SAMURAI POLICE 1109: HITLER’S CHIEF ARCHITECT: ALBERT SPEER (MARCH 19, 1905 TO SEPTEMBER 1, 1981)

Monday, September 1, 2014

HITLER’S CHIEF ARCHITECT: ALBERT SPEER (MARCH 19, 1905 TO SEPTEMBER 1, 1981)

On this date, September 1, 1981, Adolf Hitler’s Chief Architect, Albert Speer passed away. I will post information about him from Wikipedia and other links.

Albert Speer in 1933.

Speer in 1933
Minister of Armaments and War Production
In office February 8, 1942 – May 23, 1945
President	Adolf Hitler (Führer) Karl Dönitz
Chancellor	Adolf Hitler Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk (Leading Minister)
Preceded by	Fritz Todt (as Minister of Armaments and Munitions)
Succeeded by	Karl Saur (as Minister of Munitions)
Personal details
Born	Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer March 19, 1905 Mannheim, Baden, Germany
Died	September 1, 1981 (aged 76) London, United Kingdom
Nationality	German
Political party	National Socialist German Workers' Party
Spouse(s)	Margarete Weber (1928–1981, survived as widow)
Children	Albert Speer, Jr., Hilde Schramm, Fritz Speer, Margret Nissen, Arnold Speer, Ernst Speer
Alma mater	Technical University of Berlin Technical University of Munich Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Profession	Architect, author

Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (German: [ˈʃpeːɐ̯]; March 19, 1905 – September 1, 1981) was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office. As "the Nazi who said sorry",^[a] he accepted moral responsibility at the Nuremberg trials and in his memoirs for complicity in crimes of the Nazi regime. His level of involvement in the persecution of the Jews and his level of knowledge of the Holocaust remain matters of dispute.

Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931, launching himself on a political and governmental career which lasted fourteen years. His architectural skills made him increasingly prominent within the Party and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Hitler instructed him to design and construct structures including the Reich Chancellery and the Zeppelinfeld stadium in Nuremberg where Party rallies were held. Speer also made plans to reconstruct Berlin on a grand scale, with huge buildings, wide boulevards, and a reorganized transportation system.

In February 1942, Hitler appointed Speer Minister of Armaments and War Production. Under his leadership, Germany's war production continued to increase despite considerable Allied bombing. After the war, he was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the Nazi regime, principally for the use of forced labor. He served his full sentence, most of it at Spandau Prison in West Berlin.

Following his release from Spandau in 1966, Speer published two bestselling autobiographical works, Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries, detailing his often close personal relationship with Hitler, and providing readers and historians with a unique perspective on the workings of the Nazi regime. He later wrote a third book, Infiltration, about the SS. Speer died of natural causes in 1981 while on a visit to London.

Early years

Nazi architect

Joining the Nazis (1930–1934)

First Architect of the Third Reich (1934–1939)

Wartime architect (1939–1942)

Minister of Armaments

Appointment and increasing power

Fall of the Reich

Nuremberg Trial

Imprisonment

Release and later life

Legacy and controversy

Architectural legacy

Actions regarding the Jews

Knowledge of the Holocaust

Career summary

Nazi Party positions

Government positions

Political ranks

Awards and decorations

Notes

Explanatory notes

The title of a BBC2 documentary, The Nazi Who Said Sorry.
Fest 1999, p. 296. "Wenn Hitler überhaupt Freunde gehabt hätte, wäre ich bestimmt einer seiner engen Freunde gewesen."
Speer 1975, p. 217. Diary entry made on Nov, 20, 1949.
Tooze 2007, p. 577. "The simple story spun by Speer, that the German war economy up to 1941 was an inefficient sink for labour and raw materials and that it was only after December 1941, by means of the Fuehrer's decree and Speer's inspired leadership, that it was awakened to the need for efficiency, is clearly a myth [and] the statistics usually invoked to support this description of the pre-Speer era simply do not stand up to detailed scrutiny."
Tooze 2007, p. 556. "[G]iven the highly political function of the 'armaments miracle' the historical record of the Speer Ministry must be approached with a very wary eye. Too many historians have been far too uncritical in the acceptance of Speer's rhetoric of rationalization, efficiency and productivism. . . . And this critique is more than mere nit-picking. It goes to the very heart of Speer's ideological vision of the war economy, as a limitless flow of output released by energetic leadership and technological genius."

INTERNET SOURCE: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Speer

Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (March 19, 1905 – September 1, 1981), commonly known as Albert Speer, was an architect, author and high-ranking Nazi German government official.

Sourced

I felt this coming. I tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Hitler in 1945. I am not concerned with jurisdiction of the court as Hess or others are. History will show the trials to be necessary.

To Leon Goldensohn, April 14, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

20 years. Well ... that's fair enough. They couldn't have given me a lighter sentence, considering the facts, and I can't complain. I said the sentences must be severe, and I admitted my share of the guilt, so it would be ridiculous if I complained about the punishment.

To Dr. G. M. Gilbert, after receiving his sentence. Quoted in "Nuremberg Diary" by G. M. Gilbert - History - 1995

Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical means like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man.

1946. Quoted in "Nuremberg: The War Crimes Trial" by Richard Norton-Taylor, Nicolas Kent - Drama - 1997

In the burning and devastated cities, we daily experienced the direct impact of war. It spurred us to do our utmost...the bombing and the hardships that resulted from them did not weaken the morale of the populace.

Quoted in "Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs" - Page 363 - by Albert Speer - National socialists - 1971

The Nuremberg Trial stands for me still today as an attempt to break through to a better world. Still today I acknowledge as generally correct the reasons of my sentence by the International Military Tribunal. Moreover, I still today consider as just that I assume the responsibility and thus the guilt for everything that was perpetrated by way of, generally speaking, crime, after my joining the Hitler Government on the 8th February 1942. Not the individual mistakes, grave as they may be, are burdening my conscience, but my having acted in the leadership. Therefore, I for my person, have in the Nuremberg Trial, confessed to the collective responsibility and I am also maintaining this today still. I still see my main guilt in my having approved of the persecution of the Jews and of the murder of millions of them.

Testimony of Albert Speer, Munich, 15 June 1977

Hatred of the Jews was Hitler's motor and central point perhaps even the very element which motivated him. The German people, the German greatness, the Empire, they all meant nothing to him in the last analysis. For this reason, he wished in the final sentence of his testament, to fixate us Germans, even after the apocalyptic downfall in a miserable hatred of the Jews...When speaking of the victims of the bomb raids, particularly after the massive attacks on Hamburg in Summer 1943, he again and again reiterated that he would avenge these victims on the Jews; just as if the air-terror against the civilian population actually suited him in that it furnished him with a belated substitute motivation for a crime decided upon long ago and emanating from quite different layers of his personality. Just as if he wanted to justify his own mass murders with these remarks.

Testimony of Albert Speer, Munich, 15 June 1977

So long as Hitler had temperamental outbursts of hate, there was yet hope for a change towards more moderate directions. Therefore, it was the resoluteness and coldness which made his outbreaks against the Jews so convincing. In other areas when he announced horrifying decisions in a cold and quiet voice, those around him, and I myself knew that things had now become serious. And with just this cold superiority he declared also, when we occasionally had lunch together, that he was set to destroy the Jews in Europe.