Reich Chancellery Meeting of 12 December 1941 - The Meeting

The Meeting

On the afternoon of 12 December 1941, Hitler ordered the leading members of the Nazi party to a meeting in his private rooms at the Reich Chancellery. Because the meeting took place in private rooms rather than Hitler's office, no official record of it exists. However, entries in the diaries of Goebbels and Frank confirm it.

Joseph Goebbels noted Hitler's words in his records:

Regarding the Jewish question, the Führer is determined to clear the table. He warned the Jews that if they were to cause another world war, it would lead to their own destruction. Those were not empty words. Now the world war has come. The destruction of the Jews must be its necessary consequence. This question is to be regarded without sentimentalism. We are not here to have sympathy with the Jews, but rather with our German people. If the German people have sacrificed 160,000 dead in the eastern campaign, so the authors of this bloody conflict will have to pay for it with their lives.

Apart from the fact that the European war had turned into a world war, another reason for this shift must be seen in the fact that the entry of the United States into the war meant that the Jewish population had lost its value for Hitler as hostages against this war entry and he was finally free to act according to his long-term plans.

The much more well-known Wannsee Conference in January 1942, marked the next step in the Nazis' plans to exterminate the Jews. However, unlike this meeting, it was mostly attended by senior bureaucrats. It also undermines claims that Hitler was ignorant of the Holocaust and that it was carried out by subordinates without his knowledge.

The meeting marked a turning point in the Nazi regime's attitude towards the Jewish people. It was part of a shift from propaganda, intimidation and attacks to outright and planned extermination. The latter step had already been taken in some parts of Eastern Europe as early as September 1941.