History Film / Conspiracy2001

''(about half those present raise their hands, including Klopfer)''\\

* SoMuchForStealth: Stuckart argues that you just can't "evacuate" millions of Jews without their non-Jewish relatives clogging the courts for decades, settling issues of inheritance or divorce - which necessarily implies filing for ''death'' certificates. "What happens to your 'secret' killings then?"

* SoMuchForStealth: Stuckart argues that you just can't 'evacuate' millions of people without non-Jewish relatives clogging the courts for decades settling issues of inheritance or divorce. "What happens to your secret killings then?"

* LetsSeeYouDoBetter: Comes up when [[AssInAmbassador Luther]], fed up by all the debates regarding various extermination methods, irritably remarks, [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim "Why can't you shoot them?"]], and mocks Lange's soldiers for not being able to stomach murdering millions of Jews one-by-one. Lange snaps back in true military fashion, asking if Luther would like to volunteer. That backfires when Luther instantly agrees. Heydrich shuts the whole thing down: shooting that many people in small batches is simply too inefficient in time and resources.

* LetsSeeYouDoBetter: Comes up when [[AssInAmbassador Luther]] criticizes Lange's soldiers for not being able to stomach murdering, one-by-one, literally millions of Jews. Lange snaps back in true military fashion to ask if Luther would like to enlist himself. That backfires when Luther instantly agrees. Heydrich irritably shuts the whole thing down: shooting that many people in small batches is simply too inefficient in time and resources.

* LetsSeeYouDoBetter: Comes up when [[AssInAmbassador Luther]] criticizes Lange's soldiers for not being able to stomach murdering, one-by-one, literal kilotons of Jews. Lange snaps back in true military fashion to ask if Luther would like to enlist himself. That backfires when Luther instantly agrees. Heydrich irritably shut the whole thing down: shooting that many people in small batches is a farcical waste of resources.

-->'''Stuckart:''' Depending on subjective evaluations as to whether he "looks Jewish" or "has a Jewish personality," or whatever else, is subject to personal interpretation and variation, including the assertions of the damned Jew himself! And what does this do; it subverts the Nuremberg laws and perpetuates disrespect for the law!

* IDontPayYouToThink: 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".

-->'''Stuckart:''' Depending on subjective evaluations as to whether he looks Jewish or has a Jewish personality, or whatever else is subject to personal interpretation and variation including the assertions of the damned Jew himself! And what does this do; it subverts the Nuremberg laws and perpetuates disrespect for the law!

* FalseReassurance: Kritzinger believes that the 'Final Solution to the Jewish Question' that is being discussed will not involve their complete annihilation because "That possibility has been personally denied to me by the Führer!" When it looks like the discussion is progressing in this fashion, he brings this up again in outrage -- and Heydrich, the chairman of the meeting, simply replies "And it will continue to be." Kritzinger finally realises that Heydrich is not saying there will be no extermination, but that Hitler will instead continue to lie about it for plausible deniability.

* EvilLawyerJoke: When the law keeps being brought up as an obstacle to the proposed policies, Dr. Gerhard Klopfer remarks that they will just ''change'' the law. After all, how many of the people here are lawyers? When the majority of members of the conference all raise their hands (Including himself) he laughs and remarks that it was even worse than he thought.

** Kritzinger gets a minor HistoricalVillainDowngrade that is PlayedWith in a conversation with Heydrich, who mocks Kritzinger for seemingly being okay with beating, robbing, and imprisoning Jews, but then draws the line at ''killing'' them. Lange gets a more obvious one in order to be used as an allegorical character. He is shown to be unsettled by his actions in order to present a more common reaction on the parts of the men carrying out the Holocaust (in real life he was very much an unrepentant Nazi until his presumed death and took the mass murder way better than the average participants). Klopfer in turn is subject to an obvious HistoricalVillainUpgrade by being significantly more uncouth and and callous than in real life (he was way less ugly and fat in real life and was more quiet and reserved than openly mocking and perverted), in turn being allegorical to the Nazi Party officials who are doing political work with little or no use in day to day state affairs and not being involved with the atrocities in person while reaping all the benefits.

** Kritzinger gets a minor HistoricalVillainDowngrade that is PlayedWith in a conversation with Heydrich over him being okay with every atrocity with the sole exception of mass murder as if that is much better than the others. Lange gets a more obvious one in order to be used as an allegorical character, he is shown to be unsettled by his actions in order to present a more common reaction on the parts of the men carrying out the Holocaust (in real life he was very much an unrepentant Nazi until his presumed death and took the mass murder way better than the average participants). Klopfer in turn is subject to an obvious HistoricalVillainUpgrade by being significantly more uncouth and and callous than in real life (he was way less ugly and fat in real life and was more quiet and reserved than openly mocking and perverted), in turn being allegorical to the Nazi Party officials who are doing political work with little or no use in day to day state affairs and not being involved with the atrocities in person while reaping all the benefits.

** While Eichmann and Heydrich are describing their "modificaitons" to the Nuremberg Laws, Stuckart attempts to interrupt at regular intervals to make sure they're using the terminology that's actually in the laws. Naturally, since they're intending to disregard the law entirely, they ignore him.

* PragmaticVillainy: Many objections are raised to the impending Holocaust, but other than Kritzinger's, none of them have anything to do with moral concerns. Stuckart, in particular, is passionate about the the consequences of ignoring established laws, giving virtually unlimited power to the SS, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking creating a tidal wave of inheritance claims.]] Others point out that the loss of slave labor will exacerbate labor shortages, and that diverting soldiers, vehicles and trains from the Russian front will weaken the war effort. The closest anyone gets to pointing out the horrors of genocide are concerns that ordering soldiers to kill unarmed women and children en masse would cause "morale problems" -- and then the only solution proposed is to simply change the method of killing. Encapsulated perfectly by Doctor Meyer:

* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Luther asks this, only to by told by Lange that soldiers break down psychologically when they're asked to kill thousands of unarmed 'enemies', including women and children, many of whom were also German nationals. Luther is unimpressed, proclaiming that he would be ready to shoot Jews personally. But then Heydrich adds that it's a waste of time, manpower, and bullets. Then he turns the subject to gas.

* IdTellYouButThenIdHaveToKillYou: 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.

* DeadlyEuphemism: As befitting a film about the Holocaust, these are used frequently -- "evacuation" is the term initially used by Heydrich when discussing the future policy of the regime One member asks what the difference between "emigration" and "evacuation" is, and Heydrich responds that they will not be addressing that point just yet. Lange eventually gets so pissed off by this he confronts Heydrich, [[EuphemismBuster asking if mass killings were meant by "evacuation"]]. Heydrich simply responds that they were. Later, other euphemisms are used by the participants as well, such as "sausage making" and "putting a period at the end". Infamously, this is TruthInTelevision regarding all official Nazi documents, in which direct references to the deadly nature of the FinalSolution were strictly avoided. During the conference itself, however, the participants discussed everything in very blunt terms, not at all bothering with the euphemisms, according to Eichmann's testimony.

** The opening narration refers to Hitler's "best general" recently dying of a heart attack in Russia, and the attendees discuss rumors about fighting around Moscow with, "We're counterattacking; Reichenau's got them out of the trenches and--", "Reichenau's dead." Walter von Reichenau did in fact of a heart attack in Russia three days before the conference but his combat record was fairly mediocre and as commander of Army Group South he was stationed in Ukraine, hundreds of mile from Moscow.

* WouldBeRudeToSayGenocide: The words "extermination" are almost never used, and are not written down as such by the secretary. Instead, everything is couched in euphemisms. Interestingly this was before the specific word "genocide" to denote such mass slaughters was coined. Coupled with the TranslationConvention, Kritzinger and Lange struggle to come up with something that would encapsulate it as "war" is thoroughly insufficient and settle on ''"chaos"''.
** Whenever the killing of Jews is explicitly mentioned, Eichmann gestures to the stenographer to stop typing.

* EnemyCivilWar: [[DiscussedTrope 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.

'''Klopfer:''' I represent Martin Bormann, Party Chairman... of the Thousand-Year-Plan[[labelnote:note]]A joking wordplay based on the "Thousand-Year Reich", as Nazi Germany had been informally called, and on the aforementioned RealLife 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[[/labelnote]].

* PlausibleDeniability:

* LetMeTellYouAStory: 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 [[OedipusComplex 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.