This work would be a poor choice if a reader wished to know what happened; for that, best read the famous work of Shirer, Rise And Fall of The Third Reich. This one is rather about how Albert Speer experienced it and recalls it, if not rather about what he chose to say after his indictment and judgement at Nuremberg trials and his incarceration at Spandau for the term of his punishment, and despite his belonging to an intimate circle around Hitler it's much less about what really was going on and necessarily limited to what an adoring underling can know when he has chosen to close his minds to wrongs of his object of worship.
Albert Speer uses the almost Gandhian technique of completely surrendering and accepting the judgement against him and his side, and taking responsibility, while claiming total lack of information regarding the horrendous crimes (committed by the regime he was in the high inner circle of) that he's accepting responsibility for, before proceeding to tell the story of his life and involvement in the regime, demonstrating how it was all wonderful and innocent and glorious for him, and by extrapolation, not only for likes of him but for those who did not actually commit those crimes.
And yet, it's all too convenient to claim this innocence, this lack of knowledge, when it isn't about a handful of murders, but a policy of enslavement of major chunks of population and complete intention of genocide of millions. The chinks are quite visible, as one reads about his account of Kristallnacht (he deplored the mess), or the beginning of war (he was on holiday, and it began when they returned; people suddenly stopped cheering Hitler), and even about most of the account he gives until then; for the narrative until the beginning of the war is about his being engaged to design huge lavish buildings and a complete remodelling of Berlin where the centre of town was to contain, apart from similar other buildings, a domed hall to allow space for several hundred thousand people.
He was an architect, and it's strange he didn't stop to ask himself, why? Why the craze to erect such monumental structures intended to last a millennium? Commemorating what? But then, he does indicate he was aware that Hitler, whom he worshipped in all but actual ceremonial worship, intended to conquer and subjugate major chunks of the gl9be, beginning with most of Europe, with every intention of the conquered being not held citizens, merely subjects inferior to Germans. He admits as much, along with antisemitism of the party, but brushes it aside, as something he never thought about.
And there is no mention of the persecutions, concentration camps or genocide, other than shock at the end when faced with evidence, complete lack of denial by all accused, and acceptance of responsibility by Speer on part of the regime. Other than that, it's as if there is a total curtain, a wall, a partition of the universe, and those massacred by nazis never existed. This is Nazi success beyond the genocides, this mindset and attitude.
Also, while Speer accepted responsibility for all the horrors as a part of the regime, in Nuremburg and does so in the book too, when he writes about various acts or attitudes he seems to always blame the lesser guys around the boss, while often either exonerating or exculpating the boss completely or making it seem excusable or even justifiable what he did; where he can't, he avoids the topic, unless it's small enough. This makes one wonder, was his taking responsibility as a blank cheque an act of sacrificial nature, offering himself in stead of his boss and Germany in general? It would seem so.
There are only a handful of instances where he mentions any indication of things being abnormal. One is the encounter between his father (who told him - when Speer showed him the buildings they were planning - that they'd all gone mad), and his boss and chief client, Hitler.
""My father, too, came to see the work of his now famous son. He only shrugged his shoulders at the array of models: “You’ve all gone completely crazy.” The evening of his visit we went to the theater and saw a comedy in which Heinz Rühmann was appearing. By chance Hitler was at the same performance. During the intermission he sent one of his adjutants to ask whether the old gentleman sitting beside me was my father; then he asked us both to his box. When my father—still erect and self-controlled in spite of his seventy-five years—was introduced to Hitler, he was overcome by a violent quivering such as I had never seen him exhibit before, nor ever did again. He turned pale, did not respond to Hitler’s lavish praise of his son, and then took his leave in silence. Later, my father never mentioned this meeting, and I too avoided asking him about the fit of nerves that the sight of Hitler had produced in him."
The other is equally unearthly, description of the night the whole group experienced weird northern lights as they watched from the balcony at Berghof, the night Hitler celebrated the Soviet pact because now he could freely wage war.
"In the course of the night we stood on the terrace of the Berghof with Hitler and marveled at a rare natural spectacle. Northern lights1 of unusual intensity threw red light on the legend-haunted Untersberg across the valley, while the sky above shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow. The last act of Götterdämmerung could not have been more effectively staged. The same red light bathed our faces and our hands. The display produced a curiously pensive mood among us. Abruptly turning to one of his military adjutants, Hitler said: “Looks like a great deal of blood. This time we won’t bring it off without violence.”"
And there is the breaking of the Bismarck statue from the old chancellory, taken as a bad omen parallel to the breaking of German eagle before WWI, to begin with. This breaking of the Bismarck statue was not told to Hitler, but instead a new identical one was made and given a patina to match the old one. Before all this, too, there was the breaking of silver hammer used by Hitler to lay the cornerstone for House of German Art in Munich, which Hitler later ascribed to being a premonition of death of the senior architect Troost, instead of understanding it as death knell of his intentions to subjugate and loot Europe - which the said building was to represent, in that the nazis looted art treasures of every land they occupied, most for purpose of this museum.
Speer describes graphically but succinctly the empty town of Rheims and the refugees fleeing as German forces advanced, and then finishes the short paragraph with saying he saw similar scenes in Germany three years later. He's already described how people in Germany were unwilling and unhappy about this war, and thus he proceeds to equalise travails of the two, Germans and the citizens of countries invaded by Germany. But this is a clever device to wipe out the travails of the latter and the fact that those travails were imposed by the Nazi regime he worked for, asnd push it all under the rug while he recounts his story.
Speer states
"Hitler made no inroads on the famous state art collections of France."
Whether Speer really was ignorant or is lying in hope that those who wish to believe him will find his statement giving them strength, is unclear. What is known is that art treasures were stolen by nazi occupying regimes from everywhere and sent to Germany, later recovered partly by Monuments men and women, to be returned to where they belonged; some were destroyed by the nazis as allied forces arrived, and some probably remain hidden where nazis hid them. Speer mentions that art was mostly taken from Jewish private owners, and this is simply untrue, it was looted even from churches and cathedrals, but this statement is typical of the type of lies one can hear from a nazi who claims to accept that horrors were perpetrated and as a German they cannot deny responsibility - before they proceed to lie, including about such loot of art treasures; when asked, they say Jews left, and the art was returned to them; they're hoping you don't know they are lying, and you'd believe them.
But there is something even more insidious there, in that Speer is expecting most antisemitic readers to find it acceptable that nazis stole from Jews, as long as he says they didn't rob others.
"In the salon at the Berghof stood a large globe on which, a few months later, I found traces of this unsuccessful conference. One of the army adjutants pointed out, with a significant look, an ordinary pencil line: a line running from north to south along the Urals. Hitler had drawn it to indicate the future boundary between his sphere of interest and that of the Japanese. On June 21, 1941, the eve of the attack on the Soviet Union, Hitler called me into his Berlin salon after dinner, had a record put on and a few bars from Liszt’s Les Préludes played. “You’ll hear that often in the near future, because it is going to be our victory fanfare for the Russian campaign. Funk chose it. How do you like it?"
Speer travelled with Sepp Dietrich to Dnepropetrovsk in January 1942.
"Huddled close together, we sat in a Heinkel bomber refitted as a passenger plane. Beneath us the dreary, snow-covered plains of southern Russia flowed by. On large farms we saw the burned sheds and barns. To keep our direction, we flew along the railroad line. Scarcely a train could be seen; the stations were burned out, the roundhouses destroyed. Roads were rare, and they too were empty of vehicles. The great stretches of land we passed over were frightening in their deathly silence, which could be felt even inside the plane. Only gusts of snow broke the monotony of the landscape—or, rather, emphasized it. This flight brought home to me the danger to the armies almost cut off from supplies. At dusk we landed in the Russian industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk."
What he does not mention is villages and whole communities in occupied Russian territory burned by German forces, and most populations massacred, often burnt alive and shot dead if attempting to escape. This amounted to millions.
Hence the deathly silence of the completely empty landscape. Lebensraum that German forces were ordered to clear up so Germans could be brought to settle and occupy the land right up to Urals.
Perhaps it's clear from the beginning, but it's all the more clear beginning with appointment of Speer in place of Todt, who died in winter of 1941-42 in Prussia when his plane exploded shortly after take off from Rastensburg, and then subsequently when Göring tried again to take over, that Hitler promoting and trusting Speer was about a deep hidden relationship that was more of a paternal mentor with a devoted son that Hitler never had, than about a leader and boss with a follower who worked for him. This aspect is quite visible in the cover photograph as well, once one sees it.
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"THE UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS OF THE PERIOD OF NATIONAL Socialism remain with us. The enormity of the crimes committed, the huge scale of victory and defeat are subjects of continuous exploration and analysis. How could one of the chief centers of the civilised world have become a torture chamber for millions of people, a country ruled by criminals so effectively that it conquered most of Europe, moving out toward other continents, planting its swastika standards from Norway to the Caucasus and Africa before it was brought down at the cost of some thirty million lives? What had happened to the nation of thinkers and poets, the “good” Germans that the nineteenth century knew? And how did intelligent, well-intentioned, educated, principled people like Albert Speer become so caught up in the movement, so captivated by Hitler’s magnetism that they could accept everything—the secret police, the concentration camps, the nonsensical rhetoric of Aryan heroism and anti-Semitism, the slaughter of the Fuehrer’s wars—and devote all their resources to keeping this regime in power? In these memoirs of the man who was very likely the most gifted member of the government hierarchy we have some of the answers to these riddles and as complete a view as we are ever likely to get of the inside of the Nazi state."
The introduction begins well, except - as usual - the writer uses two stolen and horribly twisted terms in their perverted sense:- Swastik and Aryan. Neither word has anything to do with Europe other than the misuse by nazis after borrowing them, and both are Sanskrit words, as such rooted in ancient culture of India. The first one, literally, means "a symbol of well being", and is used every day in India as it has always been, invoking blessings on the home where its drawn or painted. The second has literally nothing to do with any physical characteristics of colour, and is about an enlightenment that is of culture of a person or people.
That West neither understands this nor gives it importance, is racism perpetrated on, whereby any European or otherwise "white" person or country can blithely steal terms, words or knowledge of India or other cultures subjugated in colonial era, and claim their own misuse as the authentic or equal or more, ignoring the injury and humiliation this perpetrated against the culture such terms are stolen from.
It's not that different from, say, natives of the continent supposedly discovered by Columbus being called Indian, even though by now everyone knows or ought to know that he wasn't even mistaken, but lied, and anyway there is no connection of those natives with India in any way; but then India has had now for decades to fight companies in U.S. attempting to patent ancient knowledge from Aayurveda, even though every grandmother is known to have practiced some of it since anyone can remember, apart from the professionals practicing this Indian system of medicine.
And then there is the racist propaganda in U.S. denying thst yoga stems from the ancient Indian culture named Hindu.
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"At Nuremberg he was sentenced to twenty years for crimes against humanity and for war crimes; he served this sentence to the last hour. Some of these years he used to write these memoirs."
"He had been accused on all four counts of the Nuremberg indictment: of having plotted to wage aggressive war, of participating in it, and of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. ... he had served all too well as Minister of Armaments and War Production in a criminal state."
"In prison Speer set himself the task of finding out why it had taken him so long to see the error in the way he had chosen. He put himself through a long and careful self-analysis, a process that prison was ideally suited to further. He could read almost any nonpolitical books he chose; so he turned to psychology, philosophy, and metaphysics, the kind of books, he says, he never in the world would have read or thought he had the time to read when he was in civil life. And he could look inward, ask himself questions as he went over the days of his life, questions that a man sometimes asks during or after major crises but that seldom can be thoroughly investigated amid the intense preoccupations of making a career in the contemporary world. Speer was unhampered by the demands of such a life; he had gnawing problems, to be sure—the well-being of his family and the appalling state of the country he had helped to keep at war and thus had helped destroy—but his main preoccupation was to try to explain himself to himself. He could do this best by writing it all down. In what he said he had nothing to lose. He was condemned and sentenced; he had acknowledged his guilt; now it was his job to understand what he had done and why. So the reader of these memoirs is fortunate: he will be told, as far as the author is capable of telling him, precisely why Speer acted as he did. Thus this chronicle of National Socialist Germany seen from within also becomes a self-revealing account of one of the most able men who served it."
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"He put his life on the line in the Nuremberg courtroom and he now meets his German and foreign critics with calm assurance, with sorrow for the irretrievable mistakes he made but the conviction that he has paid for them as far as he could and as far as his judges thought he should."
Did Eugene Davidson, who wrote this in the introduction, ever lose a near and dear one to a murder, much less a whole family to genocide? As any mother who lost a child due to some drunken driver knows, nothing makes up for the loss.
Nuremberg trials hanged a few of the guilty, amongst those caught; far too many, or rather, most, escaped successfully to lands across the Atlantic, mostly Southern Atlantic, and prospered in countries where they were welcome.
But even if they were all caught and every single one responsible for any murders hanged, it still wouldn't make it up for the millions whose deaths nazis were responsible for, by design and plan rather than by necessities of war. And since they perpetrated the war, they were responsible just as much for the millions whose deaths were caused in the war, too.
No, the sentence above should read slightly differently. It's punished for, not paid for, that makes sense if at all in the context of the genocides and the whole horror.
"Much of what Speer tells us is related to an old story of hubris, of temptations of pride and position, and of the opportunity to create on a heroic scale. In the euphoria of history-making activity, unpleasant facts were ignored; they were no more than obstacles to the achievement of the grand design. But with the collapse of everything he had lived for and lived by, Speer came to judge himself more strictly than the Nuremberg court could judge him. It is in this long, painful struggle for self-enlightenment that we may see that whatever he lost when he made his pact with Adolf Hitler, it was not his soul."
Whoever wrote that last concluding sentence has either not quite read this book, or definitely has been prevented from comprehending what went on, despite reading. Speer made no pact, but was captured by the same force that terrified his father so, which the son could see. His mind didn't function as well as it ought to have, which he states, but ascribes to lack of education in politics and sociology. As for Speer not losing his soul, the person writing that is basing it on Speer accepting responsibility, without seeing that such nominal acceptance of responsibility is just that - nominal. The rest of the book, in taking the reader on this luxury journey of top inner circle through the mayhem and he'll landscape with curtains drawn and Wagnerian music blaring to prevent one from hearing screams of victims, is about making the reader see how it was natural for most people to not only want to know nothing but actually know little or nothing, and in sharing the highs of that journey, dissolve need of forgiveness for those guilty.
So might a Chingis Khan too write about his lavish nights with widows of soldiers of the enemy while towns he burnt over their populations massacred smoldered.
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Albert Speer writes well, apart from being intelligent, and gives an account of his early years and family that's not only engrossing but sheds light on the the times and country. But his thinking process is limited by the time that had cast off shackles of church in favour of science, rationalistic thinking and more. Describing his being mesmerised by Hitler and joining the party, instead of evaluating it critically by reading, he looks back at his failure.
"My decision to enter Hitler’s party was no less frivolous. Why, for example, was I willing to abide by the almost hypnotic impression Hitler’s speech had made upon me? Why did I not undertake a thorough, systematic investigation of, say, the value or worthlessness of the ideologies of all the parties? Why did I not read the various party programs, or at least Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century? As an intellectual I might have been expected to collect documentation with the same thoroughness and to examine various points of view with the same lack of bias that I had learned to apply to my preliminary architectural studies. This failure was rooted in my inadequate political schooling. As a result, I remained uncritical, unable to deal with the arguments of my student friends, who were predominantly indoctrinated with the National Socialist ideology."
He's underestimating what Hitler's effect was about in thinking that a political education would have been sufficient to protect him and his sort against it. But a political or sociological education is different from an education of science and mathematics, in that the latter is subjected to experimental festival and logical proving rigorously, while the former can take the format of inculcating whatever ideology chosen by the regime, the school, the teacher or the author of text.
What could have defended him and others needed to be far more strongly rooted a spiritual enlightenment that wasn't about demanding subservience and forcing blinkers on flock, but about enabling perception of Truth that would give strength in face of peer pressure and more, for one to stand for ones perception and refuse the subservience demanded.
"Moreover, in 1931, I had some reason to feel that Hitler was moving in a moderate direction. I did not realize that there were opportunistic reasons for this. Hitler was trying to appear respectable in order to seem qualified to enter the government. The party at that time was confining itself—as far as I can recall today—to denouncing what it called the excessive influence of the Jews upon various spheres of cultural and economic life. It was demanding that their participation in these various areas be reduced to a level consonant with their percentage of the population."
He's unable to see that this seemingly modest demand should have rung alarm bells, but the reason they did not was the strong hold church had on psyche of West in general, and church had propagated antisemitism for over seventeen centuries, after the necessary compromise with Rome for survival, when the teaching of history was suddenly turned about and crucifixion blamed on the victims of Rome, rather than the Roman empire that had invaded and subjugated homeland of Jews and finally driven them out.
"Had Hitler announced, before 1933, that a few years later he would burn down Jewish synagogues, involve Germany in a war, and kill Jews and his political opponents, he would at one blow have lost me and probably most of the adherents he won after 1930. Goebbels had realized that, for on November 2, 1931, he wrote an editorial in the Angriff entitled “Septemberlings” concerning the host of new members who joined the party after the September election of 1930. In this editorial he warned the party against the infiltration of more bourgeois intellectuals who came from the propertied and educated classes and were not as trustworthy as the Old Fighters. In character and principles, he maintained, they stood abysmally far below the good old party comrades, but they were far ahead in intellectual skills: “They are of the opinion that the Movement has been brought to greatness by the talk of mere demagogues and are now prepared to take it over themselves and provide it with leadership and expertise. That’s what they think!”"
"That same night I sketched a large platform and behind it three mighty banners, each of them taller than a ten-story building, stretched between wooden struts: two of the banners would be a black-white-red with the swastika banner between them. (A rather risky idea, for in a strong wind those banners would act like sails.) They were to be illuminated by powerful searchlights. The sketch was accepted immediately, and once more I had moved a step ahead.
"Full of pride, I showed my drawings to Tessenow. But he remained fixed in his ideal of solid craftmanship. “Do you think you have created something? It’s showy, that’s all.”
"To decorate the Goebbels house I borrowed a few watercolours by Nolde from Eberhard Hanfstaengl, the director of the Berlin National Gallery. Goebbels and his wife were delighted with the paintings—until Hitler came to inspect and expressed his severe disapproval. Then the Minister summoned me immediately: “The pictures have to go at once; they’re simply impossible!”
"Knowing nothing about this episode with Nolde’s watercolors, he assembled an exhibition of pictures more or less of the Nolde-Munch school and recommended them to the Minister as samples of revolutionary, nationalist art. Goebbels, having learned better, had the compromising paintings removed at once. When Weidemann refused to go along with this total repudiation of modernity, he was reassigned to some lesser job within the Ministry. At the time this conjunction of power and servility on Goebbels’s part struck me as weird. There was something fantastic about the absolute authority Hitler could assert over his closest associates of many years, even in matters of taste. Goebbels had simply groveled before Hitler. We were all in the same boat. I too, though altogether at home in modern art, tacitly accepted Hitler’s pronouncement."
Albert Speer writes well, apart from being intelligent, and gives an account of his early years and family that's not only engrossing but sheds light on the the times and country. But his thinking process is limited by the time that had cast off shackles of church in favour of science, rationalistic thinking and more. Describing his being mesmerised by Hitler and joining the party, instead of evaluating it critically by reading, he looks back at his failure.
"My decision to enter Hitler’s party was no less frivolous. Why, for example, was I willing to abide by the almost hypnotic impression Hitler’s speech had made upon me? Why did I not undertake a thorough, systematic investigation of, say, the value or worthlessness of the ideologies of all the parties? Why did I not read the various party programs, or at least Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century? As an intellectual I might have been expected to collect documentation with the same thoroughness and to examine various points of view with the same lack of bias that I had learned to apply to my preliminary architectural studies. This failure was rooted in my inadequate political schooling. As a result, I remained uncritical, unable to deal with the arguments of my student friends, who were predominantly indoctrinated with the National Socialist ideology."
He's underestimating what Hitler's effect was about in thinking that a political education would have been sufficient to protect him and his sort against it. But a political or sociological education is different from an education of science and mathematics, in that the latter is subjected to experimental festival and logical proving rigorously, while the former can take the format of inculcating whatever ideology chosen by the regime, the school, the teacher or the author of text.
What could have defended him and others needed to be far more strongly rooted a spiritual enlightenment that wasn't about demanding subservience and forcing blinkers on flock, but about enabling perception of Truth that would give strength in face of peer pressure and more, for one to stand for ones perception and refuse the subservience demanded.
"Moreover, in 1931, I had some reason to feel that Hitler was moving in a moderate direction. I did not realize that there were opportunistic reasons for this. Hitler was trying to appear respectable in order to seem qualified to enter the government. The party at that time was confining itself—as far as I can recall today—to denouncing what it called the excessive influence of the Jews upon various spheres of cultural and economic life. It was demanding that their participation in these various areas be reduced to a level consonant with their percentage of the population."
He's unable to see that this seemingly modest demand should have rung alarm bells, but the reason they did not was the strong hold church had on psyche of West in general, and church had propagated antisemitism for over seventeen centuries, after the necessary compromise with Rome for survival, when the teaching of history was suddenly turned about and crucifixion blamed on the victims of Rome, rather than the Roman empire that had invaded and subjugated homeland of Jews and finally driven them out.
"Had Hitler announced, before 1933, that a few years later he would burn down Jewish synagogues, involve Germany in a war, and kill Jews and his political opponents, he would at one blow have lost me and probably most of the adherents he won after 1930. Goebbels had realized that, for on November 2, 1931, he wrote an editorial in the Angriff entitled “Septemberlings” concerning the host of new members who joined the party after the September election of 1930. In this editorial he warned the party against the infiltration of more bourgeois intellectuals who came from the propertied and educated classes and were not as trustworthy as the Old Fighters. In character and principles, he maintained, they stood abysmally far below the good old party comrades, but they were far ahead in intellectual skills: “They are of the opinion that the Movement has been brought to greatness by the talk of mere demagogues and are now prepared to take it over themselves and provide it with leadership and expertise. That’s what they think!”"
................................................................................................
"That same night I sketched a large platform and behind it three mighty banners, each of them taller than a ten-story building, stretched between wooden struts: two of the banners would be a black-white-red with the swastika banner between them. (A rather risky idea, for in a strong wind those banners would act like sails.) They were to be illuminated by powerful searchlights. The sketch was accepted immediately, and once more I had moved a step ahead.
"Full of pride, I showed my drawings to Tessenow. But he remained fixed in his ideal of solid craftmanship. “Do you think you have created something? It’s showy, that’s all.”
"To decorate the Goebbels house I borrowed a few watercolours by Nolde from Eberhard Hanfstaengl, the director of the Berlin National Gallery. Goebbels and his wife were delighted with the paintings—until Hitler came to inspect and expressed his severe disapproval. Then the Minister summoned me immediately: “The pictures have to go at once; they’re simply impossible!”
"Knowing nothing about this episode with Nolde’s watercolors, he assembled an exhibition of pictures more or less of the Nolde-Munch school and recommended them to the Minister as samples of revolutionary, nationalist art. Goebbels, having learned better, had the compromising paintings removed at once. When Weidemann refused to go along with this total repudiation of modernity, he was reassigned to some lesser job within the Ministry. At the time this conjunction of power and servility on Goebbels’s part struck me as weird. There was something fantastic about the absolute authority Hitler could assert over his closest associates of many years, even in matters of taste. Goebbels had simply groveled before Hitler. We were all in the same boat. I too, though altogether at home in modern art, tacitly accepted Hitler’s pronouncement."
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"In retrospect, what perhaps troubles me most is that my occasional spells of uneasiness during this period were concerned mainly with the direction I was taking as an architect, with my growing estrangement from Tessenow’s doctrines. On the other hand I must have had the feeling that it was no affair of mine when I heard the people around me declaring an open season on Jews, Freemasons, Social Democrats, or Jehovah’s Witnesses. I thought I was not implicated if I myself did not take part.
"The ordinary party member was being taught that grand policy was much too complex for him to judge it. Consequently, one felt one was being represented, never called upon to take personal responsibility. The whole structure of the system was aimed at preventing conflicts of conscience from even arising. The result was the total sterility of all conversations and discussions among these like-minded persons. It was boring for people to confirm one another in their uniform opinions.
"Worse still was the restriction of responsibility to one’s own field. That was explicitly demanded. Everyone kept to his own group—of architects, physicians, jurists, technicians, soldiers or farmers. The professional organizations to which everyone had to belong were called chambers (Physicians’ Chamber, Art Chamber), and this term aptly described the way people were immured in isolated, closed-off areas of life. The longer Hitler’s system lasted, the more people’s minds moved within such isolated chambers. If this arrangement had gone on for a number of generations, it alone would have caused the whole system to wither, I think, for we would have arrived at a kind of caste society. The disparity between this and the Volksgemeinschaft (community of the people) proclaimed in 1933 always astonished me. For this had the effect of stamping out the promised integration, or at any rate of greatly hindering it. What eventually developed was a society of totally isolated individuals. For although it may sound strange today, for us it was no empty slogan that “the Fuehrer proposes and disposes” for all.
"We had been rendered susceptible to such ideas from our youth on. We had derived our principles from the Obrigkeitsstaat, the authoritarian though not totalitarian state of Imperial Germany. Moreover, we had learned those principles in wartime, when the state’s authoritarian character had been further intensified. Perhaps the background had prepared us like soldiers for the kind of thinking we encountered once again in Hitler’s system. Tight public order was in our blood; the liberalism of the Weimar Republic seemed to us by comparison lax, dubious, and in no way desirable."
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"He liked to describe the way he had broken the grip of the bureaucracy, which threatened to strangle him in his capacity as Reich Chancellor:
"In the first few weeks every petty matter was brought to me for decision. Every day I found heaps of files on my desk, and however much I worked there were always as many again. Finally, I put an end to that nonsense. If I had gone on that way, I would never have accomplished anything, simply because that stuff left me no time for thinking. When I refused to see the files they told me that important decisions would be held up. But I decided that I had to clear the decks so I could give my mind to the important things. That way I governed the course of development instead of being governed by the officials."
Does remind one of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.
"In retrospect, what perhaps troubles me most is that my occasional spells of uneasiness during this period were concerned mainly with the direction I was taking as an architect, with my growing estrangement from Tessenow’s doctrines. On the other hand I must have had the feeling that it was no affair of mine when I heard the people around me declaring an open season on Jews, Freemasons, Social Democrats, or Jehovah’s Witnesses. I thought I was not implicated if I myself did not take part.
"The ordinary party member was being taught that grand policy was much too complex for him to judge it. Consequently, one felt one was being represented, never called upon to take personal responsibility. The whole structure of the system was aimed at preventing conflicts of conscience from even arising. The result was the total sterility of all conversations and discussions among these like-minded persons. It was boring for people to confirm one another in their uniform opinions.
"Worse still was the restriction of responsibility to one’s own field. That was explicitly demanded. Everyone kept to his own group—of architects, physicians, jurists, technicians, soldiers or farmers. The professional organizations to which everyone had to belong were called chambers (Physicians’ Chamber, Art Chamber), and this term aptly described the way people were immured in isolated, closed-off areas of life. The longer Hitler’s system lasted, the more people’s minds moved within such isolated chambers. If this arrangement had gone on for a number of generations, it alone would have caused the whole system to wither, I think, for we would have arrived at a kind of caste society. The disparity between this and the Volksgemeinschaft (community of the people) proclaimed in 1933 always astonished me. For this had the effect of stamping out the promised integration, or at any rate of greatly hindering it. What eventually developed was a society of totally isolated individuals. For although it may sound strange today, for us it was no empty slogan that “the Fuehrer proposes and disposes” for all.
"We had been rendered susceptible to such ideas from our youth on. We had derived our principles from the Obrigkeitsstaat, the authoritarian though not totalitarian state of Imperial Germany. Moreover, we had learned those principles in wartime, when the state’s authoritarian character had been further intensified. Perhaps the background had prepared us like soldiers for the kind of thinking we encountered once again in Hitler’s system. Tight public order was in our blood; the liberalism of the Weimar Republic seemed to us by comparison lax, dubious, and in no way desirable."
................................................................................................
"He liked to describe the way he had broken the grip of the bureaucracy, which threatened to strangle him in his capacity as Reich Chancellor:
"In the first few weeks every petty matter was brought to me for decision. Every day I found heaps of files on my desk, and however much I worked there were always as many again. Finally, I put an end to that nonsense. If I had gone on that way, I would never have accomplished anything, simply because that stuff left me no time for thinking. When I refused to see the files they told me that important decisions would be held up. But I decided that I had to clear the decks so I could give my mind to the important things. That way I governed the course of development instead of being governed by the officials."
Does remind one of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.
................................................................................................
"Hitler preferred light entertainment, love, and society films. All the films with Emil Jannings and Heinz Rühmann, with Henny Porten, Lil Dagover, Olga Tschechowa, Zarah Leander, or Jenny Jugo had to be procured as quickly as possible. Revues with lots of leg display were sure to please him."
The above has the danger of lulling a reader into looking down on the person as one with an all too comprehensible prurience, not that uncommon in lumpen of unsophisticated taste, and hence think of him as human, however common. The same danger is compounded when Speer describes Hitler's taste and knowledge of architecture - former, confused but not unquestionably high or low, latter, a jumble again - and one wonders if the demon would have been checked if only his aspirations of art and architecture had not been nipped in bud! One is alarmed at one forgetting as one reads these early parts that it's about the era when fiends in human form cheated their way into German government and took over, to cause havoc through Europe and across the world.
"Another time we drove by car to the Königssee and from there by motorboat to the Bartholomä Peninsula; or else we took a three-hour hike over the Scharitzkehl to the Königssee. On the last part of this walk we had to thread our way through numerous strollers who had been lured out by the lovely weather. Interestingly enough, these many people did not immediately recognize Hitler in his rustic Bavarian clothes, since scarcely anyone imagined that he would be among the hikers. But shortly before we reached our destination, the Schiffmeister restaurant, a band of enthusiasts began excitedly following our group; they had belatedly realized whom they had encountered. Hitler in the lead, almost running, we barely reached the door before we were overtaken by the swelling crowd. We sat over coffee and cake while the big square outside filled. Hitler waited until police reinforcements had been brought up before he entered the open car, which had been driven there to meet us. The front seat was folded back, and he stood beside the driver, left hand resting on the windshield, so that even those standing at a distance could see him. Two men of the escort squad walked in front of the car, three more on either side, while the car moved at a snail’s pace through the throng. I sat as usual in the jump seat close behind Hitler and shall never forget that surge of rejoicing, the ecstacy reflected in so many faces. Wherever Hitler went during those first years of his rule, wherever his car stopped for a short time, such scenes were repeated. The mass exultation was not called forth by rhetoric or suggestion, but solely by the effect of Hitler’s presence. Whereas individuals in the crowd were subject to this influence only for a few seconds at a time, Hitler himself was eternally exposed to the worship of the masses. At the time I admired him for nevertheless retaining his informal habits in private.
"Perhaps it is understandable that I was carried along by these tempests of homage. But it was even more overwhelming for me to speak with the idol of a nation a few minutes or a few hours later, to discuss building plans with him, sit beside him in the theater, or eat ravioli with him in the Osteria. It was this contrast that overcame me.
"Only a few months before I had been carried away by the prospect of drafting and executing buildings. Now I was completely under Hitler’s spell, unreservedly and unthinkingly held by him. I was ready to follow him anywhere. Yet his ostensible interest in me was only to launch me on a glorious career as an architect. Years later, in Spandau, I read Ernst Cassirer’s comment on the men who of their own accord threw away man’s highest privilege: to be an autonomous person.
"Now I was one of them.
"Two deaths in 1934 delimited the private and the political realms. After some weeks of severe illness, Hitler’s architect Troost died on January 21; and on August 2, Reich President von Hindenburg passed away. His death left the way clear for Hitler to assume total power.
"On October 15, 1933, Hitler had solemnly laid the cornerstone for the House of German Art in Munich. He delivered the ceremonial hammer blows with a fine silver hammer Troost had designed specially for this day. But the hammer broke. Now, four months later, Hitler remarked to us: “When that hammer shattered I knew at once it was an evil omen. Something is going to happen, I thought. Now we know why the hammer broke. The architect was destined to die.” I have witnessed quite a few examples of Hitler’s superstitiousness."
Funny, never occurred to either of them that the omen wasn't about Troost, or even about Hitler's physical life, as much as about the whole fiendish dream of Germany ruling the world into slavery, since that museum was aimed at collecting all of art treasures of Europe and keep it as property of Germany, as good a symbol of the intended Nazi takeover of the world as any!
"I was in Berlin during the Roehm putsch.* Tension hung over the city. Soldiers in battle array were encamped in the Tiergarten. Trucks full of police holding rifles cruised the streets. There was clearly an air of “something cooking,” similar to that of July 20, 1944, which I would likewise experience in Berlin.
"The leadership became frenziedly busy justifying the operation. A day of great activity ended with a speech by Hitler to a special session of the Reichstag. His feelings of guilt were audible in his protestations of innocence. A Hitler defending himself was something we would not encounter again in the future, not even in 1939, at the beginning of the war. ... The fact that the army silently accepted General Schleicher’s death seemed highly significant.
"It was no accident that after the Roehm putsch the Right, represented by the President, the Minister of Justice, and the generals, lined up behind Hitler. These men were free of radical anti-Semitism of the sort Hitler advocated. They in fact despised that eruption of plebeian hatreds. Their conservatism had nothing in common with racist delusions. Their open display of sympathy for Hitler’s intervention sprang from quite different causes: in the Blood Purge of June 30, 1934, the strong left wing of the party, represented chiefly by the SA, was eliminated. That wing had felt cheated of the fruits of the revolution. And not without reason. For the majority of the members of the SA, raised in the spirit of revolution before 1933, had taken Hitler’s supposedly socialist program seriously. During my brief period of activity in Wannsee I had been able to observe, on the lowest plane, how the ordinary SA man sacrificed himself for the movement, giving up time and personal safety in expectation that he would some day receive tangible compensation. When nothing came of that, anger and discontent built up. It could easily have reached the explosive point. Possibly Hitler’s action did indeed avert that “second revolution” Roehm was supposed to have been plotting."
"Hitler preferred light entertainment, love, and society films. All the films with Emil Jannings and Heinz Rühmann, with Henny Porten, Lil Dagover, Olga Tschechowa, Zarah Leander, or Jenny Jugo had to be procured as quickly as possible. Revues with lots of leg display were sure to please him."
The above has the danger of lulling a reader into looking down on the person as one with an all too comprehensible prurience, not that uncommon in lumpen of unsophisticated taste, and hence think of him as human, however common. The same danger is compounded when Speer describes Hitler's taste and knowledge of architecture - former, confused but not unquestionably high or low, latter, a jumble again - and one wonders if the demon would have been checked if only his aspirations of art and architecture had not been nipped in bud! One is alarmed at one forgetting as one reads these early parts that it's about the era when fiends in human form cheated their way into German government and took over, to cause havoc through Europe and across the world.
"Another time we drove by car to the Königssee and from there by motorboat to the Bartholomä Peninsula; or else we took a three-hour hike over the Scharitzkehl to the Königssee. On the last part of this walk we had to thread our way through numerous strollers who had been lured out by the lovely weather. Interestingly enough, these many people did not immediately recognize Hitler in his rustic Bavarian clothes, since scarcely anyone imagined that he would be among the hikers. But shortly before we reached our destination, the Schiffmeister restaurant, a band of enthusiasts began excitedly following our group; they had belatedly realized whom they had encountered. Hitler in the lead, almost running, we barely reached the door before we were overtaken by the swelling crowd. We sat over coffee and cake while the big square outside filled. Hitler waited until police reinforcements had been brought up before he entered the open car, which had been driven there to meet us. The front seat was folded back, and he stood beside the driver, left hand resting on the windshield, so that even those standing at a distance could see him. Two men of the escort squad walked in front of the car, three more on either side, while the car moved at a snail’s pace through the throng. I sat as usual in the jump seat close behind Hitler and shall never forget that surge of rejoicing, the ecstacy reflected in so many faces. Wherever Hitler went during those first years of his rule, wherever his car stopped for a short time, such scenes were repeated. The mass exultation was not called forth by rhetoric or suggestion, but solely by the effect of Hitler’s presence. Whereas individuals in the crowd were subject to this influence only for a few seconds at a time, Hitler himself was eternally exposed to the worship of the masses. At the time I admired him for nevertheless retaining his informal habits in private.
"Perhaps it is understandable that I was carried along by these tempests of homage. But it was even more overwhelming for me to speak with the idol of a nation a few minutes or a few hours later, to discuss building plans with him, sit beside him in the theater, or eat ravioli with him in the Osteria. It was this contrast that overcame me.
"Only a few months before I had been carried away by the prospect of drafting and executing buildings. Now I was completely under Hitler’s spell, unreservedly and unthinkingly held by him. I was ready to follow him anywhere. Yet his ostensible interest in me was only to launch me on a glorious career as an architect. Years later, in Spandau, I read Ernst Cassirer’s comment on the men who of their own accord threw away man’s highest privilege: to be an autonomous person.
"Now I was one of them.
"Two deaths in 1934 delimited the private and the political realms. After some weeks of severe illness, Hitler’s architect Troost died on January 21; and on August 2, Reich President von Hindenburg passed away. His death left the way clear for Hitler to assume total power.
"On October 15, 1933, Hitler had solemnly laid the cornerstone for the House of German Art in Munich. He delivered the ceremonial hammer blows with a fine silver hammer Troost had designed specially for this day. But the hammer broke. Now, four months later, Hitler remarked to us: “When that hammer shattered I knew at once it was an evil omen. Something is going to happen, I thought. Now we know why the hammer broke. The architect was destined to die.” I have witnessed quite a few examples of Hitler’s superstitiousness."
Funny, never occurred to either of them that the omen wasn't about Troost, or even about Hitler's physical life, as much as about the whole fiendish dream of Germany ruling the world into slavery, since that museum was aimed at collecting all of art treasures of Europe and keep it as property of Germany, as good a symbol of the intended Nazi takeover of the world as any!
................................................................................................
"I was in Berlin during the Roehm putsch.* Tension hung over the city. Soldiers in battle array were encamped in the Tiergarten. Trucks full of police holding rifles cruised the streets. There was clearly an air of “something cooking,” similar to that of July 20, 1944, which I would likewise experience in Berlin.
"The leadership became frenziedly busy justifying the operation. A day of great activity ended with a speech by Hitler to a special session of the Reichstag. His feelings of guilt were audible in his protestations of innocence. A Hitler defending himself was something we would not encounter again in the future, not even in 1939, at the beginning of the war. ... The fact that the army silently accepted General Schleicher’s death seemed highly significant.
"It was no accident that after the Roehm putsch the Right, represented by the President, the Minister of Justice, and the generals, lined up behind Hitler. These men were free of radical anti-Semitism of the sort Hitler advocated. They in fact despised that eruption of plebeian hatreds. Their conservatism had nothing in common with racist delusions. Their open display of sympathy for Hitler’s intervention sprang from quite different causes: in the Blood Purge of June 30, 1934, the strong left wing of the party, represented chiefly by the SA, was eliminated. That wing had felt cheated of the fruits of the revolution. And not without reason. For the majority of the members of the SA, raised in the spirit of revolution before 1933, had taken Hitler’s supposedly socialist program seriously. During my brief period of activity in Wannsee I had been able to observe, on the lowest plane, how the ordinary SA man sacrificed himself for the movement, giving up time and personal safety in expectation that he would some day receive tangible compensation. When nothing came of that, anger and discontent built up. It could easily have reached the explosive point. Possibly Hitler’s action did indeed avert that “second revolution” Roehm was supposed to have been plotting."
................................................................................................
"At the same Party Rally of 1937 at which Hitler laid the cornerstone of the stadium, his last speech ended with the ringing words: “The German nation has after all acquired its Germanic Reich.”"
"At the time there was a great deal of talk to the effect that this mysterious dictum would be ushering in a new era in foreign policy; that it would bear much fruit. I had an idea of what it meant, for shortly before the speech was given, Hitler one day abruptly stopped me on the stairs to his apartment, let his entourage go on ahead, and said: “We will create a great empire. All the Germanic peoples will be included in it. It will begin in Norway and extend to northern Italy. I myself must carry this out. If only I keep my health!”"
"A few months after the uncontested remilitarization of the Rhineland, Hitler exulted over the harmonious atmosphere that prevailed during the Olympic Games. International animosity toward National Socialist Germany was plainly a thing of the past, he thought. He gave orders that everything should be done to convey the impression of a peace-minded Germany to the many prominent foreign guests. ... Each of the German victories—and there were a surprising number of these—made him happy, but he was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites. They represented unfair competition and hence must be excluded from future games. Hitler was also jolted by the jubilation of the Berliners when the French team filed solemnly into the Olympic Stadium. They had marched past Hitler with raised arms and thereby sent the crowd into transports of enthusiasm. But in the prolonged applause Hitler sensed a popular mood, a longing for peace and reconciliation with Germany’s western neighbor. If I am correctly interpreting Hitler’s expression at the time, he was more disturbed than pleased by the Berliners’ cheers."
"Hitler declared again and again: “How I wish I had been an architect.” And when I responded: “But then I would have no client,” he would say: “Oh, you, you would have made your way in any case!” I sometimes ask myself whether Hitler would have forsaken his political career if in the early twenties he had met a wealthy client willing to employ him as architect. But at bottom, I think, his sense of political mission and his passion for architecture were always inseparable. It seems to me that this theory is borne out by the two sketches he made around 1925, when at the age of thirty-six his political career had been virtually wrecked—for certainly it must then have seemed a wild absurdity that he would ever be a political leader who could crown his success with a triumphal arch and a domed hall."
"At the same Party Rally of 1937 at which Hitler laid the cornerstone of the stadium, his last speech ended with the ringing words: “The German nation has after all acquired its Germanic Reich.”"
"At the time there was a great deal of talk to the effect that this mysterious dictum would be ushering in a new era in foreign policy; that it would bear much fruit. I had an idea of what it meant, for shortly before the speech was given, Hitler one day abruptly stopped me on the stairs to his apartment, let his entourage go on ahead, and said: “We will create a great empire. All the Germanic peoples will be included in it. It will begin in Norway and extend to northern Italy. I myself must carry this out. If only I keep my health!”"
................................................................................................
"A few months after the uncontested remilitarization of the Rhineland, Hitler exulted over the harmonious atmosphere that prevailed during the Olympic Games. International animosity toward National Socialist Germany was plainly a thing of the past, he thought. He gave orders that everything should be done to convey the impression of a peace-minded Germany to the many prominent foreign guests. ... Each of the German victories—and there were a surprising number of these—made him happy, but he was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites. They represented unfair competition and hence must be excluded from future games. Hitler was also jolted by the jubilation of the Berliners when the French team filed solemnly into the Olympic Stadium. They had marched past Hitler with raised arms and thereby sent the crowd into transports of enthusiasm. But in the prolonged applause Hitler sensed a popular mood, a longing for peace and reconciliation with Germany’s western neighbor. If I am correctly interpreting Hitler’s expression at the time, he was more disturbed than pleased by the Berliners’ cheers."
"Hitler declared again and again: “How I wish I had been an architect.” And when I responded: “But then I would have no client,” he would say: “Oh, you, you would have made your way in any case!” I sometimes ask myself whether Hitler would have forsaken his political career if in the early twenties he had met a wealthy client willing to employ him as architect. But at bottom, I think, his sense of political mission and his passion for architecture were always inseparable. It seems to me that this theory is borne out by the two sketches he made around 1925, when at the age of thirty-six his political career had been virtually wrecked—for certainly it must then have seemed a wild absurdity that he would ever be a political leader who could crown his success with a triumphal arch and a domed hall."
................................................................................................
"Hitler praised Bormann’s financial skill. Once I heard him relate how Bormann had performed a significant service for the party during the difficult year of 1932 by introducing compulsory accident insurance for all party members. The income from this insurance fund considerably exceeded the expenditures, Hitler said, and the party was able to use the surplus for other purposes. Bormann also did his bit to eliminate Hitler’s financial anxieties permanently after 1933. He found two sources of ample funds. Together with Hitler’s personal photographer Hoffmann and Hoffmann’s friend Ohnesorge, the Minister of Posts, he decided that Hitler had rights to the reproduction of his picture on postage stamps and was therefore entitled to payments. The percentage royalty was infinitesimal, but since the Fuehrer’s head appeared on all stamps, millions flowed into the privy purse administered by Bormann."
"Occasionally the movies were discussed, Hitler commenting mainly on the female actors and Eva Braun on the males. No one took the trouble to raise the conversation above the level of trivialities by, for example, remarking on any of the new trends in directing. Of course the choice of films scarcely allowed for any other approach, for they were all standard products of the entertainment industry. Such experiments of the period as Curt Ortel’s Michelangelo films were never shown, at least not when I was there. Sometimes Bormann used the occasion to take some swipes at Goebbels, who was responsible for German film production. Thus, he would remark that Goebbels had made all kinds of trouble for the movie based on Kleist’s The Broken Jug because he thought Emil Janning’s portrayal of the lame village magistrate, Adam, was a caricature of himself. Hitler gleefully watched the film, which had been withdrawn from circulation, and gave orders that it be shown again in the largest Berlin movie theater. But—and this it typical of Hitler’s sometimes amazing lack of authority—for a long time this simply was not done. Bormann, however, kept bringing up the matter until Hitler showed serious irritation and let Goebbels know that his orders had better be obeyed."
"To animate these rather barren evenings, sparkling wine was handed around and, after the occupation of France, confiscated champagne of a cheap brand; Goering and his air marshals had appropriated the best brands."
"I have often wondered whether Hitler felt anything like affection for children. He certainly made an effort when he met them, whether they were the children of acquaintances or unknown to him. He even tried to deal with them in a paternally friendly fashion, but never managed to be very convincing about it. He never found the proper easy manner of treating them; after a few benign words he would soon turn to others. On the whole he regarded children as representatives of the next generation and therefore took more pleasure in their appearance (blond, blue-eyed), their stature (strong, healthy), or their intelligence (brisk, aggressive) than in their nature as children. His personality had no effect whatsoever upon my own children."
"Once, when we were seated at the round table in the teahouse, Hitler began staring at me. Instead of dropping my eyes, I took it as a challenge. Who knows what primitive instincts are involved in such staring duels. I had had others, and always used to win them, but this time I had to muster almost inhuman strength, seemingly forever, not to yield to the ever-mounting urge to look away—until Hitler suddenly closed his eyes and shortly afterward turned to the woman at his side.
"Sometimes I asked myself: Why can’t I call Hitler my friend? What is missing? I spent endless time with him, was almost at home in his private circle and, moreover, his foremost associate in his favorite field, architecture.
"Everything was missing. Never in my life have I met a person who so seldom revealed his feelings, and if he did so, instantly locked them away again. During my time in Spandau I talked with Hess about this peculiarity of Hitler’s. Both of us agreed that there had been moments when we felt we had come close to him. But we were invariably disillusioned. If either of us ventured a slightly more personal tone, Hitler promptly put up an unbreakable wall."
"Hitler must already have realized the immense drama that his life was, the high stakes he was playing for, by the time he had a long conversation with Cardinal Faulhaber at Obersalzberg in November 1936. Afterward Hitler sat alone with me in the bay window of the dining room, while the twilight fell. For a long time he looked out of the window in silence. Then he said pensively: “There are two possibilities for me: To win through with all my plans, or to fail. If I win, I shall be one of the greatest men in history. If I fail, I shall be condemned, despised, and damned.”"
................................................................................................
"On May 2, 1938, Hitler drew up his personal will. He had already outlined his political testament on November 5, 1937, in the presence of the Foreign Minister and the military heads of the Reich. In that speech, he referred to his extensive plans for conquest as a “testamentary bequest in case of my decease.” With his intimate entourage, who night after night had to watch trivial operetta movies and listen to endless tirades on the Catholic Church, diet recipes, Greek temples, and police dogs, he did not reveal how literally he took his dream of world dominion. Many of Hitler’s former associates have since attempted to establish the theory that Hitler changed in 1938. They attribute the change to his deteriorated health resulting from Morell’s treatment. It seems to me, on the contrary, that Hitler’s plans and aims never changed. Sickness and the fear of death merely made him advance his deadlines. His aims could only have been thwarted by superior counterforces, and in 1938 no such forces were visible. Quite the opposite: The successes of that year encouraged him to go on forcing the already accelerated pace."
"The dramatic year 1938 led finally to Hitler’s wresting the consent of the Western powers for the partition of Czechoslovakia. A few weeks before Hitler had put on an exceptionally effective performance at the Nuremberg Party Rally, playing the enraged leader of his nation; and supported by the frenzied applause of his followers, he tried to convince the contingent of foreign observers that he would not shrink from war. That was, judged with benefit of hindsight, intimidation on a grand scale. He had already tested his technique in his conference with Schuschnigg. On the other hand, he loved to sharpen his mettle by such audacities, going so far that he could no longer retreat without risking his prestige."
"The war Brückner was predicting was averted again more because of the compliance of the Western powers than because of any reasonableness on Hitler’s part. The surrender of the Sudetenland to Germany took place before the eyes of a frightened world and of Hitler’s followers, now completely convinced of their leader’s invincibility.
"The Czech border fortifications caused general astonishment. To the surprise of experts a test bombardment showed that our weapons would not have prevailed against them. Hitler himself went to the former frontier to inspect the arrangements and returned impressed. The fortifications were amazingly massive, he said, laid out with extraordinary skill and echeloned, making prime use of the terrain. “Given a resolute defense, taking them would have been very difficult and would have cost us a great many lives. Now we have obtained them without loss of blood. One thing is certain: I shall never again permit the Czechs to build a new defense line. What a marvelous starting position we have now. We are over the mountains and already in the valleys of Bohemia.”
"On November 10, driving to the office, I passed by the still smoldering ruins of the Berlin synagogues. That was the fourth momentous event that established the character of this last of the prewar years. Today, this memory is one of the most doleful of my life, chiefly because what really disturbed me at the time was the aspect of disorder that I saw on Fasanenstrasse: charred beams, collapsed façades, burned-out walls—anticipations of a scene that during the war would dominate much of Europe. Most of all I was troubled by the political revival of the “gutter.” The smashed panes of shop windows offended my sense of middle-class order."
"Whether I knew or did not know, or how much or how little I knew, is totally unimportant when I consider what horrors I ought to have known about and what conclusions would have been the natural ones to draw from the little I did know. Those who ask me are fundamentally expecting me to offer justifications. But I have none. No apologies are possible."
"As late as May 8, 1943, Goebbels noted in his diary: “The Fuehrer expresses his unshakable conviction that the Reich will one day rule all of Europe. We will have to survive a great many conflicts, but they will doubtless lead to the most glorious triumphs. And from then on the road to world domination is practically spread out before us. For whoever rules Europe will be able to seize the leadership of the world.”"
"According to L. W. Helwig, Persönlichkeiten der Gegenwart (1940), Lenard inveighed against “relativity theories produced by alien minds.” In his four-volume work, Die Deutsche Physik (1935), Helwig considered physics “cleansed of the outgrowths which the by now well-known findings of race research have shown to be the exclusive products of the Jewish mind and which the German Volk must shun as racially incompatible with itself.”"
................................................................................................
"Gebhardt had also been consulted about a knee injury by Leopold ΙΠ of Belgium and by the Belgian industrialist Danny Heinemann. During the Nuremberg Trial, I learned that Gebhardt had performed experiments on prisoners in concentration camps."
Speer and others were affected by conditions of prisoners of war used as forced labour.
"The shocking effect the camp had on us is indicated in the deliberately veiled phraseology of the Office Journal entry for December 10, 1943: “On the morning of December 10 the minister went to inspect a new plant in the Harz Mountains. Carrying out this tremendous mission drew on the leaders’ last reserves of strength. Some of the men were so affected that they had to be forcibly sent off on vacations to restore their nerves.”"
................................................................................................
"The prison psychologist, G. M. Gilbert, has revealed in his Nuremberg Diary (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, Inc., 1947), p. 158, that the different groups were established deliberately by the prison command to prevent Goering from “terrorizing the defendants.”—Translator’s note."
"The readiness of technicians to carry out any order is, of course, not limited to our country. A year later, Harry L. Stimson (U.S. Secretary of State from 1929–33, Secretary of War from 1911–13 and 1940–45) wrote an article, “The Nürnberg Trial: Landmark in Law,” Foreign Affairs (1947) in which he said:
"We must never forget, that under modern conditions of life, science and technology, all war has become greatly brutalized, and that no one who joins in it, even in self-defense, can escape becoming also in a measure brutalized. Modern war cannot be limited in its destructive method and the inevitable debasement of all participants … A fair scrutiny of the last two World Wars makes clear the steady intensification in the inhumanity of the weapons and methods employed by both, the aggressors and the victors. In order to defeat Japanese aggression, we were forced, as Admiral Nimitz has stated, to employ a technique of unrestricted submarine warfare, not unlike that which 25 years ago was the proximate cause of our entry into World War I. In the use of strategic air power the Allies took the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Germany and in Japan … We as well as our enemies have contributed to the proof that the central moral problem is war and not its methods, and that a continuance of war will in all probability end with the destruction of our civilization."
"Almost two decades later President Kennedy said at his press conference of August 20, 1963: “What we now have … will kill three hundred million people in one hour.” (The New York Times, August 21, 1963.)"
November 23, 2019.
ISBN 978 1 4746 0338 6
................................................
"Hitler praised Bormann’s financial skill. Once I heard him relate how Bormann had performed a significant service for the party during the difficult year of 1932 by introducing compulsory accident insurance for all party members. The income from this insurance fund considerably exceeded the expenditures, Hitler said, and the party was able to use the surplus for other purposes. Bormann also did his bit to eliminate Hitler’s financial anxieties permanently after 1933. He found two sources of ample funds. Together with Hitler’s personal photographer Hoffmann and Hoffmann’s friend Ohnesorge, the Minister of Posts, he decided that Hitler had rights to the reproduction of his picture on postage stamps and was therefore entitled to payments. The percentage royalty was infinitesimal, but since the Fuehrer’s head appeared on all stamps, millions flowed into the privy purse administered by Bormann."
"Occasionally the movies were discussed, Hitler commenting mainly on the female actors and Eva Braun on the males. No one took the trouble to raise the conversation above the level of trivialities by, for example, remarking on any of the new trends in directing. Of course the choice of films scarcely allowed for any other approach, for they were all standard products of the entertainment industry. Such experiments of the period as Curt Ortel’s Michelangelo films were never shown, at least not when I was there. Sometimes Bormann used the occasion to take some swipes at Goebbels, who was responsible for German film production. Thus, he would remark that Goebbels had made all kinds of trouble for the movie based on Kleist’s The Broken Jug because he thought Emil Janning’s portrayal of the lame village magistrate, Adam, was a caricature of himself. Hitler gleefully watched the film, which had been withdrawn from circulation, and gave orders that it be shown again in the largest Berlin movie theater. But—and this it typical of Hitler’s sometimes amazing lack of authority—for a long time this simply was not done. Bormann, however, kept bringing up the matter until Hitler showed serious irritation and let Goebbels know that his orders had better be obeyed."
"To animate these rather barren evenings, sparkling wine was handed around and, after the occupation of France, confiscated champagne of a cheap brand; Goering and his air marshals had appropriated the best brands."
"I have often wondered whether Hitler felt anything like affection for children. He certainly made an effort when he met them, whether they were the children of acquaintances or unknown to him. He even tried to deal with them in a paternally friendly fashion, but never managed to be very convincing about it. He never found the proper easy manner of treating them; after a few benign words he would soon turn to others. On the whole he regarded children as representatives of the next generation and therefore took more pleasure in their appearance (blond, blue-eyed), their stature (strong, healthy), or their intelligence (brisk, aggressive) than in their nature as children. His personality had no effect whatsoever upon my own children."
"Once, when we were seated at the round table in the teahouse, Hitler began staring at me. Instead of dropping my eyes, I took it as a challenge. Who knows what primitive instincts are involved in such staring duels. I had had others, and always used to win them, but this time I had to muster almost inhuman strength, seemingly forever, not to yield to the ever-mounting urge to look away—until Hitler suddenly closed his eyes and shortly afterward turned to the woman at his side.
"Sometimes I asked myself: Why can’t I call Hitler my friend? What is missing? I spent endless time with him, was almost at home in his private circle and, moreover, his foremost associate in his favorite field, architecture.
"Everything was missing. Never in my life have I met a person who so seldom revealed his feelings, and if he did so, instantly locked them away again. During my time in Spandau I talked with Hess about this peculiarity of Hitler’s. Both of us agreed that there had been moments when we felt we had come close to him. But we were invariably disillusioned. If either of us ventured a slightly more personal tone, Hitler promptly put up an unbreakable wall."
"Hitler must already have realized the immense drama that his life was, the high stakes he was playing for, by the time he had a long conversation with Cardinal Faulhaber at Obersalzberg in November 1936. Afterward Hitler sat alone with me in the bay window of the dining room, while the twilight fell. For a long time he looked out of the window in silence. Then he said pensively: “There are two possibilities for me: To win through with all my plans, or to fail. If I win, I shall be one of the greatest men in history. If I fail, I shall be condemned, despised, and damned.”"
................................................................................................
"On May 2, 1938, Hitler drew up his personal will. He had already outlined his political testament on November 5, 1937, in the presence of the Foreign Minister and the military heads of the Reich. In that speech, he referred to his extensive plans for conquest as a “testamentary bequest in case of my decease.” With his intimate entourage, who night after night had to watch trivial operetta movies and listen to endless tirades on the Catholic Church, diet recipes, Greek temples, and police dogs, he did not reveal how literally he took his dream of world dominion. Many of Hitler’s former associates have since attempted to establish the theory that Hitler changed in 1938. They attribute the change to his deteriorated health resulting from Morell’s treatment. It seems to me, on the contrary, that Hitler’s plans and aims never changed. Sickness and the fear of death merely made him advance his deadlines. His aims could only have been thwarted by superior counterforces, and in 1938 no such forces were visible. Quite the opposite: The successes of that year encouraged him to go on forcing the already accelerated pace."
"The dramatic year 1938 led finally to Hitler’s wresting the consent of the Western powers for the partition of Czechoslovakia. A few weeks before Hitler had put on an exceptionally effective performance at the Nuremberg Party Rally, playing the enraged leader of his nation; and supported by the frenzied applause of his followers, he tried to convince the contingent of foreign observers that he would not shrink from war. That was, judged with benefit of hindsight, intimidation on a grand scale. He had already tested his technique in his conference with Schuschnigg. On the other hand, he loved to sharpen his mettle by such audacities, going so far that he could no longer retreat without risking his prestige."
"The war Brückner was predicting was averted again more because of the compliance of the Western powers than because of any reasonableness on Hitler’s part. The surrender of the Sudetenland to Germany took place before the eyes of a frightened world and of Hitler’s followers, now completely convinced of their leader’s invincibility.
"The Czech border fortifications caused general astonishment. To the surprise of experts a test bombardment showed that our weapons would not have prevailed against them. Hitler himself went to the former frontier to inspect the arrangements and returned impressed. The fortifications were amazingly massive, he said, laid out with extraordinary skill and echeloned, making prime use of the terrain. “Given a resolute defense, taking them would have been very difficult and would have cost us a great many lives. Now we have obtained them without loss of blood. One thing is certain: I shall never again permit the Czechs to build a new defense line. What a marvelous starting position we have now. We are over the mountains and already in the valleys of Bohemia.”
"On November 10, driving to the office, I passed by the still smoldering ruins of the Berlin synagogues. That was the fourth momentous event that established the character of this last of the prewar years. Today, this memory is one of the most doleful of my life, chiefly because what really disturbed me at the time was the aspect of disorder that I saw on Fasanenstrasse: charred beams, collapsed façades, burned-out walls—anticipations of a scene that during the war would dominate much of Europe. Most of all I was troubled by the political revival of the “gutter.” The smashed panes of shop windows offended my sense of middle-class order."
"Whether I knew or did not know, or how much or how little I knew, is totally unimportant when I consider what horrors I ought to have known about and what conclusions would have been the natural ones to draw from the little I did know. Those who ask me are fundamentally expecting me to offer justifications. But I have none. No apologies are possible."
................................................................................................
"For decades a marble bust of Bismarck by Reinhold Begas had stood in the Chancellery. A few days before the dedication of the new building, while workmen were moving the bust to the new headquarters, it dropped and broke off at the neck. I felt this an evil omen. And since I had heard Hitler’s story that right at the beginning of the First World War the Reich eagle had toppled from the post-office building, I kept the accident a secret and had Arno Breker make an exact copy. We gave it some patina by steeping it in tea."
"On January 10, 1939, the new building destined to last for centuries was dedicated: Hitler received the diplomats accredited to Berlin in the Grand Salon and delivered his New Year address to them.
"Sixty-five days after the dedication, on March 15, 1939, the President of Czechoslovakia was ushered into Hitler’s new study. This room was the scene of the tragedy which ended at night with Hacha’s submission and early in the morning with the occupation of his country. “At last,” Hitler reported later, “I had so belabored the old man that his nerves gave way completely, and he was on the point of signing; then he had a heart attack. In the adjoining room Dr. Morell gave him an injection, but in this case it was too effective. Hacha regained too much of his strength, revived, and was no longer prepared to sign, until I finally wore him down again.”"
"On July 16, 1945, seventy-eight months after the dedication, Winston Churchill was shown through the Chancellery. “In front of the Chancellery there was a considerable crowd. When I got out of the car and walked among them, except for one old man who shook his head disapprovingly, they all began to cheer. My hate had died with their surrender, and I was much moved by their demonstrations.” Then the party walked for a good while through the shattered corridors and halls of the Chancellery.
"Soon afterward the remains of the building were removed. The stone and marble supplied the materials for the Russian war monument in Berlin-Treptow."
"When ideology receded into the background after the seizure of power, efforts were made to tame down the party and make it more respectable. Goebbels and Bormann were the chief opponents of that tendency. They were always trying to radicalize Hitler ideologically. To judge by his speeches, Ley must also have belonged to the group of tough ideologist, but lacked the stature to gain any significant influence. Himmler, on the other hand, obviously was going his own absurd way, which was compounded of beliefs about an original Germanic race, a brand of elitism, and an assortment of health-food notions. The whole thing was beginning to assume far-fetched pseudoreligious forms. Goebbels, with Hitler, took the lead in ridiculing these dreams of Himmler’s, with Himmler himself adding to the comedy by his vanity and obsessiveness. When, for example, the Japanese presented him with a samurai sword, he at once discovered kinships between Japanese and Teutonic cults and called upon scientists to help him trace these similarities to a racial common denominator."
................................................................................................"For decades a marble bust of Bismarck by Reinhold Begas had stood in the Chancellery. A few days before the dedication of the new building, while workmen were moving the bust to the new headquarters, it dropped and broke off at the neck. I felt this an evil omen. And since I had heard Hitler’s story that right at the beginning of the First World War the Reich eagle had toppled from the post-office building, I kept the accident a secret and had Arno Breker make an exact copy. We gave it some patina by steeping it in tea."
"On January 10, 1939, the new building destined to last for centuries was dedicated: Hitler received the diplomats accredited to Berlin in the Grand Salon and delivered his New Year address to them.
"Sixty-five days after the dedication, on March 15, 1939, the President of Czechoslovakia was ushered into Hitler’s new study. This room was the scene of the tragedy which ended at night with Hacha’s submission and early in the morning with the occupation of his country. “At last,” Hitler reported later, “I had so belabored the old man that his nerves gave way completely, and he was on the point of signing; then he had a heart attack. In the adjoining room Dr. Morell gave him an injection, but in this case it was too effective. Hacha regained too much of his strength, revived, and was no longer prepared to sign, until I finally wore him down again.”"
"On July 16, 1945, seventy-eight months after the dedication, Winston Churchill was shown through the Chancellery. “In front of the Chancellery there was a considerable crowd. When I got out of the car and walked among them, except for one old man who shook his head disapprovingly, they all began to cheer. My hate had died with their surrender, and I was much moved by their demonstrations.” Then the party walked for a good while through the shattered corridors and halls of the Chancellery.
"Soon afterward the remains of the building were removed. The stone and marble supplied the materials for the Russian war monument in Berlin-Treptow."
................................................................................................
"When ideology receded into the background after the seizure of power, efforts were made to tame down the party and make it more respectable. Goebbels and Bormann were the chief opponents of that tendency. They were always trying to radicalize Hitler ideologically. To judge by his speeches, Ley must also have belonged to the group of tough ideologist, but lacked the stature to gain any significant influence. Himmler, on the other hand, obviously was going his own absurd way, which was compounded of beliefs about an original Germanic race, a brand of elitism, and an assortment of health-food notions. The whole thing was beginning to assume far-fetched pseudoreligious forms. Goebbels, with Hitler, took the lead in ridiculing these dreams of Himmler’s, with Himmler himself adding to the comedy by his vanity and obsessiveness. When, for example, the Japanese presented him with a samurai sword, he at once discovered kinships between Japanese and Teutonic cults and called upon scientists to help him trace these similarities to a racial common denominator."
................................................................................................
"As far as I could observe, Hitler was in fact no match for Goebbels in such matters; with his more direct temperament he did not understand this sort of cunning. But it certainly should have given one pause that Hitler allowed this nasty game to go on and even encouraged it. One word of displeasure would certainly have stopped this sort of thing for a long while to come.
"I often asked myself whether Hitler was open to influence. He surely could be swayed by those who knew how to manage him. Hitler was mistrustful, to be sure. But he was so in a cruder sense, it often seemed to me; for he did not see through clever chess moves or subtle manipulation of his opinions. He had apparently no sense for methodical deceit. Among the masters of that art were Goering, Goebbels, Bormann, and, within limits, Himmler. Since those who spoke out in candid terms on the important questions usually could not make Hitler change his mind, the cunning men naturally gained more and more power."
"My father, too, came to see the work of his now famous son. He only shrugged his shoulders at the array of models: “You’ve all gone completely crazy.” The evening of his visit we went to the theater and saw a comedy in which Heinz Rühmann was appearing. By chance Hitler was at the same performance. During the intermission he sent one of his adjutants to ask whether the old gentleman sitting beside me was my father; then he asked us both to his box. When my father—still erect and self-controlled in spite of his seventy-five years—was introduced to Hitler, he was overcome by a violent quivering such as I had never seen him exhibit before, nor ever did again. He turned pale, did not respond to Hitler’s lavish praise of his son, and then took his leave in silence. Later, my father never mentioned this meeting, and I too avoided asking him about the fit of nerves that the sight of Hitler had produced in him."
"As far as I could observe, Hitler was in fact no match for Goebbels in such matters; with his more direct temperament he did not understand this sort of cunning. But it certainly should have given one pause that Hitler allowed this nasty game to go on and even encouraged it. One word of displeasure would certainly have stopped this sort of thing for a long while to come.
"I often asked myself whether Hitler was open to influence. He surely could be swayed by those who knew how to manage him. Hitler was mistrustful, to be sure. But he was so in a cruder sense, it often seemed to me; for he did not see through clever chess moves or subtle manipulation of his opinions. He had apparently no sense for methodical deceit. Among the masters of that art were Goering, Goebbels, Bormann, and, within limits, Himmler. Since those who spoke out in candid terms on the important questions usually could not make Hitler change his mind, the cunning men naturally gained more and more power."
................................................................................................
"My father, too, came to see the work of his now famous son. He only shrugged his shoulders at the array of models: “You’ve all gone completely crazy.” The evening of his visit we went to the theater and saw a comedy in which Heinz Rühmann was appearing. By chance Hitler was at the same performance. During the intermission he sent one of his adjutants to ask whether the old gentleman sitting beside me was my father; then he asked us both to his box. When my father—still erect and self-controlled in spite of his seventy-five years—was introduced to Hitler, he was overcome by a violent quivering such as I had never seen him exhibit before, nor ever did again. He turned pale, did not respond to Hitler’s lavish praise of his son, and then took his leave in silence. Later, my father never mentioned this meeting, and I too avoided asking him about the fit of nerves that the sight of Hitler had produced in him."
................................................................................................
"Our happiest concept, comparatively speaking, was the central railroad station, the southern pole of Hitler’s grand boulevard.
"State visitors would have descended a large outside staircase. The idea was that as soon as they, as well as ordinary travelers, stepped out of the station they would be overwhelmed, or rather stunned, by the urban scene and thus the power of the Reich. The station plaza, thirty-three hundred feet long and a thousand feet wide, was to be lined with captured weapons, after the fashion of the Avenue of Rams which leads from Karnak to Luxor. Hitler conceived this detail after the campaign in France and came back to it again in the late autumn of 1941, after his first defeats in the Soviet Union.
"This plaza was to be crowned by Hitler’s great arch or “Arch of Triumph,” as he only occasionally called it. Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe on the Place de l’Etoile with its one-hundred-sixty-foot height certainly presents a monumental appearance and provides a majestic terminus to the Champs Elysées. Our triumphal arch, five hundred and fifty feet wide, three hundred and ninety-two feet deep, and three hundred and eighty-six feet high, would have towered over all the other buildings on this southern portion of the avenue and would literally have dwarfed them."
"Sighting through the two hundred sixty foot opening of the great arch, the arriving traveler would see at the end of a three-mile vista the street’s second great triumphal structure rearing out of the haze of the metropolis: the great hall with its enormous dome, described in an earlier chapter.
"Eleven separate ministry buildings adorned the avenue between the triumphal arch and the great hall. I had already designed quarters for the ministries of the Interior, Transportation, Justice, Economics, and Food when, after 1941, I was told to include a Colonial Ministry in my plans.3 In other words, even after the invasion of Russia, Hitler was dreaming of acquiring German colonies."
"The Berlin triumphal arch (including the arch aperture) would have had a volume of 83,543,460 cubic feet; the Arc de Triomphe in Paris would have fitted into it 49 times. The Soldiers’ Hall was a cube 820 feet long, 295 feet deep, and 262 feet high. The field behind the hall, intended for the new High Command, measured 984 by 1476 feet. The entrance hall with the grand staircase in Goering’s new building had a floor space of 158 by 158 feet and a height of 138 feet. The cost of this building was estimated at a minimum of 160 million Reichsmarks. The new Berlin Town Hall was planned to have a length of 1476 feet; its central structure would have been 197 feet high. The Navy High Command was to be 1050 feet long, and the new police headquarters 919 feet."
"The design for Goering’s headquarters provided for extensive series of stairways, halls, and salons which took up more room than the offices themselves. The heart of the building was to be an imposing hall with a great flight of stairs rising through four stories, which would never have been used since everyone would of course have taken the elevator. The whole thing was pure spectacle. .... Reich Marshal was highly pleased with the model of his building. ... “In tribute to this, the greatest staircase in the world,” Goering continued, “Breker must create a monument to the Inspector General of Buildings. It will be installed here to commemorate forever the man who so magnificently shaped this building.”
"This part of the ministry, with its eight hundred feet of frontage on the grand boulevard, was supplemented by a wing of equal size, on the Tiergarten side, which contained the ballrooms Goering had stipulated as well as his private apartment. I situated the bedrooms on the top story. Alleging the need for air-raid protection, I decided to cover the roof with thirteen feet of garden soil, which meant that even large trees would have been able to strike root there. Thus I envisioned a two and a half acre roof garden, with swimming pools and tennis courts, fountains, ponds, colonnades, pergolas, and refreshment rooms, and finally a summer theater for two hundred and forty spectators above the roofs of Berlin. Goering was overwhelmed and began raving about the parties he would hold there. “I’ll illuminate the great dome with Bengal lights and provide grand fireworks for my guests.”"
"For five years I lived in this world of plans, and in spite of all their defects and absurdities I still cannot entirely tear myself away from it all. When I look deep into myself for the reasons for my present hatred of Hitler, I sometimes think that in addition to all the terrible things he perpetrated I should perhaps include the personal disappointment his warmaking brought to me; but I also realize that these plans could only have sprung from his unscrupulous game of power."
"Our happiest concept, comparatively speaking, was the central railroad station, the southern pole of Hitler’s grand boulevard.
"State visitors would have descended a large outside staircase. The idea was that as soon as they, as well as ordinary travelers, stepped out of the station they would be overwhelmed, or rather stunned, by the urban scene and thus the power of the Reich. The station plaza, thirty-three hundred feet long and a thousand feet wide, was to be lined with captured weapons, after the fashion of the Avenue of Rams which leads from Karnak to Luxor. Hitler conceived this detail after the campaign in France and came back to it again in the late autumn of 1941, after his first defeats in the Soviet Union.
"This plaza was to be crowned by Hitler’s great arch or “Arch of Triumph,” as he only occasionally called it. Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe on the Place de l’Etoile with its one-hundred-sixty-foot height certainly presents a monumental appearance and provides a majestic terminus to the Champs Elysées. Our triumphal arch, five hundred and fifty feet wide, three hundred and ninety-two feet deep, and three hundred and eighty-six feet high, would have towered over all the other buildings on this southern portion of the avenue and would literally have dwarfed them."
"Sighting through the two hundred sixty foot opening of the great arch, the arriving traveler would see at the end of a three-mile vista the street’s second great triumphal structure rearing out of the haze of the metropolis: the great hall with its enormous dome, described in an earlier chapter.
"Eleven separate ministry buildings adorned the avenue between the triumphal arch and the great hall. I had already designed quarters for the ministries of the Interior, Transportation, Justice, Economics, and Food when, after 1941, I was told to include a Colonial Ministry in my plans.3 In other words, even after the invasion of Russia, Hitler was dreaming of acquiring German colonies."
"The Berlin triumphal arch (including the arch aperture) would have had a volume of 83,543,460 cubic feet; the Arc de Triomphe in Paris would have fitted into it 49 times. The Soldiers’ Hall was a cube 820 feet long, 295 feet deep, and 262 feet high. The field behind the hall, intended for the new High Command, measured 984 by 1476 feet. The entrance hall with the grand staircase in Goering’s new building had a floor space of 158 by 158 feet and a height of 138 feet. The cost of this building was estimated at a minimum of 160 million Reichsmarks. The new Berlin Town Hall was planned to have a length of 1476 feet; its central structure would have been 197 feet high. The Navy High Command was to be 1050 feet long, and the new police headquarters 919 feet."
................................................................................................
"The design for Goering’s headquarters provided for extensive series of stairways, halls, and salons which took up more room than the offices themselves. The heart of the building was to be an imposing hall with a great flight of stairs rising through four stories, which would never have been used since everyone would of course have taken the elevator. The whole thing was pure spectacle. .... Reich Marshal was highly pleased with the model of his building. ... “In tribute to this, the greatest staircase in the world,” Goering continued, “Breker must create a monument to the Inspector General of Buildings. It will be installed here to commemorate forever the man who so magnificently shaped this building.”
"This part of the ministry, with its eight hundred feet of frontage on the grand boulevard, was supplemented by a wing of equal size, on the Tiergarten side, which contained the ballrooms Goering had stipulated as well as his private apartment. I situated the bedrooms on the top story. Alleging the need for air-raid protection, I decided to cover the roof with thirteen feet of garden soil, which meant that even large trees would have been able to strike root there. Thus I envisioned a two and a half acre roof garden, with swimming pools and tennis courts, fountains, ponds, colonnades, pergolas, and refreshment rooms, and finally a summer theater for two hundred and forty spectators above the roofs of Berlin. Goering was overwhelmed and began raving about the parties he would hold there. “I’ll illuminate the great dome with Bengal lights and provide grand fireworks for my guests.”"
"For five years I lived in this world of plans, and in spite of all their defects and absurdities I still cannot entirely tear myself away from it all. When I look deep into myself for the reasons for my present hatred of Hitler, I sometimes think that in addition to all the terrible things he perpetrated I should perhaps include the personal disappointment his warmaking brought to me; but I also realize that these plans could only have sprung from his unscrupulous game of power."
................................................................................................
"Shortly after my appointment I managed to persuade Hitler that party members of any quality had long since been assigned leading posts, so that only members of the second rank were available for my tasks. He therefore gave me permission to choose my associates as I pleased. Gradually word went round that a sanctuary for nonparty people could be found in my office, and so more and more architects thronged to join us.
"Once one of my associates asked me for a reference for admission to the party. My answer went the rounds of the Inspectorate General of Building: “Why? It’s enough for all of us that I’m in the party.” We took Hitler’s building plans seriously but were not so reverential as others about the solemnity of this Hitlerian Reich."
"In March 1939, I took a trip with a group of close friends through Sicily and southern Italy. Wilhelm Kreis, Josef Thorak, Hermann Kaspar, Arno Breker, Robert Frank, Karl Brandt and their wives, formed the party. Magda Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister’s wife, came along at our invitation; she used a false name for the journey.
"Throughout this trip, Frau Goebbels proved a pleasant and sensible woman."
"While we had been dreaming our way through Greek antiquity, Hitler occupied Czechoslovakia and annexed it to the Reich. Back in Germany we found a general mood of depression. Apprehensions about the future filled all of us. To this day I find it strange that a nation can have so right a sense of what is to come, so much so that all the massive propaganda by the government does not banish this feeling."
"Shortly after my appointment I managed to persuade Hitler that party members of any quality had long since been assigned leading posts, so that only members of the second rank were available for my tasks. He therefore gave me permission to choose my associates as I pleased. Gradually word went round that a sanctuary for nonparty people could be found in my office, and so more and more architects thronged to join us.
"Once one of my associates asked me for a reference for admission to the party. My answer went the rounds of the Inspectorate General of Building: “Why? It’s enough for all of us that I’m in the party.” We took Hitler’s building plans seriously but were not so reverential as others about the solemnity of this Hitlerian Reich."
................................................................................................
"In March 1939, I took a trip with a group of close friends through Sicily and southern Italy. Wilhelm Kreis, Josef Thorak, Hermann Kaspar, Arno Breker, Robert Frank, Karl Brandt and their wives, formed the party. Magda Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister’s wife, came along at our invitation; she used a false name for the journey.
"Throughout this trip, Frau Goebbels proved a pleasant and sensible woman."
"While we had been dreaming our way through Greek antiquity, Hitler occupied Czechoslovakia and annexed it to the Reich. Back in Germany we found a general mood of depression. Apprehensions about the future filled all of us. To this day I find it strange that a nation can have so right a sense of what is to come, so much so that all the massive propaganda by the government does not banish this feeling."
................................................................................................
"Meanwhile matters had progressed between Hanke and Frau Goebbels to such a point that, to the horror of everyone in the know, they wished to marry. An ill-matched couple: Hanke was young and awkward, she was considerably older and a polished society woman. Hanke petitioned Hitler for his approval, but Hitler refused to allow the Goebbelses a divorce for raison d’état! At the beginning of the 1939 Bayreuth Festival, Hanke arrived at my house one morning in a state of despair. Magda and Joseph Goebbels had had a reconciliation, he reported, and gone to Bayreuth together. For my part I thought this was the happiest outcome for Hanke, too. But you cannot console a desperate lover with felicitations on his escape. I therefore promised him to find out what had happened in Bayreuth and left at once.
"Goebbels and his wife had arrived in Bayreuth on the same day as myself and, like Hitler, had moved into the Wahnfried annex. Frau Goebbels looked very drawn. She spoke quite candidly with me: “It was frightful, the way my husband threatened me. I was just beginning to recuperate at Gastein when he turned up at the hotel. For three days he argued with me incessantly, until I could no longer stand it. He used the children to blackmail me; he threatened to take them away from me. What could I do? The reconciliation is only for show. Albert, it’s terrible! I’ve had to swear never to meet Karl privately again. I’m so unhappy, but I have no choice.”"
Upton Sinclair's portrayal of Magda Goebbels attempting to leave her husband is set in Switzerland, with no lover, but a desperation to escape a horror. Was that another incident, later?
"At the beginning of the war, I had formed a theory which I explained at a dinner in Maxim’s in Paris to a group of German and French artists. Cocteau and Despiau were among the latter. The French Revolution, I said, had developed a new sense of style which was destined to replace the late rococo. Even its simplest furniture was beautifully proportioned. .... Compressed within the span of twenty years, I said, we could observe a phenomenon that ordinarily took place only over centuries: the development from the Doric buildings of early antiquity to the fissured baroque façades of Late Hellenism, such as was to be seen in, say, Baalbek; or the Romanesque buildings at the beginning of the medieval period and the playful Late Gothic at its end.
"Had I been able to think the matter out consistently, I ought to have argued further that my designs for Hitler were following the pattern of the Late Empire and forecasting the end of the regime; that, therefore, Hitler’s downfall could be deduced from these very designs. But this was hidden from me at the time. Probably Napoleon’s entourage saw in the ornate salons of the Late Empire only the expression of grandeur. Probably only posterity beholds the symptoms of downfall in such creations. Hitler’s entourage, at any rate, felt the towering inkwell to be a suitable prop for his genius as a statesmen, and similarly accepted my hulking dome as the symbol of Hitler’s power."
"One day in the early summer of 1939, he pointed to the German eagle with the swastika in its claws which was to crown the dome nine hundred fifty-seven feet in the air. “That has to be changed. Instead of the swastika, the eagle is to be perched above the globe. To crown this greatest building in the world the eagle must stand above the globe.”* There are photos of the models in which this revision is plainly to be seen.
"A few months later the Second World War began."
"Meanwhile matters had progressed between Hanke and Frau Goebbels to such a point that, to the horror of everyone in the know, they wished to marry. An ill-matched couple: Hanke was young and awkward, she was considerably older and a polished society woman. Hanke petitioned Hitler for his approval, but Hitler refused to allow the Goebbelses a divorce for raison d’état! At the beginning of the 1939 Bayreuth Festival, Hanke arrived at my house one morning in a state of despair. Magda and Joseph Goebbels had had a reconciliation, he reported, and gone to Bayreuth together. For my part I thought this was the happiest outcome for Hanke, too. But you cannot console a desperate lover with felicitations on his escape. I therefore promised him to find out what had happened in Bayreuth and left at once.
"Goebbels and his wife had arrived in Bayreuth on the same day as myself and, like Hitler, had moved into the Wahnfried annex. Frau Goebbels looked very drawn. She spoke quite candidly with me: “It was frightful, the way my husband threatened me. I was just beginning to recuperate at Gastein when he turned up at the hotel. For three days he argued with me incessantly, until I could no longer stand it. He used the children to blackmail me; he threatened to take them away from me. What could I do? The reconciliation is only for show. Albert, it’s terrible! I’ve had to swear never to meet Karl privately again. I’m so unhappy, but I have no choice.”"
Upton Sinclair's portrayal of Magda Goebbels attempting to leave her husband is set in Switzerland, with no lover, but a desperation to escape a horror. Was that another incident, later?
................................................................................................
"At the beginning of the war, I had formed a theory which I explained at a dinner in Maxim’s in Paris to a group of German and French artists. Cocteau and Despiau were among the latter. The French Revolution, I said, had developed a new sense of style which was destined to replace the late rococo. Even its simplest furniture was beautifully proportioned. .... Compressed within the span of twenty years, I said, we could observe a phenomenon that ordinarily took place only over centuries: the development from the Doric buildings of early antiquity to the fissured baroque façades of Late Hellenism, such as was to be seen in, say, Baalbek; or the Romanesque buildings at the beginning of the medieval period and the playful Late Gothic at its end.
"Had I been able to think the matter out consistently, I ought to have argued further that my designs for Hitler were following the pattern of the Late Empire and forecasting the end of the regime; that, therefore, Hitler’s downfall could be deduced from these very designs. But this was hidden from me at the time. Probably Napoleon’s entourage saw in the ornate salons of the Late Empire only the expression of grandeur. Probably only posterity beholds the symptoms of downfall in such creations. Hitler’s entourage, at any rate, felt the towering inkwell to be a suitable prop for his genius as a statesmen, and similarly accepted my hulking dome as the symbol of Hitler’s power."
"One day in the early summer of 1939, he pointed to the German eagle with the swastika in its claws which was to crown the dome nine hundred fifty-seven feet in the air. “That has to be changed. Instead of the swastika, the eagle is to be perched above the globe. To crown this greatest building in the world the eagle must stand above the globe.”* There are photos of the models in which this revision is plainly to be seen.
"A few months later the Second World War began."
................................................................................................
"ABOUT THE BEGINNING OF AUGUST 1939 WE, AN UNTROUBLED group, drove with Hitler up to the Eagle’s Nest."
"August 21, 1939, we heard that the German Foreign Minister was in Moscow for some negotiations. During supper a note was handed to Hitler. He scanned it, stared into space for a moment, flushed deeply, then banged on the table so hard that the glasses rattled, and exclaimed in a voice breaking with excitement: “I have them! I have them!”"
"After supper Hitler called his entourage together. “We are going to conclude a nonaggression pact with Russia. Here, read this. A telegram from Stalin.”"
"Goebbels held an evening press conference on August 23 in which he offered commentary on the pact. Hitler telephoned him immediately afterward. He wanted to know how the foreign correspondents had reacted. With eyes glistening feverishly, he told us what Goebbels had said. “The sensation was fantastic. And when the church bells simultaneously began ringing outside, a British correspondent fatalistically remarked: ‘That is the death knell of the British Empire.’ ” These words made the strongest impression upon Hitler in his euphoria that night. He thought he now stood so high as to be out of the reach of fate.
"In the course of the night we stood on the terrace of the Berghof with Hitler and marveled at a rare natural spectacle. Northern lights1 of unusual intensity threw red light on the legend-haunted Untersberg across the valley, while the sky above shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow. The last act of Götterdämmerung could not have been more effectively staged. The same red light bathed our faces and our hands. The display produced a curiously pensive mood among us. Abruptly turning to one of his military adjutants, Hitler said: “Looks like a great deal of blood. This time we won’t bring it off without violence.”"
"Only a few days later Hitler’s motorcade was moving along the autobahn to Munich. There were ten cars at long distances from one another, for security. My wife and I were in one of the cars. It was a beautiful, cloudless sunny day at the end of summer. The populace remained unusually silent as Hitler drove by. Hardly anyone waved. In Berlin, too, it was strikingly quiet in the vicinity of the Chancellery. Usually, when Hitler’s private standard was raised to indicate his presence, the building was besieged by people who cheered him as he drove out and in."
"Out of the rush of events I particularly remembered one evening in the conservatory of the Chancellor’s residence. I had the impression that Hitler looked exhausted from overwork. He spoke with deep conviction to his intimate circle: “This time the mistake of 1914 will be avoided. Everything depends on making the other side accept responsibility. In 1914 that was handled clumsily. And now again the ideas of the Foreign Office are simply useless. The best thing is for me to compose the notes myself.”"
"I noted down Heinrici’s remarkable story as follows: “Hitler said that he was the first man since Charlemagne to hold unlimited power in his own hand. He did not hold this power in vain, he said, but would know how to use it in a struggle for Germany. If the war were not won, that would mean that Germany had not stood the test of strength; in that case she would deserve to be and would be doomed.”"
"In October, Hanke told me something which had been learned when German troops met Soviet troops on the demarcation line in Poland: that Soviet equipment appeared extremely deficient, in fact wretched. Hanke had reported this to Hitler. Army officers confirmed this point; Hitler must have listened to this piece of intelligence with the keenest interest, for thereafter he repeatedly cited this report as evidence that the Russians were weak and poorly organized. Soon afterward, the failure of the Soviet offensive against Finland confirmed him in this view."
"In spite of all the secrecy I obtained some light on Hitler’s further plans when he gave me the assignment, still in 1939, to fit out a headquarters for him in western Germany. Ziegenberg, a manorial estate of Goethe’s time, situated near Nauheim in the foothills of the Taunus range, was modernized by us for this purpose, and provided with shelters."
"ABOUT THE BEGINNING OF AUGUST 1939 WE, AN UNTROUBLED group, drove with Hitler up to the Eagle’s Nest."
"August 21, 1939, we heard that the German Foreign Minister was in Moscow for some negotiations. During supper a note was handed to Hitler. He scanned it, stared into space for a moment, flushed deeply, then banged on the table so hard that the glasses rattled, and exclaimed in a voice breaking with excitement: “I have them! I have them!”"
"After supper Hitler called his entourage together. “We are going to conclude a nonaggression pact with Russia. Here, read this. A telegram from Stalin.”"
"Goebbels held an evening press conference on August 23 in which he offered commentary on the pact. Hitler telephoned him immediately afterward. He wanted to know how the foreign correspondents had reacted. With eyes glistening feverishly, he told us what Goebbels had said. “The sensation was fantastic. And when the church bells simultaneously began ringing outside, a British correspondent fatalistically remarked: ‘That is the death knell of the British Empire.’ ” These words made the strongest impression upon Hitler in his euphoria that night. He thought he now stood so high as to be out of the reach of fate.
"In the course of the night we stood on the terrace of the Berghof with Hitler and marveled at a rare natural spectacle. Northern lights1 of unusual intensity threw red light on the legend-haunted Untersberg across the valley, while the sky above shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow. The last act of Götterdämmerung could not have been more effectively staged. The same red light bathed our faces and our hands. The display produced a curiously pensive mood among us. Abruptly turning to one of his military adjutants, Hitler said: “Looks like a great deal of blood. This time we won’t bring it off without violence.”"
"Only a few days later Hitler’s motorcade was moving along the autobahn to Munich. There were ten cars at long distances from one another, for security. My wife and I were in one of the cars. It was a beautiful, cloudless sunny day at the end of summer. The populace remained unusually silent as Hitler drove by. Hardly anyone waved. In Berlin, too, it was strikingly quiet in the vicinity of the Chancellery. Usually, when Hitler’s private standard was raised to indicate his presence, the building was besieged by people who cheered him as he drove out and in."
................................................................................................
"Out of the rush of events I particularly remembered one evening in the conservatory of the Chancellor’s residence. I had the impression that Hitler looked exhausted from overwork. He spoke with deep conviction to his intimate circle: “This time the mistake of 1914 will be avoided. Everything depends on making the other side accept responsibility. In 1914 that was handled clumsily. And now again the ideas of the Foreign Office are simply useless. The best thing is for me to compose the notes myself.”"
"I noted down Heinrici’s remarkable story as follows: “Hitler said that he was the first man since Charlemagne to hold unlimited power in his own hand. He did not hold this power in vain, he said, but would know how to use it in a struggle for Germany. If the war were not won, that would mean that Germany had not stood the test of strength; in that case she would deserve to be and would be doomed.”"
"In October, Hanke told me something which had been learned when German troops met Soviet troops on the demarcation line in Poland: that Soviet equipment appeared extremely deficient, in fact wretched. Hanke had reported this to Hitler. Army officers confirmed this point; Hitler must have listened to this piece of intelligence with the keenest interest, for thereafter he repeatedly cited this report as evidence that the Russians were weak and poorly organized. Soon afterward, the failure of the Soviet offensive against Finland confirmed him in this view."
"In spite of all the secrecy I obtained some light on Hitler’s further plans when he gave me the assignment, still in 1939, to fit out a headquarters for him in western Germany. Ziegenberg, a manorial estate of Goethe’s time, situated near Nauheim in the foothills of the Taunus range, was modernized by us for this purpose, and provided with shelters."
................................................................................................
Speer describes graphically but succinctly the empty town of Rheims and the refugees fleeing as German forces advanced, and then finishes the short paragraph with saying he saw similar scenes in Germany three years later. He's already described how people in Germany were unwilling and unhappy about this war, and thus he proceeds to equalise travails of the two, Germans and the citizens of countries invaded by Germany. But this is a clever device to wipe out the travails of the latter and the fact that those travails were imposed by the Nazi regime he worked for, asnd push it all under the rug while he recounts his story.
"After a last look at Paris we drove swiftly back to the airport. By nine o’clock in the morning the sightseeing tour was over. “It was the dream of my life to be permitted to see Paris. I cannot say how happy I am to have that dream fulfilled today.” For a moment I felt something like pity for him: three hours in Paris, the one and only time he was to see it, made him happy when he stood at the height of his triumphs."
"That same evening he received me once more in the small room in the peasant house. He was sitting alone at table. Without more ado he declared: “Draw up a decree in my name ordering full-scale resumption of work on the Berlin buildings…. Wasn’t Paris beautiful? But Berlin must be made far more beautiful. In the past I often considered whether we would not have to destroy Paris,” he continued with great calm, as if he were talking about the most natural thing in the world. “But when we are finished in Berlin, Paris will only be a shadow. So why should we destroy it?” With that, I was dismissed.
"Although I was accustomed to hearing Hitler make impulsive remarks, I was nevertheless shocked by this cool display of vandalism. He had reacted in a similar fashion to the devastation of Warsaw. At the time he had announced that he was not going to allow the city to be rebuilt, in order to deprive the Polish people of their political and cultural center. Warsaw, however, had been devastated by acts of war. Now Hitler was showing that he could entertain the thought of wantonly and without cause annihilating the city which he himself had called the most beautiful in Europe, with all its priceless artistic treasures."
Speer describes graphically but succinctly the empty town of Rheims and the refugees fleeing as German forces advanced, and then finishes the short paragraph with saying he saw similar scenes in Germany three years later. He's already described how people in Germany were unwilling and unhappy about this war, and thus he proceeds to equalise travails of the two, Germans and the citizens of countries invaded by Germany. But this is a clever device to wipe out the travails of the latter and the fact that those travails were imposed by the Nazi regime he worked for, asnd push it all under the rug while he recounts his story.
................................................................................................
"After a last look at Paris we drove swiftly back to the airport. By nine o’clock in the morning the sightseeing tour was over. “It was the dream of my life to be permitted to see Paris. I cannot say how happy I am to have that dream fulfilled today.” For a moment I felt something like pity for him: three hours in Paris, the one and only time he was to see it, made him happy when he stood at the height of his triumphs."
"That same evening he received me once more in the small room in the peasant house. He was sitting alone at table. Without more ado he declared: “Draw up a decree in my name ordering full-scale resumption of work on the Berlin buildings…. Wasn’t Paris beautiful? But Berlin must be made far more beautiful. In the past I often considered whether we would not have to destroy Paris,” he continued with great calm, as if he were talking about the most natural thing in the world. “But when we are finished in Berlin, Paris will only be a shadow. So why should we destroy it?” With that, I was dismissed.
"Although I was accustomed to hearing Hitler make impulsive remarks, I was nevertheless shocked by this cool display of vandalism. He had reacted in a similar fashion to the devastation of Warsaw. At the time he had announced that he was not going to allow the city to be rebuilt, in order to deprive the Polish people of their political and cultural center. Warsaw, however, had been devastated by acts of war. Now Hitler was showing that he could entertain the thought of wantonly and without cause annihilating the city which he himself had called the most beautiful in Europe, with all its priceless artistic treasures."
................................................................................................
Speer states
"Hitler made no inroads on the famous state art collections of France."
Whether Speer really was ignorant or is lying in hope that those who wish to believe him will find his statement giving them strength, is unclear. What is known is that art treasures were stolen by nazi occupying regimes from everywhere and sent to Germany, later recovered partly by Monuments men and women, to be returned to where they belonged; some were destroyed by the nazis as allied forces arrived, and some probably remain hidden where nazis hid them. Speer mentions that art was mostly taken from Jewish private owners, and this is simply untrue, it was looted even from churches and cathedrals, but this statement is typical of the type of lies one can hear from a nazi who claims to accept that horrors were perpetrated and as a German they cannot deny responsibility - before they proceed to lie, including about such loot of art treasures; when asked, they say Jews left, and the art was returned to them; they're hoping you don't know they are lying, and you'd believe them.
But there is something even more insidious there, in that Speer is expecting most antisemitic readers to find it acceptable that nazis stole from Jews, as long as he says they didn't rob others.
"In the salon at the Berghof stood a large globe on which, a few months later, I found traces of this unsuccessful conference. One of the army adjutants pointed out, with a significant look, an ordinary pencil line: a line running from north to south along the Urals. Hitler had drawn it to indicate the future boundary between his sphere of interest and that of the Japanese. On June 21, 1941, the eve of the attack on the Soviet Union, Hitler called me into his Berlin salon after dinner, had a record put on and a few bars from Liszt’s Les Préludes played. “You’ll hear that often in the near future, because it is going to be our victory fanfare for the Russian campaign. Funk chose it. How do you like it?"
"Hitler’s ideas about the political constitution of his “Teutonic Empire of the German Nation” still seemed quite vague, but he had already made up his mind about one point: In the immediate vicinity of the Norwegian city of Trondheim, which offered a particularly favorable strategic position, the largest German naval base was to arise. Along with shipyards and docks a city for a quarter of a million Germans would be built and incorporated into the German Reich. Hitler had commissioned me to do the planning. .... May 13, 1942, he discussed this base in the course of a conference on armaments. Special maps were prepared from which he studied the optimum position of the docks, and he decided that a large underground submarine base was to be blasted into the granite cliff. For the rest, Hitler assumed that St. Nazaire and Lorient in France, as well as the British Channel Islands, would be incorporated into a future naval base system. Thus he disposed at will of territories, interests, and rights belonging to others; by now he was totally convinced of his world dominion."
"In the autumn of 1941, Hitler was convinced that the Russians were already defeated; he therefore wanted priority to be given to building up the air force in preparation for his next operation, the subjugation of England."
"The German military organization had been unable to cope with the Russian winter. Moreover, the Soviet troops in the course of their retreat had systematically wiped out all locomotive sheds, watering stations, and other technical apparatus of their railroad system. In the intoxication of success during the summer and autumn when it seemed that “the Russian bear is already finished,” no one had given sufficient thought to the repair of this equipment. Hitler had refused to understand that such technical measures must be taken well ahead of time, in view of the Russian winter.
"Todt had just returned from a long tour of inspection in the eastern theater of war. He had seen stalled hospital trains in which the wounded had frozen to death and had witnessed the misery of the troops in villages and hamlets cut off by snow and cold."
Speer states
"Hitler made no inroads on the famous state art collections of France."
Whether Speer really was ignorant or is lying in hope that those who wish to believe him will find his statement giving them strength, is unclear. What is known is that art treasures were stolen by nazi occupying regimes from everywhere and sent to Germany, later recovered partly by Monuments men and women, to be returned to where they belonged; some were destroyed by the nazis as allied forces arrived, and some probably remain hidden where nazis hid them. Speer mentions that art was mostly taken from Jewish private owners, and this is simply untrue, it was looted even from churches and cathedrals, but this statement is typical of the type of lies one can hear from a nazi who claims to accept that horrors were perpetrated and as a German they cannot deny responsibility - before they proceed to lie, including about such loot of art treasures; when asked, they say Jews left, and the art was returned to them; they're hoping you don't know they are lying, and you'd believe them.
But there is something even more insidious there, in that Speer is expecting most antisemitic readers to find it acceptable that nazis stole from Jews, as long as he says they didn't rob others.
................................................................................................
"In the salon at the Berghof stood a large globe on which, a few months later, I found traces of this unsuccessful conference. One of the army adjutants pointed out, with a significant look, an ordinary pencil line: a line running from north to south along the Urals. Hitler had drawn it to indicate the future boundary between his sphere of interest and that of the Japanese. On June 21, 1941, the eve of the attack on the Soviet Union, Hitler called me into his Berlin salon after dinner, had a record put on and a few bars from Liszt’s Les Préludes played. “You’ll hear that often in the near future, because it is going to be our victory fanfare for the Russian campaign. Funk chose it. How do you like it?"
"Hitler’s ideas about the political constitution of his “Teutonic Empire of the German Nation” still seemed quite vague, but he had already made up his mind about one point: In the immediate vicinity of the Norwegian city of Trondheim, which offered a particularly favorable strategic position, the largest German naval base was to arise. Along with shipyards and docks a city for a quarter of a million Germans would be built and incorporated into the German Reich. Hitler had commissioned me to do the planning. .... May 13, 1942, he discussed this base in the course of a conference on armaments. Special maps were prepared from which he studied the optimum position of the docks, and he decided that a large underground submarine base was to be blasted into the granite cliff. For the rest, Hitler assumed that St. Nazaire and Lorient in France, as well as the British Channel Islands, would be incorporated into a future naval base system. Thus he disposed at will of territories, interests, and rights belonging to others; by now he was totally convinced of his world dominion."
"In the autumn of 1941, Hitler was convinced that the Russians were already defeated; he therefore wanted priority to be given to building up the air force in preparation for his next operation, the subjugation of England."
"The German military organization had been unable to cope with the Russian winter. Moreover, the Soviet troops in the course of their retreat had systematically wiped out all locomotive sheds, watering stations, and other technical apparatus of their railroad system. In the intoxication of success during the summer and autumn when it seemed that “the Russian bear is already finished,” no one had given sufficient thought to the repair of this equipment. Hitler had refused to understand that such technical measures must be taken well ahead of time, in view of the Russian winter.
"Todt had just returned from a long tour of inspection in the eastern theater of war. He had seen stalled hospital trains in which the wounded had frozen to death and had witnessed the misery of the troops in villages and hamlets cut off by snow and cold."
................................................................................................
Speer travelled with Sepp Dietrich to Dnepropetrovsk in January 1942.
"Huddled close together, we sat in a Heinkel bomber refitted as a passenger plane. Beneath us the dreary, snow-covered plains of southern Russia flowed by. On large farms we saw the burned sheds and barns. To keep our direction, we flew along the railroad line. Scarcely a train could be seen; the stations were burned out, the roundhouses destroyed. Roads were rare, and they too were empty of vehicles. The great stretches of land we passed over were frightening in their deathly silence, which could be felt even inside the plane. Only gusts of snow broke the monotony of the landscape—or, rather, emphasized it. This flight brought home to me the danger to the armies almost cut off from supplies. At dusk we landed in the Russian industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk."
What he does not mention is villages and whole communities in occupied Russian territory burned by German forces, and most populations massacred, often burnt alive and shot dead if attempting to escape. This amounted to millions.
Hence the deathly silence of the completely empty landscape. Lebensraum that German forces were ordered to clear up so Germans could be brought to settle and occupy the land right up to Urals.
"In this hopeless situation, on January 15, 1943, Hitler signed a special decree giving Field Marshal Milch the power to take all measures in the air force and the civilian air fleet that he considered necessary for supplying Stalingrad—without asking Goering’s permission..*
"Milch directed this operation from the air force headquarters south of Stalingrad. He was able to increase the flights to Stalingrad appreciably, so that at least some of the wounded could be evacuated. After performing his mission, Milch was received by Hitler. Their conversation ended in a violent clash over the desperate military situation, whose seriousness Hitler still refused to acknowledge.
"At the time I telephoned Milch several times, for he had promised me to rescue my brother, who was caught with the rest of the encircled troops in Stalingrad. In the general confusion, however, it proved impossible to locate him. Desperate letters came from him. He had jaundice and swollen limbs, was taken to a field hospital, but could not endure conditions there and dragged himself back to his comrades at an artillery observation post. After that nothing more was heard from him. What my parents and I went through was repeated by hundreds of thousands of families who for a time continued to receive airmail letters from the encircled city, until it was all over.†
"Hitler could not have blocked delivery of these letters without causing wild rumors. But when the Soviet Army allowed German prisoners to send home postcards, Hitler ordered the cards destroyed. Because they were a sign of life from the relatives, they might have mitigated the Russophobia that was being so carefully cultivated by Hitler’s propaganda apparatus. Fritzsche told me about this at Nuremberg.
"In the future Hitler never said another word about the catastrophe for which he and Goering were alone responsible. Instead, he commanded the immediate formation of a new Sixth Army which was supposed to restore the glory of the doomed one. A year and a half later, in the middle of August 1944, it too was encircled by the Russians and annihilated.
"Our enemies rightly regarded this disaster at Stalingrad as a turning point in the war. But at Hitler’s headquarters the only reaction was a temporary numbness followed by a rush of feverish staff work in which the most trivial details were threshed over. Hitler began conceiving plans for new victories in 1943. The top leadership of the Reich, already torn by dissension and filled with envy and jealousy, did not close ranks in the face of the peril that was almost upon us. On the contrary, in that den of intrigue which Hitler had created by splitting all the centers of power, the gamblers began playing for higher stakes than ever before."
Perhaps it's clear from the beginning, but it's all the more clear beginning with appointment of Speer in place of Todt, who died in winter of 1941-42 in Prussia when his plane exploded shortly after take off from Rastensburg, and then subsequently when Göring tried again to take over, that Hitler promoting and trusting Speer was about a deep hidden relationship that was more of a paternal mentor with a devoted son that Hitler never had, than about a leader and boss with a follower who worked for him. This aspect is quite visible in the cover photograph as well, once one sees it.
Speer travelled with Sepp Dietrich to Dnepropetrovsk in January 1942.
"Huddled close together, we sat in a Heinkel bomber refitted as a passenger plane. Beneath us the dreary, snow-covered plains of southern Russia flowed by. On large farms we saw the burned sheds and barns. To keep our direction, we flew along the railroad line. Scarcely a train could be seen; the stations were burned out, the roundhouses destroyed. Roads were rare, and they too were empty of vehicles. The great stretches of land we passed over were frightening in their deathly silence, which could be felt even inside the plane. Only gusts of snow broke the monotony of the landscape—or, rather, emphasized it. This flight brought home to me the danger to the armies almost cut off from supplies. At dusk we landed in the Russian industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk."
What he does not mention is villages and whole communities in occupied Russian territory burned by German forces, and most populations massacred, often burnt alive and shot dead if attempting to escape. This amounted to millions.
Hence the deathly silence of the completely empty landscape. Lebensraum that German forces were ordered to clear up so Germans could be brought to settle and occupy the land right up to Urals.
................................................................................................
"In this hopeless situation, on January 15, 1943, Hitler signed a special decree giving Field Marshal Milch the power to take all measures in the air force and the civilian air fleet that he considered necessary for supplying Stalingrad—without asking Goering’s permission..*
"Milch directed this operation from the air force headquarters south of Stalingrad. He was able to increase the flights to Stalingrad appreciably, so that at least some of the wounded could be evacuated. After performing his mission, Milch was received by Hitler. Their conversation ended in a violent clash over the desperate military situation, whose seriousness Hitler still refused to acknowledge.
"At the time I telephoned Milch several times, for he had promised me to rescue my brother, who was caught with the rest of the encircled troops in Stalingrad. In the general confusion, however, it proved impossible to locate him. Desperate letters came from him. He had jaundice and swollen limbs, was taken to a field hospital, but could not endure conditions there and dragged himself back to his comrades at an artillery observation post. After that nothing more was heard from him. What my parents and I went through was repeated by hundreds of thousands of families who for a time continued to receive airmail letters from the encircled city, until it was all over.†
"Hitler could not have blocked delivery of these letters without causing wild rumors. But when the Soviet Army allowed German prisoners to send home postcards, Hitler ordered the cards destroyed. Because they were a sign of life from the relatives, they might have mitigated the Russophobia that was being so carefully cultivated by Hitler’s propaganda apparatus. Fritzsche told me about this at Nuremberg.
"In the future Hitler never said another word about the catastrophe for which he and Goering were alone responsible. Instead, he commanded the immediate formation of a new Sixth Army which was supposed to restore the glory of the doomed one. A year and a half later, in the middle of August 1944, it too was encircled by the Russians and annihilated.
"Our enemies rightly regarded this disaster at Stalingrad as a turning point in the war. But at Hitler’s headquarters the only reaction was a temporary numbness followed by a rush of feverish staff work in which the most trivial details were threshed over. Hitler began conceiving plans for new victories in 1943. The top leadership of the Reich, already torn by dissension and filled with envy and jealousy, did not close ranks in the face of the peril that was almost upon us. On the contrary, in that den of intrigue which Hitler had created by splitting all the centers of power, the gamblers began playing for higher stakes than ever before."
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
"Equipped with Hitler’s grant of full authority, with a peaceable Goering in the background, I could go forward with my comprehensive plan of “industrial self-responsibility,” as I had sketched it in my outline. Today it is generally agreed that the astonishingly rapid rise in armaments production was due to this plan. Its principles, however, were not new. Both Field Marshal Milch and my predecessor Todt had already adopted the procedure of entrusting eminent technicians from leading industrial firms with the management of separate areas of armaments production. But Dr. Todt himself had borrowed this idea. The real creator of the concept of industrial self-responsibility was Walther Rathenau, the great Jewish organizer of the German economy during the First World War. He realized that considerable increases in production could be achieved by exchange of technical experiences, by division of labor from plant to plant, and by standardization. As early as 1917 he declared that such methods could guarantee “a doubling of production with no increase in equipment and no increase in labor costs.”5 On the top floor of Todt’s Ministry sat one of Rathenau’s old assistants who had been active in his raw materials organization during the First World War and had later written a memorandum on its structure. Dr. Todt benefited by his advice."
Again, Speer refrains from mentioning that the very competent and loyal Rathenau, a minister of the federal government of Germany at the time shortly after WWI, was murdered by an antisemitic zealot. It suits his purpose to seem not quite antisemitic by giving credit to Rathenau, but informing a comparatively less informed reader that he was murdered before the nazis came to power, would only remind and strengthen the readers about what was wrong with the rotten party and ideology.
Wonder if he noticed Einstein leaving, and if so, blamed him, or denigrated whole modern physics as his boss did?
"After two and a half years, in spite of the beginning of heavy bombing, we had raised our entire armaments production from an average index figure of 98 for the year 1941 to a summit of 322 in July 1944. During the same period the labor force expanded by only about 30 percent. We had succeeded in doubling the output of labor and had achieved the very results Rathenau had predicted in 1917 as the effect of efficiency: doubling production without increasing equipment or labor costs."
Is he deliberately omitting mention of slave labour, sourced from concentration camps and occupied territories?
"Equipped with Hitler’s grant of full authority, with a peaceable Goering in the background, I could go forward with my comprehensive plan of “industrial self-responsibility,” as I had sketched it in my outline. Today it is generally agreed that the astonishingly rapid rise in armaments production was due to this plan. Its principles, however, were not new. Both Field Marshal Milch and my predecessor Todt had already adopted the procedure of entrusting eminent technicians from leading industrial firms with the management of separate areas of armaments production. But Dr. Todt himself had borrowed this idea. The real creator of the concept of industrial self-responsibility was Walther Rathenau, the great Jewish organizer of the German economy during the First World War. He realized that considerable increases in production could be achieved by exchange of technical experiences, by division of labor from plant to plant, and by standardization. As early as 1917 he declared that such methods could guarantee “a doubling of production with no increase in equipment and no increase in labor costs.”5 On the top floor of Todt’s Ministry sat one of Rathenau’s old assistants who had been active in his raw materials organization during the First World War and had later written a memorandum on its structure. Dr. Todt benefited by his advice."
Again, Speer refrains from mentioning that the very competent and loyal Rathenau, a minister of the federal government of Germany at the time shortly after WWI, was murdered by an antisemitic zealot. It suits his purpose to seem not quite antisemitic by giving credit to Rathenau, but informing a comparatively less informed reader that he was murdered before the nazis came to power, would only remind and strengthen the readers about what was wrong with the rotten party and ideology.
Wonder if he noticed Einstein leaving, and if so, blamed him, or denigrated whole modern physics as his boss did?
................................................................................................
"After two and a half years, in spite of the beginning of heavy bombing, we had raised our entire armaments production from an average index figure of 98 for the year 1941 to a summit of 322 in July 1944. During the same period the labor force expanded by only about 30 percent. We had succeeded in doubling the output of labor and had achieved the very results Rathenau had predicted in 1917 as the effect of efficiency: doubling production without increasing equipment or labor costs."
Is he deliberately omitting mention of slave labour, sourced from concentration camps and occupied territories?
................................................................................................
"Moreover, the bombing raids on German cities forced us to constant ingenuities. There were times when I actually regarded these raids as helpful—witness my ironic reaction to the destruction of the Ministry in the air raid of November 22, 1943: “Although we have been fortunate in that large parts of the current files of the Ministry have burned and so relieved us for a time of useless ballast, we cannot really expect that such events will continually introduce the necessary fresh air into our work.”"
"IT REMAINS ONE OF THE ODDITIES OF THIS WAR THAT HITLER demanded far less from his people than Churchill and Roosevelt did from their respective nations. The discrepancy between the total mobilization of labor forces in democratic England and the casual treatment of this question in authoritarian Germany is proof of the regime’s anxiety not to risk any shift in the popular mood. The German leaders were not disposed to make sacrifices themselves or to ask sacrifices of the people."
That is certainly untrue, in the last part. German people were, first, terrorised, and while not everyone was harnessed by nazis or Gestapo, enough were, so people were living in fear unless they were in complete accord with Nazi thinking or were willing to close their minds due to their advantageous situation such as Speer was in. Most Germans did suffer deprivation through the war years, not only of luxury goods or due to bombings, but far more, including food. And this is not counting the victims of genocide and persecution.
"Alarmed by the setbacks on the Russian front, in the spring of 1942 I considered total mobilization of all auxiliary forces. What was more, I urged that “the war must be ended in the shortest possible time; if not, Germany will lose the war. We must win it by the end of October, before the Russian winter begins, or we have lost it once and for all. Consequently, we can only win with the weapons we have now, not with those we are going to have next year.” In some inexplicable way this situation analysis came to the knowledge of The Times (London), which published it on September 7, 1942. The Times article actually summed up the points on which Milch, Fromm, and I had agreed at the time."
"As I saw it, a mobilization of all reserves should have begun with the heads of the party hierarchy. This seemed all the more proper since Hitler himself had solemnly declared to the Reichstag on September 1, 1939, that there would be no privations which he himself was not prepared to assume at once.
"In actual fact he at last agreed to suspend all the building projects he was still engaged on, including those at Obersalzberg. I cited this noble gesture of the Fuehrer’s two weeks after entering office when I addressed the group that gave us the most difficulties, the assembled Gauleiters and Reichleiters ...."
Seriously??????
While millions were subjected to genocide and slave labour, giving up building monuments to one's megalomaniac illusions of glory was a noble sacrifice?
Speer wrote this long after he accepted guilt, supposedly; obviously, he's not over the hypnotic state and the said acceptance of guilt is only superficial, unless he's divided his consciousness with a neat partition.
"Reichsleiter Bormann was the arch offender. He easily persuaded a vacillating Hitler that the Obersalzberg project need not be canceled. The large crew employed there, who had to be provided for, actually stayed right there on the site until the end of the war, even though three weeks after the meeting I had again wrested a suspension order from Hitler."
"Even after I had made this ringing appeal, Hitler went ahead and had the tumble-down castle of Klessheim near Salzburg rebuilt into a luxurious guest house at an expenditure of many millions of marks. Near Berchtesgaden, Himmler erected a country lodge for his mistress and did it so secretly that I did not hear of it until the last weeks of the war. Even after 1942, Hitler encouraged one of his Gauleiters to renovate a hotel and the Posen Castle, both projects drawing heavily on essential materials. The same Gauleiter had a private residence built for himself in the vicinity of the city. In 1942–43 new special trains were built for Ley, Keitel, and others, although this kind of thing tied down valuable raw materials and technicians. For the most part, however, these whims of the party functionaries were concealed from me."
"After only nine years of rule the leadership was so corrupt that even in the critical phase of the war it could not cut back on its luxurious style of living. For “representational reasons” the leaders all needed big houses, hunting lodges, estates and palaces, many servants, a rich table, and a select wine cellar. ... Hitler himself, wherever he went, first of all issued orders for building bunkers for his personal protection. The thickness of their roofs increased with the caliber of the bombs until it reached sixteen and a half feet. Ultimately there were veritable systems of bunkers in Rastenburg, in Berlin, at Obersalzberg, in Munich, in the guest palace near Salzburg, at the Nauheim headquarters, and on the Somme. And in 1944 he had two underground headquarters blasted into mountains in Silesia and Thuringia, a project tying up hundreds of indispensable mining specialists and thousands of workmen."
The then Princess of Wales and future Queen Elizabeth II, meanwhile, drove an ambulance in a London bombed by Germany incessantly, while her royal parents the King and Queen stayed put, rather than heed pleas of their cabinet to relocate to Canada for safety!
"Moreover, the bombing raids on German cities forced us to constant ingenuities. There were times when I actually regarded these raids as helpful—witness my ironic reaction to the destruction of the Ministry in the air raid of November 22, 1943: “Although we have been fortunate in that large parts of the current files of the Ministry have burned and so relieved us for a time of useless ballast, we cannot really expect that such events will continually introduce the necessary fresh air into our work.”"
................................................................................................
"IT REMAINS ONE OF THE ODDITIES OF THIS WAR THAT HITLER demanded far less from his people than Churchill and Roosevelt did from their respective nations. The discrepancy between the total mobilization of labor forces in democratic England and the casual treatment of this question in authoritarian Germany is proof of the regime’s anxiety not to risk any shift in the popular mood. The German leaders were not disposed to make sacrifices themselves or to ask sacrifices of the people."
That is certainly untrue, in the last part. German people were, first, terrorised, and while not everyone was harnessed by nazis or Gestapo, enough were, so people were living in fear unless they were in complete accord with Nazi thinking or were willing to close their minds due to their advantageous situation such as Speer was in. Most Germans did suffer deprivation through the war years, not only of luxury goods or due to bombings, but far more, including food. And this is not counting the victims of genocide and persecution.
"Alarmed by the setbacks on the Russian front, in the spring of 1942 I considered total mobilization of all auxiliary forces. What was more, I urged that “the war must be ended in the shortest possible time; if not, Germany will lose the war. We must win it by the end of October, before the Russian winter begins, or we have lost it once and for all. Consequently, we can only win with the weapons we have now, not with those we are going to have next year.” In some inexplicable way this situation analysis came to the knowledge of The Times (London), which published it on September 7, 1942. The Times article actually summed up the points on which Milch, Fromm, and I had agreed at the time."
"As I saw it, a mobilization of all reserves should have begun with the heads of the party hierarchy. This seemed all the more proper since Hitler himself had solemnly declared to the Reichstag on September 1, 1939, that there would be no privations which he himself was not prepared to assume at once.
"In actual fact he at last agreed to suspend all the building projects he was still engaged on, including those at Obersalzberg. I cited this noble gesture of the Fuehrer’s two weeks after entering office when I addressed the group that gave us the most difficulties, the assembled Gauleiters and Reichleiters ...."
Seriously??????
While millions were subjected to genocide and slave labour, giving up building monuments to one's megalomaniac illusions of glory was a noble sacrifice?
Speer wrote this long after he accepted guilt, supposedly; obviously, he's not over the hypnotic state and the said acceptance of guilt is only superficial, unless he's divided his consciousness with a neat partition.
"Reichsleiter Bormann was the arch offender. He easily persuaded a vacillating Hitler that the Obersalzberg project need not be canceled. The large crew employed there, who had to be provided for, actually stayed right there on the site until the end of the war, even though three weeks after the meeting I had again wrested a suspension order from Hitler."
"Even after I had made this ringing appeal, Hitler went ahead and had the tumble-down castle of Klessheim near Salzburg rebuilt into a luxurious guest house at an expenditure of many millions of marks. Near Berchtesgaden, Himmler erected a country lodge for his mistress and did it so secretly that I did not hear of it until the last weeks of the war. Even after 1942, Hitler encouraged one of his Gauleiters to renovate a hotel and the Posen Castle, both projects drawing heavily on essential materials. The same Gauleiter had a private residence built for himself in the vicinity of the city. In 1942–43 new special trains were built for Ley, Keitel, and others, although this kind of thing tied down valuable raw materials and technicians. For the most part, however, these whims of the party functionaries were concealed from me."
"After only nine years of rule the leadership was so corrupt that even in the critical phase of the war it could not cut back on its luxurious style of living. For “representational reasons” the leaders all needed big houses, hunting lodges, estates and palaces, many servants, a rich table, and a select wine cellar. ... Hitler himself, wherever he went, first of all issued orders for building bunkers for his personal protection. The thickness of their roofs increased with the caliber of the bombs until it reached sixteen and a half feet. Ultimately there were veritable systems of bunkers in Rastenburg, in Berlin, at Obersalzberg, in Munich, in the guest palace near Salzburg, at the Nauheim headquarters, and on the Somme. And in 1944 he had two underground headquarters blasted into mountains in Silesia and Thuringia, a project tying up hundreds of indispensable mining specialists and thousands of workmen."
The then Princess of Wales and future Queen Elizabeth II, meanwhile, drove an ambulance in a London bombed by Germany incessantly, while her royal parents the King and Queen stayed put, rather than heed pleas of their cabinet to relocate to Canada for safety!
................................................................................................
"I am sure that Hitler would not have hesitated for a moment to employ atom bombs against England. I remember his reaction to the final scene of a newsreel on the bombing of Warsaw in the autumn of 1939. We were sitting with him and Goebbels in his Berlin salon watching the film. Clouds of smoke darkened the sky; dive bombers tilted and hurtled toward their goal; we could watch the flight of the released bombs, the pull-out of the planes and the cloud from the explosions expanding gigantically. The effect was enhanced by running the film in slow motion. Hitler was fascinated. The film ended with a montage showing a plane diving toward the outlines of the British Isles. A burst of flame followed, and the island flew into the air in tatters. Hitler’s enthusiasm was unbounded. “That is what will happen to them!” he cried out, carried away. “That is how we will annihilate them!”"
Anybody inform Patrick Buchanan?
................................................................................................
"Our failure to pursue the possibilities of atomic warfare can be partly traced to ideological reasons. Hitler had great respect for Philipp Lenard, the physicist who had received the Nobel Prize in 1920 and was one of the few early adherents of Nazism among the ranks of the scientists. Lenard had instilled the idea in Hitler that the Jews were exerting a seditious influence in their concern with nuclear physics and the relativity theory. To his table companions Hitler occasionally referred to nuclear physics as “Jewish physics”—citing Lenard as his authority for this. This view was taken up by Rosenberg. It thus becomes clearer why the Minister of Education was not inclined to support nuclear research."
What Speer isn't saying is that German understanding, and consequently research, in the field was not only far behind but had taken a wrong turn. When told U.S. had done it, they - the German physicists in allied captivity - were convinced that it was propaganda for purposes of deception, since they thought such a thing was impossible.
"Hitler himself used to say, during those war years: “The loser of this war will be the side that makes the greatest blunders.” For Hitler, by a succession of wrong-headed decisions, helped to speed the end of a war already lost because of productive capacities—for example, by his confused planning of the air war against England, by the shortage of U-boats at the beginning of the war, and, in general, by his failure to develop an overall plan of the war. So that when many German memoirs comment on Hitler’s decisive mistakes, the writers are completely right. But all that does not mean that the war could have been won."
Here one can clearly see the underlying mindset most Germans have, which is, losing the war was the single wrong with German history of WWII.
"Supplies could no longer keep up; the spare parts the tanks carried with them had long since been consumed, so that the fighting wedge was steadily thinning out. Moreover, our monthly armaments production lagged far behind the demands of an offensive over such enormous spaces."
"Hitler realized none of this. With the enemy supposedly too weak to offer any resistance, he wanted the exhausted German troops to thrust on to the southern side of the Caucasus, toward Georgia. He therefore detached considerable forces from the already weakened wedge and directed them to advance beyond Maikop toward Sochi. These contingents were supposed to reach Sukhumi by way of the narrow coastal road. This was where the main blow was to be delivered; he assumed that the territory north of the Caucasus would fall easily to him in any case.
"But the units were done in. They could no longer push forward, however imperiously Hitler ordered it. In the situation conferences Hitler was shown aerial photos of the impenetrable walnut forests outside Sochi. Chief of Staff Halder warned Hitler that the Russians could easily render the coastal road impassable for a long time by blasting the steep slopes. In any case, he argued, the road was too narrow for the advance of large troop units. But Hitler remained unimpressed:
"These difficulties can be overcome as all difficulties can be overcome! First we must conquer the road. Then the way is open to the plains south of the Caucasus. There we can deploy our armies freely and set up supply camps. Then, in one or two years, we’ll start an offensive into the underbelly of the British Empire. With a minimum of effort we can liberate Persia and Iraq. The Indians will hail our divisions enthusiastically."
"A grotesque example demonstrates the extent to which the Gauleiters, as Hitler’s immediate subordinates, disregarded decisions by the official agencies: Leipzig was the headquarters of the Reich’s Central Agency for the Fur Trade. One day the local Gauleiter, Mutschmann, informed the director of the agency that he had appointed one of his friends as the director’s successor. The Minister of Economics protested vigorously, since the director of a central agency could be appointed only by Berlin. The Gauleiter summarily ordered the director to vacate his post within a few days. In the face of this power clash, the Minister of Economics resorted to an absurd solution: The night before the post was to be handed over to the Gauleiter’s friend, trucks from Berlin drove up to the doors and transferred the entire fur trade agency, including its files and its director, to Berlin."
"I am sure that Hitler would not have hesitated for a moment to employ atom bombs against England. I remember his reaction to the final scene of a newsreel on the bombing of Warsaw in the autumn of 1939. We were sitting with him and Goebbels in his Berlin salon watching the film. Clouds of smoke darkened the sky; dive bombers tilted and hurtled toward their goal; we could watch the flight of the released bombs, the pull-out of the planes and the cloud from the explosions expanding gigantically. The effect was enhanced by running the film in slow motion. Hitler was fascinated. The film ended with a montage showing a plane diving toward the outlines of the British Isles. A burst of flame followed, and the island flew into the air in tatters. Hitler’s enthusiasm was unbounded. “That is what will happen to them!” he cried out, carried away. “That is how we will annihilate them!”"
Anybody inform Patrick Buchanan?
................................................................................................
"Our failure to pursue the possibilities of atomic warfare can be partly traced to ideological reasons. Hitler had great respect for Philipp Lenard, the physicist who had received the Nobel Prize in 1920 and was one of the few early adherents of Nazism among the ranks of the scientists. Lenard had instilled the idea in Hitler that the Jews were exerting a seditious influence in their concern with nuclear physics and the relativity theory. To his table companions Hitler occasionally referred to nuclear physics as “Jewish physics”—citing Lenard as his authority for this. This view was taken up by Rosenberg. It thus becomes clearer why the Minister of Education was not inclined to support nuclear research."
What Speer isn't saying is that German understanding, and consequently research, in the field was not only far behind but had taken a wrong turn. When told U.S. had done it, they - the German physicists in allied captivity - were convinced that it was propaganda for purposes of deception, since they thought such a thing was impossible.
"Hitler himself used to say, during those war years: “The loser of this war will be the side that makes the greatest blunders.” For Hitler, by a succession of wrong-headed decisions, helped to speed the end of a war already lost because of productive capacities—for example, by his confused planning of the air war against England, by the shortage of U-boats at the beginning of the war, and, in general, by his failure to develop an overall plan of the war. So that when many German memoirs comment on Hitler’s decisive mistakes, the writers are completely right. But all that does not mean that the war could have been won."
Here one can clearly see the underlying mindset most Germans have, which is, losing the war was the single wrong with German history of WWII.
................................................................................................
"Supplies could no longer keep up; the spare parts the tanks carried with them had long since been consumed, so that the fighting wedge was steadily thinning out. Moreover, our monthly armaments production lagged far behind the demands of an offensive over such enormous spaces."
"Hitler realized none of this. With the enemy supposedly too weak to offer any resistance, he wanted the exhausted German troops to thrust on to the southern side of the Caucasus, toward Georgia. He therefore detached considerable forces from the already weakened wedge and directed them to advance beyond Maikop toward Sochi. These contingents were supposed to reach Sukhumi by way of the narrow coastal road. This was where the main blow was to be delivered; he assumed that the territory north of the Caucasus would fall easily to him in any case.
"But the units were done in. They could no longer push forward, however imperiously Hitler ordered it. In the situation conferences Hitler was shown aerial photos of the impenetrable walnut forests outside Sochi. Chief of Staff Halder warned Hitler that the Russians could easily render the coastal road impassable for a long time by blasting the steep slopes. In any case, he argued, the road was too narrow for the advance of large troop units. But Hitler remained unimpressed:
"These difficulties can be overcome as all difficulties can be overcome! First we must conquer the road. Then the way is open to the plains south of the Caucasus. There we can deploy our armies freely and set up supply camps. Then, in one or two years, we’ll start an offensive into the underbelly of the British Empire. With a minimum of effort we can liberate Persia and Iraq. The Indians will hail our divisions enthusiastically."
................................................................................................
"On the afternoon of November 7, 1942, I accompanied Hitler to Munich in his special train."
"Late in the evening we sat with Hitler in his rosewood-paneled dining car. The table was elegantly set with silver flatware, cut glass, good china, and flower arrangements. As we began our ample meal, none of us at first saw that a freight train was stopped on the adjacent track. From the cattle car bedraggled, starved, and in some cases wounded German soldiers just returning from the east, stared at the diners. With a start, Hitler noticed the somber scene two yards from his window. Without as much as a gesture of greeting in their direction, he peremptorily ordered his servant to draw the shades. This, then, in the second half of the war, was how Hitler handled a meeting with ordinary front-line soldiers such as he himself had once been."
It's worth reading the reactions to allied forces landing in North Africa.
Speer relates about losing the battle of Stalingrad at length, about how Hitler insisted the Sixth Army hold on despite lack of rations and fuel and other supplies, how Göring promised supplies by air but only managed a fraction, how Zeitzler fought every day to save the army.
"In this hopeless situation, on January 15, 1943, Hitler signed a special decree giving Field Marshal Milch the power to take all measures in the air force and the civilian air fleet that he considered necessary for supplying Stalingrad—without asking Goering’s permission.. At the time I telephoned Milch several times, for he had promised me to rescue my brother, who was caught with the rest of the encircled troops in Stalingrad. In the general confusion, however, it proved impossible to locate him. Desperate letters came from him. He had jaundice and swollen limbs, was taken to a field hospital, but could not endure conditions there and dragged himself back to his comrades at an artillery observation post. After that nothing more was heard from him. What my parents and I went through was repeated by hundreds of thousands of families who for a time continued to receive airmail letters from the encircled city, until it was all over. In the future Hitler never said another word about the catastrophe for which he and Goering were alone responsible. Instead, he commanded the immediate formation of a new Sixth Army which was supposed to restore the glory of the doomed one. A year and a half later, in the middle of August 1944, it too was encircled by the Russians and annihilated."
"At a simple supper in a small back room of the Chancellery furnished in peasant style, I by chance heard from Sepp Dietrich, the commander of Hitler’s bodyguard, that Hitler intended to issue an order that this time no prisoners were to be taken. In the course of advances by SS units it had been established, Dietrich said, that the Soviet troops had killed their German prisoners. Hitler had then and there announced that a thousandfold retaliation in blood must be taken."
This was supposed to be Operation Citadel, in 1943. Again, either Speer is lying or was ignorant then, and isn't mentioning if he learned better since; fact is policy directives explicitly stated that populations of all occupied lands East of Germany were to be used as slave labour, food from those lands was for Germans, and any intellectuals or landlords or anyone more than peasant labour were to be executed; this was all stated and conveyed to not only SS units but the Generals as policy to be followed, before the invasions. And followed it was. In Belarus alone millions were massacred by whole villages being burnt along with their residents.
"On the afternoon of November 7, 1942, I accompanied Hitler to Munich in his special train."
"Late in the evening we sat with Hitler in his rosewood-paneled dining car. The table was elegantly set with silver flatware, cut glass, good china, and flower arrangements. As we began our ample meal, none of us at first saw that a freight train was stopped on the adjacent track. From the cattle car bedraggled, starved, and in some cases wounded German soldiers just returning from the east, stared at the diners. With a start, Hitler noticed the somber scene two yards from his window. Without as much as a gesture of greeting in their direction, he peremptorily ordered his servant to draw the shades. This, then, in the second half of the war, was how Hitler handled a meeting with ordinary front-line soldiers such as he himself had once been."
It's worth reading the reactions to allied forces landing in North Africa.
Speer relates about losing the battle of Stalingrad at length, about how Hitler insisted the Sixth Army hold on despite lack of rations and fuel and other supplies, how Göring promised supplies by air but only managed a fraction, how Zeitzler fought every day to save the army.
"In this hopeless situation, on January 15, 1943, Hitler signed a special decree giving Field Marshal Milch the power to take all measures in the air force and the civilian air fleet that he considered necessary for supplying Stalingrad—without asking Goering’s permission.. At the time I telephoned Milch several times, for he had promised me to rescue my brother, who was caught with the rest of the encircled troops in Stalingrad. In the general confusion, however, it proved impossible to locate him. Desperate letters came from him. He had jaundice and swollen limbs, was taken to a field hospital, but could not endure conditions there and dragged himself back to his comrades at an artillery observation post. After that nothing more was heard from him. What my parents and I went through was repeated by hundreds of thousands of families who for a time continued to receive airmail letters from the encircled city, until it was all over. In the future Hitler never said another word about the catastrophe for which he and Goering were alone responsible. Instead, he commanded the immediate formation of a new Sixth Army which was supposed to restore the glory of the doomed one. A year and a half later, in the middle of August 1944, it too was encircled by the Russians and annihilated."
................................................................................................
"At a simple supper in a small back room of the Chancellery furnished in peasant style, I by chance heard from Sepp Dietrich, the commander of Hitler’s bodyguard, that Hitler intended to issue an order that this time no prisoners were to be taken. In the course of advances by SS units it had been established, Dietrich said, that the Soviet troops had killed their German prisoners. Hitler had then and there announced that a thousandfold retaliation in blood must be taken."
This was supposed to be Operation Citadel, in 1943. Again, either Speer is lying or was ignorant then, and isn't mentioning if he learned better since; fact is policy directives explicitly stated that populations of all occupied lands East of Germany were to be used as slave labour, food from those lands was for Germans, and any intellectuals or landlords or anyone more than peasant labour were to be executed; this was all stated and conveyed to not only SS units but the Generals as policy to be followed, before the invasions. And followed it was. In Belarus alone millions were massacred by whole villages being burnt along with their residents.
................................................................................................
"Our heaviest expense was in fact the elaborate defensive measures. In the Reich and in the western theaters of war the barrels of ten thousand antiaircraft guns were pointed toward the sky. The same guns could have well been employed in Russia against tanks and other ground targets. Had it not been for this new front, the air front over Germany, our defensive strength against tanks would have been about doubled, as far as equipment was concerned. Moreover, the antiaircraft force tied down hundreds of thousands of young soldiers. A third of the optical industry was busy producing gunsights for the flak batteries. About half of the electronics industry was engaged in producing radar and communications networks for defense against bombing. Simply because of this, in spite of the high level of the German electronics and optical industries, the supply of our frontline troops with modern equipment remained far behind that of the Western armies."
That paragraph ought to be taught across U.S. in junior high until it's well understood. One gets tired of ignoramus boasters on internet going on about U.S. rescuing Europe and U.K.. Fact is, but for Britain holding on and Russia fighting back as tenaciously as she did, it just as well could have been U.S. that would have had to fight nazis at every possible border! And Speer testifying here to RAF keeping German defence on its toes making it all the more difficult for their war on East front is key to understanding how each of the component of the allied forces were vital to the whole - for surely the partisans of France and across Europe, as well as the French and Polish armies of De Gaulle and General Sikorsky, and others, were just as vital to the whole.
"When we were together in Spandau prison, Funk told me the details of an incident which he had only dared hint at in 1944. Sometime in the autumn of 1943 the staff of Sepp Dietrich’s SS army had held a drinking bout Dr. Gebhardt was among the guests. Funk himself had heard about it through his friend and formed adjutant Horst Walter, who at the time was Dietrich’s adjutant It seemed that Gebhardt had remarked to this circle of SS leaders that in Himmler’s opinion Speer was dangerous; he would have to disappear."
................................................................................................
"My takeover of the air armaments industry was a minor matter compared with the havoc being wrought in Germany by the enemy air forces. After a pause of only two weeks, during which their air strength was mostly used for supporting the invasion, the Allies staged a new series of attacks which put many fuel plants out of action."
"In Spandau prison, Funk confided to me that the one reason he, Funk, was able to deceive the doctors so consistently and credibly about his health was that he believed his own lies. He added that this attitude had been the basis of Goebbels’s propaganda. Similarly, I can only explain Hitler’s rigid attitude on the grounds that he made himself believe in his ultimate victory."
"Our heaviest expense was in fact the elaborate defensive measures. In the Reich and in the western theaters of war the barrels of ten thousand antiaircraft guns were pointed toward the sky. The same guns could have well been employed in Russia against tanks and other ground targets. Had it not been for this new front, the air front over Germany, our defensive strength against tanks would have been about doubled, as far as equipment was concerned. Moreover, the antiaircraft force tied down hundreds of thousands of young soldiers. A third of the optical industry was busy producing gunsights for the flak batteries. About half of the electronics industry was engaged in producing radar and communications networks for defense against bombing. Simply because of this, in spite of the high level of the German electronics and optical industries, the supply of our frontline troops with modern equipment remained far behind that of the Western armies."
That paragraph ought to be taught across U.S. in junior high until it's well understood. One gets tired of ignoramus boasters on internet going on about U.S. rescuing Europe and U.K.. Fact is, but for Britain holding on and Russia fighting back as tenaciously as she did, it just as well could have been U.S. that would have had to fight nazis at every possible border! And Speer testifying here to RAF keeping German defence on its toes making it all the more difficult for their war on East front is key to understanding how each of the component of the allied forces were vital to the whole - for surely the partisans of France and across Europe, as well as the French and Polish armies of De Gaulle and General Sikorsky, and others, were just as vital to the whole.
................................................................................................
"When we were together in Spandau prison, Funk told me the details of an incident which he had only dared hint at in 1944. Sometime in the autumn of 1943 the staff of Sepp Dietrich’s SS army had held a drinking bout Dr. Gebhardt was among the guests. Funk himself had heard about it through his friend and formed adjutant Horst Walter, who at the time was Dietrich’s adjutant It seemed that Gebhardt had remarked to this circle of SS leaders that in Himmler’s opinion Speer was dangerous; he would have to disappear."
................................................................................................
"My takeover of the air armaments industry was a minor matter compared with the havoc being wrought in Germany by the enemy air forces. After a pause of only two weeks, during which their air strength was mostly used for supporting the invasion, the Allies staged a new series of attacks which put many fuel plants out of action."
................................................................................................
"In Spandau prison, Funk confided to me that the one reason he, Funk, was able to deceive the doctors so consistently and credibly about his health was that he believed his own lies. He added that this attitude had been the basis of Goebbels’s propaganda. Similarly, I can only explain Hitler’s rigid attitude on the grounds that he made himself believe in his ultimate victory."
................................................................................................
"After postponing the development of the jet fighter and later converting it into a light bomber. Hitler now decided to use our big new rockets to retaliate against England."
Speer was thrilled to be associated with the V-1 And V-2 projects, even before he was minister in charge of armaments, and kept it going long after hitler had given it up and stopped funding.
"On October 14, 1942, I was able to inform him that his doubts could be over. The second rocket had successfully flown the prescribed course of one hundred and twenty miles and had struck within two and a half miles of the target."
Notice the bland "target", instead of admitting it was London, and the grim reality of aiming to massacre a few hundred, a few thousand, civilians in their homes, babies and women and old and all? Thus does Speer veil the reality of those years, with velvet curtains hung high and Wagnerian music of Valkyrie veiling the screams of victims.
"It seemed like the first step toward a dream. Only at this point did Hitler, too, show lively interest. As usual, his desires underwent instant inflation. He insisted that before the rocket was put into action a flock of five thousand missiles was to be ready, “available for wholesale commitment.”"
Wholesale commitment? Would that be annihilating British isles and U.S., canada and Russia and anyone else who dared not submit? Quite a la Chingis Khan weren't they! No wonder Brits called them Huns.
"After postponing the development of the jet fighter and later converting it into a light bomber. Hitler now decided to use our big new rockets to retaliate against England."
................................................................................................
Speer was thrilled to be associated with the V-1 And V-2 projects, even before he was minister in charge of armaments, and kept it going long after hitler had given it up and stopped funding.
"On October 14, 1942, I was able to inform him that his doubts could be over. The second rocket had successfully flown the prescribed course of one hundred and twenty miles and had struck within two and a half miles of the target."
Notice the bland "target", instead of admitting it was London, and the grim reality of aiming to massacre a few hundred, a few thousand, civilians in their homes, babies and women and old and all? Thus does Speer veil the reality of those years, with velvet curtains hung high and Wagnerian music of Valkyrie veiling the screams of victims.
"It seemed like the first step toward a dream. Only at this point did Hitler, too, show lively interest. As usual, his desires underwent instant inflation. He insisted that before the rocket was put into action a flock of five thousand missiles was to be ready, “available for wholesale commitment.”"
Wholesale commitment? Would that be annihilating British isles and U.S., canada and Russia and anyone else who dared not submit? Quite a la Chingis Khan weren't they! No wonder Brits called them Huns.
................................................................................................
"After Hitler had become excited over the V-2 project, Himmler entered the picture. Six weeks later he came to Hitler to propose the simplest way to guarantee secrecy for this vital program. If the entire work force were concentration camp prisoners, all contact with the outside world would be eliminated. Such prisoners did not even have any mail, Himmler said. Along with this, he offered to provide all necessary technicians from the ranks of the prisoners. All industry would have to furnish would be the management and the engineers."
"At first the factory managers complained that the prisoners arrived in a weakened condition and after a few months had to be sent back, exhausted, to the regular camps. Since their training time alone required several weeks and instructors were scarce, we could not afford to train a new group every few months. In response to our complaints the SS made considerable improvements in the sanitary conditions and rations of the camps. Soon, in the course of my rounds through the armaments plants, I saw more contented faces among the prisoners and better fed people."
"More contented and better fed"! So he'd noticed! And yet he claimed to the contrary. Speer writes about being appalled at the conditions of prisoner labour in rocket factory, trying to help and being obstructed by Himmler and Bormann.
"Himmler’s close associates Oswald Pohl, Hans Jüttner, and Gottlob Berger were tough and ruthless in negotiation, but moderately good-natured. They had that kind of banality which seems quite tolerable at first sight. But two of his other men were surrounded by an aura of iciness like that of their chief: Both Reinhard Heydrich and Hans Kammler were blond, blue-eyed, long-headed, always neatly dressed, and well bred. Both were capable of unexpected decisions at any moment, and once they had arrived at them they would carry them through with a rare obstinacy. Himmler had made a significant choice in picking Kammler as his aide. For in spite of all his ideological crankiness, in matters of personnel Himmler was not overly concerned about lengthy party membership. He was more interested in such qualities as energy, swift intelligence, and extreme zeal. In the spring of 1942, Himmler had appointed Kammler, who had previously been a high-ranking construction employee in the Air Ministry, to head the SS construction operations, and in the summer of 1943 he chose him to handle the rocket program. In the course of my enforced collaboration with this man, I discovered him to be a cold, ruthless schemer, a fanatic in the pursuit of a goal, and as carefully calculating as he was unscrupulous."
................................................................................................
"One day, some time in the summer of 1944, my friend Karl Hanke, the Gauleiter of Lower Silesia, came to see me. In early years he had told me a great deal about the Polish and French campaigns, had spoken of the dead and wounded, the pain and agonies, and in talking about these things had shown himself a man of sympathy and directness. This time, sitting in the green leather easy chair in my office, he seemed confused and spoke falteringly, with many breaks. He advised me never to accept an invitation to inspect a concentration camp in Upper Silesia. Never, under any circumstances. He had seen something there which he was not permitted to describe and moreover could not describe.
"I did not query him, I did not query Himmler, I did not query Hitler, I did not speak with personal friends. I did not investigate—for I did not want to know what was happening there. Hanke must have been speaking of Auschwitz. During those few seconds, while Hanke was warning me, the whole responsibility had become a reality again. Those seconds 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. This deliberate blindness outweighs whatever good I may have done or tried to do in the last period of the war. Those activities shrink to nothing in the face of it. Because I failed at that time, I still feel, to this day, responsible for Auschwitz in a wholly personal sense."
Speer escaped being roped into Valkyrie by chance.
"I considered at the time what I would have done had the July 20 insurrection succeeded and the conspirators asked me to continue in my post. I probably would have complied for a transitional period, but not without considerable inner conflict. Judging by all I know today about the individuals and the motives of the conspiracy, collaboration with them would within a short time have cured me of my loyalty to Hitler. They would quickly have won me over to their cause. But that in itself would have made my remaining in the government, doubtful enough for superficial reasons, quite impossible for psychological reasons. For if I had come to a moral understanding of the nature of the regime and of the part that I had played in it, I would have been forced to recognize that it was no longer conceivable for me to hold any position of leadership in a post-Hitler Germany."
In August, he was invited to speak to SS gauleiters, and then visit Rastenburg, Hitler's headquarters, where Hitler praised him, thus reinstating him above suspicion.
"That evening the film of the execution of the conspirators was shown in the movie room. I could not and would not see it. But in order not to attract attention, I gave the excuse that I was far behind in my work. I saw many others going to this showing, mostly lower-ranking SS men and civilians. Not a single officer of the Wehrmacht attended."
"After Hitler had become excited over the V-2 project, Himmler entered the picture. Six weeks later he came to Hitler to propose the simplest way to guarantee secrecy for this vital program. If the entire work force were concentration camp prisoners, all contact with the outside world would be eliminated. Such prisoners did not even have any mail, Himmler said. Along with this, he offered to provide all necessary technicians from the ranks of the prisoners. All industry would have to furnish would be the management and the engineers."
"At first the factory managers complained that the prisoners arrived in a weakened condition and after a few months had to be sent back, exhausted, to the regular camps. Since their training time alone required several weeks and instructors were scarce, we could not afford to train a new group every few months. In response to our complaints the SS made considerable improvements in the sanitary conditions and rations of the camps. Soon, in the course of my rounds through the armaments plants, I saw more contented faces among the prisoners and better fed people."
"More contented and better fed"! So he'd noticed! And yet he claimed to the contrary. Speer writes about being appalled at the conditions of prisoner labour in rocket factory, trying to help and being obstructed by Himmler and Bormann.
................................................................................................
"Himmler’s close associates Oswald Pohl, Hans Jüttner, and Gottlob Berger were tough and ruthless in negotiation, but moderately good-natured. They had that kind of banality which seems quite tolerable at first sight. But two of his other men were surrounded by an aura of iciness like that of their chief: Both Reinhard Heydrich and Hans Kammler were blond, blue-eyed, long-headed, always neatly dressed, and well bred. Both were capable of unexpected decisions at any moment, and once they had arrived at them they would carry them through with a rare obstinacy. Himmler had made a significant choice in picking Kammler as his aide. For in spite of all his ideological crankiness, in matters of personnel Himmler was not overly concerned about lengthy party membership. He was more interested in such qualities as energy, swift intelligence, and extreme zeal. In the spring of 1942, Himmler had appointed Kammler, who had previously been a high-ranking construction employee in the Air Ministry, to head the SS construction operations, and in the summer of 1943 he chose him to handle the rocket program. In the course of my enforced collaboration with this man, I discovered him to be a cold, ruthless schemer, a fanatic in the pursuit of a goal, and as carefully calculating as he was unscrupulous."
................................................................................................
"One day, some time in the summer of 1944, my friend Karl Hanke, the Gauleiter of Lower Silesia, came to see me. In early years he had told me a great deal about the Polish and French campaigns, had spoken of the dead and wounded, the pain and agonies, and in talking about these things had shown himself a man of sympathy and directness. This time, sitting in the green leather easy chair in my office, he seemed confused and spoke falteringly, with many breaks. He advised me never to accept an invitation to inspect a concentration camp in Upper Silesia. Never, under any circumstances. He had seen something there which he was not permitted to describe and moreover could not describe.
"I did not query him, I did not query Himmler, I did not query Hitler, I did not speak with personal friends. I did not investigate—for I did not want to know what was happening there. Hanke must have been speaking of Auschwitz. During those few seconds, while Hanke was warning me, the whole responsibility had become a reality again. Those seconds 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. This deliberate blindness outweighs whatever good I may have done or tried to do in the last period of the war. Those activities shrink to nothing in the face of it. Because I failed at that time, I still feel, to this day, responsible for Auschwitz in a wholly personal sense."
................................................................................................
Speer escaped being roped into Valkyrie by chance.
"I considered at the time what I would have done had the July 20 insurrection succeeded and the conspirators asked me to continue in my post. I probably would have complied for a transitional period, but not without considerable inner conflict. Judging by all I know today about the individuals and the motives of the conspiracy, collaboration with them would within a short time have cured me of my loyalty to Hitler. They would quickly have won me over to their cause. But that in itself would have made my remaining in the government, doubtful enough for superficial reasons, quite impossible for psychological reasons. For if I had come to a moral understanding of the nature of the regime and of the part that I had played in it, I would have been forced to recognize that it was no longer conceivable for me to hold any position of leadership in a post-Hitler Germany."
In August, he was invited to speak to SS gauleiters, and then visit Rastenburg, Hitler's headquarters, where Hitler praised him, thus reinstating him above suspicion.
"That evening the film of the execution of the conspirators was shown in the movie room. I could not and would not see it. But in order not to attract attention, I gave the excuse that I was far behind in my work. I saw many others going to this showing, mostly lower-ranking SS men and civilians. Not a single officer of the Wehrmacht attended."
................................................................................................
"In the late autumn of 1944, Hitler abruptly intervened in the matter of gas masks and appointed a special commissioner directly responsible to him. With great haste a program was set up to protect the entire population from the effects of gas warfare. Although gas mask production rose to more than two million three hundred thousand per month, it was evident that it would take a while before the entire urban population could be properly equipped. The party organs therefore published advice on primitive gas protection methods, such as the use of paper masks.
"At the time, it is true, Hitler spoke of the danger of an enemy gas attack on German cities.* But Dr. Karl Brandt, whom he entrusted with the protective measures, thought it not unlikely that these hectic preparations were intended to serve the ends of gas warfare that we would begin. Among our “secret weapons” we possessed a poison gas called tabun; it penetrated the filters of all known gas masks and contact with even very small lingering quantities had fatal effects."
Speer writes more than once about the increasingly conflicting views he held against policy dictated by his boss, which led to his dismissal, and his subsequent efforts to save Germany despite orders to the contrary.
The explicit orders sent out by Hitler were to the effect that all industry, buildings and cities in West were to be destroyed as allied forces approached, and populations evacuated.
It's obvious that this seems like a copy of what German armies found in Russia as they invaded, or Napoleon's armies before that, but the situation was very different. Russia had always had huge land, sparsely populated, and the poor had little to lose. West German landscape on the other hand had thickly populated cities with high rise buildings, universities, cathedrals, and industries, apart from the mines. Besides, there was hardly space to resettle the evacuated population, even if the evacuation were feasible.
"In the late autumn of 1944, Hitler abruptly intervened in the matter of gas masks and appointed a special commissioner directly responsible to him. With great haste a program was set up to protect the entire population from the effects of gas warfare. Although gas mask production rose to more than two million three hundred thousand per month, it was evident that it would take a while before the entire urban population could be properly equipped. The party organs therefore published advice on primitive gas protection methods, such as the use of paper masks.
"At the time, it is true, Hitler spoke of the danger of an enemy gas attack on German cities.* But Dr. Karl Brandt, whom he entrusted with the protective measures, thought it not unlikely that these hectic preparations were intended to serve the ends of gas warfare that we would begin. Among our “secret weapons” we possessed a poison gas called tabun; it penetrated the filters of all known gas masks and contact with even very small lingering quantities had fatal effects."
................................................................................................
Speer writes more than once about the increasingly conflicting views he held against policy dictated by his boss, which led to his dismissal, and his subsequent efforts to save Germany despite orders to the contrary.
The explicit orders sent out by Hitler were to the effect that all industry, buildings and cities in West were to be destroyed as allied forces approached, and populations evacuated.
It's obvious that this seems like a copy of what German armies found in Russia as they invaded, or Napoleon's armies before that, but the situation was very different. Russia had always had huge land, sparsely populated, and the poor had little to lose. West German landscape on the other hand had thickly populated cities with high rise buildings, universities, cathedrals, and industries, apart from the mines. Besides, there was hardly space to resettle the evacuated population, even if the evacuation were feasible.
................................................................................................
Speer visited Berlin for a farewell visit to his boss.
"The road between the Brandenburg Gate and the Victory Column had been converted into a runway by the use of red lanterns. Labor squads had filled the holes from the latest shell hits. We started without incident; I saw a shadow rush by the right side of the plane: the Victory Column. Then we were in the air, and undisturbed. In and around Berlin we saw many large fires, the flashes of artillery, flares that looked like fireflies. Still, the scene could not be compared with that produced by a single heavy air raid on Berlin. We headed toward a gap in the ring of artillery fire, where the darkness was still tranquil. Toward five o’clock, with the first glimmers of dawn, we arrived back at the Rechlin airfield."
Which seems to support the recent TV documentary on information channels postulating that the story then put out, and universally believed, about his boss committing suicide and being cremated, was just that, a story; that in fact he was flown to Canaries to be transferred to a u-boat and taken across South Atlantic, to live in a secluded and guarded house, with an occasional outing in company of his people, so very many of whom had fled to that continent post WWII.
For if Speer's plane could take off on the road so close to the Chancellory, so could another, and then transferring to a more suitable plane for flying to Canaries, or perhaps a u-boat journey from Baltic via Canaries, would be further detail.
Certainly the amount of travel between Germany and that continent, by various Germans not involved in trade or politics but occupations not necessitating such a visit, is curious, to say the least.
"On the evening of that May 1, when Hitler’s death was announced, I slept in a small room in Doenitz’s quarters."
"Two weeks later, staggered by the revelations of the crimes in the concentration camps, I wrote to the chairman of the ministerial cabinet, Schwerin-Krosigk: “The previous leadership of the German nation bears a collective guilt for the fate that now hangs over the German people. Each member of that leadership must personally assume his responsibility in such a way that the guilt which might otherwise descend upon the German people is expiated.”"
................................................................................................
"On May 4 came the armistice in northwest Germany, followed three days later, on May 7, 1945, by the unconditioned surrender in all the theaters of war. A day later that capitulation was again solemnly sealed by the signatures of Keitel and three representatives of the branches of the Wehrmacht at the Soviet headquarters in Karlshorst, near Berlin. After the signing the Soviet generals, whom Goebbels’s propaganda had always represented as barbarians without manners or knowledge of civilized conduct, served the German delegation a good meal, complete with champagne and caviar, as Keitel told us."
After first co-operating with British at Flensburg and Glücksburg, Speer was taken by British to Luxembourg and then Versailles, where he was amongst many of the top men of the Nazi government kept imprisoned in luxury hotels, but Speer was treated well. Subsequently he and others were taken to Kransburg castle and then to Nuremberg, where they were in U.S. custody.
"The preliminary investigation had been concluded; the actual trial was beginning. In my naïveté I had imagined that each of us would receive an individual indictment. Now it turned out that we were one and all accused of the monstrous crimes that this document listed. After reading it I was overwhelmed by a sense of despair. But in that despair at what had happened and my role in it, I found the position I felt I should take in the trial: to regard my own fate as insignificant, not to struggle for my own life, but to assume the responsibility in a general sense. In spite of all the opposition of my lawyer and in spite of the strains of the trial, I held fast to this resolve."
"At this time the prison psychologist, G. M. Gilbert, was going from cell to cell with a copy of the indictment, asking the defendants to write their comments on it. When I read the partially evasive, partially disdainful words of many of my fellow defendants, I wrote, to Gilbert’s astonishment: “The trial is necessary. There is a shared responsibility for such horrible crimes even in an authoritarian state.”
"I still regard it as my greatest feat of psychic courage to have held to this view throughout the ten months of the trial."
Speer visited Berlin for a farewell visit to his boss.
"The road between the Brandenburg Gate and the Victory Column had been converted into a runway by the use of red lanterns. Labor squads had filled the holes from the latest shell hits. We started without incident; I saw a shadow rush by the right side of the plane: the Victory Column. Then we were in the air, and undisturbed. In and around Berlin we saw many large fires, the flashes of artillery, flares that looked like fireflies. Still, the scene could not be compared with that produced by a single heavy air raid on Berlin. We headed toward a gap in the ring of artillery fire, where the darkness was still tranquil. Toward five o’clock, with the first glimmers of dawn, we arrived back at the Rechlin airfield."
Which seems to support the recent TV documentary on information channels postulating that the story then put out, and universally believed, about his boss committing suicide and being cremated, was just that, a story; that in fact he was flown to Canaries to be transferred to a u-boat and taken across South Atlantic, to live in a secluded and guarded house, with an occasional outing in company of his people, so very many of whom had fled to that continent post WWII.
For if Speer's plane could take off on the road so close to the Chancellory, so could another, and then transferring to a more suitable plane for flying to Canaries, or perhaps a u-boat journey from Baltic via Canaries, would be further detail.
Certainly the amount of travel between Germany and that continent, by various Germans not involved in trade or politics but occupations not necessitating such a visit, is curious, to say the least.
................................................................................................
"On the evening of that May 1, when Hitler’s death was announced, I slept in a small room in Doenitz’s quarters."
"Two weeks later, staggered by the revelations of the crimes in the concentration camps, I wrote to the chairman of the ministerial cabinet, Schwerin-Krosigk: “The previous leadership of the German nation bears a collective guilt for the fate that now hangs over the German people. Each member of that leadership must personally assume his responsibility in such a way that the guilt which might otherwise descend upon the German people is expiated.”"
................................................................................................
"On May 4 came the armistice in northwest Germany, followed three days later, on May 7, 1945, by the unconditioned surrender in all the theaters of war. A day later that capitulation was again solemnly sealed by the signatures of Keitel and three representatives of the branches of the Wehrmacht at the Soviet headquarters in Karlshorst, near Berlin. After the signing the Soviet generals, whom Goebbels’s propaganda had always represented as barbarians without manners or knowledge of civilized conduct, served the German delegation a good meal, complete with champagne and caviar, as Keitel told us."
................................................................................................
After first co-operating with British at Flensburg and Glücksburg, Speer was taken by British to Luxembourg and then Versailles, where he was amongst many of the top men of the Nazi government kept imprisoned in luxury hotels, but Speer was treated well. Subsequently he and others were taken to Kransburg castle and then to Nuremberg, where they were in U.S. custody.
"The preliminary investigation had been concluded; the actual trial was beginning. In my naïveté I had imagined that each of us would receive an individual indictment. Now it turned out that we were one and all accused of the monstrous crimes that this document listed. After reading it I was overwhelmed by a sense of despair. But in that despair at what had happened and my role in it, I found the position I felt I should take in the trial: to regard my own fate as insignificant, not to struggle for my own life, but to assume the responsibility in a general sense. In spite of all the opposition of my lawyer and in spite of the strains of the trial, I held fast to this resolve."
"At this time the prison psychologist, G. M. Gilbert, was going from cell to cell with a copy of the indictment, asking the defendants to write their comments on it. When I read the partially evasive, partially disdainful words of many of my fellow defendants, I wrote, to Gilbert’s astonishment: “The trial is necessary. There is a shared responsibility for such horrible crimes even in an authoritarian state.”
"I still regard it as my greatest feat of psychic courage to have held to this view throughout the ten months of the trial."
................................................................................................
"I had a certain insight into Goering’s real motives when he observed that the victors would undoubtedly kill him but that within fifty years his remains would be laid in a marble sarcophagus and he would be celebrated by the German people as a national hero and martyr. Many of the prisoners had the same dream about themselves. On other subjects Goering’s arguments were less effective. There were no differences among us, he said; we were all sentenced to death from the start and none of us had a chance. It was pointless to bother about a defense. I remarked: “Goering wants to ride into Valhalla with a large retinue.” In actuality Goering later defended himself more stubbornly than the rest of us did.
"At Mondorf and Nuremberg, Goering had undergone a systematic withdrawal cure which had ended his drug addiction. Ever since, he was in better form than I had ever seen him. He displayed remarkable energy and became the most formidable personality among the defendants. I thought it a great pity that he had not been up to this level in the months before the outbreak of the war and in critical situations during the war. He would have been the only person whose authority and popularity Hitler would have had to reckon with. Actually, he had been one of the few sensible enough to foresee the doom that awaited us. But having thrown away his chance to save the country while that was still possible, it was absurd and truly criminal for him to use his regained powers to hoodwink his own people. His whole policy was one of deception. Once, in the prison yard something was said about Jewish survivors in Hungary. Goering remarked coldly: “So, there are still some there? I thought we had knocked off all of them. Somebody slipped up again.” I was stunned."
"In a letter to my defense attorney who was trying to define the line we would follow, I declared that viewed within the total framework everything that we would be discussing as points in my favor appeared to me unimportant and ludicrous.
"For many months the documents and testimonies accumulated. These aimed to prove that the crimes had been committed, without regard to whether any one of the defendants had been personally connected with them. It was horrible, and could only be borne because our nerves became more blunted from session to session. To this day photographs, documents and orders keep coming back to me. They were so monstrous that they seemed unbelievable, and yet none of the defendants doubted their genuineness."
"I had a certain insight into Goering’s real motives when he observed that the victors would undoubtedly kill him but that within fifty years his remains would be laid in a marble sarcophagus and he would be celebrated by the German people as a national hero and martyr. Many of the prisoners had the same dream about themselves. On other subjects Goering’s arguments were less effective. There were no differences among us, he said; we were all sentenced to death from the start and none of us had a chance. It was pointless to bother about a defense. I remarked: “Goering wants to ride into Valhalla with a large retinue.” In actuality Goering later defended himself more stubbornly than the rest of us did.
"At Mondorf and Nuremberg, Goering had undergone a systematic withdrawal cure which had ended his drug addiction. Ever since, he was in better form than I had ever seen him. He displayed remarkable energy and became the most formidable personality among the defendants. I thought it a great pity that he had not been up to this level in the months before the outbreak of the war and in critical situations during the war. He would have been the only person whose authority and popularity Hitler would have had to reckon with. Actually, he had been one of the few sensible enough to foresee the doom that awaited us. But having thrown away his chance to save the country while that was still possible, it was absurd and truly criminal for him to use his regained powers to hoodwink his own people. His whole policy was one of deception. Once, in the prison yard something was said about Jewish survivors in Hungary. Goering remarked coldly: “So, there are still some there? I thought we had knocked off all of them. Somebody slipped up again.” I was stunned."
................................................................................................
"In a letter to my defense attorney who was trying to define the line we would follow, I declared that viewed within the total framework everything that we would be discussing as points in my favor appeared to me unimportant and ludicrous.
"For many months the documents and testimonies accumulated. These aimed to prove that the crimes had been committed, without regard to whether any one of the defendants had been personally connected with them. It was horrible, and could only be borne because our nerves became more blunted from session to session. To this day photographs, documents and orders keep coming back to me. They were so monstrous that they seemed unbelievable, and yet none of the defendants doubted their genuineness."
................................................................................................
"In his duel with Goering, Prosecutor Jackson had the advantage of surprise. There were always fresh documents he could pull out of his swollen briefcase. But Goering could take advantage of his adversary’s basic ignorance of the material. In the end Goering merely fought for his life, using evasions, obfuscations and denials.
"Ribbentrop and Keitel, the next two defendants, behaved in the same way. They too repudiated any responsibility: Whenever confronted with a document that bore their signatures, they justified it on grounds of an order from Hitler. Disgusted, I blurted out the remark about the “letter carriers on high salaries,” which afterward was printed in newspapers throughout the world. When I consider the matter today, they were basically telling the truth: They were actually not much more than transmitters of Hitler’s orders. Rosenberg, on the other hand, made an impression of honesty and consistency. All the efforts of his lawyer both before and behind the scenes to persuade him to recant his so-called ideology came to nothing. Hans Frank, Hitler’s lawyer and later Governor General of Poland, also shouldered his responsibility. Funk reasoned skillfully and in a way that stirred my pity. Schacht’s attorney drew on all his rhetorical resources to make his client out a rebel conspirator; his efforts ended only in his weakening rather than strengthening the actual exonerating evidence in Schacht’s favor. Doenitz, for his part, fought obstinately for himself and his submarines; it gave him great satisfaction when his lawyer was able to present an affidavit from Admiral Nimitz, commander of the American Pacific fleet, stating that he had conducted his own submarine warfare on the basis of the same principles as the German naval leadership. Raeder gave the impression of objectivity; Sauckel’s simple-mindedness seemed rather pathetic; Jodl’s precise and sober defense was rather imposing. He seemed to be one of the few men who stood above the situation."
"But after my admission I felt my spirits lightened. I was glad I had not tried to dodge the issue. Having made this matter clear, I believed I could now launch into the second part of my testimony which dealt with the last phase of the war. I believed it important to present these data, chiefly for their effect on the German people. If they learned of Hitler’s intentions to destroy the very basis of life for the German people after the loss of the war, it would help the nation turn its back on the past. Here was strong evidence to counter the creation of a Hitler legend. But when I said these things, I encountered stiff disapproval from Goering and other defendants."
In their concluding speeches,
"Even Goering, who had entered the trial with an aggressive determination to justify himself, spoke in his final speech of the terrible crimes that had been brought to light, condemned the ghastly mass murders, and declared that he could not comprehend them. Keitel stated that he would rather choose death than be entangled again in such horrors. Frank spoke of the guilt that Hitler and the German people had laden upon themselves. He warned the incorrigibles against the “way of political folly which must lead to destruction and death.” His speech sounded overwrought, but it expressed the essence of my own view also. Even Streicher in his final speech condemned Hitler’s “mass killings of Jews.” Funk spoke of frightful crimes that filled him with profound shame. Schacht declared that he stood “shaken to the depths of his soul by the unspeakable misery which he had tried to prevent.” Sauckel was “shocked in his inmost soul by the crimes that had been revealed in the course of the trial.” Papen declared that “the power of evil had proved stronger than that of good.” Seyss-Inquart spoke of “fearful excesses.” To Fritzsche “the murder of five million people” was “a gruesome warning for the future.” On the other hand they all denied their own share in these events."
"Today, a quarter of a century after these events, it is not only specific faults that burden my conscience, great as these may have been. My moral failure is not a matter of this item and that; it resides in my active association with the whole course of events. I had participated in a war which, as we of the intimate circle should never have doubted, was aimed at world dominion. What is more, by my abilities and my energies I had prolonged that war by many months. I had assented to having the globe of the world crown that domed hall which was to be the symbol of new Berlin. Nor was it only symbolically that Hitler dreamed of possessing the globe. It was part of his dream to subjugate the other nations. France, I had heard him say many times, was to be reduced to the status of a small nation. Belgium, Holland, even Burgundy, were to be incorporated into his Reich. The national life of the Poles and the Soviet Russians was to be extinguished; they were to be made into helot peoples. Nor, for one who wanted to listen, had Hitler ever concealed his intention to exterminate the Jewish people. In his speech of January 30, 1939,6 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.
"During the next twenty years of my life I was guarded, in Spandau prison, by nationals of the four powers against whom I had organized Hitler’s war. Along with my six fellow prisoners, they were the only people I had close contact with. Through them I learned directly what the effects of my work had been. Many of them mourned loved ones who had died in the war—in particular, every one of the Soviet guards had lost some close relative, brothers or a father. Yet not one of them bore a grudge toward me for my personal share in the tragedy; never did I hear words of recrimination. At the lowest ebb of my existence, in contact with these ordinary people, I encountered uncorrupted feelings of sympathy, helpfulness, human understanding, feelings that bypassed the prison rules…. On the day before my appointment as Minister of Armaments and War Production I had encountered peasants in the Ukraine who had saved me from frostbite. At the time I had been merely touched, without understanding. Now, after all was over, I once again was treated to examples of human kindness that transcended all enmity. And now, at last, I wanted to understand. This book, too, is an attempt at such understanding."
"Dazzled by the possibilities of technology, I devoted crucial years of my life to serving it. But in the end my feelings about it are highly skeptical."
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
From footnotes:-
"In his duel with Goering, Prosecutor Jackson had the advantage of surprise. There were always fresh documents he could pull out of his swollen briefcase. But Goering could take advantage of his adversary’s basic ignorance of the material. In the end Goering merely fought for his life, using evasions, obfuscations and denials.
"Ribbentrop and Keitel, the next two defendants, behaved in the same way. They too repudiated any responsibility: Whenever confronted with a document that bore their signatures, they justified it on grounds of an order from Hitler. Disgusted, I blurted out the remark about the “letter carriers on high salaries,” which afterward was printed in newspapers throughout the world. When I consider the matter today, they were basically telling the truth: They were actually not much more than transmitters of Hitler’s orders. Rosenberg, on the other hand, made an impression of honesty and consistency. All the efforts of his lawyer both before and behind the scenes to persuade him to recant his so-called ideology came to nothing. Hans Frank, Hitler’s lawyer and later Governor General of Poland, also shouldered his responsibility. Funk reasoned skillfully and in a way that stirred my pity. Schacht’s attorney drew on all his rhetorical resources to make his client out a rebel conspirator; his efforts ended only in his weakening rather than strengthening the actual exonerating evidence in Schacht’s favor. Doenitz, for his part, fought obstinately for himself and his submarines; it gave him great satisfaction when his lawyer was able to present an affidavit from Admiral Nimitz, commander of the American Pacific fleet, stating that he had conducted his own submarine warfare on the basis of the same principles as the German naval leadership. Raeder gave the impression of objectivity; Sauckel’s simple-mindedness seemed rather pathetic; Jodl’s precise and sober defense was rather imposing. He seemed to be one of the few men who stood above the situation."
"But after my admission I felt my spirits lightened. I was glad I had not tried to dodge the issue. Having made this matter clear, I believed I could now launch into the second part of my testimony which dealt with the last phase of the war. I believed it important to present these data, chiefly for their effect on the German people. If they learned of Hitler’s intentions to destroy the very basis of life for the German people after the loss of the war, it would help the nation turn its back on the past. Here was strong evidence to counter the creation of a Hitler legend. But when I said these things, I encountered stiff disapproval from Goering and other defendants."
In their concluding speeches,
"Even Goering, who had entered the trial with an aggressive determination to justify himself, spoke in his final speech of the terrible crimes that had been brought to light, condemned the ghastly mass murders, and declared that he could not comprehend them. Keitel stated that he would rather choose death than be entangled again in such horrors. Frank spoke of the guilt that Hitler and the German people had laden upon themselves. He warned the incorrigibles against the “way of political folly which must lead to destruction and death.” His speech sounded overwrought, but it expressed the essence of my own view also. Even Streicher in his final speech condemned Hitler’s “mass killings of Jews.” Funk spoke of frightful crimes that filled him with profound shame. Schacht declared that he stood “shaken to the depths of his soul by the unspeakable misery which he had tried to prevent.” Sauckel was “shocked in his inmost soul by the crimes that had been revealed in the course of the trial.” Papen declared that “the power of evil had proved stronger than that of good.” Seyss-Inquart spoke of “fearful excesses.” To Fritzsche “the murder of five million people” was “a gruesome warning for the future.” On the other hand they all denied their own share in these events."
................................................................................................
"Today, a quarter of a century after these events, it is not only specific faults that burden my conscience, great as these may have been. My moral failure is not a matter of this item and that; it resides in my active association with the whole course of events. I had participated in a war which, as we of the intimate circle should never have doubted, was aimed at world dominion. What is more, by my abilities and my energies I had prolonged that war by many months. I had assented to having the globe of the world crown that domed hall which was to be the symbol of new Berlin. Nor was it only symbolically that Hitler dreamed of possessing the globe. It was part of his dream to subjugate the other nations. France, I had heard him say many times, was to be reduced to the status of a small nation. Belgium, Holland, even Burgundy, were to be incorporated into his Reich. The national life of the Poles and the Soviet Russians was to be extinguished; they were to be made into helot peoples. Nor, for one who wanted to listen, had Hitler ever concealed his intention to exterminate the Jewish people. In his speech of January 30, 1939,6 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.
"During the next twenty years of my life I was guarded, in Spandau prison, by nationals of the four powers against whom I had organized Hitler’s war. Along with my six fellow prisoners, they were the only people I had close contact with. Through them I learned directly what the effects of my work had been. Many of them mourned loved ones who had died in the war—in particular, every one of the Soviet guards had lost some close relative, brothers or a father. Yet not one of them bore a grudge toward me for my personal share in the tragedy; never did I hear words of recrimination. At the lowest ebb of my existence, in contact with these ordinary people, I encountered uncorrupted feelings of sympathy, helpfulness, human understanding, feelings that bypassed the prison rules…. On the day before my appointment as Minister of Armaments and War Production I had encountered peasants in the Ukraine who had saved me from frostbite. At the time I had been merely touched, without understanding. Now, after all was over, I once again was treated to examples of human kindness that transcended all enmity. And now, at last, I wanted to understand. This book, too, is an attempt at such understanding."
"Dazzled by the possibilities of technology, I devoted crucial years of my life to serving it. But in the end my feelings about it are highly skeptical."
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
From footnotes:-
................................................................................................
"The Völkischer Beobachter reported on August 23, 1939: “Tuesday morning [August 22], starting about 2.45 A.M., a very impressive display of northern lights could be seen in the northwestern and northern sky from Sternberg Observatory.”"
"On November 23, 1937, at the dedication of the Sonthofen Ordensberg [Order Castle], tremendous cheers erupted when Hitler—after a speech that had been received quietly—unexpectedly shouted to the assembled party leaders: “Our Enemy Number One is England!” At the time I was astonished by the spontaneity of this cheering. I was also surprised at Hitler’s suddenly turning against England, for I had assumed all along that England still held a special place in his wishful thinking."
"See Hitler’s statement to Hermann Rauschning that if the coming war could not be won, the Nazi leadership would opt for dragging the whole continent into the abyss. (Rauschning, Hitler Speaks [London, 1939].)"
................................................................................................
"The Völkischer Beobachter reported on August 23, 1939: “Tuesday morning [August 22], starting about 2.45 A.M., a very impressive display of northern lights could be seen in the northwestern and northern sky from Sternberg Observatory.”"
"On November 23, 1937, at the dedication of the Sonthofen Ordensberg [Order Castle], tremendous cheers erupted when Hitler—after a speech that had been received quietly—unexpectedly shouted to the assembled party leaders: “Our Enemy Number One is England!” At the time I was astonished by the spontaneity of this cheering. I was also surprised at Hitler’s suddenly turning against England, for I had assumed all along that England still held a special place in his wishful thinking."
"See Hitler’s statement to Hermann Rauschning that if the coming war could not be won, the Nazi leadership would opt for dragging the whole continent into the abyss. (Rauschning, Hitler Speaks [London, 1939].)"
................................................................................................
"On February 11, 1942, an armaments firm in Oldenburg ordered a quart of alcohol from its supplier in Leipzig. First, a requisition slip from the Reich Monopoly Bureau was needed. The Oldenburg firm submitted its request for such a slip but was referred to the Economic Group, from which it was to secure a certificate of urgent need. The Economic Group in turn referred the matter to its Regional Office in Hanover, which requested and received a declaration that the alcohol was to be used for technical purposes only. On March 19, after more than five weeks, the Hanover office announced that it had already returned the order to the Economic Group in Berlin. On March 26 the Oldenburg firm made inquiries and was told that its request had been approved and sent on to the Reich Monopoly Bureau; at the same time it was explained that further correspondence with the Economic Group was pointless since the group had no contingency control over alcohol. In the future, the company should apply to the Monopoly Bureau—which, we should note, it had tried to do in the first place, but to no avail. A new application to the Monopoly Bureau, submitted on March 30, was followed twelve days later by the reminder that the Monopoly Bureau was supposed to be informed of the monthly consumption of alcohol but that nevertheless the one quart of alcohol was a generous gesture being released from a firm in Oldenburg.
"Now, eight weeks after its first requests, the firm happily sent a messenger to the depot, only to have him told that before the alcohol could be picked up a certificate had to be obtained from the Food Rationing Board, a division of the Agriculture Department. When queried, the local Food Rationing Board stated that it could license alcohol for drinking purposes only and not for manufacturing or technical uses. Meanwhile, April 18 had arrived, and the one quart of alcohol ordered on February 11 was still not in the hands of the firm that had ordered it, despite the fact that the alcohol was urgently needed for a specific purpose."
"According to Point 18 of the Führerprotokoll, June 20, 1944, I reported to the Fuehrer that “at the moment a good 28,000 workers are building additions to the Fuehrer’s headquarters.” According to my memorandum of September 22, 1944, some 36,000,000 marks were spent for bunkers in Rastenburg, 13,000,000 for bunkers in Pullach near Munich to provide for Hitler’s safety when he visited Munich, and 150,000,000 for the bunker complex called the “Giant” near Bad Charlottenbrunn. These projects required 328,000 cubic yards of reinforced concrete (including small quantities of masonry), 277,000 cubic yards of underground passages, 36 miles of roads with six bridges, and 62 miles of pipes. The “Giant” complex alone consumed more concrete than the entire population had at its disposal for air-raid shelters in 1944."
"On February 11, 1942, an armaments firm in Oldenburg ordered a quart of alcohol from its supplier in Leipzig. First, a requisition slip from the Reich Monopoly Bureau was needed. The Oldenburg firm submitted its request for such a slip but was referred to the Economic Group, from which it was to secure a certificate of urgent need. The Economic Group in turn referred the matter to its Regional Office in Hanover, which requested and received a declaration that the alcohol was to be used for technical purposes only. On March 19, after more than five weeks, the Hanover office announced that it had already returned the order to the Economic Group in Berlin. On March 26 the Oldenburg firm made inquiries and was told that its request had been approved and sent on to the Reich Monopoly Bureau; at the same time it was explained that further correspondence with the Economic Group was pointless since the group had no contingency control over alcohol. In the future, the company should apply to the Monopoly Bureau—which, we should note, it had tried to do in the first place, but to no avail. A new application to the Monopoly Bureau, submitted on March 30, was followed twelve days later by the reminder that the Monopoly Bureau was supposed to be informed of the monthly consumption of alcohol but that nevertheless the one quart of alcohol was a generous gesture being released from a firm in Oldenburg.
"Now, eight weeks after its first requests, the firm happily sent a messenger to the depot, only to have him told that before the alcohol could be picked up a certificate had to be obtained from the Food Rationing Board, a division of the Agriculture Department. When queried, the local Food Rationing Board stated that it could license alcohol for drinking purposes only and not for manufacturing or technical uses. Meanwhile, April 18 had arrived, and the one quart of alcohol ordered on February 11 was still not in the hands of the firm that had ordered it, despite the fact that the alcohol was urgently needed for a specific purpose."
................................................................................................
"According to Point 18 of the Führerprotokoll, June 20, 1944, I reported to the Fuehrer that “at the moment a good 28,000 workers are building additions to the Fuehrer’s headquarters.” According to my memorandum of September 22, 1944, some 36,000,000 marks were spent for bunkers in Rastenburg, 13,000,000 for bunkers in Pullach near Munich to provide for Hitler’s safety when he visited Munich, and 150,000,000 for the bunker complex called the “Giant” near Bad Charlottenbrunn. These projects required 328,000 cubic yards of reinforced concrete (including small quantities of masonry), 277,000 cubic yards of underground passages, 36 miles of roads with six bridges, and 62 miles of pipes. The “Giant” complex alone consumed more concrete than the entire population had at its disposal for air-raid shelters in 1944."
................................................................................................
"A grotesque example demonstrates the extent to which the Gauleiters, as Hitler’s immediate subordinates, disregarded decisions by the official agencies: Leipzig was the headquarters of the Reich’s Central Agency for the Fur Trade. One day the local Gauleiter, Mutschmann, informed the director of the agency that he had appointed one of his friends as the director’s successor. The Minister of Economics protested vigorously, since the director of a central agency could be appointed only by Berlin. The Gauleiter summarily ordered the director to vacate his post within a few days. In the face of this power clash, the Minister of Economics resorted to an absurd solution: The night before the post was to be handed over to the Gauleiter’s friend, trucks from Berlin drove up to the doors and transferred the entire fur trade agency, including its files and its director, to Berlin."
................................................................................................
"In February 1945, when I had a minor collision with a truck in Upper Silesia and was slightly injured, Gebhardt immediately boarded a special plane to bring me back to his hospital. My assistant, Karl Cliever, thwarted this plan without giving me any reasons, although, as he indicated at the time, he had some. Toward the end of the war French Minister Bichelonne had Gebhardt operate on his knee at Hohenlychen. He died a few weeks later of a pulmonary embolism."
"In general the authenticity of the documents presented was questioned neither by the defense attorneys nor by the defendants. Whenever a document was challenged, the prosecution withdrew it from evidence, with one exception: the Hossbach transcript of the meeting at which Hitler announced his war aims. In his memoirs Hossbach has since confirmed the authenticity of that document."
"In February 1945, when I had a minor collision with a truck in Upper Silesia and was slightly injured, Gebhardt immediately boarded a special plane to bring me back to his hospital. My assistant, Karl Cliever, thwarted this plan without giving me any reasons, although, as he indicated at the time, he had some. Toward the end of the war French Minister Bichelonne had Gebhardt operate on his knee at Hohenlychen. He died a few weeks later of a pulmonary embolism."
................................................................................................
"In general the authenticity of the documents presented was questioned neither by the defense attorneys nor by the defendants. Whenever a document was challenged, the prosecution withdrew it from evidence, with one exception: the Hossbach transcript of the meeting at which Hitler announced his war aims. In his memoirs Hossbach has since confirmed the authenticity of that document."
................................................................................................
"The Fuehrer’s order for the destruction that was to be purposefully carried out in the Reich read in full:
"The struggle for the very existence of our people forces us to seize any means which can weaken the combat readiness of our enemy and prevent him from advancing. Every opportunity, direct or indirect, to inflict the most lasting possible damage on the enemy’s striking power must be used to the utmost. It is a mistake to believe that when we win back the lost territories we will be able to retrieve and use these transportation, communications, production, and supply facilities that have not been destroyed or have been temporarily crippled; when the enemy withdraws he will leave us only scorched earth and will show no consideration for the welfare of the population.
"Therefore, I order:
"1. All military, transportation, communications, industrial, and food-supply facilities, as well as all resources within the Reich which the enemy might use either immediately or in the foreseeable future for continuing the war, are to be destroyed.
"2. Those responsible for these measures are: the military commands for all military objects, including the transportation and communications installations; the Gauleiters and defense commissioners for all industrial and supply facilities, as well as other resources. When necessary, the troops are to assist the Gauleiters and the defense commissioners in carrying out their task.
"3. These orders are to be communicated at once to all troop commanders; contrary instructions are invalid.
"This decree was directly contrary to the requests I had made in my March 18 memorandum: “If the war advances farther into Reich territory, measures should be taken to assure that no one has the right to destry industrial installations, coal mines, electric plants, and other facilities, nor transportation installations and inland waterways. Demolition of bridges as planned would do more lasting damage to the transportation network than all the bombing of the past few years.”"
................................................................................................
"Hitler’s decree of April 7, 1945, read as follows (with the passage Hitler crossed out in italics): To assure uniform execution of my decree of March 19, 1945 I decree the following for transportation and communications:
"1. Operatively important bridges must be destroyed in such a way that they cannot be used by the enemy. Areas or sectors (rivers, parts of the autobahn, etc.) where such bridges are to be destroyed will be determined from case to case by the High Command of the armed forces. The harshest penalties must be inflicted if these bridges are not destroyed.
"2. All other bridges must not be destroyed until the defense commissioners along with the competent agencies of the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Armaments and War Production determine that the approach of the enemy makes it essential to halt production or transportation to those areas. To assure that production continues until the last possible moment, I ordered in my decree of March 30, 1945, that transportation must be maintained up to the last possible moment [even if the enemy’s rapid movement creates the risk that a bridge (with the exception of those designated in point 1) may fall into his hands before it can be destroyed].
"3. All other objects and installations important for vehicular movement (other manufactured objects of every sort, rails, ballast, and repair shops), as well as the communications facilities of the postal system, the railroad system, and of private companies are to be effectively incapacitated. With regard to all measures for demolition and evacuation it must be borne in mind that, with the exception of the instances treated separately under point 1, when lost territory is recovered these installations should be usable for German production.
"Headquarters, April 7, 1945 Adolf Hitler"
................................................................................................
Speer's speech, against the directive about total destruction:-
"The complete text of this speech, written April 16, 1945, follows:
"Never before in history has a civilized people been struck so hard; never have the destruction and war damage been so great as in our country, and never has a people borne the hardships of war with greater endurance, hardiness, and loyalty than you.
"Now all of you are depressed, shaken to the core. Your love is turning to hate, your endurance and hardiness to fatigue and indifference.
"This must not be. In this war the German people has displayed a determination which in days to come will, if history is just, be accorded the highest honor. Especially at this moment we must not weep and mourn for what is past. Only desperately hard work will enable us to bear our fate. But we can help ourselves by realistically and soberly deciding what the essential demands of the hour are.
"And here we find there is only one main task: to avoid everything that could rob the German people of its basis for life, a basis already so diminished. Preservation of our places of work, of the transportation network, and of all other installations necessary to the feeding, clothing, and sheltering of our people is the first prerequisite for preserving our strength as a nation. In this phase of the war, therefore, we must avoid anything which could inflict further damage on our economy.
"As the Minister responsible for all production, for the preservation of roads, waterways, and power plants and for the restoration of transportation, I therefore order, in agreement with the highest authorities of the various branches of the armed forces:
"1. Destruction or crippling of any bridge, plant, waterway, railroad, or communications facility is henceforth prohibited.
"2. All explosive charges on bridges are to be spiked and all other preparations for demolition or incapacitating are to be eliminated. If a plant has already been crippled, the parts removed are to be returned.
"3. Local measures to protect the plants and the railroad and communications networks should be instituted at once.
"4. These instructions apply not only to the Reich but also to occupied Norway, Denmark, Bohemia, Moravia, and Italy.
"5. Anyone who acts counter to these instructions is consciously and intentionally inflicting harm on the German people and thus becomes an enemy. The soldiers of the armed forces and the militia are hereby instructed to proceed against these enemies of the people with all possible means, if necessary by the use of firearms.
"In not destroying bridges that were intended to be blown up, we are giving our enemies an advantage in their operations. For this reason, but more for the sake of humane warfare, we urge our enemies to cease air raids on German cities and villages even if these contain installations important to the war effort. For our part we must make arrangements for the orderly surrender of cities and towns which are completely encircled. Cities which lack effective means of defense should be declared open cities.
"To avoid injustices and serious blunders during this last phase of the war, the following instructions are issued in the interests of the German people:
"1. Prisoners of war and foreign workers are to remain in their places of work. Those who are already on the move should be directed toward their home countries.
"2. In the concentration camps the political prisoners, including the Jews, should be separated from asocial elements. The former are to be handed over unharmed to the occupying forces.
"3. Punishment of all political prisoners, including the Jews, is to cease until further notice.
"4. Service of the Volkssturm [People’s Militia] against the enemy is voluntary. In addition it is the militia’s duty to assure law and order within the country. Until the enemy occupation begins, members of the National Socialist Party are obligated to work with the militia in order to demonstrate that they wish to serve the people to the end.
"5. The activities of the Werewolf and similar organizations must cease at once. They give the enemy a just pretext for reprisals and also threaten the foundations of our strength as a nation. Order and meeting our obligations are essential prerequisites to the survival of the German people.
"The destruction which this war has brought upon Germany can be compared only with that of the Thirty Years’ War. But losses in human lives from hunger and epidemics must never be allowed to take on the proportions they did then. The enemy alone can decide whether he will try to win his place in history as a decent and generous victor by conferring on the German people the honor and conditions deserved by an opponent who, although vanquished, can be said to have fought bravely and well.
"But each one of you can do his part to protect our people from the worst. During the next few months you must summon up even more of the determination to rebuild that you, German workers and factory directors, and you, German railroad men, have shown time and again during the devastating air raids. The last few months of paralyzing horror and boundless disappointment have produced an understandable lethargy. But that must go now! God will only help a nation that does not give up, even in so desperate a situation.
For the immediate future I give you the following guidelines to be followed in areas already occupied by the enemy:
"1. The most important task is repair of the damaged railroads. Therefore, if the enemy gives permission or orders, every possible means must be employed, no matter how primitive, to carry out this work of reconstruction. For transportation makes it possible to provide food to large areas in which the population would otherwise face grave shortages. And only if you manage to patch up a transportation network will you ever be reunited with your families. Therefore, it is in the personal interest of each one of you to do everything possible to restore transportation.
"2. Industrial and manual workers, who have performed incomparable feats during this war, are under obligation to carry out as quickly as possible all assignments connected with rebuilding the railroads; other tasks should be put aside for the time being.
"3. During six years of war the German farmer has been highly self-disciplined; he has been an example to the nation in delivering his products according to his own instruction. In the days to come every German farmer must raise his production to the highest possible level. It can be taken for granted that the German farmer will cultivate this year’s crop in fullest awareness of his duty. He knows how large a responsiblity he bears to the German people.
"4. Food must receive transportation priority over everything else. Food-producing plants must receive electricity, gas, coal, or wood before any other factories are supplied.
"5. Government bureaus must not be dissolved. Bureau chiefs bear full responsibility for keeping them in operation. Anyone who leaves his place of work without his supervisor’s permission is committing a crime against the nation. Administration is necessary if we are to preserve the German people from chaos.
"If we work with the same determination that we have demonstrated during the past few years, the German people will survive without more great losses. Transportation can be fairly adequately restored within two or three months. According to our calculations, modest but sufficient food supplies can be maintained in the area west of the Oder River until the next harvest. Whether our enemies will permit this remains to be seen. But I pledge to devote all my strength, up to the very end, to the survival of the German people.
"The military blows which Germany has received during the last few months have been shattering. Our fate is no longer in our own hands. Only a more merciful Providence can change our prospects for the future. We ourselves, however, can help save ourselves not only by going about our work industriously, facing the enemy with dignity and self-confidence, but also by becoming more modest in our hearts, by practicing self-criticism, and by believing unshakably in the future of our nation, which will remain forever and always.
"May God protect Germany!"
"Hitler repeated the announcement of his intentions on January 30, 1942: This war will not end “as the Jews imagine, by the extermination of the European-Aryan peoples, but the outcome of this war will be the annihilation of Jewry.”
"The Fuehrer’s order for the destruction that was to be purposefully carried out in the Reich read in full:
"The struggle for the very existence of our people forces us to seize any means which can weaken the combat readiness of our enemy and prevent him from advancing. Every opportunity, direct or indirect, to inflict the most lasting possible damage on the enemy’s striking power must be used to the utmost. It is a mistake to believe that when we win back the lost territories we will be able to retrieve and use these transportation, communications, production, and supply facilities that have not been destroyed or have been temporarily crippled; when the enemy withdraws he will leave us only scorched earth and will show no consideration for the welfare of the population.
"Therefore, I order:
"1. All military, transportation, communications, industrial, and food-supply facilities, as well as all resources within the Reich which the enemy might use either immediately or in the foreseeable future for continuing the war, are to be destroyed.
"2. Those responsible for these measures are: the military commands for all military objects, including the transportation and communications installations; the Gauleiters and defense commissioners for all industrial and supply facilities, as well as other resources. When necessary, the troops are to assist the Gauleiters and the defense commissioners in carrying out their task.
"3. These orders are to be communicated at once to all troop commanders; contrary instructions are invalid.
"This decree was directly contrary to the requests I had made in my March 18 memorandum: “If the war advances farther into Reich territory, measures should be taken to assure that no one has the right to destry industrial installations, coal mines, electric plants, and other facilities, nor transportation installations and inland waterways. Demolition of bridges as planned would do more lasting damage to the transportation network than all the bombing of the past few years.”"
................................................................................................
"Hitler’s decree of April 7, 1945, read as follows (with the passage Hitler crossed out in italics): To assure uniform execution of my decree of March 19, 1945 I decree the following for transportation and communications:
"1. Operatively important bridges must be destroyed in such a way that they cannot be used by the enemy. Areas or sectors (rivers, parts of the autobahn, etc.) where such bridges are to be destroyed will be determined from case to case by the High Command of the armed forces. The harshest penalties must be inflicted if these bridges are not destroyed.
"2. All other bridges must not be destroyed until the defense commissioners along with the competent agencies of the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Armaments and War Production determine that the approach of the enemy makes it essential to halt production or transportation to those areas. To assure that production continues until the last possible moment, I ordered in my decree of March 30, 1945, that transportation must be maintained up to the last possible moment [even if the enemy’s rapid movement creates the risk that a bridge (with the exception of those designated in point 1) may fall into his hands before it can be destroyed].
"3. All other objects and installations important for vehicular movement (other manufactured objects of every sort, rails, ballast, and repair shops), as well as the communications facilities of the postal system, the railroad system, and of private companies are to be effectively incapacitated. With regard to all measures for demolition and evacuation it must be borne in mind that, with the exception of the instances treated separately under point 1, when lost territory is recovered these installations should be usable for German production.
"Headquarters, April 7, 1945 Adolf Hitler"
................................................................................................
Speer's speech, against the directive about total destruction:-
"The complete text of this speech, written April 16, 1945, follows:
"Never before in history has a civilized people been struck so hard; never have the destruction and war damage been so great as in our country, and never has a people borne the hardships of war with greater endurance, hardiness, and loyalty than you.
"Now all of you are depressed, shaken to the core. Your love is turning to hate, your endurance and hardiness to fatigue and indifference.
"This must not be. In this war the German people has displayed a determination which in days to come will, if history is just, be accorded the highest honor. Especially at this moment we must not weep and mourn for what is past. Only desperately hard work will enable us to bear our fate. But we can help ourselves by realistically and soberly deciding what the essential demands of the hour are.
"And here we find there is only one main task: to avoid everything that could rob the German people of its basis for life, a basis already so diminished. Preservation of our places of work, of the transportation network, and of all other installations necessary to the feeding, clothing, and sheltering of our people is the first prerequisite for preserving our strength as a nation. In this phase of the war, therefore, we must avoid anything which could inflict further damage on our economy.
"As the Minister responsible for all production, for the preservation of roads, waterways, and power plants and for the restoration of transportation, I therefore order, in agreement with the highest authorities of the various branches of the armed forces:
"1. Destruction or crippling of any bridge, plant, waterway, railroad, or communications facility is henceforth prohibited.
"2. All explosive charges on bridges are to be spiked and all other preparations for demolition or incapacitating are to be eliminated. If a plant has already been crippled, the parts removed are to be returned.
"3. Local measures to protect the plants and the railroad and communications networks should be instituted at once.
"4. These instructions apply not only to the Reich but also to occupied Norway, Denmark, Bohemia, Moravia, and Italy.
"5. Anyone who acts counter to these instructions is consciously and intentionally inflicting harm on the German people and thus becomes an enemy. The soldiers of the armed forces and the militia are hereby instructed to proceed against these enemies of the people with all possible means, if necessary by the use of firearms.
"In not destroying bridges that were intended to be blown up, we are giving our enemies an advantage in their operations. For this reason, but more for the sake of humane warfare, we urge our enemies to cease air raids on German cities and villages even if these contain installations important to the war effort. For our part we must make arrangements for the orderly surrender of cities and towns which are completely encircled. Cities which lack effective means of defense should be declared open cities.
"To avoid injustices and serious blunders during this last phase of the war, the following instructions are issued in the interests of the German people:
"1. Prisoners of war and foreign workers are to remain in their places of work. Those who are already on the move should be directed toward their home countries.
"2. In the concentration camps the political prisoners, including the Jews, should be separated from asocial elements. The former are to be handed over unharmed to the occupying forces.
"3. Punishment of all political prisoners, including the Jews, is to cease until further notice.
"4. Service of the Volkssturm [People’s Militia] against the enemy is voluntary. In addition it is the militia’s duty to assure law and order within the country. Until the enemy occupation begins, members of the National Socialist Party are obligated to work with the militia in order to demonstrate that they wish to serve the people to the end.
"5. The activities of the Werewolf and similar organizations must cease at once. They give the enemy a just pretext for reprisals and also threaten the foundations of our strength as a nation. Order and meeting our obligations are essential prerequisites to the survival of the German people.
"The destruction which this war has brought upon Germany can be compared only with that of the Thirty Years’ War. But losses in human lives from hunger and epidemics must never be allowed to take on the proportions they did then. The enemy alone can decide whether he will try to win his place in history as a decent and generous victor by conferring on the German people the honor and conditions deserved by an opponent who, although vanquished, can be said to have fought bravely and well.
"But each one of you can do his part to protect our people from the worst. During the next few months you must summon up even more of the determination to rebuild that you, German workers and factory directors, and you, German railroad men, have shown time and again during the devastating air raids. The last few months of paralyzing horror and boundless disappointment have produced an understandable lethargy. But that must go now! God will only help a nation that does not give up, even in so desperate a situation.
For the immediate future I give you the following guidelines to be followed in areas already occupied by the enemy:
"1. The most important task is repair of the damaged railroads. Therefore, if the enemy gives permission or orders, every possible means must be employed, no matter how primitive, to carry out this work of reconstruction. For transportation makes it possible to provide food to large areas in which the population would otherwise face grave shortages. And only if you manage to patch up a transportation network will you ever be reunited with your families. Therefore, it is in the personal interest of each one of you to do everything possible to restore transportation.
"2. Industrial and manual workers, who have performed incomparable feats during this war, are under obligation to carry out as quickly as possible all assignments connected with rebuilding the railroads; other tasks should be put aside for the time being.
"3. During six years of war the German farmer has been highly self-disciplined; he has been an example to the nation in delivering his products according to his own instruction. In the days to come every German farmer must raise his production to the highest possible level. It can be taken for granted that the German farmer will cultivate this year’s crop in fullest awareness of his duty. He knows how large a responsiblity he bears to the German people.
"4. Food must receive transportation priority over everything else. Food-producing plants must receive electricity, gas, coal, or wood before any other factories are supplied.
"5. Government bureaus must not be dissolved. Bureau chiefs bear full responsibility for keeping them in operation. Anyone who leaves his place of work without his supervisor’s permission is committing a crime against the nation. Administration is necessary if we are to preserve the German people from chaos.
"If we work with the same determination that we have demonstrated during the past few years, the German people will survive without more great losses. Transportation can be fairly adequately restored within two or three months. According to our calculations, modest but sufficient food supplies can be maintained in the area west of the Oder River until the next harvest. Whether our enemies will permit this remains to be seen. But I pledge to devote all my strength, up to the very end, to the survival of the German people.
"The military blows which Germany has received during the last few months have been shattering. Our fate is no longer in our own hands. Only a more merciful Providence can change our prospects for the future. We ourselves, however, can help save ourselves not only by going about our work industriously, facing the enemy with dignity and self-confidence, but also by becoming more modest in our hearts, by practicing self-criticism, and by believing unshakably in the future of our nation, which will remain forever and always.
"May God protect Germany!"
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"Hitler repeated the announcement of his intentions on January 30, 1942: This war will not end “as the Jews imagine, by the extermination of the European-Aryan peoples, but the outcome of this war will be the annihilation of Jewry.”
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"Gebhardt had also been consulted about a knee injury by Leopold ΙΠ of Belgium and by the Belgian industrialist Danny Heinemann. During the Nuremberg Trial, I learned that Gebhardt had performed experiments on prisoners in concentration camps."
"Gebhardt had also been consulted about a knee injury by Leopold ΙΠ of Belgium and by the Belgian industrialist Danny Heinemann. During the Nuremberg Trial, I learned that Gebhardt had performed experiments on prisoners in concentration camps."
"As late as May 8, 1943, Goebbels noted in his diary: “The Fuehrer expresses his unshakable conviction that the Reich will one day rule all of Europe. We will have to survive a great many conflicts, but they will doubtless lead to the most glorious triumphs. And from then on the road to world domination is practically spread out before us. For whoever rules Europe will be able to seize the leadership of the world.”"
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"According to L. W. Helwig, Persönlichkeiten der Gegenwart (1940), Lenard inveighed against “relativity theories produced by alien minds.” In his four-volume work, Die Deutsche Physik (1935), Helwig considered physics “cleansed of the outgrowths which the by now well-known findings of race research have shown to be the exclusive products of the Jewish mind and which the German Volk must shun as racially incompatible with itself.”"
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"Gebhardt had also been consulted about a knee injury by Leopold ΙΠ of Belgium and by the Belgian industrialist Danny Heinemann. During the Nuremberg Trial, I learned that Gebhardt had performed experiments on prisoners in concentration camps."
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Speer and others were affected by conditions of prisoners of war used as forced labour.
"The shocking effect the camp had on us is indicated in the deliberately veiled phraseology of the Office Journal entry for December 10, 1943: “On the morning of December 10 the minister went to inspect a new plant in the Harz Mountains. Carrying out this tremendous mission drew on the leaders’ last reserves of strength. Some of the men were so affected that they had to be forcibly sent off on vacations to restore their nerves.”"
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"The prison psychologist, G. M. Gilbert, has revealed in his Nuremberg Diary (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, Inc., 1947), p. 158, that the different groups were established deliberately by the prison command to prevent Goering from “terrorizing the defendants.”—Translator’s note."
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"The readiness of technicians to carry out any order is, of course, not limited to our country. A year later, Harry L. Stimson (U.S. Secretary of State from 1929–33, Secretary of War from 1911–13 and 1940–45) wrote an article, “The Nürnberg Trial: Landmark in Law,” Foreign Affairs (1947) in which he said:
"We must never forget, that under modern conditions of life, science and technology, all war has become greatly brutalized, and that no one who joins in it, even in self-defense, can escape becoming also in a measure brutalized. Modern war cannot be limited in its destructive method and the inevitable debasement of all participants … A fair scrutiny of the last two World Wars makes clear the steady intensification in the inhumanity of the weapons and methods employed by both, the aggressors and the victors. In order to defeat Japanese aggression, we were forced, as Admiral Nimitz has stated, to employ a technique of unrestricted submarine warfare, not unlike that which 25 years ago was the proximate cause of our entry into World War I. In the use of strategic air power the Allies took the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Germany and in Japan … We as well as our enemies have contributed to the proof that the central moral problem is war and not its methods, and that a continuance of war will in all probability end with the destruction of our civilization."
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November 23, 2019.
ISBN 978 1 4746 0338 6
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