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1. On April 10, 2025 at 4:30 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:

   If you want to know the complete story underlying the Wannsee Conference and the “Final Solution,” apart from the obvious – Fuhrer Adolf Hitler himself – it must also include at least two other names than Heinrich Himmler: Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) and Amin al-Husseini (1897-1974). Both figures – through their influence at the conference and in other ways – had prominent roles in setting the direction of German state policy following the Wannsee Conference of January 1942.

   Reinhard Heydrich was one of the most-senior members of the Schutzstaffel (SS), and the protege of SS head Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. He held the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei, as well as the title of Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia (formerly of Czechoslovakia). A part of the fanatical inner-circle surrounding Hitler, Heydrich was a ‘true believer’ in national socialism who advocated not just resettlement (deportation) of the ‘enemies of the Reich’ (Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, communists, dissidents, etc.) but their liquidation – views he promoted strongly at Wannsee in early 1942.

   Heydrich was morally-wounded on May 27, 1942, when his chauffeured motor car was attacked by a team of SOE-trained Czech operatives, as the Reichsprotektor was driven to his office.
   Enraged at the assassination of one of his favorites and the likely successor to Himmler, Hitler ordered that the strictest and most-draconian of measures be used to “punish” those responsible.

   After a brief manhunt, the SOE team members were cornered inside the crypt of a church where they had taken refuge. SS troops lowered machine guns into the tomb and killed the entire group. The Nazi high-command, believing that the people of the villages of Lidice and Ležáky were responsible for aiding the Czechs, ordered the inhabitants shot or sent to concentration camps, and both villages to be razed.

   Hitler ordered a commemorative coin struck, one side of which bore a likely of Reinhard Heydrich, and the other which bore the word “Rache,” which in German means “Revenge.”

   Hajj Amin al-Husseini, a Palestinian by birth, was the influential Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and perhaps the leading figure in the Pan-Arab movement of the first half of the 20th century. Husseini despised the British, whom he saw as occupiers, and the Jews – with equal ferocity.

   Active in the various Arab uprisings in the Middle East between the wars and into the early years of WW2, Husseini eventually grew infamous-enough that he had to go on the run to avoid arrest by the British and French, both of whom saw him as a threat to regional stability. Even when France flipped to being Vichy (occupied) France, he still had to leave North Africa/Middle East for sanctuary first in fascist Italy, and ultimately in Berlin, where he arrived in November, 1941 as an honored guest of the party.

   Grand Mufti al-Husseini was seen by the German state as a means of cultivating allies and influence in the Arab world, much of which was contained within the British Empire. If the millions of Muslims therein could be convinced to ally themselves with the Axis powers, it would materially harm the Allied war effort – or so it was hoped.

   Meeting the inner circle around Hitler and then the Fuhrer himself, Husseini was feted as an honored guest and provided with a monetary stipend, lavish home and chauffeured automobile, plus a small staff of servants. He began hosting a radio broadcast in Arabic, aimed at his potentially vast audience in the Arab world. And in due course, he took part in the discussions surrounding the fate of the Jews and others declared to be enemies of the Reich.

   Indeed, Husseini won a certain degree of notoriety for his rabid hatred of all things Jewish, going so far as to make periodic inquires of the SS as to the status of the liquidations, and exhorting them to “go faster…”

   Although he should have been tried at Nuremberg, al-Husseini was ultimately spared when British and French military authorities arranged for him to slip the dragnet and escape from Europe back to the Middle East, where it was theorized that he might provide a degree of stability. How wrong they proved to be, as events later proved!

   Husseini resumed his activities and station in Arab and Palestinian society, his ideological commitment and religious fervor undimmed. Before dying of natural causes in 1974, Husseini witnessed his grand-daughter marry one of the founders of the PLO-Fatah terrorist/direct-action group “Black September” and that group’s assault upon the Munich Olympics of 1972.

   Heydrich and Husseini are two of the attendees at Wannsee who pushed the hardest for the liquidation of the eventual victims of the Holocaust. Himmler was fully-committed to the project, but these two subordinates/associates pushed every bit as hard for it.

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