-
Introduction On a cold, overcast January morning in 1942, fifteen men arrived at a stately villa at 56-58 Am Großen Wannsee in Berlin. The building, a former pharmaceutical industrialist’s home, was now an SS guesthouse. Its setting was idyllic, overlooking a frozen lake, its interior adorned with fine furniture, expensive carpets, and warm, crackling fireplaces. The men who gathered there were not the most famous faces of the Third Reich; Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels were absent. Instead, they were the senior management of the German state: state secretaries, undersecretaries, and high-ranking SS officers. They had been invited by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard…