Conspiracy [2001]

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I Don't Pay You to Think: When Heydrich notes that the secretary will be discreet about the proceedings that will discuss mass murder, Eichmann replies that the man in question agrees. Heydrich sarcastically replies "He agrees? Excellent".

Barnaby Kay as SS- Sturmbannführer Dr Rudolf Lange: Commander of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in Latvia. Let Me Tell You a Story: Kritzinger relates a story to Heydrich as a warning to what he is trying to accomplish, which Heydrich later relates in turn to Müller and Eichmann at the end. It concerns a boyhood friend of Kritzinger, who hated his abusive father fiercely but was devoted to his loving mother. When his mother died some years later, the man tried to cry as her casket was lowered into the grave, but wasn’t able to. When his father died at a much older age, the man couldn't control his tears. The moral of the story is that being consumed by hatred for something will mean that once that thing is gone, the hater's life will be nothing but a hollow shell anymore. Heydrich is unimpressed — after relaying the story and the warning to Eichmann and Müller, he simply remarks that he will not miss the Jews.Enemy Civil War: Discussed. Müller at several points in the film interjects when other characters protest the way that the SS is dominating the situation, explaining that there must be a single guiding hand to form policy. If there are multiple objectives then the entire process can fall into shambles as they compete against one another; he likens it to an animal having two heads and a ship having two captains. He explicitly points out that having Martin Bormann and Hermann Göring fight it out would be disastrous.

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. 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. 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." 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." Several of the conference members opposed to the Final Solution make the argument that reducing the population of available labor while fighting a war is a bad idea. Josef Bühler points out that, in the Eastern ghettos at least, none of the Jews are fit for labor anyway: all of them are old or diseased, and those that aren't have never worked a day of hard labor in their lives.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. Some of the Nazi officials are concerned with the plight of German spouses of the German Jews they want to murder when those people's husbands and wives are taken away. Others counter that they feel they're "race traitors" anyway and should be treated as such. SS General Heinrich Müller goes so far as to say that he'd happily throw them all on the same transport if it were up to him. David Threlfall as Ministerialdirektor Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger: Deputy Head, Reich Chancellery. All portrayed characters were actual German officials who took part in the real Wannsee Conference, with their accurate ranks and areas of responsibility. Affably Evil: An extremely chilling example of this trope. A group of intelligent, cultivated, soft-spoken men having a secret conference in Germany in 1942 about what to do with the "storage problem" of the Jews in Europe. And it is based on the minutes of the actual meeting.

Generalgouvernement's representatives point out epidemics and food shortage in the already overcrowded Polish ghettoes. While murder is not necessarily the best solution for them, they really do need to find some way of reducing the number of people if they want to avoid excessive budgetary strains and spreading infection to Germans. Luther arrives for the meeting with a "memorandum of recommendations" for Eichmann to give to Heydrich, which Eichmann politely brushes off. Later, Heydrich thanks him for the memo, but when Luther claims he "heard some of what I wrote in what you have already said," Heydrich bluntly replies, "I think not."As the officials depart, a brief account of the fate of each one is given. Most of the members either died during the war or were arrested immediately after; two, Josef Bühler and Karl Eberhard Schongarth, are convicted by Allied military tribunals and executed, and the others acquitted to live a peaceful life in postwar West Germany. Heydrich would be assassinated by Czechoslovak partisans for his brutal rule in Bohemia and Moravia within six months, while Eichmann would flee to Buenos Aires but be captured, tried and sentenced to death by Israel in the 1960s. The film ends with the house tidied up and all records of the meeting destroyed as if it had never happened. The final card before the credits reveals that Luther's copy of the Wannsee minutes, recovered by the US Army in the archives of the German Foreign Office in 1947, was the only record of the conference to survive.

Politically Incorrect Villain: Every character is a Nazi. Were you even remotely surprised that they're all foul racists? 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.) The conference as a whole: a business luncheon — held at a palatial estate in a fancy Berlin suburb, catered with mouth-wateringly depicted food and drink — convened by some of the most evil men in history for the purpose of planning mass murder on a horrifically unprecedented scale.

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