Inside the Third Reich. Through his autobiographies and interviews, Speer carefully constructed an image of himself as a man who deeply regretted having failed to discover the monstrous crimes of the Third Reich. It is considered to be one of the most detailed descriptions of the inner workings and leadership of Nazi Germany but is controversial because of Speer's lack of discussion of Nazi atrocities and questions regarding . sent during this battle. by punktlich02 29 Oct 2009, 11:35, Return to The Dieter Zinke Axis Biographical Research Section. [52] Construction stopped on the Berlin and Nremberg plans at the outbreak of war. [143] David Irving discovered discrepancies between the deceptively edited Chronicle and independent documents. [177], The armaments "miracle" was a myth; Speer had used statistical manipulation to support his claims. From 1946 to 1966, while serving the sentence in Spandau Prison, he penned more than 2,000 manuscript pages of personal memoirs. He was aided editorially by Wolf Jobst Siedler, Ullstein and Propylaen, and Joachim Fest. Speer studied at the technical schools in Karlsruhe, Munich, and Berlin, and acquired an architectural license in 1927. [124], The prisoners were forbidden to write memoirs. He lost yet more authority. Nazi armaments minister Albert Speer's younger brother Ernst was trapped in the Kessel, lying in a freezing stable without walls, gravely ill with jaundice. There were so many corpses at the Dora underground factory, for example, that the crematorium was overwhelmed. Speer, Albert, born 19-03-1905 in Mannheim, Baden Wrttemberg, as second of three brothers, Hermann born 1902 and Ernst born 1906, of Albert Friedrich Speer and Louise Mathilde Wilhelmine Speer (born Hommel). [34] Hitler ordered Speer to develop plans to rebuild Berlin. Showing 28 distinct works. [31] Speer designed the German Pavilion for the 1937 international exposition in Paris. In this position, Speer used millions of forced laborers to raise economic production. [91], On 14 April 1944, Speer lost control of Organisation Todt to his Deputy, Franz Xaver Dorsch. [95], Losses of territory and a dramatic expansion of the Allied strategic bombing campaign caused the collapse of the German economy from late 1944. Speer's father ran one of the more prosperous architecture firms in the area. Speer asked Wolters to destroy the material he had omitted from his donation but Wolters refused and retained an original copy. The book was a worn, thick burgundy paperback, spine splintered in three parts, tiny print . While he sought to frustrate directives to destroy industrial facilities in areas at risk of capture, so that they could be used after the war, he still supported the war's continuation. [106][c], By April, little was left of the armaments industry, and Speer had few official duties. [55] On 8 February 1942, Reich Minister of Armaments and Munitions Fritz Todt died in a plane crash shortly after taking off from Hitler's eastern headquarters at Rastenburg. "[115] Speer's attorney, Hans Flchsner, successfully contrasted Speer from other defendants[116] and portrayed him as an artist thrust into political life who had always remained a non-ideologue. [64] Another factor that produced the boom in ammunition was the policy of allocating more coal to the steel industry. Albert Speer, Germany Architect. [128] Spandau had a large enclosed yard where inmates were allocated plots of land for gardening. The building was able to hold 340,000 people. As a Nazi Party member, she had greatly enjoyed dining with Hitler. In 1944, this became endemic; over half a million workers were arrested. For the record, Ernst Speer is discussed at p. 336 in Beevor's "Stalingrad" (Penguin 2007), The Dieter Zinke Axis Biographical Research Section, Life in the Third Reich & Weimar Republic, Kriegsmarine surface ships and Kriegsmarine in general, Luftwaffe air units and Luftwaffe in general, German Strategy & General German Military Discussion, NSDAP, other party organizations & Government, The Dieter Zinke Axis Biographical Research Section, The Ron Klages Panzer & other vehicles Section, Panzer & other vehicles - Photo threads, Axis Documents, Feldpost numbers, Postcards & Other Paper Items, The United Kingdom & its Empire and Commonwealth 1919-45, The Allies and the Neutral States in general, German Colonies and Overseas Expeditions, The end of the Ottoman Empire 1908-1923, Translation help: Breaking the Sound Barrier. William. Speer first heard Adolf Hitler speak during an address to the combined students and faculty of Berlin University and his institute. In his writings, Speer claimed to have finished five thousand books while in prison. In September 1945, he was told that he would be tried for war crimes, and several days later, he was moved to Nuremberg and incarcerated there. he is one of Germany's top architects. He fabricated the additional details. [102][103] Hitler rejected Speer's proposal to cease demolitions. [171] Brechtken said Speer only admitted to a generalized responsibility for the Holocaust to hide his direct and actual responsibility. [6] He followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and studied architecture. He goes on to say that at the Nuremberg Trial he stated he "had to share the total responsibility for all that had happened", and that he "was inescapably contaminated morally". Hitler commissioned him to design and construct structures including the Reich Chancellery and the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. Before that, Speer worked as the chief architect in Hitler's Nazi . Before World War II, Speer helped propel the Nazi vision of grandeur and superiority. Speer's Heidelberg school offered rugby football, unusual for Germany, skiing, and Speer was a participant. Albert Speer was a close confidant of Hitler, and the Third Reich's most celebrated architect. His sentence of twenty years amounted to 7,305 days, which only allotted one and a half days per book. [9] In 1925, he transferred again, this time to the Technical University of Berlin where he studied under Heinrich Tessenow, whom Speer greatly admired. He also cites the use of the V-2 as a terror weapon, rather than continued development of the ground-to-air defensive Waterfall rocket. In the World War II, Hitler appointed him as the Minister of Armaments and War Production for Germany. [153] He was well-educated, middle class, and bourgeois, and could contrast himself with those who, in the popular mind, typified "bad Nazis". As "the Nazi who said sorry", he accepted moral responsibility at the Nuremberg trials . Labor to build the A4 rockets came from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. [1]:488498,569, Speer's involvement with concentration camp prisoners as a work force came about when Hitler agreed to Himmler's proposal they be used for the secret V-2 project. 46.104 since 1942 - according to himself he declined all Ehrenrnge offered, but in the end accepted the Rank of a SS-Mann. Albert Einstein lived in the USA, so was not where the holocaust Speer was born in Mannheim, Germany on March 19, 1905, to Luise and Albert. Speer provided Hitler with a memorandum on 15 March, which detailed Germany's dire economic situation and sought approval to cease demolitions of infrastructure. He was 76 years old. The relationship was frowned upon by Speer's class-conscious mother, who felt the Webers were socially inferior. During the winter of 194142, in the light of Germany's disastrous defeat in the Battle of Moscow, the German leadership including Friedrich Fromm, Georg Thomas and Fritz Todt had come to the conclusion that the war could not be won. Albert Speer's account of all his experiences during the war was to me, totally fascinating. It became instrumental in exploiting slave labor for the benefit of the German war effort. Feigned repentance at Nuremberg, saving his own neck. He was more forthright in an interview with William Hamsher in which he said he joined the party in order to save "Germany from Communism". The journalist had unwittingly collaborated in one of his myths. [15], In January 1931, Speer applied for Nazi Party membership, and on 1 March 1931, he became member number 474,481. [43] The Schutzstaffel (SS) built two concentration camps in 1938 and used the inmates to quarry stone for its construction. [167] Brechtken wrote that his most brazen lie was fabricated during an interview with a French journalist in 1952. Having served his full term, Speer was released in 1966. Progress was slow because fuel was rationed and Army Group A were given priority. [84] Production of German fighter aircraft more than doubled between 1943 and 1944. [71] Speer and Sauckel cooperated closely to meet Speer's labor demands. Speer was formally arrested on May 23rd. [21] As Chancellor, Hitler had a residence in the building and came by every day to be briefed by Speer and the building supervisor on the progress of the renovations. [146] Adam Tooze in his book The Wages of Destruction said Speer had manoeuvred himself through the ranks of the regime skillfully and ruthlessly and that the idea he was a technocrat blindly carrying out orders was "absurd". Study now. FC Bayern Munich opens a new sports complex with a youth academy planned by AS+P. In her renowned biography, Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth, she describes her friend Schramm as "maybe the most moral person I have ever met". [137], Speer's release from prison was a worldwide media event. Speer arrived there the previous evening and accepted Todt's offer to fly with him to Berlin. In June 1936 he charged a personal honorarium of 30,000 Reichsmark and estimated the chancellery would be completed within three to four years. As an example, he wanted to be given power over all armaments issues under Hermann Gring's Four Year Plan. 4.10 avg rating 13,205 ratings published 1969 86 editions. The task force was established by 1 March 1944, orders of Speer, with support from Erhard Milch of the Reich Aviation Ministry. [139] Although he stated he hoped to resume an architectural career, his sole project, a collaboration for a brewery, was unsuccessful. [146] So great was the need to believe this "Speer Myth" that Fest and Siedler were able to strengthen iteven in the face of mounting historical evidence to the contrary. Albert Speer, the Nazi architect who built a Cathedral of Light for Hitler and commanded millions of prisoners in the forced production of weaponry, had a comfortable second life. letters that exist between ernst and the parents which he wrote and Among those who pledged support for his sentence to be commuted were Charles de Gaulle and US diplomat George Wildman Ball. This ignored military realities, as the German armed forces were unable to match the Allies' firepower and were facing total defeat. Nobody else in Hitler's circle, not even Josef Goebbels, was shown such favoritism. [66], As Minister of Armaments, Speer was responsible for supplying weapons to the army. First published in 1969, it appeared in English translation in 1970. Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (/pr/; German: [pe] (listen); 19 March 1905 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. Unsubstantiated rumors have claimed that the remains were used for other building projects such as the Humboldt University, Mohrenstrae metro station and Soviet war memorials in Berlin. In 1942, he was named Minister of Armaments and Munitions, assuming significant responsibility for the German war economy. [83] His political rivals used the opportunity to undermine his authority and damage his reputation with Hitler. Founded in 1999. [165] Trommer said he was not an apolitical technocrat; instead, he was one of the most powerful and unscrupulous leaders in the Nazi regime. [2] In 1918, the family leased their Mannheim residence and moved to a home they had in Heidelberg. [107] Speer visited the Fhrerbunker on 22 April for the last time. [26], Speer also sought to portray himself as an opponent of Hitler's leadership. [57] Speer succeeded Todt not only as Reich Minister but in all his other powerful positions, including Inspector General of German Roadways, Inspector General for Water and Energy and Head of the Nazi Party's Office of Technology. Minister for Armaments. [67] With Hitler's full agreement, he decided to prioritize tank production, and he was given unrivaled power to ensure success. By the autumn of 1942 however, the estimated period for developing a weapon had increased to three to four years, much too long to affect the war. This carried with it the rank of State Secretary in the Reich government and gave him extraordinary powers over the Berlin city government. [119] While three of the eight judges (two Soviet and American Francis Biddle) advocated the death penalty for Speer, the other judges did not, and a compromise sentence was reached after two days of discussions. [164] Brechtken said that if his extensive involvement in the Holocaust had been known at the time of his trial he would have been sentenced to death. Inside the Third Reich (German: Erinnerungen, "Memories") is a memoir written by Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister of Armaments from 1942 to 1945, serving as Adolf Hitler's main architect before this period. [148] In October 1973, he made his first trip to Britain, flying to London to be interviewed on the BBC Midweek programme. By Thomas Rogers 23 May 2017 I'd like to know more about his life; all I know is that he was inside Stalingrad's. Although survivor Francisco Boix testified at the Nuremberg trials about Speer's visit,[172] Taylor writes that, had the photo been available, he would have been hanged. [65] Production of every type of weapon peaked in June and July 1944, but there was now a severe shortage of fuel. All of the Germanic peoples will be included in it. Speer has paid his penance for his part of the inner circle and had come to the realization of Germany's reality during WWII. Speer described the personalities of many Nazi officials, including Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Gring, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann, and, of course, Hitler himself. For the television film based on the book, see, :55,71,7879,83,105,115116,138,188,651,674,696, Sarah Word from the British film magazine ", Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inside_the_Third_Reich&oldid=1132240858, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2022, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 7 January 2023, at 23:15. [85] The growth, however, consisted in large part of models that were becoming obsolescent and proved easy prey for Allied aircraft. Included in the building works was material to build gas chambers, crematoria and morgues. all Albert Speer wanted was to feel important. Po vlce byl bhem Norimberskho procesu odsouzen jako vlen zloinec ke 20 letm vzen. [55] At the same time, Hitler also appointed Speer as head of the Organisation Todt, a massive, government-controlled construction company. [73] Sauckel obtained new workers often using the most brutal methods. Sept. 21, 2017. Sauckel had whole villages in France, Holland and Belgium forcibly rounded up and shipped to Speer's factories. It began in 1932 but had not supplied any weaponry. The myth began to fall apart in the 1980s, when the armaments miracle was attributed to Nazi propaganda. - Han var ikke sdan en morfar, man sad p skdet af, og . See answer (1) Copy. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, he was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Speer joined the National Socialist Party in January 1931; he wrote "I was not choosing the NSDAP, but becoming a follower of Hitler, whose magnetic force had reached out to me the first time I saw him and had not, thereafter, released me." [20], Shortly after Hitler came into power, he began to make plans to rebuild the chancellery. Speer's full length portrait of Hitler has unnerving reality. Hitler became interested in Speer through his own interest in the arts. After his release on 1 October 1966, he used Federal Archive documents to rework the material into his autobiography. Speer's illness coincided with the Allied "Big Week", a series of bombing raids on the German aircraft factories that were a devastating blow to aircraft production. This led to a significant German Army failure at the Battle of Prokhorovka, a major turning point on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Red Army. It is primarily based on the memoirs of Gertraud "Traudl" Junge ( Alexandra Maria Lara ), one of Hitler's secretaries, and is one of the most accurate portrayals of the last, desperate days of the Third Reich and its effects on the Fhrer, his closest aides, and ordinary Germans. the atmosphere was said the best ever it was actually worded they Speer states he became hopeful when Hitler explained how communism could be checked and Germany could recover economically. Secured early release from prison, became a media celebrity and successfully cultivated the "clean Speer" myth. Speer was aided in shaping the works by Joachim Fest and Wolf Jobst Siedler from the publishing house Ullstein. Como Ministro do Armamento, Speer foi responsvel pela grande produtividade da Alemanha neste setor nos anos finais da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Figlio e nipote di architetti, Spee. Speer in response used his propaganda expertise to display a new dynamism of the war economy. After the war, Speer was among the 24 "major war criminals" arrested and charged with the crimes of the Nazi regime at the Nuremberg trials. If Speer, who had been so close to Hitler, had not known the full extent of the crimes of the Nazi regime and had just been "following orders", then they could tell themselves and others they too had done the same. [5] Speer was active in sports, taking up skiing and mountaineering. A dramatization of the life of Albert Speer (Rutger Hauer), Adolf Hitler's (Sir Derek Jacobi's) young architect and one-time confidant, and his meteoric rise into the Nazi hierarchy. The relationship will always amaze. by Durand 27 Jul 2005, 14:18, Post by PanzerKavallerie 27 Jul 2005, 07:49, Post He was not involved in the plot, and played a minor role in the regime's efforts to regain control over Berlin after Hitler survived. Finally, Speer states, "Because I failed at the time, I still feel, to this day, responsible for Auschwitz in a wholly personal sense. 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