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PERSONALITY IN THE 20TH CENTURY:

ALBERT SPEER 19051981


Tall, handsome, quietly spoken and intellectual, Speer was the only leading Nazi
at the Nuremberg Trials to acknowledge the evils of the Nazi regime, and one
of the few to show remorse. As a result, he escaped the death penalty, receiving
a sentence of twenty years imprisonment. After his release he was a courteous
and helpful source of information for numerous documentaries and books.
Although he claimed to have had a close relationship with Hitler, saying: If Hitler
ever had a friend, it would have been me, to the end of his days he claimed
complete ignorance of the excesses of the regime, including the horrors of the
concentration camps. Was Albert Speer really the good, if misguided Nazi as he
liked to portray himself, or did he succeed in fooling everyone?

Timeline
1905

Speer is born in Mannheim; his father is a wealthy architect.

1927

After studying in Munich and Berlin, he qualies as an architect.

1928

He marries Margarete Weber and they have six children.

1931

He joins the Nazi Party.

1933

He redesigns the Gauhaus in Berlin for Goebbels.


Designs a simple but effective backdrop for the Nazi rally on the Templehof aireld on 1 May.
Commissioned by Hitler to renovate and refurbish the dilapidated chancellery in Berlin.

1934

He runs the Beauty of Labour section of the Strength through Joy campaign, and becomes the First Architect of
the Reich.
Commissioned to redesign the Nuremberg Rally grounds; work was begun but never completed.

1937

His design for the German pavilion at the Paris World Exhibition wins the gold medal.
He is appointed to rebuild Berlin as Germania, directly answerable to Hitler.

Personality Prole: Albert Speer

1938

He is appointed to build a new Reich chancellery within twelve months; he succeeds.

1942

He is appointed minister of armaments and munitions.

1943

September: his position is expanded to Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production.

1945

He is sentenced at the Nuremberg Trials, principally for his use of forced and slave labour; the Soviets want him hanged.

1966

He is released from Spandau prison, Berlin.

1969

Inside the Third Reich, Speers memoirs are published.

1975

Spandau: The Secret Diaries is published.

1981

Speer dies.

354 | Key Features of Modern History

Background
Albert Speer was born in Mannheim on 19 March 1905.
He came from a normal upper-middle-class family and
enjoyed the typical upbringing of a provincial child in
those circumstances. Speers father, like his grandfather,
was an architect who had made a name for himself in the
Mannheim area. His mother had come from a wealthy
merchant family in Mainz, by the river Rhine, and was
never reconciled to the move to industrial Mannheim
upon marriage. She compensated for the less glamorous
surroundings by being socially ambitious and running
an aristocratic household complete with servants and
fine furniture. In 1918, the family moved to a new home
surrounded by woodland and overlooking the town
of Heidelberg.
Speer was not close to his parents, who were virtually
strangers to him (Fest 2002, p. 14). Nor did he get on well
with his brothers, Hermann (b. 1902) and Ernst (b. 1906), who
were robust and outgoing, while he was physically delicate
and had unstable health. The inhibitions that all observers
later remarked on were already conspicuous in those early
years. Speers mother, who had sought refuge from various
disappointments in a restless social life filled with receptions
and house parties, remained aloof (Fest 2002, p. 14). When
he passed his school-leaving exam, Albert wanted to study
mathematics, but his father persuaded him to follow the
family tradition into architecture.

Figure 11.44

Young Speer with Margarete Weber

In 1922 he fell in love with Margarete Weber, the daughter of a joiner. Both sets of parents objected
and tried to keep the young people aparthe being sent to Karlsruhe to begin studies, she to a
boarding school in Freiburg. They kept in touch by letter and in 1925 Speer moved from Munich to
Berlin to continue his studies. There he came under the influence of Heinrich Tessenow, who appointed
Speer as his assistant in 1928. This well-paid post enabled him to marry in that year. Albert and
Margarete spent their time in cultural activities, mountain walks and canoeing.
In his parents home, open discussion of politics had been banned. Albert remained apolitical,
apparently untouched by developments during the Weimar years. His father was a liberal, despising
Hitler as a criminal upstart. Yet Speers mother, after being impressed by an SA march through the
streets of Heidelberg in 1931, secretly joined the Nazi Party.

Personality Prole: Albert Speer

Fest sums up this early phase of Speers life by describing him as an immature but gifted young
man, caught up in the prejudices and moods of his day. Nothing in him suggests any disorder caused
by parental neglect, or any complexes or deformations. He had even remained untouched by the
political and artistic extremes of the wild twenties, which captured almost everybody, at least for a time
(Fest 2002, p. 24).
Speer first heard Hitler speak when he addressed a meeting of arts students in Berlin in December
1930, and Speer declared himself captivated by the magic of Hitlers voice. On 1 March 1931 he joined
the Nazi Party.

Germany 19181939 | 355

Rise to prominence
Speer the architect
Speers first architectural commission for the Nazis came
from Goebbels, the Gauleiter of Berlin, to renovate the
Gauhaus in that city. That was quickly followed by the task
of organising the backdrop for the May Day rally at the
Templehof airfield in Berlin in 1933. The black, white and
red flags of the old Reich, each ten storeys high, were hung
vertically. In between them a similarly large Nazi standard
was placed, the whole lit up at night.
The Fhrer was pleased with the effect and Speer was
asked to organise the Nuremberg rally of 1933, followed
by a commission to build entirely new rally grounds at
Nuremberg for the 1934 party rally. Hitler began to forge a
close relationship with the young architect.
In 1934, Speer was given responsibility for the Beauty
of Labour section of the new Strength through Joy
campaign. This involved improving workers conditions by
providing canteen facilities, turning paved areas into parks,
and improving lighting and ventilation. These changes,
while part of Nazi policy, never interested Hitler, whose
main interest lay in architecture. In January 1934, Paul
Troost, Hitlers favourite architect, died, and Speer replaced

him. Speers plans for the 1934 party rally at Nuremberg


brought him further credit, with his idea of a Cathedral of
Light effect created by placing 150 searchlights around the
perimeter of the rally ground, with their beams pointing
perpendicularly into the night sky.
In 1936, the Olympic Games were to be held in Berlin.
A crisis arose when Hitler, furious at the glass box stadium
designs of the architect Werner March, threatened to cancel
the games. Speer was hastily brought in, removed much
of the glass and concrete that had angered Hitler, and
carried out the essential reconstructions to the satisfaction
of the Fhrer.
The next year, Speer achieved another triumph at the
Paris World Exhibition, when his design for the German
pavilion, incorporating an eagle holding a wreathed swastika
in its claws, seemingly looking down in triumph on the
Soviet exhibition opposite, won the approval both of Hitler
and the exhibition judges, who rewarded Speers effort with
the gold medal.
In January 1938 Hitler asked Speer to build a new
Reich chancellery, with the specification that it had to be
completed within twelve months. Speers ability as an

Personality Prole: Albert Speer

Figure 11.46 Speers cathedral of light formed by hundreds of searchlights pointing vertically to give the impression of huge columns
surrounding the rally grounds.

356 | Key Features of Modern History

Germania
In 1937 Speer was handed the most ambitious architectural
project of his career: to rebuild Berlin, to be renamed
Germania, as the capital of the new Reich. The whole project
was the brainchild of Hitler who, in subsequent years, spent
many hours going over the designs of the new city with
Speer. A start was made by clearing away 52 000 flats in
the centre of Berlin to make way for one of the imposing
avenues of the new capital.

Figure 11.47 The centre of Germania. The arch in the centre would contain the names of all 1.8 million Germans who had died in the
First World War.

Germany 19181939 | 357

Personality Prole: Albert Speer

organiser now became clear. Using the best tradesmen


and having several building firms working simultaneously
on different parts of the building, the deadline was met.
In January 1939 the new building was opened and Hitler,
greatly pleased with the result, declared Speer a genius.
The chancellery was intended to demonstrate the might
of the Reich. Visitors could gain access to Hitlers office only
by walking along an imposing marble gallery almost 150
metres in length. The building was decorated with heroic,
muscle-bound sculptures representing party and army.

Speer as minister of armaments and munitions


At the start of the war, Fritz Todt had been appointed as minister of armaments and munitions.
He had already built up a massive organisation for the construction of public works and defences.
On 8 February 1942, Todt was killed in a plane crash and Speer was named as his successor.
Speer threw himself enthusiastically into his new role. He found that after two and a half years
of war the German workforce was riddled with inefficiencies. Some factories still operated single
shifts, and too many resources were being diverted to non-essential consumer production. In April
1942, Speer established a central planning board, which he called the most important war economy
measure of all, and which controlled the allocation of raw materials and planning decisions for new
plants. Speer pushed through a program of rationalisation, which trebled armaments output in three
years with a relatively small increase of resources, despite the loss of millions of workers to the armed
forces. This loss would have been greater without the introduction of a system of reserved occupations,
which gave exemptions from military service to the most important skilled men. In July 1943 he
established the Ruhr staff: a taskforce whose job it was to organise the restitution of damaged plant
and workers accommodation in this heavily bombed industrial area.

Obstacles to efciency
On 12 July 1943, Speer sent a memorandum to Hitler urging the use of more women for the war effort:
8IBUXPVMECFUIFDPOTFRVFODFT GPSFYBNQMF JGmQFSDFOUPGPVS(FSNBOEPNFTUJD
TFSWBOUTXFSFXJUIESBXOGSPNUIFJSFYJTUJOHXPSLGPSTJYNPOUITBOE BTBSFTVMU BQQSPYJNBUFMZ
mXPNFOXFSFEFQMPZFEJOUIFXBSFPSU PSJGPOFUIJSEPSPOFRVBSUFSPGUIF
DMFBOJOHMBEJFT XIPBSFTUJMMXPSLJOHJO(FSNBOBENJOJTUSBUJWFPDFT XFSFXJUIESBXO 8IZ
JOUIFQSFTFOUDJSDVNTUBODFTBSFUIFSFTUJMMGFNBMFTUVEFOUTTUVEZJOHQIJMPMPHZ NVTJD GBTIJPO 
MBOHVBHFTPSPUIFSUIJOHTXIJDIBSFOPXPGBCTPMVUFMZOPJOUFSFTU  /PBLFT Q

However, the Nazis conservative ideology still opposed maximising the use of women for war work,
and Speer had to turn to forced labour from the camps and conquered countries for his workforce.
Another source of opposition was the Gauleiters. These Nazi regional leaders were antagonistic
towards Speers attempts to impose a central control of resources, particularly when it took resources
away from their own Gaus. As late as 1943 Speer was still pressing for the closure of non-essential
plants, in the face of opposition from the local Gauleiter.

Achievements
The transformation in armaments output between 194142 and 194445 was remarkable. The higher
production was achieved in the face of intensified Allied bombing of industrial plants.
1941

1942

1943

1944

Combat aircraft (Germany)

11 030

14 700

25 220

37 950

Combat aircraft (Britain)

20 100

23 600

26 200

26 500

Personality Prole: Albert Speer

Source: D. van der Vat, The Good Nazi: the Life and Lies of Albert Speer, 1997, p. 178.

By August 1944 Speer was responsible for the whole of German war economy, with fourteen
million workers under his direction. It was Speer who, by a remarkable feat of organisation, patched
up bombed communications and factories, and somehow maintained the bare minimum of transport
and production, without which the war on the German side would have come to a standstill. His efforts
enabled Germany to stay in the war for another year or possibly two.

358 | Key Features of Modern History

His relationship with Hitler


Speer had worked very closely with Hitler on architectural
matters. He was one of the few ministers allowed direct
access to the Fhrer. Speer was later to say, partly perhaps
as an excuse for his actions, that Hitlers charisma cast a
spell over his subordinates: I noticed during my activities
as architect, that to be in his presence for any length of
time made me tired, exhausted and void. Capacity for
independent work was paralysed (Bullock 1993). Illness kept
him away from the Fhrers headquarters from February to
June 1944, but on his return he became alarmed at the price
which Germany was being made to pay to prolong the war.

Hitlers destruction orders


The collapse of the German Ardennes offensive in December
1944 and the Russian offensive in January 1945 convinced
Speer that the war was lost. Hitler, however, was determined
to destroy Germany rather than admit defeat. On 15 March
1945, in response to Hitlers ideas of a scorched earth policy
for Germany, Speer drew up a memorandum in which he
argued that Germanys final collapse was certain within
weeks, and that the overriding obligation of Germanys

Figure 11.48 Speer in conversation with Hitler

Source 11.26

Source 11.27

Galbraith [J. K. Galbraith, an interrogator at Nuremberg], is


scathing about Speers claims to have frustrated Hitlers
scorched-earth decree almost single handed and to have
plotted to gas him These stories, Galbraith thought, had
gained much in the telling and contained major elements
of fantasy. So, he felt, did Speers claims about the German
war economy, whose exponential growth had been from
a very small base and did not surpass a smaller Britains
until 1944. All this, and Speers carefully nuanced candour,
were part and parcel of his well devised strategy of selfvindication and survival.

By the time he took over responsibility for the war economy,


Germany was ghting for its life and Speer [was] in his
element, as a crisis manager and problem solver. But
even he could not make up for Hitlers earlier, Blitzkriegbased short-termism and could only achieve too little, too
late, even when building up production so spectacularly
(if from a small base). He was also as responsible as
Hitler himself for some immensely wasteful diversions of
scarce resources, such as the V2 project, as well as for the
suering of millions forced to work for himand the tens
of thousands of Jews he had directly caused to be thrown
on the streets of Berlin in the rst stage of a journey that
usually ended in murder.

D. van der Vat, The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert
Speer, 1997, p. 241.

D. van der Vat, The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert
Speer, 1997, p. 366.

DO CUMEN T S TUDY QUE ST IONS


1 What comment does Galbraith make in Source 11.26 about Speers economic claims?
2 What claims by Speer does Galbraith dismiss as fantasy?
3 What qualities of Speer are mentioned in Source 11.27?
4 What criticisms of Speer are made in Source 11.27?

Germany 19181939 | 359

Personality Prole: Albert Speer

D O C UM ENT STU DY: A N A SSESSMENT OF ALBERT SPEER

rulers was to ensure that the German people should be left with some possibility of reconstructing
their lives in the future. Hitler did not agree and issued orders for the scorched-earth policy. Noakes
comments that Speers determination to thwart the destruction of German industry was motivated
partly by a genuine concern for the future of the German people and partly, no doubt, by an attempt
to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of Germanys conquerors (Noakes, 1998, p. 659).
Speer devoted himself in the final months of the war to preserving as much as possible of
Germanys industrial base. He flew into the blockaded Ruhr and persuaded the Wehrmacht not to
destroy the bridges, railways and other installations or encourage the enemy to destroy them by
using them as defensive positions. He organised stockpiles of food and other essentials in Berlin and
elsewhere, persuading many individual commanders to refrain from an orgy of destruction, not only in
Germany but also in the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Speer devoted all his efforts to saving
everything he could. But for him, thousands of bridges, waterways, telegraphic and power facilities
would have been blown up.
Speers refusal to carry out Hitlers scorched-earth policy completed the break with the Fhrer. In
Hitlers last testament, written just before his suicide, Speer was replaced as minister for armaments.

The Nuremberg trials


At the Nuremberg trials, Speer claimed to have been detached from the politics of the Reich. He was,
he said, first and foremost an architect and an organiser, but he was disinterested in party politics and
ignorant of the excesses of the Nazi regime, particularly in relation to the fate of the Jews. Nonetheless,
as a minister in Hitlers government he admitted a shared responsibility for what had been done and
expressed his contrition. He even claimed to have formulated a plan to assassinate Hitler. Convicted
of Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes, primarily for his role in the use of forced labour, Speers
expressions of regret and acceptance of responsibility allowed him to escape the death penalty,
receiving instead a sentence of twenty years imprisonment.

Speer in Spandau
For a time, Speer and his fellow prisonersRaeder, Doenitz, Funk, Neurath, von Schirach and Hess
were held at Nuremberg until their transfer to Spandau prison, Berlin, on 18 July 1947.
Speers account of these years appeared in 1975 in Spandau: The Secret Diaries. Despite a prohibition
on the keeping of diaries, Speer managed to smuggle out more than 20 000 pages of notes, some by
way of letters, others on cardboard and even sheets of toilet paper. In this enterprise he was assisted
over the years by friendly prison workers. The opportunity first arose on 14 October 1947 when a young
Dutch prison employee Toni Proost (referred to as Anton Vlaer in the diaries) offered to smuggle letters
for Speer. Proost had been a wartime labour conscript in Berlin. When he became ill he had been taken
to a hospital for construction workers, which Speer had established, and been well treated. Now he
wished to repay Speer.

Personality Prole: Albert Speer

The smuggled writings found their way to Rudolf Wolters, an old friend and architectural colleague
of Speer, who had them typed into a manuscript ready for Speers eventual release. Wolters was
determined to help his friend in other ways. He later smuggled a small camera into Spandau for
Speers use, but his major contribution came with the setting up of a school fee account, designed
to support Speers family during his imprisonment. Many contemporaries of Speer had risen to
important positions in government and industry in post-war Germany and were willing to contribute
to the fund.
Speer had to devise ways to keep his diary writings secret, as discovery would mean confiscation of
the notes, and punishment for him. One method he used in his cell was to keep the top button of his
trousers undone so that he could shove his writing paper into his underpants if disturbed. This was also

360 | Key Features of Modern History

where he kept his reserve stock of paper (supplied by Proost)


and letters awaiting answer. Using bandages he sometimes
needed for a swollen leg, he closed the bottom of his
underpants to prevent anything falling out.
Conditions in Spandau were severe. The prisoners,
referred to only by their number (Speer was number five),
were not permitted to speak to each other, a restriction that
was not eased until 1954. The four Allied powersBritain,
the USA, France and the Soviet Uniontook turns to guard
the prisoners, and though it was true that the Russian
periods were generally regarded as times of poorer food,
friendly and unfriendly guards could be found from among
all the nations. Exercise was taken in the prison yard, and
eventually the prisoners were allowed to cultivate a garden.
In 1954 Speer adopted the idea of walking the distance from
Berlin to Heidelberg (626 kilometres), having marked out a
course in the exercise yard. By 1955 he had completed the
journey and, encouraged by Hess, planned a walk around
the world, a feat which led him, by his own calculations, to
cover 31 936 kilometres by the time of his release in 1966.

In his prison memoirs Speer commented on his


relationship with Hitler. In 1947 he reflected that my
relationship to him far more resembled that of an architect
towards an admired patron than of a follower towards
a political leader (Speer 1976, p. 81), while in 1949 he
commented on opinions in a book about Hitler which a
guard had shown him: They remind me of a remark my
associate Karl Maria Hettlage made after Hitler had paid an
evening visit to my studio, that I was Hitlers unrequited love.
(Speer, 1976, p. 139)
As for his culpability for Nazi war crimes, Speer recalled
touring the country with Hitler but claimed not to have
noticed the various anti-Semitic slogans on signs and
streamers strung across the road in welcome. Even in the
light of the strictest self-examination, I must say that I was
not an anti-Semite, he added (Speer 1976, p. 23), claiming
that Hitler toned down his anti-Semitic rhetoric in Speers

Figure 11.49 Speer in Spandau prison

presence and that in my official speeches I refrained from


participating in the campaign against the Jews. In 1960 he
wrote: Like almost all of us, I thought Hitlers anti-Semitism
a somewhat vulgar incidental, a hangover from his days in
Vienna Moreover, the anti-Semitic slogans also seemed
to me a tactical device for whipping up the instincts of the
masses. I never thought them really important, certainly not
compared with the plans for conquest, or even with our vast
projects for rebuilding the cities. (Speer 1976, p. 353)
Speers relations with his fellow prisoners were never
easy. He alleged that they sided against him because
of his attitude at Nuremberg and, although they would
speak to him, he regarded himself as an outcast among
prisoners. In addition, Doenitz continually blamed Speer
for recommending him to Hitler as successor, a fact which
Doenitz blamed for the length of his sentence. Gradually
the prisoners left Spandau. In November 1954 Neurath
was released early because of ill health. Raeder and Funk
followed in September 1955 and May 1957 for the same
reason. Meanwhile, Doenitz had been released in October
1956, having completed his sentence. At midnight on
30 September 1966, Speer and Schirach were released,
leaving Rudolf Hess as the only prisoner in Spandau until
his death, officially by suicide, in 1987. The prison was then
demolished.

Germany 19181939 | 361

Personality Prole: Albert Speer

Family visits were restricted and closely supervised by


officials. The first visit from his wife at Spandau was in June
1949. Speers work in the Nazi regime meant that he had
lost contact with his family, a situation exacerbated by his
imprisonment. This first visit lasted for one hour and with
touching forbidden, not a word passed between them. Only
in 1961, for the first time in sixteen years, did the guards
step out of the room, leaving Speer alone with his wife. Not
knowing how to react, Speer automatically stuck to the rules
and did not take her hand or embrace her.

After Spandau
Prior to his release, Speer had entertained hopes of reviving his architectural skills in a new business,
but the death of two former colleagues who had offered him work ended that possibility. He found
relations with his family difficult and even fell out with his old friend Wolters. With the publication of his
books Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries he became a much sought after interviewee
for press articles and film documentaries on Hitlers Germany.
At the end of August 1981, he was in London for an interview with the BBC. Suffering a stroke in his
hotel, he died on the evening of 1 September.

Signicance and evaluation


The central question in any historical evaluation of Albert Speer is: Was Albert Speer the Good Nazi,
essentially an honourable man who became involved in the workings of the Nazi government without
any knowledge of, or involvement in, its excesses? Or was he a committed follower of Hitler who, although
not directly linked to the worst aspects of the regime, knew of these excesses and, if on a lesser scale than
others, played a part in perpetrating them, only to use his undoubted intelligence and seemingly modest
personality to convince the Nuremberg judges that he was not deserving of the death penalty?
Given that twelve of the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg received the death sentence, and a
further three life imprisonment, Speers sentence was mild by comparison. Why? It was a question of
responsibility, knowledge and contrition.
Speer, alone among the defendants, admitted responsibility for the crimes of the Reich, but only
in a limited and general way. In his Nuremberg testimony Speer claimed A state functionary has two
types of responsibility. One is the responsibility for his own sector and for that, of course, he is fully
responsible The common responsibility, however, can only be applied to fundamental matters, it
cannot be applied to details connected with other ministries or departments. This conduct, by which
Speer accepted a general responsibility for the actions of the government of which he was a member,
while at the same time denying any knowledge or involvement in Nazi brutalities, earned a grudging
admiration at Nuremberg.
Any attempt to evaluate the life of Albert Speer must go back through the stages of his involvement
with Nazism, beginning with his early links to the party.

Joining the party


When the rising politician Hitler spoke to a crowd of students, including Speer, on 4 December 1930,
he spoke calmly and reasonably, tailoring his address to the young, enthusiastic, but also educated
listeners. Speer was captivated by this speaker and in March 1931 he joined the Nazi Party. He later gave
three reasons for joining: he was motivated by the fear of communism; he was fascinated by Hitler, the
man, though not his political program, of which Speer claimed to know little; he rejected the notion of
German war guilt pronounced at Versailles.
Personality Prole: Albert Speer

In his book Inside the Third Reich, Speer describes his decision to join the party as frivolous:
A5IFTVQFSDJBMJUZPGNZBUUJUVEFNBEFUIFGVOEBNFOUBMFSSPSBMMUIFXPSTFw*EJEOPULOPX
UIBU*XPVMEBUPOFXJUIUXFOUZPOFZFBSTPGNZMJGFGPSGSJWPMJUZBOEUIPVHIUMFTTOFTT4UJMM *XJMM
OFWFSCFGSFFPGUIBUTJO 4QFFS Q

On this point, it is difficult to judge Speer. He joined the Nazis, but so did many others at the time
of the Depression. Dan van der Vat suggests that it is only the committed who join a party long before
it is elected to office, as opposed to the bandwagon effect the Nazis experienced after January 1933.

362 | Key Features of Modern History

In his view Speers becoming member 474 481 (from an


eventual total of approximately seven million) was an act of
commitment, not frivolity. However, as Kershaw points out,
the electoral success of September 1930 was the political
breakthrough that meant that many of the respectable
middle class felt ready to join the party.

Speer as architect
Speer frequently claimed that he was first and foremost
an architect and was therefore immune from and ignorant
of the developing evils of the Nazi regime going on
around him. It is with the beginnings of his work on
Germania that a question mark appears over Speers
record of his own history. Speer was formally appointed as
inspector-general of construction for the Reich capital (GBI)
in January 1937.

To make space for this construction, thousands of old


apartment blocks were demolished. Some of the occupants
of these flats were good Aryan Germans but several
thousand were Jews. To rehouse the Aryans, Speers men
combed the capital in search of flats occupied by Jews.
When found, the occupants were turned out, often with only
an hours notice. Documents have been found that clearly
show that Speer threatened any landlords with punishment
if they rented out a vacant flat to Jews. In August 1941, on
Speers orders, action was taken to clear a further 5000 Jew
flats for the rehousing of demolition tenants. This work was
not an example of Speer carrying out Hitlers ordersthe
evictions were done at Speers command.
How did Speer respond to the issue of the Jew flats
at Nuremberg? He didntbecause he wasnt asked. All
he would concede at Nuremberg was that he knew in an
overall sense that Jews were evacuated from Germany, while
denying any personal involvement in that process. The Jew
flats affair shows that he did, at the very least, send many of
them on the first steps of the journey which was to lead to
the ghettos, concentration camps and death. The evidence
about the Jew flats evictions did not emerge until after the
Nuremberg trials. In later years, Speer denied all knowledge
of the issue.

Figure 11.50 All that remains of Speers Germania: a few street


lights in central Berlin

Speer and anti-Semitism


Anti-Semitism was one of the watchwords of the Nazi
regime and led to some of its worst excesses. Was Speer
as anti-Semitic as the rest, or was he untouched by that
particular prejudice?
In his books, Speer repeatedly claims that he was not
anti-Semitic, pointing out that he had Jewish friends from
his school and university days. Yet in one of his letters to
Hilde, his daughter, who corresponded with him throughout
his imprisonment, he later wrote about Jews: I really had
no aversion to them, or rather, no more than that slight
discomfort all of us sometimes felt when in contact with them.
(authors italics)
As we have seen above, in the Spandau diaries Speer
again declared an absence of personal anti-Semitism and a
failure to grasp its importance to Hitler.

Speer and Hitler


In his early years as Nazi architect, Speer formed a close
relationship with Hitler. Gita Sereny calls the relationship
almost erotic, Hitler referred to Speer as a genius and Speer
reports himself as being Hitlers unrequited love.

Germany 19181939 | 363

Personality Prole: Albert Speer

Germania, the new capital for the anticipated thousandyear Reich was to be built on the site of Berlin. It was to be
filled with grandiose buildings, statues and fountains in the
classical style. Though the war intervened to ensure that
Germania was never completed (only some ornate streetlights
survived as a testimony to Speers grand designs), the work
was begun and one of the first tasks was the creation of a
wide avenue in central Berlin.

They spent hours poring over designs together, sharing the same pencil, as one report has it, to
correct and amend their joint formulations. In the later years of the Reich, Speer is usually credited with
being the second most powerful man after Hitler. Only Speer, Bormann and Goering were allowed to
have a house inside the three-kilometre inner security fence at the Berghof.
It is known that Hitler liked to keep his subordinates guessing, and issued no written orders about the
Holocaust, but is it likely that a man so close to Hitler would be as unaware of the anti-Semitic agenda
as he claimed to be? Historians such as Daniel Jonah Goldhagen have suggested that the German
population as a whole knew a lot more about the anti-Semitic policies and deeds of the Nazis than has
previously been credited. How then, in Speers case, can one so important have remained so ignorant?

The use of forced labour


The single most specific issue that helped to bring Speer a prison sentence was the use of forced
labour in his efforts to boost war production. And yet, even here, critics might argue that he got off
lightly. At Nuremberg Speer admitted that he knew the workforce for his labour camps was brought
into Germany against their will and that he approved of that, though when faced with the evidence of
how they had been transportedjammed into cattle truckshe alleged that he knew nothing about
transport conditions. Later in his testimony, when Mr Justice Jackson asked him about the working
conditions of the forced labour, he said that this was not in his sphere of responsibility and he couldnt
be expected to remember any details of them.
In the Harz Mountains of southern Germany lay the Dora camp. In twenty kilometres of tunnels dug
deep into the mountains to avoid Allied bombers, 40 000 workers slaved to build the V2 rockets. One in
three died in the hellish conditions. The workers worked for eighteen hours a day, slept underground,
had no heating, ventilation or running water, and used half-barrels for toilets. They saw the sky once a
week at roll call. Speer inspected conditions at the Dora camp at the end of 1943. According to Fest,
Speer noted the stale, damp air reeking with excrement and was himself made dizzy by the lack of
oxygen. Some of his companions on the inspection were so overwhelmed by what they saw that they
had to go on leave to recover from the stress. Presumably it was small details like this that he could not
be expected to remember two years later. As Lord Shawcross, the British prosecutor, would complain
long after the Nuremberg sentence had been handed down, Fritz Saukel, Speers subordinate, was
hanged for his role in the slave labour system for carrying out Speers orderswhy wasnt Speer?

The concentration camps


In assessing Speers complicity in the crimes of the Nazi regime it is important to understand what he
knew of the concentration camps, and when.
In Inside the Third Reich he speaks of a meeting with his friend Karl Hanke, the Gauleiter of lower
Silesia, which took place in the summer of 1944.

Personality Prole: Albert Speer

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And what was Speers reaction to this piece of news?
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364 | Key Features of Modern History

It is for this deliberate blindness that Speer condemns himself at Nuremberg and assumes a share of
the responsibility for the worst actions of the Nazi government. It is as if he is saying You cannot blame
me for being involved, because I did not know. I blame myself for not seeking to know.
What did Speer know about the concentration camps? Only one visit by Speer to a concentration
camp is recordedto Mauthausen in Austria in March 1943. In a letter to Himmler written shortly
afterwards (April 1943), he complained about the luxurious constructions he found there (he was
referring to the prisoners barracks) and urged that the SS switch to more primitive construction
methods involving minimal material and labour. Mauthausen, bad as it was, was not one of the
extermination camps that were at the centre of the Final Solution. So did he really have no idea of the
Polish camps until he talked with Hanke?
His claim to have known nothing about the Final Solution is questionable. At a meeting in Posen,
Poland, on 6 October 1943, Speer and Himmler addressed assembled Gauleiters. In the morning,
Speer warned them not to obstruct his attempts to reduce the output of consumer goods. After
lunch Himmler divulged the secret of the Final Solution. Speer later claimed that he had left the
meeting before Himmler spoke and remained unaware of the details of Himmlers speech. Details of
this meeting emerged into public knowledge long after the Nuremberg trials had concluded. Even
if Speers excuse is accepted at face value, are we expected to believe that none of Speers friends or
colleagues who had heard Himmler saw fit to mention the speech in Speers presence in the weeks
and months that followed, until he had his talk with Hanke some nine months later?
In 1977 Speer engaged in correspondence with a South African Jewish organisation. In a long letter
he wrote: To this day I still consider my main guilt to be my tacit acceptance of the persecution and
the murder of millions of Jews (Fest 2002, p. 333). Surely tacit acceptance implies knowledge of, if not
necessarily involvement in, the Final Solution?
In an interview in 1979, Speer, referring to Himmlers speech, said indeed he said that it was a secret
which we had to take with us to the grave; we dared not say anything about it to anyone. Dan van der
Vat suggests that the use of we in this context is significant, a verbal slip which implies that Speer had
been present (van der Vat 1997, p. 169).

The Wolters chronicle


Information relating to Speer and his activities was only partial at the time of the Nuremberg trials. One
of the most intriguing aspects to subsequently emerge in exploring the enigma that was Albert Speer
is the story of the Wolters chronicle.
Dr Rudolf Wolters was, like Speer, an architect. They had met in the 1920s, and when Speer was
appointed as inspector-general of construction for the Reich capital he recruited Wolters as one of his
department heads.

Personality Prole: Albert Speer

In 1940, Wolters suggested to Speer that he should compile a chronicle (or history) of the work of
the GBI. Speer agreed and gave orders to his department heads to cooperate in its formulation. It is in
the Chronicle that Wolters wrote the details of the clearance of the Jew flats.
Had the Chronicle been known about at the time of Nuremberg, containing as it did the details of
the anti-Jewish actions ordered by Speer, there seems little doubt that Speer would have been hanged.
Wolters kept what he presumed was the only copy of the Chronicle with him. In 1964 he decided
to revise it, principally to remove certain parts that would incriminate Speer and one or two of his
colleagues. The Chronicle was retyped and a copy of the edited version sent to Speer. Wolters kept the
original. In 1966 the British historian David Irving made reference to the Chronicle in one of his books.
His source, Wolters thought, was probably notes made by a colleague in the GBI, a Dr Groener.

Germany 19181939 | 365

In 1969, Speer presented his copy of the edited Chronicle


to the German Federal Archive and was panic-stricken to
receive a request for the original for purposes of comparison.
Speer wrote to Wolters and strongly hinted that he
should destroy the incriminating pages in the original
but, by this time, the friendship between the two had
cooled. Wolters had grown increasingly unhappy at Speers
condemnation of the Nazi years and his criticisms of
Hitler. When Inside the Third Reich was published, Wolters
observed: A more thrilling crime novel could not have been
invented. (Fest 2002, p. 328). As van Der Vat comments:
Wolters could not bring himself to blow the whistle while
both he and Speer were alive, but he made sure that his
own cleansing of the Chronicle and Speers plan to
destroy the suppressed evidence of his crimes against the
Jews would inescapably become known (van der Vat,
p. 348). Following the death of Wolters in January 1983 the
complete Chronicle was deposited in the German Federal
Archive at Koblenz.

The closing phase of the war


In his memoirs, even while admitting his limited
responsibility, Speer managed to insert references to
whatever good I may have done or tried to do in the last
period of the war (Speer 1995, p. 507). What was this good,
and does it tip the balance back towards the figure of the
reluctant Gentleman Nazi whose eyes were opened to the
horrors of the regime he served?
Speers relationship with Hitler began to deteriorate
early in 1944 when illness kept him away from the Fhrers
headquarters from February until June. By the beginning
of 1945, Speer was convinced that the war was lost. Hitler,
however, was determined to destroy Germany rather than
admit defeat.

According to Speers testimony at Nuremberg, he hatched


a plot to kill Hitler in February 1945 by introducing poison
gas to the Fhrers bunker via a ventilation shaft that lay at
ground level in the chancellery garden. He was thwarted, so he
claimed, because in the time taken to obtain the gas, armed SS
guards had been posted on nearby roofs and the ventilation
shaft at ground level had become a chimney over three metres
high. Having reluctantly given the Nuremberg judges the
details of the assassination attempt, it could only have served
to incline the judges more favourably towards him. But is the
story true? We only have Speers word for it, and others have
observed rather cynically that the second most powerful man
in the Reich seemed unable to find a ladder!
This assassination attempt, combined with Speers efforts
to thwart Hitlers scorched-earth policy after March 1945,
may be taken at face value as Speers attempt to rescue
as much as he could from this lost cause for the benefit of
future Germans. However, we have seen all through this
study that there were two sides to Albert Speer. If this was,
as Noakes alleges, merely a rehabilitation attempt, it came to
its climax at Nuremberg. And though twenty years in prison
is not to be ignored, Speer did save his neck and enjoy his
rehabilitation as the Gentleman Nazi.
Long after his death, Albert Speer remains an enigma.
The only leading Nazi to accept responsibility for the crimes
of the regime and a man who accepted his punishment
without rancour, he has been admired as an essentially
decent man who was swept away by his surroundings, saw
the error of his ways, and paid the price. Yet if this were the
case, surely he would wish, if he could have his time again,
to alter the past? When Speer was asked whether he would
have behaved differently after all that he had since learned
about Hitler and the system created by him, he replied, after
a pause: I dont think so. (Fest 2002, p. 348)

PERS O N A LI T Y ST UDY RE VIE W QUE ST IONS


1 What were Speers achievements as an architect?
Personality Prole: Albert Speer

2 List the different positions that Speer held in the Nazi leadership and the dates when he was
appointed to those positions.
3 Outline Speers achievements in his wartime ministerial roles.
4 What factors hindered Speer in his wartime work?
5. Using the evidence provided, assess Speers relationship with Hitler.
4 What are the contentious issues that concern Speer in his wartime role?
6 From what you have read, how do you assess Speers role in Hitlers Reich? Was the Nuremberg
verdict fair?

366 | Key Features of Modern History

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