On Saturday November 12, 1938, two days after the Crystal night bloodbath, the most prominent Nazi leaders held a secret meeting chaired by Goering. Himmler, Heydrich, Goering, Funk, Daluege among others were present. Hitler, who had remained in Munich, followed every minute of the meeting. It was that surrealistic, grotesque and monstrous council of ministers, in which the vilest details mingled with the most hideous flights of barbarity, in which the Nazis hatred of one another were brought to light, that led to the decision to do away once and for all with the Jews. That was long before the meeting in a villa on the Wannsee lakeside on January 20, 1942 and nothing was said explicitly. Drawing on recently retrieved records.
