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Modern History MODERN HISTORY Albert Speer (1905 – 1981) Examine the degree to which Albert Speer was culpable in Hitler’s organization and implementation of crimes against humanity 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 Nazi Germany’s appalling crimes against humanity from 1937 to 1945. At the Nuremberg 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 war of aggression’ 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 Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945) (Chief) First Architect of the Third Reich, and responsibility for re-planning Berlin in the ‘Germania’ 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 Holocaust 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 the Holocaust: Disputed Histories. Cornell University Press, 2003. Ithaca and London: 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 Brown University. 2 See Appendices 1. Born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, in Mannheim, Germany, into a wealthy middle class family. 3 The Nuremberg trials 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 Heinrich Himmler 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 Joachim Fest. 6 SPEER, Albert. Inside The Third Reich (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 pogrom would lead to Auschwitz – however he accepted that he had sidestepped the implications: 7 The Final Solution 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 Plenipotentiary 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.
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