In this video I shall look at the postwar fate of the attendees of the Wannsee Conference.
Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated by the Czech resistance in June 1942.
Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped in Argentina, taken to Israel, found guilty at a trial and hanged.
Josef Bühler was sentenced to death on 10 July 1948 by the Polish Supreme National Tribunal and hanged on 21 August 1948 in Kraków Montelupich Prison .
Karl Eberhard Schöngarth was sentenced to death by a British military tribunal for war crimes and executed on May 16, 1946 in Hameln prison .
Georg Leibbrandt was held in custody from 1945 to 1949. He was a witness in the Ministries Trial where he stated that he did not share the madness of killing Jews. In January 1950, the Nuremberg-Fürth district court opened an investigation against Leibbrandt on suspicion of multiple murders. The investigation was terminated on 10 August 1950. No legal proceedings were initiated. In 1955 Leibbrandt was as advisor to Konrad Adenauer in the repatriation of German prisoners of war from the Soviet Union. He later headed the Bonn office of steel producer Salzgitter AG. He lived near Stuttgart. He died in Bonn on 16 June 1982 aged 82.
Alfred Meyer committed suicide on 11 April 1945 when he accepted that the war was lost. His suicide is one of the first of those Nazis who sought to evade justice by taking their own lives.
Roland Freisler was killed in an air raid in February 1945.
Otto Hofmann was sentenced in March 1948 to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity and war crimes . On 7 April 1954, he was pardoned and released from Landsberg prison. He got a job as a commercial clerk. He died on 31 December 1982 in Bad Mergentheim aged 86.
Gerhard Klopfer was arrested on 1 March 1946. He appeared at the Ministries Trial as a witness. Klopfer claimed that he could not remember the exact content of the meeting at the Wannsee Conference, stating that he always assumed that the Jews should only be "resettled" and that in 1935 he was assigned to the party office against his will. In his denazification proceedings he received a fine and a three-year probation period during which he was not allowed to take up any responsible professional activity. From 1952 he worked as an assistant in tax matters, and from 1956 as a lawyer in Ulm. A preliminary investigation by the Ulm Public Prosecutor was discontinued in 1962. He died in Ulm on 29 January 1987 aged 81.
Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger was arrested on 23 May 1945. He was questioned several times and admitted his participation in the Wannsee Conference and confirmed its criminal nature. He also declared that he was “ashamed of German politics during the war”. Kritzinger was released from prison in April 1946, but was imprisoned again in December. He was released again for health reasons and died a short time later aged 57 on 25 April 1947.
Rudolf Lange ( SS-Sturmbannführer , commander of the Security Police and SD for Latvia, representing his commander Walter Stahlecker ) was wounded during the battle for Poznań and committed suicide there on 23 Feburary 1945, aged 34.
Martin Luther (Undersecretary of State in the Foreign Office) was arrested on 10 February 1943 and interrogated by the head of the Gestapo, SS group leader Heinrich Müller who had also been present at the Wannsee Conference. Luther was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp but he received preferential treatment as a prominent prisoner. Hitler personally decided in 1944 that “Martin Luther will live in a house on the edge of the concentration camp with his wife. On 13 May 1945 he died in Berlin, aged 49 due to the consequences of a heart attack.
Heinrich Müller, SS group leader , head of Gestapo, was last seen on 1 May 1945. He stated to Hitler’s pilot Hans Bauer that he had no intention of being taken prisoner by the Soviets. He then disappeared, in all probability he was killed or committed suicide in Berlin, aged 45.
Erich Neumann (State Secretary in the office of Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan ) was arrested at the end of the war. He was released in early 1948 due to illness and died in Garmish Partenkirchen on 23 March 1951, aged 58.
Wilhelm Stuckart (State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of the Interior ) was arrested and was a defendant in the Ministries Trial, accused of having drawn up anti-Jewish legislation. He was sentenced to time served in April 1949. He got jobs in government administration. In 1951 he was tried in a de-Nazification court, classified as a "fellow traveller" (Mitläufer) and fined five hundred marks. Stuckart was killed on 15 November 1953 near Hanover, West Germany, in a car accident a day before his 51st birthday. Although there was naturally suspicion that his death may not have been an accident, no proof to the contrary was ever found nor did anyone claim responsibility.


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