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Home , Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich

MODERN HISTORY

Albert Speer (1905 – 1981)

Examine the degree to which was culpable in Hitler’s organization and implementation of from 1937 to 1945.

In the perspective of Israeli historian Omer Bartov1: “…our understanding of the Third Reich, revealing it as a consensual dictatorship whose popularity was rooted in…the profits of crimes against humanity on an unimaginable scale.”

There is no doubt, based on the historical evidence, that Albert Speer2 (1905-1981) was intimately culpable, to some degree, in ’s appalling crimes against humanity from 1937 to 1945. At the Trials3 in 1945, Speer was convicted and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment - largely on the basis of evidence showing his participation as Reich Minister for Production and Armaments, in the use of deportation and forced labour. The Court found Speer innocent on Counts One and Two; ‘planning, initiating and waging ’ and ‘crimes against peace’ respectively, and guilty on the counts of ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’. The charges which Speer faced at Nuremberg did not include reference to his earlier involvement, as ’s (1889-1945) (Chief) First Architect of the Third Reich, and responsibility for re-planning Berlin in the ‘’ project, which resulted in the forced removal of Jewish citizens from their homes in the city for the new Reich capital. Speer’s level of involvement in enslavement, the persecution of the Jews and his level of knowledge of the remain subjects of historical debate. The unanswered question, as to which Speer was given the benefit of the doubt at Nuremberg, is whether he had any knowledge of Hitler’s initiated crimes against humanity and the awful fate that awaited Jews who were deported and ‘resettled’.

As Minister, Speer was successful for dramatically increasing armaments production of Nazi Germany, making him responsible for extending the war and all associated suffering. Thus, it can be concluded that Speer was responsible for the control and allocation of workers to factories. By 1945, Speer controlled a workforce of 14,000,000 that included forced labourers from the occupied countries, prisoners of war, and Jewish slave workers. Speer collaborated with the Schutzstaffel4 (SS) when it provided concentration camp prisoners for his factories. Speer accepted culpability in the accusation that he had served as a Minister in a criminal state and took full responsibility, as a leader of the Third Reich, for the crimes of the Nazis and the death of 6 million Jews. In his autobiographical memoir written whilst in Spandau prison, Inside The Third Reich5, Speer confirms that his guilt was that he should have known what was being implemented but he chose to remain ignorant; “I closed my eyes”6. However, Speer denied all

1 Professor of European History and German Studies. Author of BARTOV, Omer. Germany’s War and : Disputed Histories. Cornell University Press, 2003. Ithaca and : Cornell University Press, 2003. Omer Bartov is the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History and Professor of History and Professor of German Studies at University. 2 See Appendices 1. Born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, in , Germany, into a wealthy middle class family. 3 The were a series of trials, or tribunals, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany after its defeat in World War II. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, from 1945 to 1946, at the Palace of Justice. 4 The SS was formed in 1925 as a personal guard unit for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, (Shield Squadron of the NSDAP). Under the leadership of between 1929 and 1945, the SS grew from a small paramilitary formation to become one of the largest and most powerful and influential political organizations in Nazi Germany. 5 Published in 1970. From 1946 to 1966, while serving the sentence in Spandau Prison, Speer penned 1,200 manuscript pages of personal memoirs. Because he was not allowed to write such memoirs while in prison, he smuggled these notes out, and returned to them after his release. He was aided by .

6 SPEER, Albert. (1942-1945), Simon & Schuster, 1997. Pg. 376. knowledge of, and personal involvement in, Hitler’s Final Solution7. When examining the degree to which Speer was culpable in Hitler’s implementation and organization of crimes against humanity, the sympathetic comments of Justice Robert H. Jackson, Chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal during the course of Speer's cross-examination, must be considered:

“Your problem of creating armaments to win the war for Germany was made very much more difficult by this anti-Jewish campaign which was being waged by others of your co- defendants.”

In his book, Albert Speer – The End of a Myth (1985), German historian Matthias Schmidt adopts a critical interpretation towards Speer’s later claim at Nuremburg to have been the non-political Nazi, the ‘technocrat’ who ignored the political implications of his actions and had no involvement, or interest, in government policies:

“…he was fully responsible for at least one aspect of the treatment of the Jews.”8

Speer exploits the atrocity as one of many chances to remind us of his ‘apolitical’ approach to his work: “The task I have to fulfill is an unpolitical one”, as he reminded Hitler in a memorandum as late as 1944. Whilst Speer’s Department had no alternative but to use the forced labour made available by the SS, he insisted on these workers being given increased rations and improved living conditions - though, with disarming frankness, he readily conceded at Nuremberg that he was motivated principally by a desire to maintain their working capacity. In contrast to a common contention of Holocaust historians that the Nuremberg defendants did not deny the existence of the crimes but merely denied their own culpability, David Irving9 points out that the defendants, including Speer, seemed unaware of the crimes against the Jews and were ashamed for their country when informed of those deeds, and hence, were not culpable in the implementation and organization of Hitler’s crimes against humanity from 1937 to 1945.

When examining a preparation for real record of Albert Speer’s personal involvement in the persecution of the Jews, the relevant passage in Chapter Eight of Inside the Third Reich merits close analysis; Speer reluctantly accepted Hitler’s anti-Semitism as part of his character. Speer’s ability to ‘compartmentalise’ suited Hitler and his methods of operation10, enabling him to separate the nature of the regime from the work he was doing for it and the character if the man who led it: “…in Hitler’s system, as in every totalitarian regime, when a man’s position rises, his isolation increases and he is therefore more sheltered from harsh reality; that with the application of technology to the process of murder…so it is easy to escape observing inhuman cruelties.”

However, according to the critical interpretations of Dutch historian Dan Van Der Vat’s in his biography of Speer, The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer (1997), all this was ‘legal exculpation’. Van Der Vat argues that Speer admitted that his personal sense of collective responsibility for the crimes against humanity of the Nazis was indistinguishable from guilt, admitting that he knew more about the Holocaust than he had let on at Nuremburg. Speer was not to know that the would lead to Auschwitz – however he accepted that he had sidestepped the implications:

7 The was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of its systematic genocide against European Jewry during World War II, resulting in the final, most deadly phase of the Holocaust (Shoah). 8 SCHMIDT, Matthias. Albert Speer – The End of a Myth. (1986) Collier Books, 1985. (SMP edition, New York, 1984). Pg. 21. 9 IRVING, David. Nuremberg: The Last Battle. Focal Point Publications, 1996. 10 SERENY, Gitta. Albert Speer : His Battle With Truth (1995) Macmillan, 1995. [Evaluation on Website] BULOW, Louis. “Albert Speer, Hitler’s Friend” Copyright 2009-2011. http://www.auschwitz.dk/Speer.htm “…horrors I ought to have known about and what conclusions would have been the natural ones to draw from the little I did know.”

Towards the end of 1940, Rudolf Wolters11 once Speer’s close friend and subordinate, suggested to Speer that he start a ‘Chronicle’ of the GBI12. The unexpurgated Chronicle is the centerpiece of Wolter’s bequest which, in its totality, proves Speer’s ‘penitence’ was false and shows he lied when he insisted at his trial and in his memoirs that he bore no personal responsibility or culpability as a Nazi leader of highest rank to the implementation and organization of crimes against humanity: nostra but definitely not mea culpa13. The chronicles have allowed historians to come to a new interpretation by revealing Speer’s hypocrisy in denying all knowledge of persecution of the Jews while, at the same time, trying to cover up evidence of his own involvement in the Final Solution.

As Nazi Minister for Armaments, Speer faced a shortage of labour. Speer did not attempt to deny that he had actively concurred in enslavement and the forced recruitment of labour in occupied countries to work in Germany and the arms industry without regard to legality. After Ernst “Fritz” Sauckel (1894-1946) was directly appointed General for Labour Deployment by Hitler under the decree of 21st March 1942, Speer was indisputably culpable in telling Sauckel where workers were most needed but left it to him to find them. In regard to Speer’s denial of culpability in Hitler’s organization and implementation of crimes against humanity from 1937 to 1945, he drew attention to other authorities collectively responsible for working conditions, whereas his own responsibility was for improving them whenever he could, he told the Court at Nuremburg. By accepting his share of responsibility for one’s own sphere and collective responsibility for overall policy, though not for matters of detail in the spheres of others, Speer saw himself as being only very limitedly culpable in the Nazi regime’s crimes against humanity.

On the 30th May 1943, Speer raised the steel ration for construction at concentration camps in general and made a special, much higher allocation of 2,400 tonnes of various steel items specifically for Auschwitz. It is only fair to deduce that in thus promoting this improvement of standards at Auschwitz he was not claiming to have bettered conditions at the death camp; but it is very hard to believe that Speer did not know of the existence of the mass- murder faculty at Auschwitz-Birkenau14 by then, as British historian refers to them; “the Nazi 'factories of death’ ” 15. That millions of Jews could have been killed in wartime industrial centres such as Auschwitz without Speer becoming aware of it seems to be almost impossible.16

Speer used a number of key words in particular statements, suggesting that he did not know about Hitler’s Final Solution, and therefore could not be culpable. American journalist Eric Borden interviewed Speer and wrote an article in Playboy magazine. Bordon wrote how Speer repeated his confession that he failed to take Hitler’s threats against the Jews seriously, and his refusal to accept any personal involvement in these actions by saying:

“…as long as I did not personally participate it has nothing to do with me. My toleration for the anti-Semitic campaign made me responsible for it…”17

11 German architect and government official. After Speer's release, the friendship slowly collapsed, Wolters objecting strongly to Speer's blaming of Hitler and other Nazis for the Jewish Holocaust and the World War. 12 (GBI) General Building Inspector of the Imperial Capital Berlin. 13 Mea culpa is a Latin phrase that translates into English as "my fault", or "my own fault". 14 The largest of Nazi Germany's concentration camps and extermination camps, established in Nazi German occupied Poland. 15 IRVING, David. Nuremberg: The Last Battle. Focal Point Publications, 1996. Pg. 235. 16 VAN DER VAT, Dan. The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer. London; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997. 17 Volume 6, 1971. In 1977, the Jewish Board of Deputies wrote to Speer asking if he could provide any evidence to show that the Holocaust had actually taken place – Speer’s reply included:

“I still see my main guilt in connivance at the persecution of the Jews and the murder of millions of them.”

There is no question that Albert Speer had complete control of the GBI. Speer ignored reports of genocide and knew that the Jews would be deported to Poland and eventually to death camps such as Auschwitz. Speer was fully informed of Gestapo18 ‘action’ evacuations, and this contradicts his claim at trial, and in his memoirs, that he had no personal involvement in the crimes against humanity that occurred during the Third Reich. In Speer’s memoir, he reflects on his guilt and culpability and the fact that Hitler did not ever conceal:

“his intention to exterminate the Jewish people. In his speech of January 30, 1939 he openly stated as much. Although I never actually agreed with Hitler on these questions, I had nevertheless designed the buildings and produced the weapons, which served his ends.”19

In his speech, Hitler clearly stated that “…the outcome of this war will be the annihilation of the Jews.” Therefore it can be concluded based on historical interpretation, that Speer knew in 1941 that the Jews were being persecuted and he played an active role in the process.

Speer's knowledge of the Holocaust has centered on his presence at the Posen Conference on October 6, 1943, at which Himmler gave a speech detailing the ongoing Holocaust to Nazi leaders:

"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."

Speer is mentioned several times in the speech, and Himmler seems to address him directly. In Inside the Third Reich, Speer mentions his own address to the officials but does not mention Himmler's speech.20 Previously, on 1st February 1943 Speer’s department wrote to Himmler declaring priority in building materials to be given “to housing for armament workers and victims of enemy bombardments at home” – this suggests that Speer knew that large numbers of Jews were being “evacuated”.

Having heard Speer deny that he had been a member of the SS since his earliest party days in 1932, Speer explained to Justice Jackson that the threat was used to keep workers in line, but he had had no idea of the horrors being perpetrated, revealed to him at Nuremburg. Jackson got Speer to concede that he knew about Nazi anti-Semitism and that “the Jews were evacuated from Germany” – but Speer flatly denied his culpability and involvement in the Jewish evacuations. Furthermore, Chief Justice Franklin N. Flaschner had not been happy about Speer’s high-risk defence strategy of accepting general while denying specific culpability for the crimes against humanity of the Nazi regime.

When Austrian-born British historian, Gitta Sereny21 interviewed Speer he confessed:

“I can say that I suspected…that something appalling was happening with the Jews.”

18The official “Secret State Police” of Nazi Germany. Under the overall administration of the (SS). 19 SPEER, Albert. Inside The Third Reich (1942-1945), Simon & Schuster, 1997. Pg.523. 20 VAN DER VAT, Dan. The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer. London; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997. 21 SERENY, Gitta. Albert Speer : His Battle With Truth (1995) Macmillan, 1995. [Evaluation on Website] BULOW, Louis. “Albert Speer, Hitler’s Friend” Copyright 2009-2011. http://www.auschwitz.dk/Speer.htm Speer insisted that he did not know of the extermination program or the gassings during the war. According to Sereny, Speer knew of the Nazi euthanasia program, under the leadership of personal friend , and acknowledged it though claimed he was not aware of its scale – the program was dubbed a ‘rehearsal’ for the lead up to the future war crimes and crimes against humanity upon the Jews. Speer also accepted that his personal guilt and culpability included the Final Solution, meaning that he should have known and that he gave his approval because he was ignorant of what was happening. However, Sereny identifies that Speer repeatedly upheld the ‘General Order Number 1’ January 1940, claiming that knowledge was only required to extend to his specific job within the Reich as Minister for Armaments and War Production. Despite this, it is most evident that as Minister, Speer was responsible for the mobilisation of the entire resources of the , including the Jewish workers. Therefore, Speer was culpable in the implementation and organization of Hitler’s crimes against humanity to a certain degree, primarily through his indirect ministerial ‘ignorance’, ‘connivance’ and ‘toleration’ of the Nazi government’s unlawful persecution policies.

In conclusion, it can be conformed in the light of conflicting historical perspectives, that Albert Speer devoted his main effort to resisting his culpability as shown in the charges of ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ of the 1945 Nuremburg Trials. In Speer’s case, this ultimately came down to the recruitment, deployment and enslavement of prisoners of war, forced and slave labour in the industries he controlled as Minister in charge of the Third Reich’s war economy. Speer denied all knowledge of the Jewish deportations; in reality, historical evidence suggests that Speer almost certainly knew where the Jews would end up, and he authorized their removal with this knowledge. As a pragmatist and egocentric opportunist, Speer was as interested in office politics and party in- fighting as he was uninterested in political ideology. During Speer’s time in the office of the Third Reich, he was neither ‘apolitical’ nor merely a ‘technocrat’: nor was he ‘amoral’ but rather participated in Hitler’s policies of immoral culpability, having flouted rather than ignored morality in his dealings with the Jewish persecutions. Therefore, when examining the degree to which Albert Speer was culpable in Hitler’s organization and implementation of crimes against humanity from 1937 to 1945, it is required to consider the conclusion drawn in Schmidt’s interpretation, that:

“…the portrait, drawn by most historians and especially by Speer himself, of an unpolitical man who was “only a technocrat”, does not stand up to critical scrutiny.”22

22 SCHMIDT, Matthias. Albert Speer – The End of a Myth. (1986) Collier Books, 1985. (SMP edition, New York, 1984).

Appendices

1. Albert Speer at the Nuremburg Trials, 1946.

2. Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler, Albert Speer (wearing ). Source Analysis

Source One [Book]

 VAN DER VAT, Dan. The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer. London; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997.

Dutch historian, Daniel Francis Jeroen Van Der Vat (born 28 October 1939, Alkmaar) is a journalist and historian of military, primarily naval history. Van der Vat grew up in Nazi-German occupied Holland. Van Der Vat, growing up in Nazi Germany, applies his life background and knowledge to skillfully present the evidence against Speer on this historical issue concerning his involvement in the Nazi crimes against humanity from 1937-1945. Thus, Van Der Vat presents a chronological source of reliable historical information from the writings of an historian who has experienced the events first-hand, however for the same reason, this source can also be considered bias as Van Der Vat detracts from the view encompassing support for Speer’s ministerial actions, to a certain degree. The usefulness and reliability of Van Der Vat’s source is expressed most accurately in the publisher’s synopsis, “For over thirty years, almost every book on Speer was either written or else overwhelmingly influenced by the man himself. The Good Nazi, the first independent biography of Albert Speer, chronicles not only the stage- management skills of Hitler’s architect and the organizational genius of the man who transformed German war production in 1942-44. It also shows Speer as the architect of his own legend and the manipulator of history, and reveals that the famous public atonement of this ‘good Nazi’ was a lie.” Therefore, it is most evident that Van Der Vat’s secondary source is useful as it challenges a sympathetic perspective of the ministerial actions of Speer, and is indisputably reliable in presenting an independent historical perspective on the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazi regime from 1937 to 1945.

Source Two [Website Book Review]

 SNIEGOSKI, Stephen J., “David Irving’s verdict: Hubris, hypocrisy, tragedy, Nuremberg: The Last Battle by David Irving. Focal Point Publications, 1996.”. http://www.codoh.com/review/revnurem.html, Copyright 2008.

This website proved to be an extremely useful secondary historical source, as it provided a very detailed and logical account, summary and source analysis of British historian David Irving’s ‘Nuremburg: The Last Battle’. The main focus area of this webpage also provided a useful overview of the Nuremberg Trial of Germany's major war criminals, which lasted from November 1945 until October 1946.

Irving's work does not attempt a refutation, given the prevalence of favorable and successful accounts of Nuremberg, it would be valuable to have a revisionist work that directly countered their arguments. Although Irving's Nuremberg is in many respects a valuable work, it falls short of being an ideal revisionist account of the subject. A debate with other historians is precluded by Irving's historical methodology, whereby he focuses almost entirely on documentary rather than published secondary sources. In many of his works, Irving's primary-source-oriented methodology has enabled him to make use of unexploited materials. But it is of limited success in the present book. Irving does inject new material (or, at least, material adduced only by revisionists) when dealing with the Holocaust – this is to be regarded as the book's greatest reliable and most useful historical contribution as a secondary source. However, Irving only briefly touches on those issues. Instead of focusing on those controversial subjects, Irving has striven for inclusiveness. Much of his work rehashes information and issues that have been covered at length by mainstream historians. Irving does not really present as clear a picture of those issues as do some other recent works on the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazi regime from 1937 to 1945. Source Three [Book]

 SCHMIDT, Matthias. Albert Speer – The End of a Myth. (1986) Collier Books, 1985. (SMP edition, New York, 1984).

German historian, Professor Matthias Schmidt, provides the best analysis of Speer's memoirs and his complicity in sanitising his own diaries, wrote on page 21 (SMP edition, New York, 1984): “Although the deletions from the original Journal do not expressly say that he knew about the extermination of the Jews these passages do make it clear that during his term of office as Inspector General of Buildings for Berlin, he was fully responsible for at least one aspect of the treatment of the Jews.” Schmidt further questions and analyses this historical argument on Speer’s later claim at Nuremburg to have been the non-political Nazi, the ‘technocrat’ who ignored the political implications of his actions and had no involvement, or interest, in government policies. When examining the degree to which Albert Speer was culpable in Hitler’s organization and implementation of crimes against humanity from 1937 to 1945, Schmidt provides a useful historical source by putting forward a conclusion in his interpretation that: “…the portrait, drawn by most historians and especially by Speer himself, of an unpolitical man who was “only a technocrat”, does not stand up to critical scrutiny.” However, Schmidt’s detracting attitude towards the ministerial actions of Speer prejudices his own source to bias of a certain degree. Schmidt’s source can be seen as reliable in that it provides an independent historical perspective on Speer’s ministerial actions within the Third Reich, with a comprehensive historiographical analysis in comparing the perspectives of other historians basing their writings on this historical debate and addressing conflicting historical interpretations in relation to Speer’s culpability in the Nazi regime’s crimes against humanity from 1938-1945.

BIBLIOGRAPHY & REFERENCE LIST

 ALY, Götz, Hitler’s Beneficiaries, Plunder, Racial War and the Nazi Welfare State. Metropolitan, 2007.

 BARTOV, Omer. Germany’s War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories. Cornell University Press, 2003.

 INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR REAL HISTORY. Reply by David Irving to Lipstadt’s Defence. http://www.fpp.co.uk/Legal/Penguin/Reply/4.html , Copyright Focal Point Publications, 1998.

 IRVING, David. Nuremberg: The Last Battle. Focal Point Publications, 1996.

 LEX SCRIPTA, “Editor’s Published Articles, The Better Nazi a review of The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer., London; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.” http://www.lexscripta.com/articles/speer.html , 27th January 2004.

 SCHMIDT, Matthias. Albert Speer – The End of a Myth. (1986) Collier Books, 1985. (SMP edition, New York, 1984).

 SERENY, Gitta. Albert Speer : His Battle With Truth (1995) Macmillan, 1995. [Evaluation on Website] BULOW, Louis. “Albert Speer, Hitler’s Friend” http://www.auschwitz.dk/Speer.htm , Copyright 2009-2011.

 SNIEGOSKI, Stephen J., “David Irving’s verdict: Hubris, hypocrisy, tragedy, Nuremberg: The Last Battle by David Irving. Focal Point Publications, 1996.”. http://www.codoh.com/review/revnurem.html, Copyright 2008.

 SPEER, Albert. Inside The Third Reich (1942-1945), Simon & Schuster, 1997.

 VAN DER VAT, Dan. The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer. London; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997.