At the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942, what Nazi policy was coordinated for Europe’s Jews?

The Wannsee Conference coordinated the Nazi regime’s implementation of the Final Solution to the Jewish question.

Senior Nazi officials met at a villa in Wannsee, Berlin, on 20 January 1942. Reinhard Heydrich chaired the meeting, while Adolf Eichmann prepared the conference minutes. The discussion organized how different German ministries and territories would cooperate in the deportation and murder of Europe’s Jews.

The conference did not begin the Holocaust or create the decision to murder Jews from scratch. Mass shootings and killings at extermination sites had already begun. Its importance was bureaucratic coordination: officials discussed Jewish populations across Europe, deportation plans, and the administrative language used to conceal mass murder. The surviving minutes are among the clearest documents showing how the Nazi state organized genocide.