SPEER’S EFFORTS TO BLOCK Hitler’s scorched-earth policy, which had begun back in September, continued into January 1945. On the nineteenth, he wrote to a Reichsleiter (the highest rank in the Nazi Party below Hitler) in the Party Chancellery in Munich to draw his attention to Hitler’s support for disabling but not destroying industry.1 Two days later, citing the authority of Schörner, one of Hitler’s most loyal commanders, Speer wrote to the Blechhammer and Heydebreck synthetic oil and chemical factories, instructing them that disabling measures taken before the Russian occupation should only keep the factories out of operation for two to three weeks.2 As before, his motivations were rational: he opposed purposeless destruction, not all destruction. The day after this intervention, Speer informed a Generalmajor Toppe that it was necessary to prepare Hungarian oil refineries for destruction because the Soviets could put these back into production too quickly.3

These efforts bought Speer time, but they did not make the problem go away. On February 22, an important order went out to the army groups. They were directed to appoint a “battle commander,” an officer or civil servant who would be personally responsible for the evacuation of the local population and for the evacuation or destruction of industry; he would also be responsible for the distribution of food and heating supplies.4 Officers who failed to make the right call and allowed goods or industry to fall intact into enemy hands would face a court martial.5 The result would almost certainly be death: from late 1944, Himmler had assumed control of the Wehrmacht penal system.6 Orders on the destruction of bridges followed a similar logic: the local commanders of the engineer units were ordered to distinguish between the temporary disablement and permanent destruction of bridges, and to do so in close cooperation with civilian authorities.7 To the degree that it was respected, the last order was significant: it provided local authorities with a formal role in the defence and destruction and, by extension, in the refusal to destroy their localities.

As these orders were going out, Speer travelled through Germany to persuade Gauleiter and army commanders to respect them. He took eighteen trips in February alone and set up thirty-five meetings with Gauleiter, army commanders, industrialists, and public servants.8 Harried by Allied fighters and, on his trip to Silesia, within earshot of the guns on the front, Speer tried to convince them not to destroy Germany.9

March brought no respite. On March 1, 1945, Hitler ordered the Gauleiter and Reich Defence Commissioners (Reichsverteidigungskommissare) to prepare the Volkssturm for the final battle.10 Then another order went out, this one calling for the complete destruction of all road and rail bridges, rail tunnels, signal stations and signal boxes, train stations, and locomotives in Germany. It would have crippled Germany’s transportation system indefinitely.11 That same month, Hitler told Walter Rohland, a steel magnate and senior official on Speer’s Ruhr staff, that “if the German people lacks the strength [Kraft] to end victoriously this war that the enemy powers have forced on them, then that people has no right to exist!”12

Speer responded by sending out orders designed to save what he could of Germany’s dense and sophisticated road and rail networks. He contacted the undersecretary of the Reich Transportation Ministry, Albert Ganzenmüller, and asked him to revise the order. Ganzenmüller did so on March 14 and sent the revised order out the next day.13

Also on March 15, Speer sent out revised instructions to OKW. Writing to the army chief of staff section responsible for engineers and fortresses (Generalstab des Heeres, General der Pioniere und Festungen), he stated, “I amend the orders regarding destruction within Germany itself in the following way:”14

The order ended with another qualification designed to limit destruction: “These measures are to be implemented with an eye to the coming shortages of explosives and fuses … [which requires] the limitation [of destruction] to militarily essential targets.” The previous day, March 14, Hitler had ordered that civilian evacuation was to be the lowest transportation priority: troops, coal, and food supplies were to be moved first.16

By March 1945, Speer was effectively in open rebellion. He expanded his travel schedule, making thirty-one trips and arranging another thirty-five meetings over the course of the month.17 In mid-March, by his own account, Speer also sent Hitler a memorandum that, for the first time, made an argument against scorched earth without mentioning eventual German victory. “Even if a re-conquest does not become possible…. It cannot possibly be the purpose of warfare at home to destroy so many bridges that … it will take years to rebuild this transportation network…. Their destruction means eliminating all further possibility for the German people to survive.”18

As Speer ramped up his efforts, so did Hitler. On March 18, a Wehrmacht communiqué announced the execution of four officers who had failed to blow up the Remagen bridge before the Allies took it.

The following day, Hitler issued his clearest scorched-earth order, known as the “Nero Order”:

The struggle for the existence of our people forces us to employ even on Reich territory every means to weaken the fighting strength of our enemy and hinder his further advance. All possible methods must be utilized to inflict, directly or indirectly, severe and lasting damage on the striking power of the enemy. It is an error to believe that transportation, communications, industrial or supply installations that are not destroyed or only put out of action for a short time can be put in working order again for our own use when lost areas are re-conquered.

The enemy when he retreats will leave us only scorched earth and will abandon all consideration for the population. I therefore give the following orders:

1) All military, traffic, communications, industrial and supply installations and objects of value within Reich territory that the enemy can in any way turn to use for the continuation of battle, either now or within the foreseeable future, are to be destroyed.

2) The military authorities are responsible for carrying out the destruction of military installations, including traffic and communications installations, the Gauleiter and Reich Defence Commissioners [are responsible] for all industrial and utility installations and miscellaneous objects of value. The troops are to give the Gauleiter and Reich Defence Commissioners the necessary help in carrying out their task. [emphasis added]

3) This order is to be brought immediately to the notice of all commanders of troops. Orders that contradict the above are invalid.

Signed, Adolf Hitler.19

March 19, 1945, was also Speer’s fortieth birthday. He used it as an excuse to see Hitler in person, attending a military conference between Hitler and his generals. After midnight on the preceding evening, Feldmarschall Albert Kesselring reported on the situation in the Saar. Kesselring had already observed that the local population was desperate for an end to the war, and civilians were begging the army not to destroy their villages by defending them against the Americans.20 Hitler responded with fury. He ordered Keitel to have the entire population west of the Rhine evacuated.21 The order went out the next day, and with it an order that all men between the ages of fourteen and fifty-five be given priority (presumably to re-establish a fighting front on the right side of the Rhine).22 If motor transportation for the evacuation was insufficient—the military had first priority on that anyway—civilians were to march. The evacuation would effectively have been an expulsion, and the millions trekking miserably westward from East Prussia and beyond would have been matched by similarly miserable columns moving east. When one of the generals objected to Hitler that evacuating people without food, without trains, and without prepared shelter would result in great misery for civilians, the dictator replied: “That can’t be our concern any longer. Get them out.”23

With the war lost, Hitler followed his crude and murderous social Darwinism to its logical conclusion: German industry, infrastructure, culture, and lives were all to end in an orgy of destruction. As he told Speer in person, “If the war is lost, the people will also be lost [and] it is not necessary to worry about their needs for elemental survival. On the contrary, it is best for us to destroy even these things. For the nation has proved to be weak, and the future belongs entirely to the strong people of the East. Whatever [of Germany] remains after this battle is any case only the inadequates [Minderwertigen], because the good ones will be dead.”24

The Nero Order went out to both the eastern and the western fronts. At 9:00 on March 20, it was sent to Army Group G, Military District XII (Wiesbaden), Army Group H, Army Group B, and the Nineteenth Army.25 Kesselring, who had succeeded Rundstedt as OB West on March 10, had every intention of obeying the order. He told his armies to make preparations for the destruction of all military installations, including traffic and communications installations, within their military districts and within the areas occupied by their troops. They were to see to it that the “destruction is carried out in good time.”26 On the eastern front, the navy reported on March 23 its plans to mine, destroy, and block the harbours of Gotenhafen, Hela, Pillau, Danzig, Königsberg, Stettin, and Swinemünde.27 On the twenty-seventh, the head of naval armaments (Chef der Kriegsmarine-Rüstung) reported that his men had destroyed all shipyards, weapons factories, and related equipment in Danzig.28

By the twenty-ninth, the order had gone out to all Gauleiter, to the Wehrmacht located in the Reich, and to occupied territories.29 In a particularly chilling line, the orders to the army noted, “destruction is only useful if it occurs on the broadest possible basis.”30 It was, as historian Michael Geyer writes, a death sentence for Germany.31

Beyond its callous savagery, Hitler’s order is noteworthy for three further reasons. First, Hitler overruled in it Speer’s many instructions to “render unusable, not destroy” and attempted to transfer power from his Reichsminister to the military and, to a lesser extent, the Gauleiter. Second, Hitler felt the need to continue his argument with Speer. The line beginning “It is an error to believe …” was really an extension of his argument with Speer. It is a mark of the remaining strength of the curious relationship of these two men, divided by upbringing and class but united by an unquenchable thirst for power, that Hitler felt the need to explain himself. Third, as Order 3 makes clear, the German army was to be the key actor in implementing scorched earth. Whether cities lived or died; whether industry, bridges, airports, and signals communications went down in flames or survived the war; whether Germany itself emerged from the war ravaged but reparable or an utter wasteland came down to the decisions made by individual Wehrmacht, and above all army, commanders on all fronts.

In his account, Speer’s next move was to meet the three Gauleiter of the Ruhr region—Florian, Hoffmann, and Schleßmann—who had firm plans to flood mines, blow bridges up, and destroy the Ruhr canals.32 They had already tasked Hörner, one of Speer’s technical assistants, with drawing up plans for destruction.33 The plan involved flooding coal mines, destroying the mines’ lift machinery, and sinking barges loaded with cement to block Ruhr ports and canals. Walter Rohland, the steel magnate, worked with Speer to ensure that no explosives were available to implement the order.34 Speer then tried to use his powers of persuasion to convince Hoffmann and Schleßmann not to destroy the Ruhr.

Florian remained unmoved. He promised to set every building in Düsseldorf alight and to evacuate everyone from the city. “Let the enemy march into a burned out, deserted city!” he exclaimed.35 As the next chapter will show, the actions of its citizens, not Speer’s entreaties, would determine Düsseldorf’s fate.

After seeing the Gauleiter, Speer went again to meet Feldmarschall Model. Speer claims in his memoirs that his persuasion carried the argument.36 In fact, Model despaired in the face of Allied firepower.37 But the important fact was that even this most fanatical of Hitler’s field marshals, a committed National Socialist, was prepared to disobey. Although the orders were drawn up to implement the destruction, Model never passed them on.38 He agreed to keep the fighting as far as possible from the industrial areas, thus avoiding the need for demolitions designed to slow advancing Allied armies.39 After seeing Model, Speer stopped in Heidelberg. He collected orders to destroy water- and gasworks across Baden and deposited them in a letterbox in an area that was soon to be occupied by the Americans.40 Speer credits himself with saving Heidelberg, but it was the German army’s decision, under massive American pressure, to withdraw after destroying two bridges that placed the famous town outside harm’s way (more on this below).41 With the army out of the city, there was no one with the means to implement scorched-earth orders, and whether they arrived before or after the Americans was irrelevant. German civilians everywhere were desperate to surrender, and Heidelberg was no exception.

Speer then went to Würzburg and, using a now well-worn argument about German troops’ needs after reoccupying territory temporarily lost to the Allies, persuaded the Gauleiter of Mainfranken, Otto Hellmuth, to spare the ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt. The decisive argument for Hellmuth was the inevitably of defeat. He asked Speer when the vaunted miracle weapons would be deployed; Speer replied, “They’re not coming.” Only then did Hellmuth agree to spare the factories.42

After Würzburg, Speer headed to Berlin, where he arrived on March 29. Two days earlier, on March 27, at 16:00, Hitler had supplemented his March 19 Nero decree. The new order demanded the “total annihilation, by explosives, fire or dismantlement” of the entire railway system, the waterways, communications systems, and broadcasting, as well as all of the masts, antennas, and stocks of spare cable and wireless parts.43

This was not the only news greeting Speer. Bormann had reported on Speer’s activities with the Gauleiter—who were Bormann’s domain—and Hitler wanted to see him.44 A heated argument resulted when Hitler demanded that Speer reaffirm his belief in ultimate victory.45 When Speer continued to demur, Hitler gave him twenty-four hours to reconsider and then dismissed him. To add to the pressure, Speer returned to his quarters to find a March 29 telegram from the chief of transportation. “[The] aim,” it read, “is creation of a transportation wasteland in abandoned territory…. [The] shortage of explosives demands resourceful utilization of all possibilities for producing lasting destruction.”46

The next morning, Speer went to see Hitler. He had composed a lengthy justification of his actions, one that Gitta Sereny later described as “romantic waffling”; by then, 1978, even Speer admitted that it was “rubbish” (Quatsch).47 But as it happened, Speer never delivered the letter.48 Rather, he saw Hitler waiting for him as he went into the bunker below the Chancellery. The dictator looked at him coldly and said only, “Well?”

Speer replied, “My Führer, I stand unreservedly behind you.”

Tears filled Hitler’s eyes, and Speer, still this late in the war attached to his Führer, felt the emotion pass through him. “Then,” Hitler replied, “all is well.”49

Speer’s account might well be embellished, or indeed falsified, but one element of it rings true: in the meeting, he was less inclined than Hitler to let emotion interfere with calculation. He saw the opportunity to increase his power. “If I stand unreservedly behind you,” Speer replied, “then you must again entrust me rather than the Gauleiter with the implementation of your decree.”50 With Speer’s mendacious assurance that he would draw up a list of important objects to be destroyed, Hitler agreed, and Speer drew up an order “amending” his March 19 scorched-earth order. Hitler signed it and ordered a glass of wine for Speer.51

After downing his wine, Speer dashed back to his offices, where the print shop was ready and waiting. Within thirty minutes, his staff had prepared several hundred copies of the order.52 By 4:00 the next morning, the orders were being distributed across Germany. Keitel, meanwhile, forwarded Hitler’s new order to the field commanders.53 Speer sent it on March 30 to all the Gauleiter. “On the suggestion of [Speer],” it read, “the Führer is issuing the following new order concerning the destruction of industry”:

1. The destructive measures ordered were solely designed to prevent the enemy from using facilities and plants to increase his fighting capacity.

2. Under no circumstances should the measures weaken our own ability to prosecute the war. Production must be kept up to the last moment, even at the risk that the enemy’s rapid advance might lead to a factory falling undestroyed into his hands. Industrial facilities of every kind, including utility plants [Versorgungsbetriebe], are only to be destroyed when the enemy DIRECTLY [unmittelbar] threatens them.

3. Whereas bridges and other transportation facilities [Verkehrsanlagen] can only be rendered useless to the enemy through destruction, industrial facilities, including utility plants, can be rendered useless through sustained disabling. The Reichsminister for Armaments and War Production will, under my directive, decide whether important industries (e.g, munitions factories, the most important chemical factories, etc.) will be destroyed.

4. The Gauleiter and Reich Defence Commissioners will oversee the implementation of destruction or paralysis of industrial facilities.
      The implementation [itself] will be carried out by agencies and organs under the Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. All agencies of the party, the state, and the Wehrmacht will assist to that end.

5. The decision on when and how the order will be implemented [Durchführungsbestimmungen] rests, with my approval, with the Reichsminister for Armaments and War Production. He has the authority to give implementation and follow-up orders to the Reich Defence Commissioners [emphasis added].

6. These principles apply equally to firms and plants outside the battle zones.

Signed, Adolf Hitler.54

The order still left the Gauleiter in the picture, but radically reduced their power. Under point 4, “overseeing” is a highly passive and distant role. Under point 5, the order gave Speer the ability to continue his campaign against scorched earth. It was an illustration of the mutual dependence of the two men. As long as Hitler believed in victory, he needed Speer to pursue it; if Speer was to defy Hitler, he needed his authority and approval to do so.55

Speer’s first order used point 5, the granting of implementing powers to him, to reinterpret the order as a restatement of his previous “dismantle, do not destroy” order. He made four essential points. First, Hitler’s Nero Order (from March 19) and the March 30 order meant that Speer’s line fully applied.56 This was a particularly generous interpretation of the Nero Order in view of the fact that the order said exactly the opposite. Second, only Speer could implement an order for total destruction. Third, the course of the war, and not politics, would determine the timing of any destruction. Finally, on the ground, the Gauleiter and Reich Defence Commissioners could implement disabling and destruction orders only in cooperation with the Wehrmacht.

Speer was making an immense effort to transfer power on the Reich level from Bormann and the party to himself and on the local level from the Gauleiter and other party hacks to the army. It worked to a considerable degree. When Gauleiter Uiberreither from Graz wrote for clarification on what exactly had to be destroyed, he wrote to Speer rather than Bormann.57 Speer replied that scorched earth was no more, and that Hitler had decisively come down in favour of disabling rather than destroying.58 Others played along, including some otherwise uncompromisingly nasty figures. Hans-Joachim Riecke, first Reichsminister and later state secretary for food and agriculture, was, after Walther Darré and Herbert Backe, among the most important figures in the implementation of the hunger policy—that is, deliberate starvation—in eastern Poland, Lithuania, and Russia.59 On March 30, he wrote to the heads of the regional food bureaus (Leiter der Landesernährungsämter), which were responsible for organizing agricultural production at the state level. Riecke passed on Speer’s instructions, ordering the directors to opt for paralysis rather than destruction of agricultural industry whenever possible.60 In the face of advancing Allied forces, they were to transport food back further into the Reich or to distribute it to the local population. Around this time, he also ordered ten to twelve trains to be loaded with food and dispatched them, without conductors, into the encircled Ruhr.61

Speer followed his general March 30 order with a series of specific ones. On April 3, he wrote to each of the waterway authorities (Wasserstraßenamt) in Hamburg, Hannover, Münster, Bremen, Magdeburg, Potsdam, Stettin, and Stuttgart, as well as to the Ministry of the Interior in Munich and Dresden-Neustadt: “Under the Führer order of March 30, 1945, the destruction without my express permission of locks, barrages, dams, canal bridges, and harbour installations is forbidden.”62 The next day, between 17:19 and 17:28, he fired off three more orders. The first went to Heinz Küppenbender, engineer at the optical firm Zeiss-Werk in Jena, and to the head of the armaments commission in Wehrkreis IX (which included parts of Thuringia and Hesse). “With reference to Hitler’s order of March 30, 1945, … [r]oad and rail bridges running over the Saale River near Saalfeld, Grossheringen, Saalfeld-Jena-Halle [all towns on a roughly north–south line west of Leipzig] and eastwards thereof should be destroyed or paralyzed [lähmen] only at the last moment.”63 To do otherwise would harm troop movements. Although the order left open the possibility that widespread destruction could occur, he added a further condition that made it highly unlikely: “Paralysis and, for that matter, destruction are only to occur after consulting the director of German Imperial Railways and military units [Militärdienststellen].”64

In the context of rapidly advancing Soviet forces, such consultations could only result in the bridges and roads being captured intact. The same day, Armed Forces Operations Staff (Wehrmachtsführungsstab) sent a more comprehensive set of orders on rail lines, bridges, and communications to General August Winter, responsible since late 1944 for the details of operational planning (under Jodl).65 It called for the delay until the last moment of all destruction or disabling measures for rail networks across Germany: from Vienna to Lundenburg (Bˇreclav in the Czech Republic); from Wesermünde-Bremen-Kreiensen and eastward; and from Erfurt-Nordhausen-Northeim-Kreiensen. When coupled with orders to coordinate all paralysis and destructive measures with an official at the Imperial Railways who was himself hostile, the result was the preservation of essential rail nexuses across Germany and Central Europe.

Two days later, Speer followed up with still further orders. He sent to the military directives designed to preserve the Zeiss optical firm, as well as the road and rail lines leading to and from Jena.66 He also instructed his eight Organization Todt Task Force leaders (OT-Einsatzgruppenleiter), who collectively oversaw 1.4 million workers, to continue their engineering and construction work until the last possible minute.67 Literally interpreted, the orders might suggest that Speer intended to do everything possible to prolong the war. Whereas that may have been the effect, it was not the cause. All evidence suggests that even Speer had given up on victory by late March 1945.68 The order to avoid destroying or even disabling factories until the last second was based on the hope that they would not be destroyed or disabled at all.

A third April 5 order—marked “top secret” and “extremely urgent!”—went out to Otto Hellmuth, the Gauleiter and Reich Defence Commissioner in Würzburg, giving official sanction to Speer’s previous entreaties. “In preparing any demolitions, it is essential to note that the following are to be paralyzed but not destroyed: factories, traffic and communications, and energy suppliers. Distribute this order to the Kreisleiter of Schweinfurt, the Schutzbereichskommandeur, and the flak commander.”69 As ever keeping the Wehrmacht in the loop, Speer copied the order to the commander of Schweinfurt.70 In developing these orders, Speer displayed his usual workaholic attention to detail. He ordered an auxiliary unit, the First Fahrbrigade (Transport Brigade), to loan its vehicles and trailers to local farmers or transportation firms in the event that they found themselves cut off behind enemy lines.71

Bormann sent out a related order. At the same moment that Speer sent his order to Jena, Bormann sent one to Austria, specifically to Reichsleiter Baldur von Schirach in Vienna and Hugo Jury, Gauleiter in the lower Danube region. “All destruction,” Bormann ordered, “of oil refineries and oil wells is prohibited [unterbleiben]. There are only to be preparations for paralysis, and these are not to be initiated without the agreement of Army Group South.” He then added a line designed to give credibility to Speer: “The Army Group has developed its instructions in close cooperation with Reichsminister Speer.”72 As Bormann was a longstanding personal and institutional rival of Speer, as he had done everything he could to undermine Hitler’s confidence in this Reichsminister, and because he had strongly supported scorched earth earlier, this intervention is difficult to explain. Either Bormann was such a sycophant that his change of mind simply followed Hitler’s, or—a more promising line of thought—he, like Speer, was seeking to position himself as a player in postwar Germany.

After sending out these orders, Speer returned again to see Hitler. Hitler was once again fantasizing about a decisive attack on the Americans’ flank, one that would expose their cowardice. As he did, Speer dryly noted, “If everything is destroyed, the recovery of these areas will do me no good at all.”73 To Speer’s surprise, and for reasons that are not entirely clear, Hitler took it well and even reassured Speer that not all of the dictator’s orders to blow up bridges had been implemented. Seizing the moment once again, Speer then presented to Hitler and Keitel yet another decree, this one focused on bridges. In Speer’s account, Keitel exploded, yelling, “No war can be waged without destroying bridges!”74 Indeed, no war could or has, but Speer’s orders always left open the possibility of destruction at some later date. Keitel agreed to the draft, and the new Führer order went out on April 7. Citing the need for a “unified implementation of my [Hitler’s] March 19 order on traffic and communications,” the decree stated:

1) Operationally important bridges must be destroyed such that their use by the enemy is impossible…. The most serious punishments will follow if these bridges are not destroyed.

2) All other bridges may only be destroyed once the Reich Defence Commissioner, the responsible Reich Transportation departments, and the Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production determine that the enemy’s approach or interference [Feindeinwirkung] makes paralysis [Einstellung] and evacuation impossible. In order to be able to continue production until the last moment in accordance with my March 30 order, traffic is to continue intact until the last moment.

3) All other transportation [infrastructure] and communications systems of the Reich Post, Reich Rail, and private companies are only to be paralyzed. With the exception of 1), all destruction and disabling must be carried out on the understanding that transportation and communications can be easily rendered functional once lost territories are recaptured.75

Speer immediately dispatched the order to every significant player in late Nazi Germany: the Wehrmacht, the Reich Defence Commissioners/Gauleiter, the Organization Todt Task Forces, and the Reich Ministers for Transportation, Post, and Agriculture.76 To guard against rogue activity, on April 7 Walter Rohland ordered businessmen and industrialists across the Reich to report immediately any destruction of industry undertaken without Speer’s authorization.77 Ten days later, Luftwaffe General Ludwig Wolff, responsible for Hannover, Bremen, Hamburg, and Wismar, issued another order countering scorched earth. Writing to the Eighth Flak Division (Bremen), he ordered: “In the destruction of non-military installations, increased attention is to be paid to the requirements of the national economy and traffic … In the destruction of [Luftwaffe] installations … the same principles are to apply, first and foremost in respect of the essential needs of the population.”78 In practice, this meant: destroying electricity transformers and power stations just before they were occupied, leaving water and drainage untouched, and disabling but not blowing up Luftwaffe installations when their destruction would harm the civilian population in any way. But not everyone was playing ball. On April 14, the Luftwaffe had sent a call for volunteers for suicide missions against German infrastructure and Allied troops behind “enemy lines.”79 There is no record of how many volunteered, but in the context of what was by then mass desertion, there were few if any. Speer was winning the argument.

He continued his efforts through to the end of the month. On April 16, he wrote again to Richard Fischer and made him personally responsible for both keeping electricity running to the last moment and for shutting down the grid.80 The next day, Speer sent instructions to Franz Xaver Dorsch, a civil engineer and one of the most senior figures in the Organization Todt. Speer’s OT task forces were to keep the trains moving until the last moment, even at the risk of ending up in enemy captivity. Speer’s stated reason for placing such importance on railways was their central role in supplying the population with food and other essential supplies.81 A cynic might interpret these moves, as scholars indeed have, as an effort by Speer to save his skin rather than that of German civilians. If so, a man as clever as Speer would surely have known that a paper trail of protests against ill treatment of POWs, forced labourers, or Jews (about whom he might have claimed indignant last-minute knowledge) would have done him more good with postwar prosecutors.

In his memoirs, Speer notes that the raft of orders sent out in March and April of 1945 created an “unclear command” structure.82 This was an understatement. On April 7 alone, orders gave to the Wehrmacht the full responsibility for the preparation of disabling measures for communication infrastructure within its own jurisdiction; to Himmler for paralysis measures affecting the Waffen and regular SS’s communication systems; to Wehrmacht commanders (Oberbefehlshaber) in the east for their own field units as well as for communication systems of Reich authorities within their jurisdiction;83 and to OKW and the Reich authorities for Berlin and Military District III (Berlin/Brandenburg).84 Orders sent by Rohland the following day divided disabling and destruction tasks based on whether they would primarily affect military or economic infrastructure: the army was responsible for the former, and Speer’s ministry was responsible for the latter.85 He also added a further order: any bridge that contained economically essential infrastructure—such as water pipes or electricity lines—was to be neither demolished nor prepared for demolition. This order stood in direct conflict with Hitler’s April 7 order on tactically important bridges.86 To further add to the confusion, Keitel sent out a telegram on the same day that ordered Oberbefehlshaber West and Northwest, as well as Army Group B, to secure OKW’s consent before any measures were taken, except when all communications were severed. In each case, Keitel ordered, all questions were to be directed to the Reich Defence Commissioners and the relevant departments of the Reich Ministry for Armaments and War Production.87

This complex mix of overlapping and at times contradictory orders assigned multiple responsibilities and required both that multiple actors—the Wehrmacht, Reich Defence Commissioners, Armaments Commissioners, and Speer himself—be consulted before any action was carried out and that destruction be delayed until the last possible moment. Speer’s hope, we can reasonably conclude, was that the result would be no destruction or even paralysis until it was too late.

Because Speer lied to so many people—his American interrogators and Allied prosecutors, his sympathetic biographer, his close friends, and the distant German public—it is tempting to conclude that he lied about, or at least vastly exaggerated, his role in blocking scorched earth. He did not. Virtually every significant claim made in Inside the Third Reich regarding scorched earth is verified by the original sources. Speer threw himself bravely, even recklessly, into the task of blocking these directives.

An obvious question is whether he succeeded. Speer would have us believe that his efforts were uniquely successful, that scorched earth ended with his definitive early-April interventions. The matter was neither this simple nor this flattering for Speer. The situation in early April 1945 was one that allowed a massive degree of individual discretion. The chain of command was breaking down, communications were poor, and many officers found themselves and their men isolated. Under such circumstances, the bar to disobedience lowered, and those who opposed the Nazi leadership, or at least the destructive orders emanating from it, felt more able to act. At the same time, existing orders assigned responsibility to multiple actors, and the orders demanded that each of those actors make judgments on what was essential (when was a bridge tactically important, and when was it just a bridge?) and when the last possible moment had in fact arrived. These orders also rested uneasily with the broader demands of fanatical resistance to the Allies’ advance. If Germans failed to destroy essential German infrastructure, their refusal to surrender would likely lead the Allies to do so.

More broadly, orders mean nothing if they are not obeyed. There were many in Germany who wished to oppose or who would have only reluctantly implemented scorched-earth orders. Particularly for them, Speer’s order may have been decisive. But there were many others who wished to fight fanatically to the end and who were more than prepared to exploit the orders’ provisions on tactical necessity to unleash a campaign of destruction against Germany itself. Which group succeeded—those who wished to destroy or those who wished to preserve—depended on the balance of proponents and opponents in a particular jurisdiction; on the call made by local Wehrmacht officials; and, above all, on the opponents’ guile, resources, and powers of persuasion. For all his ordering, Speer’s reach did not include these local actors, and in crediting himself with stopping scorched earth, he seriously overclaimed and did further violence to the history of Germany in the last months of the war.88 To understand it, we need to turn to the particular stories of obedience and disobedience themselves.

Notes

1. Communication from Speer to the Party Chancellery, January 19, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 3.

2. Communication from Speer to the Blechhammer and Heydebreck works, January 21, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 4.

3. Communication from Speer to OKH Gen. Qu. General Toppe, January 22, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 5.

4. Order from Oberkommando Heeresgruppe Weichsel regarding ARLZ-Maßnahmen (Lager und Bestände), February 22, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a. The order was reaffirmed in late March: “Befehl für Verteidigungsmaßnahmen im Armeegebiet rückwärts des Hauptkampffeldes,” BArch RH 20-19/180, 3(d), fol. 86.

5. Order from Oberkommando Heeresgruppe Weichsel regarding ARLZ-Maßnahmen (Lager und Bestände), February 22, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a.

6. Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, 703.

7. Order from Oberkommando des Heeres, General der Pioniere und Festungen on bridge detonations [Brückensprengungen], February 28, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 16.

8. Sereny, Albert Speer, 482, citing the diary of Manfred von Poser.

9. Ibid., 482–3.

10. Order from Hitler to the Gauleiter and Reichsverteidigungskommissare, March 1, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 17.

11. Communication from Ganzenmüller to Speer, March 15, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 36.

12. “… dann ist dieses Volk nicht wert, weiterzubestehen!” Walter Rohland, Bewegte Zeiten: Erinnerungen eines Eisenhüttenmannes (Stuttgart: Seewald Verlag, 1978), 99.

13. Ganzenmüller to Speer, March 15, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 36. One week earlier, Speer had already made an effort to save the transportation system. He wrote to Reichsbahn (Imperial Rail) President Lammertz on March 7: “I must once again clearly state that Hitler’s orders—that the paralysis of industry is only implemented to the extent that we can easily bring it back into production—are for us unambiguous directives [eindeutige Richtlinien]. Every violation of this order must be brought to my immediate attention. We need, above all at this moment, unity of command over such matters and we cannot tolerate instances in which orders are violated. When they are, there must be the harshest consequences.” Aktennotiz Speer, March 7, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 18.

14. “Dem Befehl über Zerstörungen im eigenen Lande bitte ich folgende Fassung zu geben.”

15. Order from Speer to Generalstab des Heeres—General der Pioniere und Festungen [multiple drafts], March 15, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 31–5.

16. Order from Hitler, March 14, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 29[a].

17. Sereny, Albert Speer, 482.

18. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 583–4.

19. “Zerstörungsmaßnahmen im Reichsgebiet,” March 19, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 46; West Europe, March 20, 1945, UKNA, HW 1/3624, TOO 0900. Emphasis added. The translation follows the latter document with small adjustments.

20. Sereny, Albert Speer, 485.

21. Ibid.

22. “Räumung im Westen,” March 19, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 42; telegram from Chief of the General Staff, OB West to the 19th Army, March 20, 1944, BArch RH 20-19/180.

23. Quoted in Sereny, Albert Speer, 485.

24. Quoted ibid., 485–6.

25. The Chief Quartermaster West, the Inspectorate of the German Air Force West, the Chief Naval Command West, Military Districts VI, XII, V, and the Special Emissary of the Party Chancellery with Commander in Chief West were also informed. West Europe, April 20, 1945, UKNA, HW 1/3624, TOO 0900/20/3/45.

26. West Europe, March 20, 1945, UKNA, HW 1/3624, TOO 0900.

27. Telegram of March 26, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 65–71.

28. Telegram from OKM/Chef Mar Rüst 1098/45, March 27, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 64.

29. “Anordnung: Aufnahme der unquartierten Volksgenossen usw. Aus Räumungsgebieten,” March 23, 1945 [from Bormann to all Gauleiter], BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 50; “Telegram KR,” March 29, 1945 [orders for the army], BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 59–61; “KR Telegram,” March 19, 1945 [orders for the northern coast and Denmark], BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 55–58.

30. Fernschreiben KR, March 29, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 59–61, point 4.

31. Geyer, “There is a Land Where Everything is Pure,” 139.

32. Corroborated by Manfred von Poser. Sereny, Albert Speer, 487; Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 595.

33. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 595.

34. Rohland, Bewegte Zeiten, 101.

35. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 597.

36. Ibid., 598.

37. Ian Kershaw, The End: Hitler’s Germany, 1944–45 (London: Allen Lane, 2011), 305.

38. On the implementing orders, see BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 59.

39. Kershaw, The End, 290.

40. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 599.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid., 291; Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 232.

43. Sereny, Albert Speer, 489.

44. Kershaw, The End, 291.

45. Sereny, Albert Speer, 491–2; Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, pt. 2, vol. 15 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1995), March 31, 1945, 643.

46. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 605.

47. Sereny, Albert Speer, 494.

48. Kershaw, The End, 291.

49. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 607–8.

50. Ibid., 608. In his conversations with Sereny, Speer claimed he had said, “But then it will help if you will immediately reconfirm my authority for the implementation of your March 19 decree.” Sereny, Albert Speer, 497.

51. Sereny, Albert Speer, 498.

52. Ibid.

53. “Zerstörungsmaßnahmen im Reichsgebiet,” March 30, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 95.

54. Führer’s Order, March 30, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 81.

55. Sereny, Albert Speer, 492.

56. “Durchführungsbestimmungen zum Führererlass vom 30.3.1945 über Lähmungs- und Zerstörungsmaßnahmen,” March 30, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 87; telegram on “Zerstörungsmaßnahmen im Reichsgebiet,” April 1, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 101-2.

57. Telegram from Uiberreither [rendered as “Ueberreither”] to Speer, April 3, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 106.

58. Radio message from Speer to Uiberreither, April 4, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a [missing folder no. on document, likely 107 or 108].

59. See Andreas Dornheim, “Rasse, Raum und Autarkie Sachverständigengutachten zur Rolle des Reichsministeriums für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft in der NS-Zeit,” commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection (March 2011): 66, http://www.bmelv.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/Ministerium/RolleReichsministeriumNSZeit.Pdf?__blob=publicationFile.

60. Communication from Riecke to the Leiter der Landesernährungsämter, Abteilung A, March 31, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 92–3.

61. Speer to Riecke and Ganzenmüller, March 30, 1945, BArch 3/1623a, fol. 90; Sereny, Albert Speer, 499, citing testimony from Manfred von Poser.

62. Telegram from Speer, April 3, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 110.

63. German police decodes No. 1 Traffic, April 5, 1945, UKNA, HW 16/43.

64. Ibid.

65. Communication from OKW/WFSt to General Winter, April 5, 1945, BArch 3/1623a, fol. 130–1.

66. Communication from Speer to OKW/WFSt General Winter, April 5, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 139–40.

67. Speer to all OT-Einsatzgruppenleiter (radio message), April 3, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 111.

68. Mierzejewski, “When Did Albert Speer Give Up?,” 391–7.

69. German police decodes No. 1 Traffic, April 5, 1945, UKNA, H16/43.

70. Communication from Speer to Hellmuth, April 4, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 116. On Speer’s fear that the Wehrmacht had not been brought into anti–scorched earth orders in Jena, see telegram from Speer to the Reich Ministry of Transportation, April 5, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 140.

71. Communication from Speer to the commander, 1. Fahrbrigade, April 4, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 115.

72. German police decodes No. 1 Traffic, April 5, 1945, UKNA, H16/43.

73. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 614.

74. Ibid.

75. Führer order, April 7, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 152.

76. “Lähmung bezw. Zerstörung von Verkehrsanlagen und Nachrichtenmitteln,” April 7, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 151.

77. Weisung an alle Betreibsführer, April 7, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a.

78. No. 252 From AOC Gelip, signed by Gen. Der Flieger Wolff to 8 Flak Divisions, April 17, 1945, UKNA, HW 1/3709, TOO 0700/17/4/45.

79. West Europe, April 14, 1945, UKNA, H1 1/3709, TOO 1130.

80. Communication from Speer to Fischer, April 16, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 194.

81. Communication from Speer to Dorsch, “Zentrale [Bau]verwaltung,” April 17, 1994, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 195.

82. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 615.

83. Telegram from Praun, April 7, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 157–8.

84. “Durchführungsbestimmungen betr. Die Zerstörung der Nachrichtenanlagen im Raum von Berlin,” April 7, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 158A–b.

85. Rohland “an die Direktionen unserer Mitgliedswerke,” n.d. [likely April 8 or 9, 1945], BArch R 3/1623a, fol. 165–6.

86. It seems, though the reference by Rohland is a bit vague, that an “army group” (Heeresgruppe) agreed to Speer’s interpretation of the order. Radio message (Funkspruch) from Rohland to Speer, April 7, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a. [missing fol. no., possibly 160].

87. “KR-Blitz-Fernschreiben” from Keitel, April 8, 1945, BArch R 3/1623a [missing fol. no. on document]. Speer falsely claims in his memoirs that Keitel “refused to issue new instructions on the basis of Hitler’s latest decree.” Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 615.

88. On this point, see Sereny, Albert Speer, 473.