ABSTRACT
According to an almost general consensus there was a 'wall of silence'. If it was possible in wartime to keep certain secrets even in the Western democracies, it was much easier to do so in totalitarian countries with their far more effective means of control and repression. The issue became of importance in the post-war trials: some of the most senior leaders claimed that they had never heard about the 'final solution'. Once the 'final solution' became institutionalized and more organized, with the installation of the death camps such as Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz, army personnel were less likely to witness extermination. The defendants could claim that in its second, post-Wannsee stage, the 'final solution' became a top secret and only a small number of people were officially initiated. According to post-war Finnish literature 'nothing was known during the entire war about the methods used in German concentration camps'.
