BERLIN. On January 20, 1942, 15 high-ranking officials of the Nazi bureaucracy met at a villa on Lake Wannsee on the western outskirts of Berlin. Snacks were served and washed down with cognac. There was only one item on the agenda: “Organizational, logistical and material steps for the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe.” The planning of the Holocaust took only 90 minutes. Eighty years after the infamous Wannsee Conference that meticulously outlined it, its bureaucratic effectiveness remains as frightening as ever. The protocols made that day and printed on 15 pages do not directly refer to the...