FROM
Albert Speer was bom in Mannheim in 1905. He grew up in liberal and artistic surroundings and graduated in architecture. In 1932 he was asked by Hitler to become his private architect. After the Nazis came to power he designed their great public works, including the Reich Chancellory in Berlin. Though he had previously been scarcely involved in party activities, he became one of the closest personal associates of Hitler.
He was appointed armaments minister in 1942 with wide powers over industrial production and labor throughout Germany and occupied Europe J In the end he plotted to kill Hitler and, in 1945, successfully defied his final order to carry out a scorched earth policy before the Allied advance. At the Nuremburg trial of the major war criminals he was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment for crimes against humanity. He was released from Spandau Prison in 1966.
The victories of the early years of the war can literally be attributed to Hitler's ignorance of the rules of the game and his layman's delight in decision-making. Since the opposing side was trained to apply rules which Hitler's self-taught, autocratic mind did not know and did not use, he achieved surprises. These audacities, coupled with military superiority, were the basis of his early successes. But as soon as setbacks occurred he suffered shipwreck, like most untrained people. Then his ignorance of the rules of the game was revealed as another kind of incompetence; then his defects were no longer strengths. The greater the failures became, the more obstinately his incurable amateurishness came to the fore. The tendency to wild decisions had long been his forte; now it speeded his downfall.
Every two or three weeks I travelled from Berlin to spend a few days in Hitler's East Prussian, and later in his Ukrainian, Headquarters in order to have him decide the many technical questions of detail in which he was interested in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief of the army. Hitler knew all the types of ordnance and ammunition, including the calibers, the lengths of barrels, and the range of fire. . . . The real expert does not
Albert Speer
burden his mind with details that he can look up or heave to an assistant. Hitler, however, felt it necessary for his own self-esteem to parade his knowledge. But he also enjoyed doing it. He obtained his information from a large book in a red binding with broad yellow diagonal stripes. It was a catalogue being brought up-to-date, of from thirty to fifty different types of ammunication and ordnance. He kept it on his night table. Sometimes he would order a servant to bring the book down when in the course of military conferences a colleague had mentioned a figure which Hitler instantly corrected. The book was opened. Hitler's data would be confirmed, without fail, every time, while the General would be shown to be in error. Hitler's memory for figures was the terror of his entourage.
It often seemed to me that Hitler used these prolonged conferences on armaments and war production as an escape from his military responsibilities. He himself admitted to me that he found in them a relaxation similar to our former conferences on architecture. Even in a crisis situation he devoted many hours to such discussions, sometimes refusing to interrupt them even when his Field Marshals or ministers urgently wanted to speak to him.
Our technical conferences were usually combined with a demonstration of new weapons which took place in a nearby field. . . . Often Hitler and I would make appreciative remarks about the weapons, such as "What an elegant barrel" or "What a fine shape this tank has!"—a ludicrous relapse into the terminology of our joint inspections of architectural models.
In the course of one such inspection, Keitel mistook a 7.5 centimeter anti-tank gun for a light field howitzer. Hitler passed over the mistake at the time but had his joke on our ride back. "Did you hear that? Keitel and the anti-tank gun? And he's a general of the artillery!"
* * *
During the next twenty years of my life I was guarded in Spandau prison, by nations 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 towards 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 by-passed the prison rules. . . . And now at last I wanted to understand.
—Richard and Clara Winston
(translators)