Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart joined the NSDAP (Nazi Party) in 1922.
He was heavily involved in the early Nazi approach towards Jews, co-writing the anti-Jewish "Nuremberg
Laws" imposed by the Nazi-controlled
Reichstag in 1935.
Stuckart later represented Wilhelm
Frick, the Interior Minister, at the Wannsee
conference on January 20, 1942,
which discussed the imposition of the “Final Solution of the Jewish
Question in the German Sphere of Influence in Europe.” It has
been speculated by looking carefully at the edited conference minutes
that at this conference Stuckart objected to the aformentioned laws
being ignored by the SS in fulfilling the “Final
Solution,” and pointed out the bureaucratic problems of such
a radical course of action - insisting that mandatory sterilization
would be a better option in preserving the “spirit” of the Nuremberg laws. However,
the Conference Chairperson, SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard
Heydrich, informed Stuckart that the decision to exterminate the
Jews had been made by Adolf
Hitler and that according to the Führerprinzip, Hitler's word was above all written law. It is worth noting also
that Stuckart and several others at the conference realized that Hitler did not give this order in writing.
After the war, Stuckart was arrested by the allies
for war crimes and spent
four years behind bars until being released for lack of evidence in
1949. He was killed in December 1953 near Hannover, West Germany in a car accident, though there has been speculation that the accident
was set up by persons hunting down Nazi war criminals still at liberty.