure Nazi evil.
Notes from the meeting were discovered in 1947 from the files of Martin Luther, a minor Nazi official, probably the lowest ranking figure at the meeting, who had, in fact, ended up in a concentration camp himself before the war was over.
Several films, including documentaries have been made about the Wannsee conference, one in German in 1984, another in English in 2001, called "Conspiracy." It stars Kenneth Branagh in a chilling portrayal of Heydrich.
If one has ever been to a high level executive meeting in any capacity, one can recognize the tenor of the meeting as portrayed in "Conspiracy." The goal is to "get things done" while schmoozing in a genial way, juggling for position, clarifying issues, coming to a final agreement and understanding.
In this sense it is frightening, and I advise young people "on their way up" in their careers to study it in this light, to see how easy it can be to slip into a kind of officiousness that is divorced in every way from morality, how easy it is to divorce one's self from ethics by "going along," "not making waves." There is surely an element of that in all kinds of business meetings, including those where the business is criminal.
A scene in the film came to mind, because I have felt myself being consumed with rage and anger and, yes, frankly hatred over the last four years.
The scene comes at the end of the film, after all of the participants in the conference have left, after agreeing in an affable business-like sense to murder all of Europe's Jews in a two hour meeting. Heydrich (Branagh), Adolf Eichmann (played by Stanley Tucci), and Heinrich Mueller, head of the Gestapo, sit together to have a drink and commiserate about the outcome of the meeting. They discuss a story told by Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, a State Secretary in the chancellery, who is portrayed in the film as having had reservations about the murder of the Jews, although it is not clear in the historical record that this actually was the case for the real Kritzinger.
The scene has stuck in my mind for many years as a kind of warning should one let oneself be consumed and defined by hatred.
No one here, I'm convinced, is consumed by race based hatred like Heydrich's Eichmann's and Mueller's hatred of the Jews, but I know for myself, I have repeatedly felt consumed by perhaps a more justified hatred over the last 4 years, which, irrespective of its origins and its justifications, is hatred all the same.
Speaking only for myself, in these days of liberation and relief, I want to let go of it; as hard as it is, I want to let go of the hatred. It does nothing good for me.
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In Prague, I saw the Anthropod Memorial as we drove north towards the frontier. Dedicated to the commandos who assassinated Heydrich, it also commemorates the Czechs murdered by the NAZIs in retaliation. Today, the Czech and German people treat one another with kindness.
A hairpin turn is where they got him, like “someone” did to JFK in Dallas.
