"Conspiracy", a movie review.

By: Art Jannicelli
www.WhatTheHellAmIDoingHere.com

It was the winter of 1942. World War 2 was well under way. The German army was frozen on the eastern front, in Russia . The Americans had just entered the war. The writing was on the wall, there would not be a thousand years Reich.

Just outside of Berlin, on a cold and dreary day, the kind that makes you long for better times, a meeting was about to take place, which would change the world forever. SS General Heydrich had called this 2-hour meeting, with authority from Adolf Hitler. Heydrich summoned 15 government and military officials to this meeting to decide a “Final Solution” for the Jewish problem. Only one set of minutes from this meeting, survived the war. The movie Conspiracy is based off the minutes of this meeting.

The purpose of this paper is to review the movie “Conspiracy”. I began by giving a brief overview of the setting. I will next move onto the various components of the meeting. Lastly, I will discuss how classical organizational theory and “Group Think” allowed Heydrich to control the meeting to the degree that there could be only one conclusion.

The first thing Heydrich did once he arrived was to call for introductions. During introductions, you learn that seven of the 15 officials present are SS. Heydrich also takes this opportunity to assert his dominance over the meeting by interrupting anyone who tried to deviate from his agenda. From introductions, you also learn that Dr. Kritzinger and Stutkark do not see a reason for the meeting; they believe the Jewish question has been answered with the then current deportation policy, and Nuremberg laws for a Jew free society.

The only other person present who seems to raise any sort of political resistance to Heydrich is General Hofmann who believes his department has Jurisdiction over this matter, as the department of race and resettlement. One of the first things Heydrich does after introductions is the reading of a memorandum placing himself in command of the Jewish question, this immediately destroys Hofmann's claim to jurisdiction. Heydrich again reiterates this point a short time later when Hofmann says, that sending a man from his office with Heydrich's man will “add iron to the glove.” Heydrich responds by telling Hofmann bluntly, “The glove is all iron”. Heydrich goes on to tell Hofmann, his office can assist and in that way “preserve the respective powers of our offices.” This conversation set the president for the group that Heydrich was all “iron” and every office would be assisting his, thereby asserting his dominance once again.

The second item on the agenda for SS General Heydrich was to make everyone acknowledge that the policy of deporting Jews is over. In place of the deportation policy, he suggests a vague and subjective policy of “evacuation” calling for the removal of special exemptions even for those who have received Germany 's highest honor the Iron Cross and adding new rules that include those that “look or behave Jewish”. During this discussion of evacuation, Heydrich allows some discussion over whether sterilization could be substituted for evacuation. When the sterilization discussion digresses into almost a shouting match, Heydrich promptly ends it by saying, “Death is the only reliable means of sterilization, Dead people don't have sex.”

During the discussion of evacuation, the meeting was interrupted twice. Once by General Hofmann getting ill immediately after the meaning of “evacuation” was spelled out and another short break called by Heydrich for refreshment. These two breaks were critical to the outcome of the meeting; they allowed Heydrich the opportunity to bully his only opposition, Dr. Kritzinger and Stutkark. In both cases, Heydrich had a one on one chat with each of them. These two conversations offer an important insight into the atmosphere of the meeting and Nazi Germany .

Throughout the meeting, Dr. Stutkark is very opposed to any new policy since the current policy is the one he wrote. Heydrich reminds him of his place in their one on one and the risk he is taking in opposing him. Heydrich tells Dr. Stutkark, there are plenty of meat hooks for those with black marks from the SS and we have more then our fair share of bullies in the SS. Put simply, he seemed to be telling Dr. Stutkark if you do not support me now you might find yourself on a meat hook.

Heydrich also had a one on one chat with Dr. Kritzinger who seemed to be the only really opposed to killing Jews for moral reasons. Heydrich tells him, your support is very important and you are a very powerful man, but do not think you cannot be brought down. Heydrich ends their conversation by telling him “You can answer now, or you can answer later.” Once again bullying another person into supporting him, this time he used a threat to power instead of violence. Although, the intent was the same, go along with what I say or else.

Besides Heydrich's bullying, other factors forced the others to except Heydrich's plan. The main factor I observed was the other SS present. The other SS spoke of the duty of a solider not to question commanders and the “Privilege of Rank”. This kind of dogma and rhetoric only helped to reinforce the idea that the only option was to follow the leader and accept the evacuation plan.

Besides the SS, there was another bullying influence at the meeting, the Nazi party, in the form of Klopfer. At one point in the movie, Klopfer in so many words calls Dr. Stutkark a Jew lover. Dr. Stutkark goes off on an enraged rant about how ignorant the party and Copher are and ironically predicts the world will judge them monsters for the policy of evacuation. Klopfer responds by saying, “I'll remember you”, in a tone of voice that suggested he meant to get revenge on Dr. Stutkark for calling him and the party ignorant. This shows that besides the SS threatening people who do not do as they wish, the Nazi party was doing the same thing. A normal organization does not operate with an atmosphere of coercion by threat of force.

As a side note, in the closing moments of the movie, the fate of each of man at the meeting was reviewed. One of those present, Martin Luther representing the Foreign Ministry was sent to die in a concentration camp for “conspiracy against his superiors”. This fact underscores the reality of the penalties that could be imposed for going against the SS or the party.

Once Heydrich had been assured of the support of everyone, by either rank or threat, the next topic brought up was the method of evacuation. The interesting thing to note here is that the only strong objection made was to removing too much potential labor for the war effort. Not a single person present said a thing about whether they should do it.

Heydrich ended the meeting by going around the table and asking for a show of support. By doing this in front of everyone, this added another element of pressure to keep people on his side and once again, besides the concern for the labor loss and who gets their Jews evacuated first, the decision was unanimous to go ahead with the gassing of Jews at a rate of 60,000 a day.

After the conclusion of the meeting, which I assume is where the official record of the meeting ended, the movie had a few good commentary scenes. The first occurred shortly after the meeting; Lt. Col. Eichmann went outside and caught several uniformed soldiers in a snowball fight. Eichmann calls them to attention and slaps one of the soldiers and demand to know what is going on! The solider replies “It just sort of happened.” Eichmann responded, “Nothing ever just happens, not in uniform!” The significance of this scene was to say that the meeting was orchestrated it did not just happen.

The next commentary scene occurs in a room in the house with just Eichmann, Heydrich, and another SS officer. Heydrich tells a story that had been told to him by Dr. Kritzinger earlier that day. The moral of the story being, If you let your hate consume your whole being, you will have nothing left to live for when your hate is dead. Dr. Kritzinger had meant this as a warning to Heydrich, not to let his hatred of the Jews consume his life. I think this scene underscored how much the SS was doing just that and why they went to such extreme lengths to eradicate Jews.

The last commentary scene was of Eichmann standing over a record player briefly listening to a record that Heydrich had said earlier “just tears out your heart.” After listening to the record for a short time, Eichmann declares he does not understand people's passion for this “sentimental … shit”. I think this scene was a metaphor for how many of the officers looked at what they were doing as no more then doing there job and there was no need to get passionate or sentimental.

The Final Solution had been decided before Heydrich called that meeting. The purpose of the meeting was not to decide on a solution, but to unify their departments in carrying out his solution. Unknowingly Heydrich clearly used Group Think to force his plan for the Final Solution on these 15 people.

The first factor of the illusion of invulnerability was done for Heydrich by the Nazi party. Propaganda of the Thousand Year Reich, told everyone in Germany they were the best, and the master race could not lose. The Illusion of unanimity was accomplished by Heydrich by inviting so many SS, in doing so he created an atmosphere that gave the impression of unanimity with him and in doing so made it very difficult for anyone to oppose him, because they would be opposing so many others at the same time. To suppress personal doubts once again, Heydrich had the SS to help him by spouting off about following orders, and his threats handled the rest of the personal doubts. The self-appointed mind guard of the group was Klopfer. Klopfer challenged just about anyone who disagreed with the Nazi party platform, which was identical to the SS. The docility fostered by suave leadership was handled well by Heydrich himself by interrupting people who were making points contrary to what he wanted and post-poning things till they could be built up to be acceptable. For instance, he could not have started the meeting with, “We are here because I have decided that mass genocide is going to be our new method of dealing with the Jewish problem, here is your assignment.” That method would have been disatourous and meet tremendous opposition. Instead, he gradually worked them up to accepting it and forced the few who did not to comply to the will of the group.

Elements of Classical Organizational theory could also been seen in Heydrich. Heydrich did not look for any kind of guidance from his subordinates, he lead the meeting just as Henri Fayol describes in “General Principals of Management”. Heydrich understands that “Authority is the right to give orders and the power to exact obedience” (Fayol 49). He exercises this every time he interrupted someone or had a one on one chat. Heydrich also used Unity of Command in Direction, he did this in two ways first by making all communications through Eichmann to him, by doing this he created a layer of leadership between him and them, further making the distinction, he is their superior and this also made it clear that there was one plan and he was their leader.

Outside of leadership, scientific management was also used to decide on the method of the final solution. Sterilization was first discussed as an option but was discarded since it could not be 100% effective. Once, death was decided upon, issues were then brought up regarding whether shooting or gassing was better. The people at the meeting decided that it was too costly to the soldiers emotionally and that it took to many troops from the front to shoot them. Instead, they decided to use gas chambers because they were more efficient. A simple way of putting this is the decision to murder Jews by means of Gassing was made in the interest of maximum efficiency.

The Final Solution had been decided before Heydrich called that meeting. Using principals of Group Think and Scientific Management, Heydrich was able to coerce these 15 people into accepting his plan as the only acceptable choice. He did this through intimidation, peer pressure, and lastly through cold efficient logic that lead to the conclusion that this was the most efficient means of dealing with the Jew problem in Germany.