The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting

Chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most feared men in Germany, it summoned top Nazi officials to a grand villa on the shore of Berlin's Lake Wannsee in order to clarify 'the Final Solution of the Jewish question'. They ate good food, drank cognac and smoked cigars - and in less than two hours had effectively sentenced six million people to death.

Only one set of minutes from this secret meeting survived, and argument has raged over its contents. Now Mark Roseman brilliantly unravels the macabre mystery of what has been called 'the most shameful document of modern history'.