The 2001 film, Conspiracy, takes place at a villa on the outskirts of Berlin.  It’s a lovely villa and, as we can see during the film’s opening moments, it’s about to play host to a meeting of very important people.

The date is January 20th and the year is 1942.  Having conquered much of Europe, Nazi Germany is now at war with the Allies.  Reinhard Heydrich (Kenneth Branagh), the young chief of the Reich Security Main Office and the man who many feel will eventually succeed Adolf Hitler as the leader of the Third Reich, has been directed to call a conference so that he and his deputy, Adolf Eichmann (Stanley Tucci), can “discuss” ways to solve “the Jewish question.”  One-by-one, representatives of the Reich’s bureaucracy show up at the villa.

At the start of the meeting, the men discuss various ways to force the Jews out of Germany and all of the occupied territories.  The men chose their words carefully, speaking in euphemisms and doing their best to sound like concerned government officials.  The men know what they’re talking about but they still seem to feel the need to avoid coming right and saying it.  As they talk, it becomes clear that everyone is trying to stay in Heydrich’s good graces while, at the same time, avoiding the fact that they understand the truth about what Germany is doing.  It’s not until halfway through the meeting that Heydrich and Eichmann reveal that Germany’s policy has already been determined and that concentration camps with gas chambers have already been designed and built.  The meeting is less about discussing the policy and more about getting each man at the meeting to sign off on it.  The unspoken subtext is that each man is being tested to determine who will support (and, if need be, help to cover up) the Final Solution and who will have to be otherwise dealt with.

Based on the actual minutes of the meeting, Conspiracy is film that is perhaps even more important now than when it was first released.  It’s a film that explores not only the banality of evil but also seeks to answer the question of why no one in Hitler’s government forcefully objected to the Final Solution.  (Many, of course, claimed not to know what was going on.  This film reveals just how little credibility that claim had.)  Some of the men go along because they understand not going along would mean the end of their careers and maybe their lives.  Some of the men agree because, as members of the military, they believe in supporting their country’s leadership, regardless of what that leadership represents.  Some of the men agree because they want to stay in Heydrich’s good graces.  These men represent a society where anti-Semitism is so normalized that it is accepted as a given and, while some of the men are not as outspoken in their prejudice as the others, it’s clear that all of them view the Jewish people as being a unique problem.  Those who do raise concerns do so only out of worry of what will happen to them if the rest of the world discovers what Germany is planning.  Heydrich insists that there is no need to worry because Germany will win the war.  Some of the men at the Conference are clearly not convinced of Germany’s pre-destined victory but not a single one has either the morality or the courage to refuse to endorse the Final Solution.  The film ends with a series of title cards, letting us know what became of the men who attended the Wannsee Conference.  Heydrich was assassinated during the war.  Eichmann fled to South America and hid there until he was captured by Israel in 1960.  Many of the men were executed for war crimes but a surprising number of them were either acquitted or never put on trial and went to live peacefully after the war.

Well-directed by Frank Pierson, Conspiracy has a distinguished cast who brings the historical characters to terrible life.  It’s one thing to read about what was said and planned at the Conference.  It’s another thing to actually hear those words spoken aloud and it’s a reminder that the evil of the Holocaust was not an accident nor was it something that took its perpetrators by surprise.  It was something that meticulously planned by human beings who were fully aware of what they were doing.  Kenneth Branagh makes for an arrogant and intimidating Heydrich while Stanley Tucci plays Eichmann as being the type of bureaucratic robot who is incapable of seeing human beings as anything more than just dwindling numbers on a report.  Colin Firth and David Threlfall make strong impressions as two of the more weary members of the Conference, as does Ian McNeice in the role of the type of crude, career-driven government functionary who has survived by pretending to be dumb.

At a time when anti-Semitism is on the upswing and Holocaust denialism is being mainstreamed, Conspiracy is an important film.  When others say that the Holocaust didn’t happen or that it doesn’t matter, Conspiracy defiantly says, “Yes, it did and yes, it does.”