Conspiracy [2001]

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Villain Protagonist: Every character in this film is a member of the Nazi Party and a high-ranking official of a totalitarian regime engaging in wars of conquest and extermination, while their objective is to organize a continental genocide. Department of Redundancy Department: Otto Hofmann introduced himself as being from the Race and Settlement Department, then explains that they deal with race and settlement. Ewan Stewart as Dr Georg Leibbrandt: Head of Political Department, Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. Industrialized Evil: The planning and practical execution of industrialized evil is the central event of the film. Heydrich openly boasts about how they applied the assembly line concept to a genocide. Historical Ugliness Update: Gerhard Klopfer was perfectly ordinary looking ◊ in real life, but is played by an obese, unpleasant-looking actor ◊.

On 20 January 1942, Nazi officials hold a conference at a villa in Wannsee, a wealthy district on the outskirts of Berlin, to determine the method by which they will make Germany's territory free of Jews, including the occupied countries of Poland, Reichskommissariat Ostland, Czechoslovakia and France. When Kritzinger finally has a one-on-one conversation with Heydrich, the latter points out how hypocritical his moral objections to the Final Solution are. He's accepted everything short of outright murder prior to this, including enslavement, marginalization, and imprisonment, so why should this be any different? Even Kritzinger can't manage a response to that. Nazi Protagonist: Every single character is either working for the Nazi government or one of its subsidiary organizations. Kritzinger: That we have undertaken to systematically annihilate all the Jews in Europe? No, no, no... that possibility has personally been denied to me by the Führer!With the softer hearts cowed, the men take their leave. Outside, Stanley Tucci’s Adolf Eichmann catches the guards indulging in a snowball fight. He finds the superior officer and slaps him. “It just seemed to happen,” the soldier stammers. “Not in uniform,” Eichmann replies. “Nothing ever just happens.” Conspiracy is a 2001 made-for-television drama film that dramatises the 1942 Wannsee Conference. Using the authentic script taken from the only surviving transcript recorded during the meeting, the film delves into the psychology of Nazi officials involved in the " Final Solution of the Jewish question" during World War II. The Bad Guy Wins: They're all bad guys, mind you. It's just that the lesser bad guys are overruled by the more evil ones by the end. Heydrich gradually squashes any dissenting opinion and forces all the other ministries that opposed the genocide in some way to fall into line with the SS, and the Holocaust goes ahead as planned. Some of the attendees were punished for their crimes during and after the war such as Heydrich being assassinated and Eichmann captured in Argentina and dragged to Israel for trial, but to serve their own national self-interest the British and American occupation authorities ensured that the rest became Karma Houdinis.

Shown Their Work: Very much so. The minutes of the actual conference, as well as Eichmann's Mossad interrogations, were used for the screenplay. Granted, much of the work had been done for them by the German predecessor, but the period details, especially the uniforms, are perfect, as is the small talk. Heydrich really was like that (and he really was late and really did turn up in a Fieseler Storch). Real Time: Like the German original, the events within the conference room strictly follow the minutes of the meeting that took place, which was over in less than 90 minutes. What, so now you want to know what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "The historical recreation of the 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which Nazi and SS leaders gathered in a Berlin suburb to discuss the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Led by SS-General Reinhard Heydrich, this group of high ranking German officials came to the historic and far reaching decision that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated in what would come to be known as the Holocaust." Klopfer: I represent Martin Bormann, Party Chairman... of the Thousand-Year-Plan note A joking wordplay based on the "Thousand-Year Reich", as Nazi Germany had been informally called, and on the aforementioned Real Life Four Year Plan" (aimed at armament of Germany for the war and due to have ended in 1940 but in fact prolonged indefinitely) overseen by Hermann Göring. Rampton, James (19 January 2002). " Conspiracy review". The Independent. London: Independent Print Ltd.

Barnaby Kay as SS- Sturmbannführer Dr Rudolf Lange: Commander of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in Latvia.

What Happened to the Mouse?: In the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue the film observes Heinrich Müller's fate is unknown. This is true: Müller is the highest-ranking Nazi whose exact fate is more or less unknown, having just vanished from Hitler's bunker in 1945 after making a comment that he would not be taken prisoner by the Soviets (which implies either suicide or some kind of escape route). To this day his whereabouts are unclear, with the main theories being that he either committed suicide/was killed in early May 1945 and subsequently buried in a mass grave — or that he survived and was recruited by the Soviets afterwards. Neither of these is considered decisively (dis)proven, but most historians tend to believe the former. Think about every bad decision you’ve read in a memorandum. Generally, those memos were the result of people sitting in a room. In that room, probably, were people with less bad ideas who were overpowered by more forceful or charismatic personalities. (President Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller is said to embody the latter traits.) In “Conspiracy,” the S.S. general Reinhard Heydrich, played with an icy suavity by Kenneth Branagh, does the overpowering. When he lays out the full extent of his plans, to kill every Jew in Europe, anyone offering anything more than an uneasy look is taken away for a talking-to. In one such aside, Heydrich warns a disgusted Wilhelm Kritzinger, played by David Threlfall, “You would be a hard man to bring down, but not impossible.” (The actual Wannsee minutes don’t note any offense by Kritzinger, though some historians have said that he was more squeamish than he let on.) Not to be confused with The Conspiracy. Another German film based on the same events, also called Die Wannseekonferenz, was released in 2022. Round Table Shot: Done twice: first when the participants introduce their names and ranks, second when the conference's chairman Reinhard Heydrich asks them all individually for their support for his " solution".

The Empire: The protagonists are bureaucrats of a totalitarian, conquering empire which is presently invading the rest of Europe and engaging in genocide. Tom Hiddleston, in one of his first film roles, briefly appears in the beginning and end as a telephone operator. Shaggy Dog" Story: The film plays with the illusion presented to the ministries that they were collected to provide their genuine opinions, and to determine policy. By the end it becomes clear that the gas chambers have already been built, the SS organized the meeting simply to bully everyone into line, and disagreement was futile from the very start. Final Solution: Follows the detailed formulation and dissemination of the plan for the Final Solution.

Lange overlaps this with the Cultured Warrior; the only one of the participants currently serving in frontline combat, his first words to Eichmann are to gush over the beauty of the house they're meeting in. Kritzinger, whose department has proceeded on assurances the Jews will be held in "liveable conditions", never lets Eichmann or Heydrich get away with cloaking brutality with ambiguity. On the other hand it's clear that the "liveable conditions" are in reality overcrowded Polish ghettos with a high risk of disease. Heydrich later calls Kritzinger on his hypocrisy for being willing to accept everything short of genocide. Heydrich then recalls and concludes the meeting. He also asks for explicit assent and support from each official, one by one. After giving careful instructions on the secrecy of the minutes and notes of the meeting, they adjourn and begin to depart. Conspiracy". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Archived from the original on 23 October 2005 . Retrieved 15 July 2021.Before the meeting begins, Dr. Kritzinger comments on how the SS always want more, even though they already have everything. When Heydrich later demands Kritzinger's support for his plans, Kritzinger explains that he will not oppose him, but Heydrich says that he needs more. Kritzinger's only response is "Of course." Eichmann himself was the most notable example of this trope, being completely emotionally detached from his actions; in the film he actually comes off as one of the least inherently anti-Semitic characters who even paid some Jewish rabbi to teach him some Yiddish and Hebrew words. It's no coincidence that the famous phrase "the banality of evil" was coined by Hannah Arendt in regards to him. Heydrich was arguably this as well in Real Life; in the film, however, he seems to actually believe in what he's doing. I'd Tell You, but Then I'd Have to Kill You: When everybody is introducing themselves to the group, SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Rudolf Lange gives his title and says "among other things." Heydrich responds that they all have "other things." His "other things" just so happens to be command of an Einsatzkommando unit, charged with executing Jews, Gypsies, communists, and other undesirables behind the advancing German army; essentially a mobile Holocaust unit. At a certain point in point in the meeting, he completely drops any pretense of secrecy about what he does, and he and Kritzinger have a rather frank discussion about it during their lunch break. The tagline and the narrator in the opening states that the attendees "in an hour, changed the world forever". However, they didn't. While it's a common misconception that the Final Solution was decided at Wannsee, it was in fact set in motion months earlier, and the Belzec camp in eastern General Gouvernement (the first camp dedicated solely for killing large numbers of people and a blueprint for other death camps) had been under construction since 1 November 1941. The Holocaust was already decided on, and no one at Wannsee could do anything to prevent it from happening, no matter what. The latter part of the movie correctly shows that the point of the meeting was to ensure that the various agencies would cooperate to make it run smoothly, and to establish the SS as the decisive force.