From Crystal to Smoke [Du Cristal à la fumée]

On Saturday, November 12, 1938, two days after the Kristallnacht bloodbath, the most prominent Nazi leaders held a secret meeting in Berlin chaired by Goering. Himmler, Heydrich, Funk, and Daluege, among others, were present. Hitler, who had remained in Munich, followed every minute of the meeting. It was during this meeting that the Nazi leaders decided to eradicate the Jews. This was long before the meeting in a villa on the Wannsee lakeside on January 20, 1942. Jacques Attali represents here, in minute detail, with the help of recently discovered German archives, the surreal dialogue of this high-level meeting, during which the worst decision ever taken by a group of men was conceived: the extermination of a people.