Five best books on secret meetings of World War II

Laurence Rees is the author of World War II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West.

For the Wall Street Journal, he named a five best list of books on fateful secret meetings of World War II.

One book on the list:

The Wannsee Conference and the 'Final Solution'
by Mark Roseman

The Wannsee Conference, held near Berlin in January 1942 and chaired by Reinhard Heydrich of the SS, is probably the most notorious "secret" meeting of World War II. The trouble is that many people have got the wrong impression about it. As Mark Roseman's standard work on the conference demonstrates, this was not the meeting at which the Nazis decided on the policy of exterminating the Jews. Crucial aspects of that policy pre-date the conference. By the time of Wannsee, for example, the first Nazi killing center in Poland, at Chelmno, was already gassing Jews. The meeting at Wannsee was held not so much to devise policy as to implement it. As important as Wannsee was, it is vital that it be seen as part of a process rather than as a single, pivotal moment.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue