ABSTRACT
The murder of Jews had begun in the German-occupied portions of the Soviet Union in June 1941. By the end of the year, some 500,000 human beings had already been killed. The deportation of Jews from Germany had begun on October 15, 1941; the first of them were shot on November 25. Among scholars, therefore, the prevalent explanation is that the conference served to coordinate the activities of the various bureaucracies. When it comes to details of the conference, there are some interesting differences of opinion to be sure. In Gerald Reitlinger's classic book of 1953 (The Final Solution) which was the first complete study, Reitlinger stated that it "was no more than a luncheon party." Directly thereafter, on February 11, 1939, Reinhard Heydric had held a session that demonstrated a remarkable similarity to the Wannsee conference. He had invited fifteen fairly low-level representatives of various agencies to the modest quarters of the Gestapo.
