On July 31st 1941 the order to plan a “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem” was formally placed into motion.

SS Chief Hermann Göring wrote a letter to his director of Reich Security Services, Reinhardt Heydrich, directing him “to carry out all the necessary preparations with regard to organizational and financial matters for bringing about a complete solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence.”

He further ordered Heydrich to prepare and submit to him the resulting overall plan to accomplish this very important task.

As of the Summer of 1941, the “German sphere of influence” already covered over a dozen countries… home to some Eleven Million Jews. Many of whose communities dated back over one thousand years. Some were to twice that old.

By January of the following year, the overall plan was ready. A coordinating conference was held in Wannsee.

The attendees included:
• Heydrich, as chief of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt-RSHA)
• SS Major General Heinrich Müller, chief of the Gestapo
• SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann, chief of the RSHA Department of Jewish Affairs
• SS Colonel Eberhard Schöngarth, RSHA commander Government General in Krakow, Poland
• Major Rudolf Lange, commander of RSHA Einsatzkommando 2, then deployed in Latvia
• SS Major General Otto Hofmann, the chief of SS Race and Settlement Main Office.
• State Secretary Roland Freisler of the Ministry of Justice
• Reichs Cabinet Ministerial Director Wilhelm Kritzinger
• State Secretary Alfred Meyer of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories
• Ministerial Director Georg Leibrandt of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories
• Foreign Office Undersecretary of State Martin Luther
• Interior Ministry State Secretary Wilhelm Stuckart
• State Secretary Erich Naumann (Office of Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan)
• State Secretary Josef Bühler of the Office of the Government of the Governor General in German-occupied Poland
• Nazi Party Chancellery Ministerial Director Gerhard Klopfer

Heydrich crisply described the disposition of the “Endlsösung” to the attendees in this way:

“(D)uring the course of the Final Solution, the Jews will be deployed under appropriate supervision at a suitable form of labor deployment in the East. In large labor columns, separated by gender, able-bodied Jews will be brought to those regions to build roads, whereby a large number will doubtlessly be lost through natural reduction. Any final remnant that survives will doubtless consist of the elements most capable of resistance. They must be dealt with appropriately, since, representing the fruit of natural selection, they are to be regarded as the core of a new Jewish revival.”