SPEER. So who is this old man? Well, he was first an architect, whose works proclaimed his country’s power to the world. And then a Minister, building armaments to dominate the world. But now he is a gardener . . . who built a place of beauty in the midst of all the dust and rubble, which he pretended was the world.
Who is he? Well, he’s all these things. But most importantly, he is your father.
HESS enters. He is in his 60s, as he was in 1954. His corduroy uniform is stamped four.
It was Herr Hess who gave me the idea.
HESS sits on the garden bench.
So how are you today, Herr Hess?
HESS. Oh, pretty bad.
SPEER (out front). He was Hitler’s deputy. And frankly he’d been pretty screwy even then.
HESS. However. I’ve decided I was wrong to think my food was being doctored to give me stomach cramps. After all, I can take any one of the seven bowls that are standing on the table.
SPEER. So you’ve got over your obsession.
HESS. Oh, no. That would never do. If I got over it, it wouldn’t be obsessive.
SPEER looks at HESS, fascinated by this logic.
SPEER. We all have our eccentricities. Do you know that I’m collecting kilometres? Don’t you think that’s crazy, writing down the distances I’ve walked each day?
HESS. Why not, if you enjoy it?
SPEER. But every week, I add them up, and calculate the weekly average, and enter the results.
HESS shrugs.
And even to start off I had to calculate my walking course, by measuring my foot, 31 centimetres, then walking heel to toe, 870 times, to work out my track.
HESS. Sounds logical to me.
SPEER. But it gets worse. Now I plan to walk to Heidelberg! 616 kilometres! That’s Two Thousand Three Hundred and eighteen point fifty two circuits of my track! Isn’t this completely mad?
HESS. Well only if \ you want to –
SPEER. And the worst thing is, my real obsession is that I’ll miscount and get there late. Can you believe that? That I could have been sitting in my favourite pastry shop but I’m still trudging through the outskirts in the rain!
HESS stands and goes out.
Herr Hess? Have I offended you?
HESS returns with a tin.
HESS. Here. Take 30 beans. Put them in your left pocket. Then every round drop one into your right pocket. And at night you count them up. You understand?
SPEER. Yes. Thank you, Hess.
HESS. Don’t mention it.
He makes to go.
A thought. Why stop at Heidelberg?
HESS goes out.
SPEER. And so from Heidelberg I walked to Munich. Then across the mountains to Vienna. And all the time, I was thinking, when I got back to my cell, and found a scrap of paper, what I’d write to little or as time passed not so little Hilde.
When you were young, about how I first met your mother, and some jokey stories about life in prison in my ‘magazine’ for you, the Spanish Illustrated. Then later, when I made our secret rule: that if something’s wrong, but you don’t want to say so, then put the word ‘nevertheless’ before the sentence. Thus if you say, ‘Nevertheless, I’m fine’, it means you are not fine at all. Meanwhile, I walk on. My record for one day so far is 24.7 kilometres, my best pace 5.8 kilometres an hour. To aid me, the person who I call ‘my friend’ has obtained for me by our secret channel maps, travelogues, art history . . . he warns me of all natural barriers, raging rivers, glaciers, mountains, and sends me descriptions of the wonders I will pass.
You ask about the Nazis. You say how could an intelligent person go along with such a thing.
This morning I left Europe and crossed the pontoon bridge to Asia. I have trouble picturing the magnificent panorama: mosques and minarets in the midst of a tangle of small houses. How many towers does Hagia Sofia have?
To reassure you: of the dreadful things, I knew nothing. As far as practising anti-semitism or even uttering anti-Semitic remarks, my conscience is entirely clear. I really had no aversion to them, or rather, no more than the slight discomfort all of us sometimes feel when in contact with these people . . .
And today I am 353 kilometres from Kabul. If no snowstorms intervene I should be there mid-January.
Already we are fewer: three years ago Neurath was released, a year later Raeder and last year Dönitz. And Neurath died.
Now there are only 780 kilometres to Calcutta, which will mark the completion of my ten thousandth kilometre.
And I wonder: will I later miss these quiet days with books and gardening, free from ambition and vexation? When I’m released, will I still be able to cope with the world?
Funk was released two years ago and now he too has died.
For more than a year now I’ve been tramping north through endless woods of larch and fir, with gnarled silver birches in the highlands.
And now another 500 kilometres through the snowy wastes to the Bering Straight still lie before me, all to be done in almost total darkness. However, wonderful northern lights, such as I saw in Lapland at the end of 1943, continually transform the scenery.
HESS enters. He is now in his late 70s.
The strait is frozen till mid March. I wanted to arrive in time to walk across. And so I have.
HESS. Herr Speer, you are talking to yourself.
SPEER. Yes, indeed I am. And in fact, Herr Hess \ you may be interested –
HESS. Schirach says that in mental hospitals they set the feeble-minded to the gardening.
SPEER. You may be interested to hear \ that you are looking –
HESS. Good point, I think.
SPEER. – that you are looking at the first central European to reach America by foot.
Pause.
HESS. This is more serious than I thought.
SPEER. Clearly you don’t remember.
HESS. No.
SPEER. So here’s a clue. The word is ‘beans’?
HESS. No, it won’t do.
SPEER. Don’t you remember? The 30 beans, to transfer from one pocket to the other. Look!
He shows HESS his beans.
HESS. You mean you’ve kept it up for all this time?
SPEER. Seventy-eight thousand five hundred and fourteen rounds. Twenty-one thousand two hundred and one kilometres. And look – the Bering Strait. The gateway to Alaska, Canada, Seattle. California!
HESS. Well . . . and they say I’m crazy.
He goes out.
SPEER (out front). And so. Hilde. This is my last letter. And a chance to thank you for all the extraordinary energy and love you expended in the effort to shorten my time here . . . the love from you to me was always the greatest gift.
SPEER stands a moment, then, in a different tone:
And what I thought but didn't say . . . This idiotic organisation of emptiness . . . What I am left with in the end is nothing but the foolish satisfaction of having marched obstinately in a circle for decades.
Through a mirrored hall of hundreds of unchanging faces, over and over, and all mine.
You know, if I had lived fully here, I think I would have had to die. Instead, I have become the man I never was.
He reaches into his sock and takes out a scrap of cardboard, from which he reads:
A telegram. To ‘my friend’. Rudi. This should reach you at precisely midnight, 30 September 1966. Please pick me up 35 kilometres south of Guadalajara, Mexico.
PRESSMEN (variously). Herr Speer, how does it feel to be released?
What do you think of the treatment you received?
This way please, Herr Speer!
What are your plans?
FLACHSNER. Excuse me, excuse me please –
PRESSMEN. Frau Speer, how long is it since you’ve seen your husband?
Just turn your head this way, Frau Speer!
Do you think your sentence was just?
Where are you going now, sir?
Have you changed your views on Hitler?
Do you think you have paid a proper price?
Are you happy with your treatment in Spandau?
What was your view about the Eichmann trial?
FLACHSNER and MARGRET have reached SPEER, who looks happy but bewildered. They shake hands. FLACHSNER is holding up his hands trying to stop the barrage of questions so that he and SPEER can speak.
PRESSMEN. What did you most miss in prison?
What do you think about the Berlin wall?
How were your relations with your fellow prisoners?
Please look over here, Herr Speer!
SPEER holds up his hands along with FLACHSNER and the hubbub dissolves into silence.
PRESSMEN. Why were you not released early?
Do you feel responsible for Nazi crimes?
Do you think you were unjustly treated?
Do you think you’ve paid the price?
FLACHSNER. Ladies and gentlemen. Herr Speer will make a short statement.
FIRST PRESSMAN. What are your immediate plans?
SPEER. Ladies and gentlemen, may I say at first that I am quite glad to be out.
Laughter. The beginnings of questions, which SPEER stops with a gesture.
PRESSMEN. Do you plan to go back to architecture, Herr Speer?
SPEER. You will understand that I can only be brief tonight, for this evening belongs to my wife.
HECKLER. It’s not your business to say anything!
Booing and shhing.
SPEER. So you will forgive me for answering your questions this way. My sentence was just. I was treated correctly at all times. I have no complaints. Thank you so much.
FIRST PRESSMAN. What are your plans, Herr Speer?
SPEER. My immediate plans are to spend some quiet days with my family.
SECOND PRESSMAN. And beyond?
SPEER. I am an architect –
HECKLER. Architect!
SPEER. – and I hope to find people who will let me practise my profession. Thank you very much.
THIRD PRESSMAN. Herr Speer, do you think you have paid the price for what you did?
SPEER. And now please, everyone . . .
FLACHSNER pushing through the PRESS, making a path for SPEER and MARGRET to the car.
FLACHSNER. Thank you, that’s all.
3RD PRESSMAN. Will you be giving further interviews, Herr Speer?
FLACHSNER. No, he will not.
PRESSMEN. What is your view about the Frankfurt trials?
Do you plan to meet with any world leaders?
Will there be a press conference?
FLACHSNER. There are no further questions. Herr and Frau Speer are going to a private address.
SPEER passes WOLTERS.
WOLTERS. So here I am. Just south of Guadalajara.
SPEER. Rudi. Long time no see.
WOLTERS. You will come and see me.
SPEER. Oh, of course.
WOLTERS. I have the ham. And the Johannisberger.
SPEER(overwhelmed). And everything you’ve done for me. For us. For all these years.
WOLTERS. But tonight is for your wife. Go, go.
After this private moment, WOLTERS is swallowed up by the crowd.
PRESSMEN. Where are you going, Herr Speer?
Are you going to write about your experiences?
Have you sold your story to a newspaper or magazine?
What is your view on denazification?
What was your relationship with Rudolf Hess?
Will you be meeting up with your old comrades?
The price, Herr Speer! Do you think you’ve paid the price?
2.2.2 Hunting Lodge, Schleswig-Holstein, 1 October 1966
The SPEER CHILDREN, their SPOUSES and ANNEMARIE waiting in a hunting lodge hired by the SPEERS. Old fashioned comfort. Downstage, easy chairs and a gramophone. To one side, a table laid for dinner. HILDE(30), her husband ULF Schramm, ALBERT(32), and his wife RUTH, FRITZ(29) and ARNOLD(26). Two WAITRESSES stand close to waiting trays of canapés and drinks. The scene starts in silence. ALBERT goes and takes a canapé.
ALBERT. What’s this?
FIRST WAITRESS. Paté de fois gras, sir.
HILDE. It was one of the requests.
RUTH. Is that the stuff they make by \ forcefeeding –
ARNOLD. Yes.
ALBERT (eating). It’s actually quite \ palatable –
ARNOLD. It just tends to be a little rich.
ALBERT gestures anyone to take one.
ALBERT. Paté de fois gras, anyone? Aunt Annemarie?
No one takes up the offer. ANNEMARIE shakes her head. HILDE goes and takes a drink and sits.
HILDE. Well, as I say, he ordered it.
ULF. He ordered everything.
HILDE. It’s been driving us all bonkers. Lists lists lists.
ULF. Appointed tasks.
ALBERT. But after twenty years, I guess you are entitled.
FRITZ. So everybody: best \ behaviour –
A door opens, HILDE leaps up. Enter the 28-year-old MARGRET, her husband HANS STRAUSS, and 23-year-old ERNST.
ALBERT. Margret.
MARGRET JNR. We met Ernst at the station.
HANS. Sorry we’re so late.
ARNOLD. It’s fine. The old man’s not here yet.
ALBERT. Now, Hans, you’ve met Aunt Annemarie? Who was Father’s secretary in the war.
HANS. Of course I have.
HILDE. And truth be told . . .
ANNEMARIE. Ernst! Aren’t you looking well.
ERNST JNR. Aha. That’s what you get for being over 21.
ARNOLD. Why’s that?
ERNST JNR. People stop saying ‘aren’t you tall’.
RUTH. And haven’t started saying ‘aren’t you old’.
Pause.
HILDE. Of course, you haven’t seen him for twenty years.
ANNEMARIE. Not since Nuremberg. And visa versa, naturally.
MARGRET JNR. You look as wonderful as ever.
ALBERT. And in fact \ I think we’ve all –
FRITZ. In fact, dear family, tarantara, tarantara.
Enter MARGRET and SPEER. Applause. ALBERT nods to the WAITRESSES who pour champagne into the glasses ready to take them round.
MARGRET. I’m sorry.
SPEER. We must have . . .
MARGRET. Father thought he spotted a reporter.
SPEER. . . . come round the wrong way.
He takes it in.
Well. Well.
ALBERT to him.
ALBERT. Father, welcome back.
They shake hands.
SPEER. My boy.
ALBERT. And father . . . Ruth.
SPEER. My dear, how wonderful to meet you.
SPEER kisses RUTH’s hand.
You know, your husband has the most lovely hands. Do you remember, Albert, on your first visit, all those years ago?
ALBERT. Of course I do.
SPEER. I shook my son’s hand, and I was put up on a charge.
MARGRET. Well, you won’t be charged with anything today.
FRITZ. Just charged for everything.
HILDE. Fritz! Papa.
SPEER. Hilde, my dearest. And Ulf . . .
MARGRET (gesturing to MARGRET JNR). Albert, your daughter.
SPEER. Margret.
MARGRET JNR. Papa.
SPEER. Still, so like my mother.
HANS. And like her mother, sir. I’m Hans Nissen.
SPEER. Of course, of course.
Shakes hands.
And where is little Annagret?
MARGRET JNR. She’s in bed, papa! Tomorrow.
SPEER (turning to ARNOLD). Of course, of course. Now, Fritz?
ARNOLD. No, Arnold, father.
Pause.
SPEER. Arnold.
ARNOLD. Yes.
SPEER. Ah, well. In jail, your mother sent me photographs I thought were Albert but turned to out to be me as a boy.
This rescues the moment. With a playful if not entirely convincing punch to the shoulder.
So – Arnold.
ARNOLD. Yes. Father, you look marvellous.
SPEER. Well, you’re the doctor. Fritz.
Shaking FRITZ’s hand.
How could I mistake the hell-raiser?
FRITZ. Hell-raiser?
MARGRET. You got drunk – once. I foolishly mentioned in a letter.
FRITZ. Right.
ERNST JNR. And by process of elimination . . .
SPEER. Ernst.
Shakes hands.
It should be easy when you’re standing. I marked your heights up on the wall. As through the years you grew – grew up from . . .
MARGRET (rescuing). Just grew up.
Slight pause.
ANNEMARIE. It’s hard to know what to say to someone who is locked away from you for twenty years.
SPEER realises it’s ANNEMARIE. During this ALBERT nods to the WAITRESSES, who bring drinks on trays.
SPEER. Frau . . . Annemarie.
ANNEMARIE. Albert.
SPEER. For twenty years, I have been just Number Five.
ANNEMARIE. For those who love you, you have never just been Number Five.
FIRST WAITRESS offering to SPEER.
FIRST WAITRESS. Herr Speer.
SPEER. Please, my wife.
FIRST WAITRESS gives a drink to MARGRET.
MARGRET. Thank you.
SECOND WAITRESS. A canapé?
SPEER. Aha! Paté de fois gras! I chose it because it’s the one thing everybody likes.
As the drinks and canapés are handed round, SPEER takes a canapé and bolts it in one. Then he takes another and does the same. ANNEMARIE notes this undelicate behaviour.
FRITZ (taking a drink). Well, I suppose, if I’m to live up to my reputation.
SPEER nods to ULF who surreptitiously produces a small jewellery case.
MARGRET JNR. Now, father, would you like to sit . . .
ALBERT. Should we move \ into the dining room –
SPEER. Now, I have a duty to perform, in relation to the most important person in the room.
A moment or two while people work out who that is. ULF gives SPEER the case.
FRITZ. Speech, speech.
SPEER. To thank her, on all your behalfs, for bringing you all up as she has. Which is all the speech she’ll get from me.
He hands the case to MARGRET.
MARGRET. Albert, how was this done?
MARGRET opens the case. It’s a gold watch.
MARGRET. Oh, Albert.
SPEER. It should be engraved.
ULF. It is engraved!
MARGRET (reads). ‘To his Libra, on his day of Liberation’. Albert.
MARGRET JNR. It’s beautiful.
ULF. Is it all right?
MARGRET. Of course it is.
ERNST JNR. But mum’s not libra. She’s a virgo.
Pause.
HILDE. Ernst.
HANS. I’m sure it’s right . . .
ERNST JNR. Eighth of September. Virgo.
SPEER. The . . . the eighth.
Pause. ARNOLD and ALBERT look at HILDE and ULF. HILDE: ‘Nothing to do with me’. ULF: ‘I did as instructed’.
MARGRET. Well, all I can say is that I am personally delighted that your father of all people can make a mistake with numbers.
Rescue successful.
And I feel that everyone should go through and enjoy what Fritz reminds us is a most expensive dinner.
HILDE. Yes.
The party proceeds to the table for dinner.
RUTH. What are your plans for the immediate future, Herr Speer?
SPEER. Well, I have many old acquaintances to renew. As Aunt Annemarie knows, my friend Rudi Wolters has promised me a Westphalian ham and a bottle of Johannisberger 37.
MARGRET. I think the places are all marked.
SPEER. It will be strange, we two old codgers meeting after all this time. He’s very fond of all the children.
HILDE. ‘Fond’ is an understatement!
Everyone is seated.
SPEER. Yes indeed. (To RUTH.) And then . . .
ALBERT taps his glass with a spoon, MARGRET shaking her head, but:
ALBERT. No, Mama, no speech. But just to raise a glass to welcome Father home. Having been kept from us for twenty years.
RUTH. Hear hear.
ARNOLD (raising his glass). Father!
THE OTHERS (variously). To Father. Papa. Albert. Herr Speer.
SPEER. Well, as is well known, I too am not one for making speeches. And so . . . the feast!
Atmosphere fully restored. EVERYONE starting to eat.
RUTH. ‘And then’?
SPEER. I’m sorry?
RUTH. You were talking of your plans.
SPEER. Oh yes. I intend to write my memoirs.
Sudden silence.
MARGRET. Memoirs.
SPEER. Yes. My life and deeds in Hitler’s Germany!
MARGRET. He told the press he was going to practise as an architect.
SPEER. Well, that was for the press. (To RUTH.) Since you raise . . . the matter of the future. (To MARGRET.) So what’s wrong?
MARGRET There’s nothing wrong.
SPEER. That is clearly not the case.
Agonising pause. MARGRET stands.
MARGRET. Excuse me, please . . . I’m sorry.
She hurries out.
SPEER. Uh . . .
ANNEMARIE. Oh, Albert.
ANNEMARIE stands and follows MARGRET out. Neither SPEER nor anybody else knows what to say. SPEER stands and goes into the other room. ALBERT makes to follow but HILDE goes instead.
HILDE. Papa, you must see how she feels.
Slight pause.
SPEER. Go on.
HILDE. After twenty years of watching us grow up, and building our own lives . . . For it to be . . . the only thing we’re known for. To have it all raked up again.
SPEER. ‘Raked up again’. I see.
Pause.
In fact, I’ve made you my literary executor.
HILDE. What? What about Uncle Rudi?
SPEER. I think it’s for the best.
Pause.
I am determined. I will write the book. I think I owe it to the world. And of course I had thought – or hoped, at least –you would support me.
MARGRET comes in, followed by ANNEMARIE.
MARGRET. Albert, I’m sorry. Please. Let’s go back into dinner.
SPEER. Yes. of course.
SPEER looks back at HILDE.
HILDE. Papa, of course you have my full support. In anything you do.
SPEER looks at HILDE. He turns back to MARGRET, who puts out her arm. SPEER goes and walks with his wife back into dinner. HILDE to ANNEMARIE:
Nevertheless . . .
ANNEMARIE. And of course the problem was: for him, it had never really been a real family. He hardly knew them in the war. And being locked away from them for twenty years . . . But it was also the family in which he had grown up: his father stopping him pursuing the career he wanted to, his mother such a snob, having to wed in secret because they disapproved of Margret’s social class, the intolerable pressure over Ernst at Stalingrad . . .
And so how was he to know what it was like to be a real father? How could he understand they had their own lives and their own concerns? How could he know they wouldn’t – couldn’t – welcome him as he imagined, unconditionally, with open arms?
SIEDLER. Ladies and gentlemen . . .
As always, the volume is wrong but it is quickly and effectively sorted.
Ladies and gentlemen, a moment, your attention. Ullstein is . . . well, moderately proud to welcome almost all of you to its summer party. And of course our guest of honour.
Smattering of applause.
As many people know, particularly in the accounts department, his reminiscences were intended to be a modest success with a long shelf-life in a slow-burn market. I think it is fair to say we failed in this.
Laughter.
We did not intend to sell half a million hardback copies, nor the serial rights to Die Welt for 600,000 marks, nor to clean up Europe and then north America in paperback. Through all of this, I’ve asked myself, how could this thing have gone so wrong?
Laughter.
Clearly we underestimated our new author.
Applause.
And also the importance of his mission, which was to speak, now, a quarter of a century on, not to his own generation but the new generation of young democratic Germans, neither traumatised by guilt nor tortured by denial. To the generation of his children.
He looks around.
Necessarily but bravely honest about that tragic period and his role in it. Herr Albert Speer.
SPEER comes to the microphone.
SPEER. Well, I am not one for making speeches.
The usual laughter and calls of ‘shame’ and ‘go on’.
And although there is a perfectly good story illustrating this . . . I am advised by Herr Siedler to point out that you may read it on page 217.
Laughter.
All I will say is to thank Herr Sidler for all his efforts with I fear an often recalcitrant new author. Thank you.
Applause. SIEDLER back to the microphone a moment.
SIEDLER. And I believe Herr Speer – who is not recalcitrant at all, will sign copies which we happen by coincidence to have available for purchase here this very afternoon.
The formality breaks. SPEER is escorted by a YOUNG WOMAN to his table. MARGRET meets the VON BELOWS.
MARGRET. Well, Klaus. How good of you to come.
VON BELOW. Margret.
MARGRET (kissing FRAU VON BELOW). Maria.
SIEDLER working his way over.
VON BELOW. He’s looking marvellous.
FRAU VON BELOW. You both are.
MARGRET. He’ll be delighted that you’re here. He speaks so warmly of the help you gave him with the book.
VON BELOW (demurring). Well . . .
MARGRET. Help that I fear I was unable . . .
FRAU VON BELOW. Well, of course, it all looks different in retrospect. I mean, those evenings at the Berghof with the Chief were not quite so boring at the time.
SIEDLER arrives.
SIEDLER. Klaus, Frau von Below, I’m so pleased you could come. It’s my aim to persuade your husband to follow in Herr Speer’s footsteps.
FRAU VON BELOW. Really?
SIEDLER. Please, let me introduce you to our chairman.
SIEDLER moves off with the VON BELOWS, leaving MARGRET standing for a moment alone. Meanwhile, SPEER is signing books. His current customer we will know later as MRS WINTERINGHAM.
SPEER. Who shall I write it to?
MRS WINTERINGHAM. To Trudi.
SPEER. Ah.
He signs, hands the book over.
MRS WINTERINGHAM. Thank you, Herr Speer.
SPEER takes the book from the next in line.
SPEER. Thank you. How would you like this signed?
WOLTERS. Oh, I think, ‘to Rudi’ would be fine, don’t you?
SPEER looks up.
SPEER. Rudi. You’re here.
WOLTERS. Well, you know what they say, about Mohammed and the Mountain.
SIEDLER arrives.
SIEDLER. Now, I hope we’re not exploiting you too grossly . . .
SPEER. Herr Siedler, this is Rudolf Wolters.
SIEDLER. Ah. ‘My friend’.
WOLTERS. And erstwhile literary executor.
Slight pause.
SIEDLER. Um . . .
WOLTERS. Albert I need a word with you.
SPEER looks at SIEDLER.
SIEDLER. Of course.
To the queue.
A moment, and Herr Speer will return.
He leads SPEER and WOLTERS to the building.
WOLTERS. Well, congratulations Herr Reichsminister.
SPEER. Rudi, it’s good to see you.
WOLTERS. Thank God you didn’t say ‘Long time no see’.
SPEER. Why not?
WOLTERS. It’s what you said when you got out.
SPEER. Did I really? Well, it hasn’t been so long this time.
WOLTERS. It has been long enough.
SPEER. Now look.
A young MALE PUBLISHER enters with a tray: full glasses of champagne, a bottle and a plate of bits.
MALE PUBLISHER. Herr Siedler thought you might like something before it all goes.
SPEER. Thank you, yes.
MALE PUBLISHER (picking up the edgy atmosphere). You were . . . it was champagne . . . ?
WOLTERS. It was champagne.
The PUBLISHER goes out. SPEER hands WOLTERS a glass.
Well . . . to two old codgers and their memories.
They drink.
WOLTERS. From one old codger and his royalties.
Pause.
Of which I’m sure the vast proportion have been properly donated to the best of causes. It would never do for the great post-Nazi rent-a-penitent to profit from his crimes. Having resolved to walk into his dotage in a hairshirt, renouncing all the vanities and luxuries of life for locusts and wild honey.
SPEER (gesturing to the feast). So, a locust? or another spoonful of wild honey?
WOLTERS. Well, precisely.
SPEER. So is this why you came to see me? To draw my attention to this contradiction?
WOLTERS. No, of course not.
SPEER. Rudi, I didn’t mention you because I thought it would be best. As an architect practising in the current atmosphere.
WOLTERS. You think I didn’t like your wretched book because I wasn’t in it?
Enter a young FEMALE PUBLISHER.
SPEER. If not, I apologise for the suggestion.
FEMALE PUBLISHER. Ah, Herr Speer, I’ve found you.
SPEER. Yes, I am having what is obviously \ a private conversation –
FEMALE PUBLISHER. There is . . . I have to tell you . . . there’s a lot of people \ waiting for your signature –
SPEER (sharply). But still a moment if you please!
Slight pause.
FEMALE PUBLISHER (put out by being snapped at). Of course.
She turns and goes. SPEER to WOLTERS.
WOLTERS. Oh, don’t worry. I’m not the first thing to be rubbed out of your past. And I doubt I’ll be the last.
SPEER. I have said, I’m sorry.
WOLTERS. Though you were right in one respect. The reign of terror’s hotting up again.
SPEER. The reign of terror?
WOLTERS. Having run out of all the various butchers of wherever, moving on to the so-called ‘perpetrators from the desk’.
SPEER. Yes?
WOLTERS. Which is why I came to see you.
SPEER. Oh?
WOLTERS. The Chronicle.
SPEER. Yes, you wrote to me. I wrote back. There’s a problem?
WOLTERS. Describe the situation as you see it.
SPEER (slightly offended). Rudi.
WOLTERS. All right. From 1940 I kept a chronicle of your activities. Of which there were four copies. Three are lost, the fourth I bury in my garden. In 1964 I dig it up, have it retyped, and two years later I hand this retyped version on to you. And like the splendid citizen you are you hand it over to the Federal Archives in Koblenz.
SPEER. Yes.
WOLTERS. However there is a British writer called David Irving \ who finds another copy –
SPEER. – who thinks that Hitler is a man much misunderstood . . .
WOLTERS. – who points out that Hitler was an ordinary, walking, talking human being with grey hair, false teeth and an obsession with his bowels. As opposed that is to either Superman or Lucifer Incarnate.
SPEER. And he comes across another copy of the original. In some library?
WOLTERS. The Imperial War Museum . . .
SPEER. . . . and compares it to the retyped version in Koblenz . . .
WOLTERS. . . . and finds they’re not the same. Because your old friend Rudi has been through the original, correcting style and grammar, and deleting one or two things that he felt were irrelevant or repetitive or just plain silly . . .
SPEER. Which is all understandable enough, hence my proposal that we send Koblenz our original, which if anybody wants to plough through they’re quite welcome. After all, Irving has presumably ploughed through it all already.
WOLTERS. I see. You think that Irving read it all.
SPEER. I understand he’s more than diligent.
WOLTERS. The London copy’s incomplete. It’s only 1943.
SPEER. So he gets to catch up on the rest in Germany. Rudi, I really don’t see the problem.
WOLTERS. The problem isn’t 1943. The problem’s 1941.
Pause.
SPEER. Yes?
WOLTERS. Do you remember, when your father asked the Chief where the people who’d been dispossessed would go?
SPEER. Yes, I suppose so.
WOLTERS. To which the then official answer was that the plan was for them to go and live in garden suburbs.
SPEER. Yes.
WOLTERS. While as it fell out, actually, a lot of them would end up somewhere very different.
Slight pause.
SPEER. So? I was the General Inspector of Buildings. I had nothing to do with the evacuations.
WOLTERS. Not directly.
A sharp knock on the door.
SPEER. Yes, what?
The MALE PUBLISHER is trying to get SPEER to come out.
MALE PUBLISHER. Herr Speer, I know you’re busy, but there is a considerable queue \ outside –
SPEER. I know. I will be with them very shortly.
WOLTERS. Natives getting restless.
SPEER. So?
WOLTERS. Minutes of meetings 1941. Attended by our people, Goebbels’ people, and SS-Lieutenant-Colonel Adolf Eichmann. To plan the eviction and evacuation of nearly 80,000 persons from Berlin. I wonder, can you guess what race of persons these ‘persons’ might have been?
SPEER. And you cut this out.
WOLTERS. Yes I cut this out.
SPEER. Although far from silly or irrelevant.
WOLTERS. Yes.
SPEER. You know I didn’t know of the evictions.
WOLTERS. I’m afraid you did. There’s some notes, still happily in my possession, with an entry on I believe the 20th of January 1941. ‘Couple action on the Jew-flats with preparation for emergency quarters for persons’ – rather different persons, obviously – ‘made homeless through bomb damage’. All quite clearly in your writing.
SPEER. Well, of course, I knew that people were deported. As I have always said. I didn’t know where they were going.
WOLTERS. No of course you didn’t. That’s the point. They were just another group of people, being shoved about. Along with soldiers, foreign workers, ordinary prisoners, prisoners of war, conscripted or evacuated, bombed out, picked up, taken in custody for the protection of, relocated, handled, processed, dealt with. In the chaos of a war which was already termed a war of national survival. It’s only now it looks like what you claim it was: the first step on the road to what you ‘should’ and ‘could’ but didn’t know was the Greatest Crime in Human History.
SPEER shrugs at this sarcastic hyperbole.
But now it all looks different. You know that Theo Ganzenmüller wrote some note in 1942, confirming he’d been able to provide some trains for the transportation of some persons somewhere as requested. The kind of routine memo we all wrote a hundred of a day. Unfortunately, the somewhere was Treblinka.
SPEER. Well, yes, of course . . .
WOLTERS. But you, great National Scapegoat, you reverse it. It’s remarkably ingenious. You flagellate yourself in hindsight actually to justify your actions at the time. Your sin is to have stood above the fray, to have kept your hands clean, never to have known. And by this sleight of hand your betraying him turns into him betraying you.
SPEER. Rudi, that’s enough.
WOLTERS. So when did he stop living up to your grand ideal? Well, by the bunker, obviously. So, when he gave you the the Arms job? When you designed Germania? When you joined the party? When you sat about and planned a better world with me?
SPEER. You know, it’s interesting, what you say about betrayal. Because for all those years, whenever I felt lost, or let down or abandoned or betrayed, whenever I was near to losing faith in humankind, I’d tell myself: just think of Rudi Wolters.
Pause.
But I suppose, we knew \ that it could never –
WOLTERS. Which is why I have to tell you what I really feel. How could I lie to you? It would be as if I lied to me.
SPEER looks at WOLTERS, with the stirring memory of that sentiment.
SPEER. Well at least, we must hope, it isn’t lost for ever.
WOLTERS. What, your faith in humankind?
SPEER. Unlike the original version of the Chronicle. Which should I think be lost forever.
WOLTERS. I’m sorry?
SPEER. As so much else has been. After all, it refers to matters which aren’t in the book. About which I knew nothing. So, for the greater good.
WOLTERS. We should pursue the line of least resistance.
SPEER looks askance.
Oh, don’t worry. The original will vanish without trace. As if it never was. From your and everyone’s domain.
SPEER stands a moment. Then, suddenly, he turns and goes back out, almost bumping into the entering MARGRET.
MARGRET. Albert, I have been sent to drag you \ back . . .
SPEER. I’m coming. Look who’s here.
He goes out.
MARGRET. Rudi. How wonderful to see you.
WOLTERS. Margret.
They shake hands. She looks questioningly.
I have been talking to the Great Best-Seller.
MARGRET. When he returned, you know, it was to be the Modest Architect. Have you read the book?
WOLTERS. Oh, yes. Have you?
MARGRET. I read the bit about Eva Braun. He seems to have been quite taken with her. I always found her rather bossy and pretentious.
WOLTERS. Of course, he talked much more about you and your courtship in his letters to the children.
MARGRET. Yes. Hilde showed me. It was incredible. All these feelings which he had inside. From a man who virtually never said a word to me.
He offers her champagne. She declines.
I’ve been chatting with Klaus von Below. He’s considering a book himself. But he’s afraid, there was some incident. A young man came to see him about something dreadful that he’d witnessed. And of course there was nothing he could do.
WOLTERS. It was a war. And it was a quarter of a century ago.
MARGRET. Of course.
Slight pause.
You know, he’s working on another book.
WOLTERS. Oh?
MARGRET. It’s about his time in Spandau.
WOLTERS. Ah.
MARGRET. Some of it was lying on his desk. It was a description of a dream.
WOLTERS. He always said the Spandau dreams were quite agreeable.
MARGRET. Not this one.
WOLTERS looks inquiringly at MARGRET.
It begins with Albert in a factory. Someone – Hitler I presume – is coming for a great inspection. And although he’s Minister of Armaments, he’s sweeping up the floor.
WOLTERS. At Nuremberg, they made the surviving prisoners sweep up the gymnasium where they’d done the hangings.
MARGRET. Well, that would explain it. Then like you are in dreams he’s in a car, and he’s trying to get his arm into his jacket.
WOLTERS. Presumably, that’s the jacket Hitler lent him when they met.
MARGRET. Of course. And then he’s in a vast square, I suppose the great square that they planned for all those years, and Hitler’s there as well, and asks his adjutants: where are the wreaths? And then Albert looks surprised, I would imagine, because the adjutant explains that nowadays ‘he’ lays wreaths all the time. And so he does, singing a kind of dreary plainsong chant, as on and on they come, wreath after wreath, piled ever higher, seemingly without end.
She’s looking out towards the garden party.
And look. Look, still they come.
WOLTERS (sensing she’s talking about something else). Excuse me?
MARGRET. He’s still signing.
WOLTERS turns out front.
WOLTERS. Not for the last time. As his Spandau Diaries were to prove another publishing phenomenon.
But once again, there was no place for his indefatigable and yet absent ‘friend’.
Those years in which I was his lifeline, and he was my life.
WOLTERS goes. MARGRET out front.
MARGRET. I’m sorry. I would like to talk about it, but I can’t. I’m sure you understand.
You see, my fear is that sometime, somebody like you, with the best of good intentions, will ask me what I knew.
And I don’t know which is worse. Having known about it . . . or the truth. That I knew nothing of what went on at all.
I am so sorry.
MARGRET turns and goes out.
CHAIR. Fellow students, fellow members of the University Historical Society, ladies and gentlemen. I must first of all apologise for the conditions. Which as everybody knows were brought about by the actions of people who prefer to shout down rather than to listen and discuss. We are grateful to the music faculty for loaning us their auditorium at such short notice. Well, at none at all.
Slight pause.
As you know our speaker this evening is the author of a noted and important autobiogaphy, about an unhappy period in our country’s recent past. He is accompanied by his publisher, Herr Siedler. We are very grateful to them both for agreeing to proceed with this symposium under the circumstances. Herr Albert Speer.
SPEER goes to the music stand. Applause and a little booing – the booing is booed back.
SPEER (adjusting his notes). No, no.
Putting on his glasses.
Well, first of all I am very pleased to be speaking in a place dedicated to music. However, I must confess that I am here under somewhat false pretences. I have never been a speech-maker, and in fact there is a story illustrating this. On the occasion of his 50th birthday, I was pleased to hand over the first completed stage of the new Berlin to Hitler. For some days he had been announcing gleefully: ‘A great event! Speer’s going to make a speech!’, and when he arrived he took his place expectantly. I took a deep breath, cleared my throat and spoke these exact words: ‘My Führer. I herewith report the completion of the east-west axis. May the work speak for itself!’
It was of course a good joke. And I must admit my pleasure that he accepted it as such. ‘You got me there, you rascal, Speer’, he’d say. ‘Two sentences indeed!’ Still, he told me it was one of the best speeches he had ever heard.
We are detecting opposition in the room.
And of course I made many other speeches, including one at the Nuremberg trial, in my defence. But what I want to do tonight is to explain to you how I can speak of Hitler as a normal walking human being . . .
FIRST HECKLER. Normal?
SPEER. And how it was not in fact till Nuremberg that I realised that, yes, this superficially normal human being was in fact \ a man of quite –
SECOND HECKLER. No Nazis! Speer out out!
SPEER. But I detect that there is something which you want to say to me.
SECOND HECKLER. Speer out!
SIEDLER. No, no.
CHAIR. Herr Speer, we ask you to ignore this anti-democratic spectacle.
SPEER. It would I fear be undemocratic of itself to do so.
Pause. The FIRST HECKLER helps out the SECONDHECKLER.
Go on, go on.
FIRST HECKLER. When did you know about the killing of the Jews?
SPEER. What, as a systematic policy of elimination?
FIRST HECKLER. Yes of course.
SPEER. As I say, at Nuremberg.
Chuntering.
CHAIR. Please, Herr Speer, do you continue your prepared address.
SPEER. No, I am happy . . . as I say, I am not an orator. I will answer questions.
Pause. SPEER returns to his seat.
CHAIR. Well, in that case, may I ask . . . ah, yes.
Points to FIRST QUESTIONER.
FIRST QUESTIONER. Speaking of Nuremberg, Herr Speer –
AUDIENCE. Can’t hear!
The FIRST QUESTIONER is handed a microphone.
FIRST QUESTIONER. Speaking of Nuremberg, may I ask about your work on the design of the party rallies there?
SPEER. What about them?
FIRST QUESTIONER. Did you feel that by providing such spectacular visual effects you were an important part of the Nazi propaganda machine?
SPEER. Well. At the time, I was a professional architect. My job was not to be concerned with political issues.
SECOND HECKLER. No, of course not!
CHAIR (to SECOND QUESTIONER). Yes, please.
SECOND QUESTIONER. ‘Herr professor’, when you joined the party, were you an anti-semite?
SPEER. No. As far as practising anti-semitism is concerned, or making anti-semitic remarks, my conscience is entirely clear. Nor, as it happens, was I a real professor.
SECOND QUESTIONER. But you were a real Nazi.
SPEER. I was a member of the National Socialist Party. And yes, I knew the party was anti-semitic, of course, and I also knew the Jews were leaving Germany.
FIRST HECKLER. And being murdered?
CHAIR. Please.
SPEER. I’m sorry, I thought she was asking about when I joined. When, like many – most I suspect – I assumed that antisemitism was a – vulgar incidental to the party programme.
SECOND HECKLER. Incidental!
SPEER. Which of course proved to be far from the case. But even later on, I knew the Jews were being evacuated, but I did not know they were being murdered as a systematic policy.
THIRD QUESTIONER. Herr Speer, you do understand why people find this hard to credit?
SPEER. I understand that people do. But it is nevertheless the case.
Slight pause.
The final solution was a secret from the German people. And as one of them, it was a secret from me too.
There is a hostile atmsophere growing in the room. SIEDLER feels he needs to rescue.
SIEDLER. Perhaps to clarify this point, it’s worth asking how it was that a person of your position in the German state would not know this.
SPEER. Well, as I say, \ the policy was secret –
SIEDLER. As clearly you knew people who did know.
SPEER. The whole ethos of the Hitler state was about the will of a single individual. Everyone was told: you need only be concerned with your domain.
SIEDLER. And if you had known, and protested, what would have happened?
Slight pause.
SPEER. Well, people were shot for less. For example, Hitler had made clear to me that if I countermanded him, that that would be treason, with the usual consequences.
SIEDLER. You are referring to your overruling Hitler’s orders to destroy German industry in the last months of the war?
SPEER. That’s right.
FIRST QUESTIONER. So why weren’t you executed, when you told him?
SPEER. I’m sorry?
As the FIRST QUESTIONER quotes, SIEDLER searches for the right page.
FIRST QUESTIONER. It’s in your book. Here. ‘I confessed to him in a low voice, that I had not carried out any demolitions but had actually prevented them. For a moment his eyes filled with tears’.
SPEER (to SIELDER). Um, where . . .
FIRST QUESTIONER. It’s just before you offer to stay with him in Berlin. Presumably to die \ along with him and Eva –
SIEDLER hands the book over to SPEER to read. SPEER interrupts.
SPEER. Ah yes. ‘Perhaps he sensed I didn’t mean it’. It was of course a time of great emotion. But it is true, at that late stage, he did not fulfil his threat. In fact, as I recall, he told me: ‘We will never speak of this again’.
FOURTH QUESTIONER. So did ‘his eyes fill up with tears’ when he watched the film of people he’d had hanged with piano wire on meathooks?
SPEER. No, this is a myth. Hitler did not watch films of anybody being executed. He was notoriously squeamish.
FIRST HECKLER. You said he did! He said it in an interview!
SPEER. I was misreported. It was after all an interview in Playboy magazine.
Laughter.
You may know, they have a fold-out section: misquotation of the month.
Laughter.
SIEDLER. In fact, I could read out what you actually said \ about this incident –
Suddenly, another QUESTIONER, with documents, marches to the stage.
FIFTH QUESTIONER. Or instead you could read this.
The CHAIR and SIEDLER stand.
SIEDLER. Um . . .
SPEER. What is that?
CHAIR (precautionary). Please, Guard . . .
SPEER (stands). No, let him be.
A SECURITY MAN hovers as SPEER goes over to the FIFTH QUESTIONER.
FIFTH QUESTIONER. It is a speech, transcribed from phonograph recordings, from the state archives at Koblenz.
SPEER. Yes?
The FIFTH QUESTIONER holds his document out to SPEER.
FIFTH QUESTIONER. Read it.
The GUARD puts his hand on the FIFTH QUESTIONER’s arm.
SPEER. What is this?
FIFTH QUESTIONER. Read it.
SECURITY MAN. Come along . . .
SPEER. No, no.
He reads, a little bemused.
‘You will not doubt that the economic aspect \ presented many great difficulties’ –
FIFTH QUESTIONER. Further up.
SPEER. ‘I want to speak now, in this most restricted circle, about a matter which \ you, my party – ’
FIFTH QUESTIONER. From there.
SPEER. ‘The brief sentence “The Jews must be exterminated” is easy to pronounce. But the demands on those who have to put it into practice are the hardest and the most difficult in the world’. Who is it?
FIFTH QUESTIONER. Himmler. Now read that.
SPEER. I, um . . . You will forgive me . . .
The FIFTH QUESTIONER snatches his papers and goes to the CHAIR.
FIFTH QUESTIONER. All right, you read it.
CHAIR. No.
FIFTH QUESTIONER. ‘To listen, to discuss’.
FIRST HECKLER. Read it!
SIEDLER. I’ll read it.
He reads the passage pointed to.
‘We, you see, were faced with the question ‘What about the women and children?’ And I decided, here too, to find an unequivocal solution. For I did not think that I was justified in exterminating – meaning kill or order to have killed – the men, but to leave their children to grow up to take revenge on our sons and grandchildren’.
Slight pause.
Well, of course, it’s terrible. When was it?
FIFTH QUESTIONER. 6th of October 1943.
SPEER. I’m sorry, when?
FIFTH QUESTIONER. 6th of October 1943. A meeting of Gauleiters, and some others, at Posen Castle in the Warthegau.
SPEER looks at him aghast.
Yes. You were there.
He takes the transcript and finds the next bit he needs.
Later Himmler talks of war production. How people tried to stop them liquidating the Warsaw ghetto because of the war production there.
CHAIR. Now, please . . .
FIFTH QUESTIONER. Then he says this: ‘Of course, this has nothing to do with party comrade Speer: it wasn’t your doing. It is precisely this kind of so-called war production enterprise which party comrade Speer and I will clean out together over the next weeks. We will do this just as unsentimentally as all things must be done in the fifth year of the war: unsentimentally but from the bottom of our hearts’.
SPEER. I wasn’t there.
CHAIR. Please, this is enough –
FIFTH QUESTIONER. You’re saying you weren’t there?
CHAIR. Guard, will you ask this man to leave.
FIFTH QUESTIONER. But Himmler says: ‘it’s not your doing’. You were there.
SPEER. I wasn’t there. I was there at the meeting in the morning, but I wasn’t there.
The SECURITY MAN takes the FIFTH QUESTIONER by the arm.
FIFTH QUESTIONER. Take note please, everyone!
SPEER. I must have left. I needed to consult . . .
SECOND QUESTIONER. Let him speak!
CHAIR. I must insist . . .
SIEDLER. Now, Albert, it’s all right.
FIFTH QUESTIONER. Don’t you understand? Himmler’s saying, Speer is here.
A SECONDSECURITY MAN comes up to help pull the FIFTH QUESTIONER out.
CHAIR. Herr Speer, I must apologise . . .
FIFTH QUESTIONER (as he goes). It’s the whole case, torn to shreds. He didn’t know. But he did know. Himmler speaks to him. ‘It’s not your doing’. In the middle of a speech in which he says of course we all know don’t we that we’re murdering the Jews . . . It makes it crystal clear . . . he’s lying as he lied at Nuremberg and he’s lied for thirty years . . .
He’s gone.
CHAIR. Herr Speer, I’m sorry. Everybody, please . . .
SIEDLER. Come on, now, Albert.
SPEER. I was not. I cannot recollect. I wasn’t there.
CASALIS. I’m afraid I don’t think that this is a good idea.
GEIS. So why \ are you –
CASALIS. It’s what he wants.
GEIS. So he always gets what he wants?
CASALIS. What he thinks he wants.
GEIS. Why does he want to meet death camp survivors now?
CASALIS. Something has happened. Some exposure by an academic, accusing him of being at a meeting where Himmler openly discussed the killing of the Jews. I gather from his wife he’s spent weeks in the Federal Archives, checking dates and times.
GEIS. He didn’t come to you?
CASALIS. No. But he wrote about it.
GEIS. I’m sorry.
CASALIS. Why?
GEIS. I thought that you were close.
CASALIS. We were. But under rather different circumstances. It’s difficult to go on knowing someone one has got to know quite deeply in a time of crisis.
GEIS. Ah, that would explain it.
CASALIS. What?
GEIS. Why, in his books, he hardly mentions you.
Pause.
CASALIS. Yes I noticed that. I think . . . I have decided . . . I don’t mind.
Slight pause.
GEIS. I’m sorry. I’m behaving like a prosecutor.
CASALIS. And we know our job is not to judge, to probe or to interrogate.
GEIS. Speak for yourself. Would you be surprised if he had lied about – whatever?
CASALIS. Well, he lied to me. I think. But then all prisoners do. It’s a way of hanging on to the little of themselves they’re left with.
GEIS. That surprises me. From his books, it seems Herr Speer is in complete command.
CASALIS. By then.
GEIS. Was that your work?
CASALIS. He never lied about his inner life. Let’s say, he built a path on which we could walk together for a while.
GEIS. Both figuratively and literally.
CASALIS. A path – a rhythm, or a discipline – on which when I had left he could proceed.
GEIS. To become a different man?
CASALIS. That, and his writing.
Slight pause.
GEIS. Yes. I know a brilliant man, completely organised and disciplined, a lover of the arts and all the higher things . . . and yet. Not only incapable of abstract thought, but also of romantic love. I often ask myself, what happened to him as a child.
CASALIS. Then you know Albert Speer.
GEIS. So was he at this meeting?
CASALIS. His case is that Himmler was notoriously short-sighted, that the room was dark, and that he couldn’t have been there. Which rests on not being able to fly in to Hitler’s east headquarters, so he had to go by road, and a gap in Hitler’s calendar in which they could have met that evening.
GEIS. And does it sound convincing?
During this, SPEER enters in his overcoat, carrying his hat.
CASALIS. Rabbi, I have a fear. That the only way he could admit what he admitted was by denying what he has denied. I taught him to confront as much of what he knew as he could deal with and remain alive. That to save his life he had to sacrifice his soul.
SPEER. Herr Pastor.
CASALIS. Why, my dear Herr Speer.
GEIS (SPEER’s head’s uncovered). Uh . . .
CASALIS. Oh yes, you need a skull-cap.
SPEER goes to get a skull cap from the pile by the door.
GEIS. In fact, your own hat is perfectly \ acceptable –
CASALIS returning with skull-cap.
SPEER. No, no, this will do.
As SPEER puts on the skull-cap.
CASALIS. This is Rabbi Geis.
SPEER and GEIS shake hands.
SPEER. I am very grateful.
GEIS. They’ll be here directly.
SPEER. Isn’t that the Bruckner Fourth?
GEIS. Yes, it’s my assistant.
SPEER. We had them play it at the last concert of the Berlin Phil.
GEIS. As you say in your reminiscences.
SPEER. I’m complimented. And your synagogue survived everything?
GEIS. With an occasional judicious change of role.
SPEER. Ah, yes.
GEIS. In fact, it may change role again. Unhappily, what was the ghetto is now prime downtown real estate.
SPEER. Oh but you mustn’t sell it. It’s so beautiful.
GEIS. Yes. Like the romantic symphony.
Slight pause.
SPEER. What do you mean?
GEIS. I have a theory, that there is a risk, that people – sometimes people who have found it hard to find love in their real lives – seek beauty in great works of art not as a supplement to personal love but as a substitute. That somehow, they can feel – feel deeply, passionately, soulfully . . . but not directly. So they feel through art.
CASALIS (fearful that GEIS may have gone too far). I think . . .
GEIS notices his assistant DAVID, in his late teens, appproaching from his office.
GEIS. This is I fear true of my assistant.
DAVID. Herr Geis, your guests are here.
GEIS. David, this is Albert Speer.
SPEER. How do you do?
DAVID. I’ve read your books.
SPEER. I’m glad.
DAVID. I have a question.
SPEER. Please.
DAVID. What are you proudest of designing, as an architect?
GEIS and CASALIS are relieved.
SPEER. The piece I feel about most – deeply and most passionately is a chair. It was very simple, rather unobtrusive. But for me . . . complete.
Pause.
DAVID. A chair.
GEIS. We’ll meet them in my office.
SPEER. Oh, can we not talk in here?
CASALIS. I think it would \ be better –
GEIS. If it’s what you want.
GEIS raises a finger, to indicate to DAVID that he should wait a moment.
But first I must ask you seriously if this is really what you want. I must put it to you that there might be something fundamentally unhealthy about living so intensely in the past. I have read your books. I know that you are now confronting other accusations. But surely – now – it is time to face the future.
SPEER. You have heard about this meeting I am supposed to have attended.
CASALIS. Yes.
GEIS. Did you attend it?
SPEER. I have proved – to my own satisfaction – I did not.
GEIS. To ‘your own satisfaction’.
SPEER. The timing is quite clear. I had to leave the meeting early, and I drove to Rastenberg and met with Hitler. I have affidavits proving where I was and who with and how long. I have proved, yes, that I wasn’t there.
Pause. GEIS says nothing.
For what is the alternative? That I was there and I don’t remember? That I blocked it out?
Slight pause.
GEIS. As you say, you have your affidavits.
CASALIS. And now perhaps we ought \ to go and see –
SPEER. Rabbi. It has been nearly thirty years. Nobody could go on asserting his own guilt at full volume all that time and remain sincere. I wake with it, I spend my days with it, I dream of it. But what I say about it has inevitably grown routine. And now that I have proved – to my own satisfaction, yes – my innocence of yet another charge . . . the danger is that in considerable relief at that I say – well if that’s all right, then there’s no guilt at all. So if you will forgive me, sir, I need this meeting. Because I need to know.
CASALIS. What do you need to know?
SPEER. What it was like, to be on the receiving end of me.
(To DAVID). So will you bring them?
DAVID goes out, SPEER moves away to look at the synagogue.
GEIS speaks out front.
GEIS. And of course it was very hard for him. One of the women was from Prague, and had been first at Theresiensdadt and then in Auschwitz where she’d been the victim of experiments.
CASALIS speaks out front.
CASALIS. He told me, once, that on his way to work he could see the crowds of people waiting for evacuation on the platform of the Nikolassee railway station. But he’d never speculated what would happen to them at the other end. Well, now he knew.
GEIS. The other was in hiding, and had spent her time since trying to find out how and where her parents, uncles, cousins, husband and two children died.
CASALIS (to GEIS). My understanding is, that Hitler’s calendar wasn’t an appointments book. It was a record of everyone who met with him. And on the evening of Himmler’s speech, Speer’s name isn’t there.
SPEER. And so they told me what I’d turned away from.
Pause.
So, yes, of course. That is the question I must answer now.
Not whether I was at a meeting. But whether, meeting or no meeting, I still knew.
And you were bound to ask eventually. Everybody does. And it is always the same answer.
Because if I knew, and if I knew I knew, then everything becomes a lie.
What I said to Georges Casalis, what I wrote, what I told my children, what I tell myself. My life becomes a lie to me.
And so I have always said. I should have known, I could have known, I didn’t know. I turned away.
Pause.
Yes, that’s right. Turned away.
Pause.
I’m sorry. I can never speak of this to you again.
He turns. It is his study.
MARGRET. Albert, there’s someone here to see you.
SPEER looks round.
It’s a woman. She claims she has an appointment.
SPEER. Um . . .
MARGRET. She’s German speaking, with an English accent. She’s clutching all your books and articles. She’s obviously more than diligent.
SPEER. Ah. Yes.
MARGRET comes over to SPEER, gives him a letter.
MARGRET. Albert, do tidy yourself up. You look worse than you looked in Spandau.
MARGRET goes out. A knock.
SPEER. Come in.
The door opens. MRS WINTERINGHAM is in her mid-to-late 30s, fair and attractive. She does indeed carry a small Speer library. SPEER glances at the letter to remind himself.
Mrs – Winteringham?
MRS WINTERINGHAM. Herr Speer, I am so pleased to meet you.
She comes over to shake his hand. Some confusion with her books.
I’m sorry . . .
SPEER. Please sit down.
They sit.
You have an English name.
MRS WINTERINGHAM. My husband’s British. I live there, you see.
SPEER. I have always admired the British.
MRS WINTERINGHAM. Yes, I know. In fact, Herr Speer, we’ve met before.
SPEER. We have?
MRS WINTERINGHAM. You signed one of my books for me.
SPEER. Ah, yes. And, when . . . ?
MRS WINTERINGHAM. Herr Speer, I’m very angry.
Slight pause.
SPEER. Oh?
MRS WINTERINGHAM. I have read your books, your articles and interviews, and other people’s articles about you.
SPEER. Ah . . .
MRS WINTERINGHAM. And my response is – what gives them the right to carp and sneer at somebody like you?
SPEER is thrown by this unexpected tack.
Herr Speer, I think your prison diary is the best, and the most moving book I’ve ever read.
SPEER demurs at this hyperbole.
And of course you made mistakes. In stirring times. How could you not? But you were Germany’s chief architect. You did stave off defeat against all odds, and save our industry from destruction at the end. You did serve twenty years in solitary confinement, and transform yourself, and come through to make a new career. And for people to insist on yet more penitence, yet more self-accusation . . . Oh, I think not, Herr Speer.
SPEER. You’re very kind.
MRS WINTERINGHAM. I am not being ‘kind’.
SPEER. Nevertheless . . .
MRS WINTERINGHAM. There is no nevertheless about it. You did these things. They were of value. And you did them on your own.
SPEER stands.
SPEER. Shall we take a walk? You can make your notes when you get back.
MRS WINTERINGHAM. My notes?
SPEER. You have not come to interview me?
MRS WINTERINGHAM. I have come to meet you.
SPEER (gesturing to the books). So . . .
MRS WINTERINGHAM. I’d hoped that you might sign my other books for me.
SPEER. Of course. When we return.
MRS WINTERINGHAM smiles and stands.
SPEER (picking up the book he signed). Please ask my wife to lend you some galoshes. I will be down directly.
MRS WINTERINGHAM turns to go. SPEER reads his inscription in her book.
SPEER. Your name is Trudi.
MRS WINTERINGHAM. Yes.
SPEER. Yes. I think – I do remember you.
He looks at her.
Do you like music, Mrs Winteringham?
MRS WINTERINGHAM. Oh, Herr Speer, I am Aquarius. I love things of beauty more than life itself.
She goes out.
HILDE. Apparently it was the Spandau Diaries. They ‘made her cry’.
SIEDLER. I saw Speer in 1980. He’d sent me the manuscript of his new book on the SS, which had considerable problems.
HILDE. My mother was naturally devastated. After everything she’d done for him.
SIEDLER. And then he said what he had said to me before: that sometimes a man needs another man in whom he can confide.
HILDE. What, did she know? He used to ‘report absent’ when he went to meet her.
SIEDLER. And then he took a snapshot from his wallet.
He said: ‘I had to be in my 70s to have my first real erotic experience with a woman’.
HILDE. Of course she knew.
SPEER. Hallo? This is room . . .
He checks his key.
516. This is to say that there will be . . .
Pause.
Ah. She’s on her way.
He looks round the room, checks his appearance in the mirror. There’s a knock at the door. He goes and admits MRS WINTERINGHAM.
MRS WINTERINGHAM. Hallo, darling.
SPEER. Hallo.
They kiss, passionately.
MRS WINTERINGHAM. It’s sweltering. How was the BBC?
SPEER. Oh, fine. They thought I’d done the plans for Hitler’s tomb at Linz.
MRS WINTERINGHAM. But that was Giesler.
Pleased that she knows this, SPEER opens wine.
SPEER. Yes. I had to improvise.
MRS WINTERINGHAM (enjoying his chutzpah). You told them you did Linz?
SPEER. I left it open. Do you want some wine?
MRS WINTERINGHAM (mock shock). Albert.
SPEER (pouring wine). Being the BBC, they couldn’t resist pointing out all that remains of my work are the ruins of the stadium, two gatehouses now converted into lavatories and a row of streetlamps.
MRS WINTERINGHAM. Now, stop that.
She kisses him.
SPEER. They invited me to lunch. I said I had a previous engagement.
She takes a glass of wine, and drinks.
MRS WINTERINGHAM. It’s wonderfully cold.
She kisses him again.
Well. Cheerio.
MRS WINTERINGHAM knocks her drink back.
Hey, I could have a shower, couldn’t I?
SPEER. Of course you could.
Taking off her jacket.
MRS WINTERINGHAM. And this evening, Herr Speer, I wish to be escorted to the theatre.
SPEER. You know, in Spandau, I made a theatre in my mind. I would imagine purchasing the ticket, leaving my coat in the cloakroom, buying a programme, sitting down. And looking forward to the curtain rising, and \ the cool draft from the stage –
She takes over as she goes out.
MRS WINTERINGHAM (taking over).‘ – the cool draft from the stage, with its smell of glue, dust and papier mâché’. Yes, I know. It was your imagination!
SPEER takes off his jacket, loosens his tie.
SPEER (to himself). Yes. If you think about it.
The room has been growing dark and peculiar. SPEER feels strange.
It was that that got me through.
SPEER stands. The transformation is beginning to take place.
So what’s this here?
SPEER. What’s going on?
Pause.
SPEER. Is it . . . am I in a street?
A MAN emerges from the darkness, throwing a huge shadow.
SPEER. This is an air-raid?
The MAN approaches, followed by other MEN.
SPEER. Or else . . . torches? This is Nuremberg? Is this then? Is this me?
HITLER. No, Speer. It’s me. And now.
HITLER is in stormtrooper uniform. HESS, SCHAUB, HANKE, also in stormtrooper uniform, behind him. It’s like a gangster raid.
HITLER. As if you didn’t know. So what have you been up to since I saw you last?
SPEER. What do you mean?
HITLER. As if I didn’t know.
He turns and nods to the others, who swagger upstage into the darkness.
You’ve been trying to remake yourself. You have been trying to become a different man.
SPEER. What’s this?
HITLER. Having been ‘condemned, robbed of your liberty, tortured by the knowledge that you’d based your life upon a lie’.
SPEER. Oh, of course, the dreams.
HITLER. Having been ‘intoxicated’, ‘blinded’ by the power I granted you.
SPEER. The dream. The dream in which you know.
HITLER. How you nevertheless stood up heroically at the end, to save the last weak remnants of the German people. At risk of being taken off and shot of course! How you were not responsible for the conditions of your labourers but now I understand you are suddenly responsible for Linz! But as you say. The dream in which I know.
SPEER. I never said you’d have me shot.
HITLER. Oh no? What did you tell that pornographic magazine?
SPEER. I’m not sure I recall.
HITLER. ‘My Führer . . . there is something I must say to
you . . . ’ ‘What is it?’ You be me.
SPEER. ‘What is it?’
HITLER. And then you: ‘My Führer, all these months, when I have been pledging my unfailing loyalty, I have been sabotaging everything you have commanded. When I said I stood unconditionally behind you, I was actually betraying you behind your back. When I said I’d never lie to you, I was actually lying at the time. And I didn’t have the guts to tell you then, but I don’t have the guts to live with my deceit and so now there’s nothing you can do about it I’m confessing it to you. Oh, and if you like, I’ll stay here in Berlin with you and we can die together!’
SPEER says nothing.
And what did I say, then? According to this fairy tale?
SPEER. ‘We will never speak of this again’.
HITLER. Oh yes. And my eyes ‘filled up with tears’. Whereas what actually occurred, on this momentous evening?
SPEER. I’m afraid I don’t \ remember.
HITLER. I passed you in a corridor. I said ‘Goodbye’. And that was that. But, oh no: ‘My eyes filled up with tears’.
Pause.
Hm?
SPEER says nothing.
And the workers in the mountains. And your shock. And pain.
SPEER. In fact, I did my best \ to improve their conditions –
HITLER. Your shock and horror at my ‘giving up’ the German people.
SPEER. I didn’t realise you could be so \ heedless of their fate –
HITLER. But most of all, the lie that after everything you didn’t know.
Pause.
SPEER. It was true. I didn’t know. As I have proved to my own satisfaction.
HITLER. What? Still?
SPEER shrugs, confirming.
Had I not always said that once the strong had been eliminated, all is lost and it is pointless trying to save the rest?
SPEER. Of course.
HITLER. That without its strongest elements, the German people would degrade into a feminised and weakened lumpen mass, as prey as Slav subhumans to the cholera of Bolshevism?
SPEER. Yes.
HITLER. That the Soviet state was a criminal conspiracy that would have to be destroyed, with implacable determination?
SPEER. You’d implied that, certainly.
HITLER. And does not the destruction of a state ‘imply’ the physical elimination of its functionaries, without mercy or consideration of the rules of war?
Slight pause.
And when I said – as I said repeatedly, and publicly, that if there was a war, it will lead inevitably to the annihilation of the racial source of Bolshevism, why couldn’t you believe it? Why did you insist that anti-semitism was ‘a vulgar incidental’? I said it – clearly, time and time again. I didn’t say ‘resettlement’ or ‘cleaning efforts’. I did not speak of ‘special handling’. And yet you all insist that when I said the Jews must be destroyed, I only meant ‘defeated’. That when I said ‘eliminate’ I didn’t mean ‘exterminate’, I only meant ‘exclude’. That when I said ‘purge’ and ‘perish’ and ‘annihilate’, it was of course a metaphor. Why was I cursed with never being taken literally? How could the world have been so blind? And how could you?
Slight pause.
But oh. ‘I turned away’. As ever. Not your fault. Why not admit it? Why not confess it? Why not come clean now?
SPEER says nothing.
Hah?
SPEER says nothing.
All right, I’ll tell you why. Speer, you present yourself as a man inspired by a great vision but who saw that vision trampled into dust. By me. Yet without me there was no vision and there was no man. Who made you, Speer? Who appointed you his architect? Who promoted you to be his armourer? Who inspired you to dream dreams you could never dream alone? You did what I required of you. You realised my vision. And if you are in a hall of faces then the face is mine.
HESS, HANKE and SCHAUB come forward with wreaths.
SPEER. You are laying wreaths.
SCHAUB. He lays them all the time.
HITLER lays wreaths.
SPEER. Who they are for?
HESS. They are for the best.
SPEER. The best are dead.
HANKE. The best are dead.
HITLER. And of course when I said our new Berlin was a mausoleum, you did not believe me either. ‘The names of our Germanic fallen, carved on every stone.’
SPEER looks in anguish at HITLER. HITLER hands wreath to SPEER.
So then: be me.
SPEER. There is no need. I have been you ever since I met you.
HITLER. Yes.
SPEER. I thought my life began with you. But it ended with you.
HITLER. Yes.
SPEER. You were the nightmare. Always. Obviously.
HITLER. Yes.
SPEER. Your tomb was Linz. Mine was Germania.
SPEER looks back for the last time into the huge grey disappearing space. His eyes are full of tears.
HITLER. Why are you crying?
SPEER. I am crying for myself. And the life I could have led if I’d been different from the start.
HITLER. Come, come.
SPEER. No.
HITLER. The best are dead.
SPEER. No.
HITLER. The dead are best.
SPEER. No.
HITLER. And now you can be best.
He looks at SPEER.
At last.
HITLER turns with his MEN and goes. SPEER is alone. His eyes are closed. But then looks back, to see a different group of people. HILDE, GEIS, CASALIS, ANNEMARIE, MARGRET. Maybe, behind them, the JEWISH FAMILY from the Nikolassee, and the DORA WORKERS from the mountains. He looks at them.
SPEER. Not yet.
Because, yes, I cannot admit what I have not admitted and remain alive.
But if I did, I could die the man I might have been.
To ‘us’.
Of course, it wasn’t that ‘I could have known’. That I was ‘blind’.
Because, yes, one cannot look into a void. If I ‘turned away’, I knew.
I knew. I helped to build a boneyard.
Yes. I knew.
And now, at last, I need never speak nor think nor dream of any of these things again.
Darkness. We hear MRS WINTERINGHAM’s voice, distraught.
MRS WINTERINGHAM. Please, you must call an ambulance. There’s a man, he must have had a stroke. Please hurry. I think he may be dead . . .
Light. SPEER’s body lies there. Suddenly, massively, HIMMLER’s face projected on all the surfaces of the set.
HIMMLER. And with this I want to finish. You are now informed, and you will keep the knowledge to yourselves. Later perhaps we can consider whether the German people should be told about this. But I think it is better that we – we together – carry for our people the responsibility – responsibility for an achievement, not just an idea . . . and then take the secret with us to our graves.
Darkness.