Branch: Government
Born: 19 March 1905 in Mannheim, Baden, Germany.
Died: 1 September 1981 in London, United Kingdom.
Appointment's:
Minister of Armaments and War Production 8 February 1942 to
23 May 1945
Decorations:
Other: Personnel
Articles:
Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer was born on 19 March
1905 in Mannheim, Baden, Germany and became a German architect
who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments
and War Production for the Third Reich. Albert Speer was
Adolf
Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office.
As the National Socialist who said sorry, Albert Speer accepted
responsibility at the Nuremberg trials and in his memoirs
for crimes of the National Socialist regime. His level of
involvement in the persecution of the Jews and his level of
knowledge of the Holocaust remain matters of dispute.
Albert Speer joined the National Socialist Party in 1931,
launching him on a political and governmental career which
lasted fourteen years. His architectural skills made him increasingly
prominent within the Party and Albert Speer became a member
of
Adolf Hitler's
inner circle.
Adolf
Hitler commanded him to design and construct a number
of structures, including the Reich Chancellery and the Zeppelinfeld
stadium in Nuremberg where Party rallies were held. Albert
Speer also made plans to reconstruct Berlin on a grand scale,
with huge buildings, wide boulevards, and a reorganised transportation
system.
As
Adolf Hitler's
Minister of Armaments and War Production, Albert Speer was
so successful that Germany's war production continued to increase
despite massive and devastating Allied bombing. After the
war, Albert Speer was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to
20 years in prison for his role in the National Socialist
regime, principally for the use of forced labor. Albert Speer
served his full sentence, most of it at Spandau Prison in
West Berlin.
Following his release from Spandau in 1966, Albert Speer published
two bestselling autobiographical works, Inside the Third Reich
and Spandau: The Secret Diaries, detailing his often close
personal relationship with
Adolf
Hitler, and providing readers and historians with a unique
perspective on the workings of the National Socialist regime.
He later wrote a third book, Infiltration, about the SS. Albert
Speer died of natural causes in 1981 while on a visit to London,
England.
Early years
Albert Speer was born in Mannheim, into a wealthy middle class
family. Albert Speer was the second of three sons of Albert
and Luise Speer. In 1918, the family moved permanently to
their summer home, Schloss-Wolfsbrunnenweg, in Heidelberg.
According to Henry T. King, deputy prosecutor at Nürnberg
who later wrote a book about Albert Speer, Love and warmth
were lacking in the household of Albert Speer's youth. Albert
Speer was active in sports, taking up skiing and mountaineering.
Albert Speer's Heidelberg school offered rugby football, unusual
for Germany, and Albert Speer was a participant. Albert Speer
wanted to become a mathematician, but his father said if Albert
Speer chose this occupation he would lead a life without money,
without a position, and without a future. Instead, Albert
Speer followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather
and studied architecture.
Albert Speer began his architectural studies at the University
of Karlsruhe instead of a more highly acclaimed institution
because the hyperinflation crisis of 1923 limited his parents'
income. In 1924 when the crisis had abated, Albert Speer transferred
to the much more reputable Technical University of Munich.
In 1925 Albert Speer transferred again, this time to the Technical
University of Berlin where Albert Speer studied under Heinrich
Tessenow, whom Albert Speer greatly admired. After passing
his exams in 1927, Albert Speer became Tessenow's assistant,
a high honour for a man of 22. As such, Albert Speer taught
some of Tessenow's classes while continuing his own postgraduate
studies. In Munich, and continuing in Berlin, Albert Speer
began a close friendship, ultimately spanning over 50 years,
with Rudolf Wolters, who also studied under Tessenow.
In the middle of 1922, Albert Speer began courting Margarete
(Margret) Weber 1905 to 1987. The relationship was frowned
upon by Albert Speer's class conscious mother, who felt that
the Webers were socially inferior Weber's father was a successful
craftsman who employed 50 workers. Despite this opposition,
the two married in Berlin on 28 August 1928 seven years were
to elapse before Margarete Speer was invited to stay at her
in-laws' home.
National Socialist architect
Albert Speer stated he was apolitical when he was a young
man, and that Albert Speer attended a Berlin National Socialist
rally in December 1930 at the urging of some of his students.
Albert Speer was surprised to find
Adolf
Hitler dressed in a neat blue suit, rather than the brown
uniform seen on National Socialist Party posters, and was
greatly impressed, not only with
Adolf
Hitler's proposals, but also with the man himself. Several
weeks later Albert Speer attended another rally: this one
was presided over by
Joseph
Goebbels. Albert Speer was disturbed by the way
Joseph
Goebbels whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Despite this
unease, Albert Speer could not shake the impression
Adolf
Hitler had made on him. On 1 March 1931, Albert Speer
applied to join the National Socialist Party and became member
number 474,481.
Albert Speer's first National Socialist Party position was
as head of the Party's motorist association for the Berlin
suburb of Wannsee Albert Speer was the only National Socialist
in the town with a car. Albert Speer reported to the Party's
leader for the West End of Berlin, Karl Hanke, who hired Albert
Speer without fee to redecorate a villa he had just rented.
Karl Hanke was enthusiastic about the resulting work.
In 1931, Albert Speer surrendered his position as Tessenow's
assistant because of pay cuts and moved to Mannheim, hoping
to use his father's connections to get commissions. Albert
Speer had little success, and his father gave him a job as
manager of the elder Albert Speer's properties. In July 1932,
the Albert Speers visited Berlin to help out the Party prior
to the Reichstag elections. While they were there, Karl Hanke
recommended the young architect to
Joseph
Goebbels to help renovate the Party's Berlin headquarters.
Albert Speer, who had been about to leave with his wife for
a vacation in East Prussia, agreed to do the work. When the
commission was completed, Albert Speer returned to Mannheim
and remained there as
Adolf
Hitler took office in January 1933.
After the National Socialists took control, Karl Hanke recalled
Albert Speer to Berlin.
Joseph
Goebbels, the new Propaganda Minister, commissioned Albert
Speer to renovate his Ministry's building on Wilhelmplatz.
Albert Speer also designed the 1933 May Day commemoration
in Berlin. In Inside the Third Reich, he wrote that, on seeing
the original design for the Berlin rally on Karl Hanke's desk,
Albert Speer remarked that the site would resemble a Schützenfest
a rifle club meet. Karl Hanke, now
Joseph
Goebbels' State Secretary, challenged him to create a
better design. As Albert Speer learned later,
Adolf
Hitler was enthusiastic about Albert Speer's design which
used giant flags, though
Joseph
Goebbels took credit for it. Tessenow was dismissive:
Do you think you have created something? It's showy, that's
all.
The organisers of the 1933 Nürnberg National Socialist
Party rally asked Albert Speer to submit designs for the rally,
bringing him into contact with
Adolf
Hitler for the first time. Neither the organisers nor
Rudolf
Hess were willing to decide whether to approve the plans,
and
Rudolf
Hess sent Albert Speer to
Adolf
Hitler's Munich apartment to seek his approval. When Albert
Speer entered, the new Chancellor was busy cleaning a pistol,
which he briefly laid aside to cast a short, interested glance
at the plans, approving them without even looking at the young
architect. This work won Albert Speer his first national post,
as National Socialist Party Commissioner for the Artistic
and Technical Presentation of Party Rallies and Demonstrations.
Albert Speer's next major assignment was as liaison to the
Berlin building trades for Paul Troost's renovation of the
Chancellery. As Chancellor,
Adolf
Hitler had a residence in the building and came by every
day to be briefed by Albert Speer and the building supervisor
on the progress of the renovations. After one of these briefings,
Adolf Hitler
invited Albert Speer to lunch, to the architect's great excitement.
Adolf Hitler
evinced considerable interest in Albert Speer during the luncheon,
and later told Albert Speer that he had been looking for a
young architect capable of carrying out his architectural
dreams for the new Germany. Albert Speer quickly became part
of
Adolf Hitler's
inner circle Albert Speer was expected to call on
Adolf
Hitler in the morning for a walk or chat, to provide consultation
on architectural matters, and to discuss
Adolf
Hitler's ideas. Most days Albert Speer was invited to
dinner.
The two men found much in common:
Adolf
Hitler spoke of Albert Speer as a kindred spirit for whom
he had always maintained the warmest human feelings. The young,
ambitious architect was dazzled by his rapid rise and close
proximity to
Adolf
Hitler, which guaranteed him a flood of commissions from
the government and from the highest ranks of the Party. Albert
Speer testified at Nuremberg, I belonged to a circle which
consisted of other artists and his personal staff. If
Adolf
Hitler had had any friends at all, I certainly would have
been one of his close friends.
When Paul Troost died on 21 January 1934, Albert Speer effectively
replaced him as the Party's chief architect.
Adolf
Hitler appointed Albert Speer as head of the Chief Office
for Construction, which placed him nominally on
Rudolf
Hess staff.
One of Albert Speer's first commissions after Paul Troost's
death was the Zeppelinfeld stadiumathe Nürnberg parade
grounds seen in Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda masterpiece
Triumph of the Will. This huge work was capable of holding
340,000 people. The tribune was influenced by the Pergamon
Altar in Anatolia, but was magnified to an enormous scale.
Albert Speer insisted that as many events as possible be held
at night, both to give greater prominence to his lighting
effects and to hide the individual National Socialists, many
of whom were overweight. Albert Speer surrounded the site
with 130 anti-aircraft searchlights. This created the effect
of a cathedral of light or, as it was called by British Ambassador
Sir Neville Henderson, a cathedral of ice. Albert Speer described
this as his most beautiful work, and as the only one that
stood the test of time.
Nürnberg was to be the site of many more official National
Socialist buildings, most of which were never built for example,
the German Stadium would have accommodated 400,000 spectators,
while an even larger rally ground would have held half a million
National Socialists. While planning these structures, Albert
Speer invented the concept of ruin value: that major buildings
should be constructed in such a way that they would leave
aesthetically pleasing ruins for thousands of years into the
future. Such ruins would be a testament to the greatness of
the Third Reich, just as ancient Greek or Roman ruins were
symbols of the greatness of those civilisations
Adolf
Hitler enthusiastically embraced this concept, and ordered
that all the Reich's important buildings be constructed in
accord with it.
Albert Speer could not avoid seeing the brutal excesses of
the National Socialist regime. Shortly after
Adolf
Hitler consolidated power in the Night of the Long Knives,
Adolf Hitler
ordered Albert Speer to take workmen and go to the building
housing the offices of Vice Chancellor
Franz
von Papen to begin its conversion into a security headquarters,
even though it was still occupied by
Franz
von Papen officials. Albert Speer and his group entered
the building, to be confronted with a pool of blood, apparently
from the body of Herbert von Bose,
Franz
von Papen secretary, who had been killed there. Albert
Speer related that the sight had no effect on him, other than
to cause him to avoid that room.
When
Adolf
Hitler deprecated Werner March's design for the Olympic
Stadium for the 1936 Summer Olympics as too modern, Albert
Speer modified the plans by adding a stone exterior. Albert
Speer designed the German Pavilion for the 1937 international
exposition in Paris. The German and Russian pavilion sites
were opposite each other. On learning through a clandestine
look at the Russian plans that the Russian design included
two colossal figures seemingly about to overrun the German
site, Albert Speer modified his design to include a cubic
mass which would check their advance, with a huge eagle on
top looking down on the Russian figures. Both pavilions were
awarded gold medals for their designs. Albert Speer would
also receive, from
Adolf
Hitler Youth Leader and later fellow Spandau prisoner
Baldur von Schirach, the Golden
Adolf
Hitler Youth honour Badge with oak leaves.
In 1937,
Adolf
Hitler appointed Albert Speer as General Building Inspector
for the Reich Capital with the rank of Undersecretary of state
in the Reich government. The position carried with it extraordinary
powers over the Berlin city government and made Albert Speer
answerable to
Adolf
Hitler alone. It also made Albert Speer a member of the
Reichstag, though the body by then had little effective power.
Adolf Hitler
ordered Albert Speer to make plans to rebuild Berlin. The
plans centred on a 3 mile long grand boulevard running from
north to south, which Albert Speer called the Prachtstrasse,
or Street of Magnificence Albert Speer also referred to it
as the North South Axis. At the north end of the boulevard,
Albert Speer planned to build the Volkshalle, a huge assembly
hall with a dome which would have been over 210 m high, with
floor space for 180,000 people. At the southern end of the
avenue would be a huge triumphal arch it would be almost 120
m high, and able to fit the Arc de Triomphe inside its opening.
The outbreak of World War II in 1939 led to the postponement,
and eventual abandonment, of these plans. Part of the land
for the boulevard was to be obtained by consolidating Berlin's
railway system. Albert Speer hired Rudolf Wolters as part
of his design team, with special responsibility for the Prachtstrasse.
When Speer's father saw the model for the new Berlin, he said
to his son, You've all gone completely insane.
Marble Gallery of the New Reich Chancellery In January 1938,
Adolf Hitler
asked Albert Speer to build a new Reich Chancellery on the
same site as the existing structure, and said he needed it
for urgent foreign policy reasons no later than his next New
Year's reception for diplomats on 10 January 1939. This was
a huge undertaking, especially since the existing Chancellery
was in full operation. After consultation with his assistants,
Albert Speer agreed. Although the site could not be cleared
until April, Albert Speer was successful in building the large,
impressive structure in nine months. The structure included
the Marble Gallery: at 146 metres long, almost twice as long
as the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. Albert
Speer employed thousands of workers in two shifts.
Adolf
Hitler, who had remained away from the project, was overwhelmed
when Albert Speer turned it over, fully furnished, two days
early. In appreciation for the architect's work on the Chancellery,
Adolf Hitler
awarded Albert Speer the National Socialist Golden Party Badge.
Tessenow was less impressed, suggesting to Albert Speer that
he should have taken nine years over the project. The second
Chancellery was damaged by the Battle of Berlin in 1945 and
was eventually dismantled by the Russians, its stone used
for a war memorial.
During the Chancellery project, the pogrom of Kristallnacht
took place. Albert Speer would make no mention of it in the
first draft of Inside the Third Reich, and it was only on
the urgent advice of his publisher that Albert Speer added
a mention of seeing the ruins of the Central Synagogue in
Berlin from his car.
Albert Speer was under significant psychological pressure
during this period of his life. Albert Speer would later remember:
Soon after
Adolf
Hitler had given me the first large architectural commissions,
I began to suffer from anxiety in long tunnels, in aeroplanes,
or in small rooms. My heart would begin to race, I would become
breathless, the diaphragm would seem to grow heavy, and I
would get the impression that my blood pressure was rising
tremendously Anxiety amidst all my freedom and power!
Albert Speer supported the German invasion of Poland and subsequent
war, though Albert Speer recognized that it would lead to
the postponement, at the least, of his architectural dreams.
In his later years, Albert Speer, talking with his biographer
to be Gitta Sereny, explained how Albert Speer felt in 1939,
Of course I was perfectly aware that
Adolf
Hitler sought world domination At that time I asked for
nothing better. That was the whole point of my buildings.
They would have looked grotesque if
Adolf
Hitler had sat still in Germany. All I wanted was for
this great man to dominate the globe.
Albert Speer placed his department at the disposal of the
Wehrmacht. When
Adolf
Hitler remonstrated, and said it was not for Albert Speer
to decide how his workers should be used, Albert Speer simply
ignored him. Among Albert Speer's innovations were quick reaction
squads to construct roads or clear away debris before long,
these units would be used to clear bomb sites. As the war
progressed, initially to great German success, Albert Speer
continued preliminary work on the Berlin and Nürnberg
plans, at
Adolf
Hitler's insistence, but failed to convince him of the
need to suspend peacetime construction projects. Albert Speer
also oversaw the construction of buildings for the Wehrmacht
and Luftwaffe, and developed a considerable organisation to
deal with this work.
In 1940, Joseph Stalin proposed that Albert Speer pay a visit
to Moscow. Joseph Stalin had been particularly impressed by
Albert Speer's work in Paris, and wished to meet the Architect
of the Reich.
Adolf
Hitler, alternating between amusement and anger, did not
allow Albert Speer to go, fearing that Joseph Stalin would
put Albert Speer in a rat hole until a new Moscow arose. When
Germany invaded the Russia in 1941, Albert Speer came to doubt,
despite
Adolf
Hitler's reassurances, that his projects for Berlin would
ever be completed.
Minister of Armaments
On 8 February 1942, Minister of Armaments Fritz Todt died
in a plane crash shortly after taking off from
Adolf
Hitler's eastern headquarters at Rastenburg. Albert Speer,
who had arrived in Rastenburg the previous evening, had accepted
Fritz Todt's offer to fly with him to Berlin, but had cancelled
some hours before takeoff Albert Speer stated in his memoirs
that the cancellation was because of exhaustion from travel
and a late night meeting with
Adolf
Hitler. Later that day,
Adolf
Hitler appointed Albert Speer as Fritz Todt's successor
to all of his posts. In Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer
recounts his meeting with
Adolf
Hitler and his reluctance to take ministerial office,
only doing so because
Adolf
Hitler commanded it. Albert Speer also states that
Hermann
Göring raced to
Adolf
Hitler's headquarters on hearing of Fritz Todt's death,
hoping to claim Fritz Todt's powers.
Adolf
Hitler instead presented
Hermann
Göring with the fait accompli of Albert Speer's appointment.
At the time of Albert Speer's accession to the office, the
German economy, unlike the British one, was not fully geared
for war production. Consumer goods were still being produced
at nearly as high a level as during peacetime. No fewer than
five Supreme Authorities had jurisdiction over armament production
one of which, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, had declared
in November 1941 that conditions did not permit an increase
in armament production. Few women were employed in the factories,
which were running only one shift. One evening soon after
his appointment, Albert Speer went to visit a Berlin armament
factory Albert Speer found no one on the premises.
Albert Speer overcame these difficulties by centralising power
over the war economy in himself. Factories were given autonomy,
or as Albert Speer put it, self responsibility, and each factory
concentrated on a single product. Backed by
Adolf
Hitler's strong support the dictator stated, Albert Speer,
I'll sign anything that comes from you, Albert Speer divided
the armament field according to weapon system, with experts
rather than civil servants overseeing each department. No
department head could be older than 55 anyone older being
susceptible to routine and arrogance and no deputy older than
40. Over these departments was a central planning committee
headed by Albert Speer, which took increasing responsibility
for war production, and as time went by, for the German economy
itself. According to the minutes of a conference at Wehrmacht
High Command in March 1942, It is only Albert Speer's word
that counts nowadays. Albert Speer can interfere in all departments.
Already Albert Speer overrides all departments On the whole,
Albert Speer's attitude is to the point.
Joseph
Goebbels would note in his diary in June 1943, Albert
Speer is still tops with the
Führer.
Albert Speer is truly a genius with organisation Albert Speer
was so successful in his position that by late 1943, Albert
Speer was widely regarded among the National Socialist elite
as a possible successor to
Adolf
Hitler.
While Albert Speer had tremendous power, Albert Speer was
of course subordinate to
Adolf
Hitler. National Socialist officials sometimes went around
Albert Speer by seeking direct orders from the dictator. When
Albert Speer ordered peacetime building work suspended, the
Gauleiters National Socialist Party district leaders obtained
an exemption for their pet projects. When Albert Speer sought
the appointment of Karl Hanke as a labor czar to optimise
the use of German labor,
Adolf
Hitler, under the influence of
Martin
Bormann, instead appointed Fritz Sauckel. Rather than
increasing female labor and taking other steps to better organise
German labor, as Albert Speer flavoured, Fritz Sauckel advocated
importing labor from the occupied nations and did so, obtaining
workers for among other things Albert Speer's armament factories,
using the most brutal methods.
On 10 December 1943, Albert Speer visited the underground
Mittelwerk
V-2
rocket factory that used concentration camp labor. Shocked
by the conditions there 5.7 percent of the work force died
that month, and to ensure the workers were in good enough
shape to perform the labor, Albert Speer ordered improved
conditions for the workers and the construction of the above
ground Dora camp. In spite of these changes, half of the workers
at Mittelwerk eventually died. Albert Speer later commented,
he conditions for these prisoners were in fact barbarous,
and a sense of profound involvement and personal guilt seizes
me whenever I think of them.
By 1943, the Allies had gained air superiority over Germany,
and bombings of German cities and industry had become commonplace.
However, the Allies in their strategic bombing campaign did
not concentrate on industry, and Albert Speer, with his improvisational
skill, was able to overcome bombing losses. In spite of these
losses, German production of tanks more than doubled in 1943,
production of planes increased by 80 percent, and production
time for Kriegsmarine's U-boats was reduced from one year
to two months. Production would continue to increase until
the second half of 1944, by which time enough equipment to
supply 270 army divisions was being produced although the
Wehrmacht had only 150 divisions in the field.
In January 1944, Albert Speer fell ill with complications
from an inflamed knee, and was away from the office for three
months. During his absence, his political rivals mainly
Hermann
Göring, and
Martin
Bormann, attempted to have some of his powers permanently
transferred to them. According to Albert Speer, SS chief
Heinrich
Himmler tried to have him physically isolated by having
Heinrich
Himmler's personal physician Karl Gebhardt treat him,
though his care did not improve his health. Albert Speer's
wife and friends managed to have his case transferred to his
friend Dr. Karl Brandt, and Albert Speer slowly recovered.
In April, Albert Speer's rivals for power succeeded in having
him deprived of responsibility for construction, and Albert
Speer promptly sent
Adolf
Hitler a bitter letter, concluding with an offer of his
resignation. Judging Albert Speer indispensable to the war
effort, Field Marshal
Erhard
Milch persuaded
Adolf
Hitler to try to get his minister to reconsider.
Adolf
Hitler sent
Erhard
Milch to Albert Speer with a message not addressing the
dispute but instead stating that he still regarded Albert
Speer as highly as ever. According to
Erhard
Milch, upon hearing the message, Albert Speer burst out,
The
Führer
can kiss my ass! After a lengthy argument,
Erhard
Milch persuaded Albert Speer to withdraw his offer of
resignation, on the condition his powers were restored. On
23 April 1944, Albert Speer went to see
Adolf
Hitler who agreed that everything will stay as it was,
Albert Speer will remain the head of all German construction.According
to Albert Speer, while he was successful in this debate,
Adolf
Hitler had also won, because he wanted and needed me back
in his corner, and he got me.
Albert Speer's name was included on the list of members of
a post
Adolf
Hitler government drawn up by the conspirators behind
the July 1944 assassination plot to kill
Adolf
Hitler. The list had a question mark and the annotation
to be won over by his name, which likely saved him from the
extensive purges that followed the scheme's failure.
By February 1945, Albert Speer, who had long concluded that
the war was lost, was working to supply areas about to be
occupied with food and materials to get them through the hard
times ahead. On 19 March 1945,
Adolf
Hitler issued his Nero Decree, ordering a scorched earth
policy in both Germany and the occupied territories.
Adolf
Hitler's order, by its terms, deprived Albert Speer of
any power to interfere with the decree, and Albert Speer went
to confront
Adolf
Hitler, telling him the war was lost.
Adolf
Hitler gave Albert Speer 24 hours to reconsider his position,
and when the two met the following day, Albert Speer answered,
I stand unconditionally behind you. However, Albert Speer
demanded the exclusive power to implement the Nero Decree,
and
Adolf Hitler
signed an order to that effect. Using this order, Albert Speer
worked to persuade generals and Gauleiters to evade the Nero
Decree and avoid needless sacrifice of personnel and destruction
of industry that would be needed after the war.
Albert Speer managed to reach a relatively safe area near
Hamburg as the National Socialist regime finally collapsed,
but decided on a final, risky visit to Berlin to see
Adolf
Hitler one more time. Albert Speer stated at Nuremberg,
I felt that it was my duty not to run away like a coward,
but to stand up to him again. Albert Speer visited the Führerbunker
on 22 April.
Adolf
Hitler seemed calm and somewhat distracted, and the two
had a long, disjointed conversation in which the dictator
defended his actions and informed Albert Speer of his intent
to commit suicide and have his body burned. In the published
edition of Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer relates that
he confessed to
Adolf
Hitler that he had defied the Nero Decree, but then assured
Adolf Hitler
of his personal loyalty, bringing tears to the dictator's
eyes. Albert Speer biographer Gitta Sereny argued, Psychologically,
it is possible that this is the way Albert Speer remembered
the occasion, because it was how he would have liked to behave,
and the way he would have liked
Adolf
Hitler to react. But the fact is that none of it happened
our witness to this is Albert Speer himself. Gitta Sereny
goes on to note that Albert Speer's original draft of his
memoirs lacks the confession and
Adolf
Hitler's tearful reaction, and contains an explicit denial
that any confession or emotional exchange took place, as had
been alleged in a French magazine article.
The following morning, Albert Speer left the Führerbunker,
with
Adolf
Hitler curtly bidding him farewell. Albert Speer toured
the damaged Chancellery one last time before leaving Berlin
to return to Hamburg. On 29 April, the day before committing
suicide,
Adolf
Hitler dictated a final political testament which dropped
Albert Speer from the successor government. Albert Speer was
to be replaced by his own subordinate, Karl-Otto Saur.
Nuremberg trial
After
Adolf
Hitler's death, Albert Speer offered his services to the
so-called Flensburg Government, headed by
Adolf
Hitler's successor,
Karl
Dönitz, and took a significant role in that short
lived regime. On 15 May the Americans arrived and asked Albert
Speer if he would be willing to provide information on the
effects of the air war. Albert Speer agreed, and over the
next several days, provided information on a broad range of
subjects. On 23 May two weeks after the surrender of German
troops, the Allies arrested the members of the Flensburg Government
and brought National Socialist Germany to a formal end.
Albert Speer was taken to several internment centres for National
Socialist officials and interrogated. In September 1945, Albert
Speer was told that he would be tried for war crimes, and
several days later, Albert Speer was taken to Nuremberg and
incarcerated there. Albert Speer was indicted on all four
possible counts: first, participating in a common plan or
conspiracy for the accomplishment of crime against peace,
second, planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression
and other crimes against peace, third, war crimes, and lastly,
crimes against humanity.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the chief U.S.
prosecutor at Nuremberg, alleged, Albert Speer joined in planning
and executing the program to dragoon prisoners of war and
foreign workers into German war industries, which waxed in
output while the workers waned in starvation. Albert Speer's
attorney, Dr. Hans Flächsner, presented Albert Speer
as an artist thrust into political life, who had always remained
a nonideological and who had been promised by
Adolf
Hitler that he could return to architecture after the
war. During his testimony, Albert Speer accepted responsibility
for the National Socialist regime's actions:
In political life, there is a responsibility for a man's own
sector. For that he is of course fully responsible. But beyond
that there is a collective responsibility when he has been
one of the leaders. Who else is to be held responsible for
the course of events, if not the closest associates around
the Chief of State?
An observer at the trial, journalist and author William L.
Shirer, wrote that, compared to his codefendants, Albert Speer
made the most straightforward impression of all and during
the long trial spoke honestly and with no attempt to shirk
his responsibility and his guilt. Albert Speer also testified
that Albert Speer had planned to kill
Adolf
Hitler in early 1945 by dropping a canister of poison
gas into the bunker's air intake. Albert Speer said his efforts
were frustrated by a high wall that had been built around
the air intake. Albert Speer stated his motive was despair
at realising that
Adolf
Hitler intended to take the German people down with him.
Albert Speer's supposed assassination plan subsequently met
with some scepticism, with Albert Speer's architectural rival
Hermann Giesler sneering, the second most powerful man in
the state did not have a ladder.
Albert Speer was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against
humanity, though Albert Speer was acquitted on the other two
counts. On 1 October 1946, Albert Speer was sentenced to 20
years' imprisonment. While three of the eight judges two Russian
and one American initially advocated the death penalty for
Albert Speer, the other judges did not, and a compromise sentence
was reached after two days' discussion and some rather bitter
horse trading.
The court's judgement stated that
In the closing stages of the war Albert Speer was one of the
few men who had the courage to tell
Adolf
Hitler that the war was lost and to take steps to prevent
the senseless destruction of production facilities, both in
occupied territories and in Germany. Albert Speer carried
out his opposition to
Adolf
Hitler's scorched earth program by deliberately sabotaging
it at considerable personal risk.
Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death including
Martin
Bormann, in absentia and three acquitted only seven of
the defendants were sentenced to imprisonment. They remained
in the cells at Nuremberg as the Allies debated where, and
under what conditions, they should be incarcerated.
Imprisonment
On 18 July 1947, Albert Speer and his six fellow prisoners,
all former high officials of the National Socialist regime,
were flown from Nuremberg to Berlin under heavy guard. The
prisoners were taken to Spandau Prison in the British Sector
of what would become West Berlin, where they would be designated
by number, with Albert Speer given Number Five. Initially,
the prisoners were kept in solitary confinement for all but
half an hour a day, and were not permitted to address each
other or their guards. As time passed, the strict regimen
was relaxed, especially during the three months in four that
the three Western powers were in control the four occupying
powers took overall control on a monthly rotation. Albert
Speer considered himself an outcast among his fellow prisoners
for his acceptance of responsibility at Nuremberg.
Albert Speer made a deliberate effort to make as productive
a use of his time as possible. Albert Speer wrote, I am obsessed
with the idea of using this time of confinement for writing
a book of major importance That could mean transforming prison
cell into scholar's den. The prisoners were forbidden to write
memoirs, and mail was severely limited and censored. However,
as a result of an offer from a sympathetic orderly, Albert
Speer was able to have his writings, which eventually amounted
to 20,000 sheets, sent to Rudolf Wolters. By 1954, Albert
Speer had completed his memoirs, which became the basis of
Inside the Third Reich, and which Rudolf Wolters arranged
to have transcribed onto 1,100 typewritten pages. Albert Speer
was also able to send letters and financial instructions,
and to obtain writing paper and letters from the outside.
His many letters to his children, all secretly transmitted,
eventually formed the basis for Spandau: The Secret Diaries.
With the draft memoir complete and clandestinely transmitted,
Albert Speer sought a new project. Albert Speer found one
while taking his daily exercise, walking in circles around
the prison yard. Measuring the path's distance carefully,
Albert Speer set out to walk the distance from Berlin to Heidelberg.
Albert Speer then expanded his idea into a worldwide journey,
visualising the places he was travelling through while walking
the path around the prison yard. Albert Speer ordered guidebooks
and other materials about the nations through which he imagined
he was passing, so as to envisage as accurate a picture as
possible. Meticulously calculating every meter travelled,
and mapping distances to the real world geography, he began
in northern Germany, passed through Asia by a southern route
before entering Siberia, then crossed the Bering Strait and
continued southwards, finally ending his sentence 35 kilometres
south of Guadalajara, Mexico.
Albert Speer devoted much of his time and energy to reading.
Though the prisoners brought some books with them in their
personal property, Spandau Prison had no library so books
were sent from Spandau's municipal library. From 1952 the
prisoners were also able to order books from the Berlin central
library in Wilmersdorf. Albert Speer was a voracious reader
and he completed well over 500 books in the first three years
at Spandau alone. Albert Speer read classic novels, travelogues,
books on ancient Egypt, and biographies of such figures as
Lucas Cranach, Friedrich Preller, and Genghis Khan. Albert
Speer took to the prison garden for enjoyment and work, at
first to do something constructive while afflicted with writer's
block. Albert Speer was allowed to build an ambitious garden,
transforming what he initially described as a wilderness into
what the American commander at Spandau described as Albert
Speer's Garden of Eden.
Albert Speer's supporters maintained a continual call for
his release. Among those who pledged support for Albert Speer's
sentence to be commuted were Charles de Gaulle, U.S. diplomat
George Ball, former U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy,
and former Nuremberg prosecutor Hartley Shawcross. Willy Karl
Brandt was a strong advocate of Albert Speer's, supporting
his release, sending flowers to his daughter on the day of
his release, and putting an end to the denazification proceedings
against Albert Speer, which could have caused his property
to be confiscated. A reduced sentence required the consent
of all four of the occupying powers, and the Russians adamantly
opposed any such proposal. Albert Speer served his full sentence,
and was released on 1 October 1966.
Release and later life
Albert Speer's release from prison was a worldwide media event,
as reporters and photographers crowded both the street outside
Spandau and the lobby of the Berlin hotel where Albert Speer
spent his first hours of freedom in over 20 years. Albert
Speer said little, reserving most comments for a major interview
published in Der Spiegel in November 1966, in which Albert
Speer again took personal responsibility for crimes of the
National Socialist regime. Abandoning plans to return to architecture
two proposed partners died shortly before his release, Albert
Speer revised his Spandau writings into two autobiographical
books, and later researched and published a third work, about
Heinrich
Himmler and the SS. His books, most notably Inside the
Third Reich n German, Erinnerungen, or Reminiscences and Spandau:
The Secret Diaries, provide a unique and personal look into
the personalities of the National Socialist era, and have
become much valued by historians. Albert Speer was aided in
shaping the works by Joachim Fest and Wolf Jobst Siedler from
the publishing house Ullstein. Albert Speer found himself
unable to re-establish his relationship with his children,
even with his son Albert, who had also become an architect.
According to Albert Speer's daughter Hilde, One by one my
sister and brothers gave up. There was no communication.
Following the publication of his bestselling books, Albert
Speer donated a considerable amount of money to Jewish charities.
According to Siedler, these donations were as high as 80%
of his royalties. Albert Speer kept the donations anonymous,
both for fear of rejection, and for fear of being called a
hypocrite.
As early as 1953, when Rudolf Wolters strongly objected to
Albert Speer referring to
Adolf
Hitler in the memoirs draft as a criminal, Albert Speer
had predicted that were the writings to be published, Albert
Speer would lose a good many friends This came to pass, as
following the publication of Inside the Third Reich, close
friends, such as Rudolf Wolters and sculptor Arno Breker,
distanced themselves from him. Hans Baur,
Adolf
Hitler's personal pilot, suggested, Albert Speer must
have taken leave of his senses. Rudolf Wolters wondered that
Albert Speer did not now walk through life in a hair shirt,
distributing his fortune among the victims of National Socialism,
forswear all the vanities and pleasures of life and live on
locusts and wild honey.
Albert Speer made himself widely available to historians and
other enquirers. Albert Speer did an extensive, in depth interview
for the June 1971 issue of Playboy magazine, in which Albert
Speer stated, If I didn't see it, then it was because I didn't
want to see it. In October 1973, Albert Speer made his first
trip to Britain, flying to London under an assumed name to
be interviewed on the BBC Midweek programme by Ludovic Kennedy.
Upon arrival, Albert Speer was detained for almost eight hours
at Heathrow Airport when British immigration authorities discovered
his true identity. The Home Secretary, Robert Carr, allowed
Albert Speer into the country for 48 hours. While in London
eight years later to participate in the BBC Newsnight programme,
Albert Speer suffered a stroke and died on 1 September 1981.
Albert Speer had formed a relationship with a German born
Englishwoman, and was with her at the time of his death.
Even to the end of his life, Albert Speer continued to question
his actions under
Adolf
Hitler. In his final book, Infiltration, Albert Speer
asks, What would have happened if
Adolf
Hitler had asked me to make decisions that required the
utmost hardness? How far would I have gone? If I had occupied
a different position, to what extent would I have ordered
atrocities if
Adolf
Hitler had told me to do so? Albert Speer leaves the questions
unanswered.
Legacy and controversy
The view of Albert Speer as an unpolitical miracle man is
challenged by Yale historian Adam Tooze. In his 2006 book,
The Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze, following Gitta Sereny,
argues that Albert Speer's ideological commitment to the National
Socialist cause was greater than Albert Speer claimed. Adam
Tooze further contends that an insufficiently challenged Albert
Speer mythology partly fostered by Albert Speer himself through
politically motivated, tendentious use of statistics and other
propaganda had led many historians to assign Albert Speer
far more credit for the increases in armaments production
than was warranted and give insufficient consideration to
the highly political function of the so-called armaments miracle.
Little remains of Albert Speer's personal architectural works,
other than the plans and photographs. No buildings designed
by Albert Speer in the National Socialist era remain in Berlin
a double row of lampposts along the Strasse des 17. Juni designed
by Albert Speer still stands. The tribune of the Zeppelinfeld
stadium in Nuremberg, though partly demolished, may also be
seen. Albert Speer's work may also be seen in London, where
Albert Speer redesigned the interior of the German Embassy
to the United Kingdom, then located at 79 Carlton House Terrace.
Since 1967, it has served as the offices of the Royal Society.
His work there, stripped of its National Socialist fixtures
and partially covered by carpets, survives in part.
Another legacy was the Arbeitsstab Wiederaufbau zerstörter
Städte Working group on Reconstruction of destroyed cities,
authorised by Albert Speer in 1943 to rebuild bombed German
cities to make them more liveable in the age of the automobile.
Headed by Rudolf Wolters, the working group took a possible
military defeat into their calculations. The Arbeitsstab's
recommendations served as the basis of the post war redevelopment
plans in many cities, and Arbeitsstab members became prominent
in the rebuilding.
As General Building Inspector, Albert Speer was responsible
for the Central Department for Resettlement. From 1939 onward,
the Department used the Nuremberg Laws to evict Jewish tenants
of non-Jewish landlords in Berlin, to make way for non-Jewish
tenants displaced by redevelopment or bombing. Eventually,
75,000 Jews were displaced by these measures. Albert Speer
was aware of these activities, and inquired as to their progress.
At least one original memo from Albert Speer so inquiring
still exists, as does the Chronicle of the Department's activities,
kept by Rudolf Wolters.
Following his release from Spandau, Albert Speer presented
to the German Federal Archives an edited version of the Chronicle,
stripped by Rudolf Wolters of any mention of the Jews. When
David Irving discovered discrepancies between the edited Chronicle
and other documents, Rudolf Wolters explained the situation
to Albert Speer, who responded by suggesting to Rudolf Wolters
that the relevant pages of the original Chronicle should cease
to exist. Rudolf Wolters did not destroy the Chronicle, and,
as his friendship with Albert Speer deteriorated, allowed
access to the original Chronicle to doctoral student Matthias
Schmidt who, after obtaining his doctorate, developed his
thesis into a book, Albert Speer, The End of a Myth. Albert
Speer considered Rudolf Wolters' actions to be a betrayal
and a stab in the back. The original Chronicle reached the
Archives in 1983, after both Albert Speer and Rudolf Wolters
had died.
Albert Speer maintained at Nuremberg and in his memoirs that
he had no knowledge of the Holocaust. In Inside the Third
Reich, Albert Speer wrote that in the middle of 1944, he was
told by Karl Hanke by then Gauleiter of Lower Silesia that
the minister should never accept an invitation to inspect
a concentration camp in neigbouring Upper Silesia, as he had
seen something there which he was not permitted to describe
and moreover could not describe Albert Speer later concluded
that Karl Hanke must have been speaking of Auschwitz, and
blamed himself for not inquiring further of Karl Hanke or
seeking information from
Heinrich
Himmler or
Adolf
Hitler.
These seconds when Karl Hanke told Albert Speer this, and
Albert Speer did not inquire were uppermost in my mind when
I stated to the international court at the Nuremberg Trial
that, as an important member of the leadership of the Reich,
I had to share the total responsibility for all that had happened.
For from that moment on I was inescapably contaminated morally
from fear of discovering something which might have made me
turn from my course, I had closed my eyes Because I failed
at that time, I still feel, to this day, responsible for Auschwitz
in a wholly personal sense.
Much of the controversy over Albert Speer's knowledge of the
Holocaust has centred on his presence at the Posen Conference
on 6 October 1943, at which
Heinrich
Himmler gave a speech detailing the ongoing Holocaust
to National Socialist leaders.
Heinrich
Himmler said, The grave decision had to be taken to cause
this people to vanish from the earth In the lands we occupy,
the Jewish question will be dealt with by the end of the year.
Albert Speer is mentioned several times in the speech, and
Heinrich
Himmler seems to address him directly. In Inside the Third
Reich, Albert Speer mentions his own address to the officials
which took place earlier in the day but does not mention
Heinrich
Himmler's speech.
In 1971, American historian Erich Goldhagen published an article
arguing that Albert Speer was present for
Heinrich
Himmler's speech. According to Fest in his biography of
Albert Speer, Goldhagen's accusation certainly would have
been more convincing had he not placed supposed incriminating
statements linking Albert Speer with the Holocaust in quotation
marks, attributed to
Heinrich
Himmler, which were in fact invented by Goldhagen. In
response, after considerable research in the German Federal
Archives in Koblenz, Albert Speer said he had left Posen around
noon long before
Heinrich
Himmler's speech in order to journey to
Adolf
Hitler's headquarters at Rastenburg. In Inside the Third
Reich, published before the Goldhagen article, Albert Speer
recalled that on the evening after the conference, many National
Socialist officials were so drunk that they needed help boarding
the special train which was to take them to a meeting with
Adolf Hitler.
One of his biographers, Dan van der Vat, suggests this necessarily
implies Albert Speer must have still been present at Posen
then, and must have heard
Heinrich
Himmler's speech. In response to Goldhagen's article,
Albert Speer had alleged that in writing Inside the Third
Reich, he erred in reporting an incident that happened at
another conference at Posen a year later, as happening in
1943.
In 2005, The Daily Telegraph reported that documents had surfaced
indicating that Albert Speer had approved the allocation of
materials for the expansion of Auschwitz after two of his
assistants toured the facility on a day when almost a thousand
Jews were murdered. The documents supposedly bore annotations
in Albert Speer's own handwriting. Albert Speer biographer
Gitta Sereny stated that, due to his workload, Albert Speer
would not have been personally aware of such activities.
The debate over Albert Speer's knowledge of, or complicity
in, the Holocaust made him a symbol for people who were involved
with the National Socialist regime yet did not have or claimed
not to have had an active part in the regime's atrocities.
As film director Heinrich Breloer remarked, Albert Speer created
a market for people who said, 'Believe me, I didn't know anything
about the Holocaust. Just look at the
Führer's
friend, he didn't know about it either.
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