[26] Brechtken added that, throughout Speer's life, his central motives were to gain power, rule, and acquire wealth. He later published a work about Himmler and the SS which has been published in English as The Slave State: Heinrich Himmler's Masterplan for SS Supremacy or Infiltration: How Heinrich Himmler Schemed to Build an SS Industrial Empire (in German, Der Sklavenstaat - Meine Auseinandersetzung mit der SS). For early access to our videos, discounted merch and many other exclusive perks please support us as a Patron or Member.Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/the. Land had been purchased by the end of 1934 and starting in March 1936 the first buildings were demolished to create space at Vostrae. "[2] A review by Kirkus Reviews on 27 August 1970 stated, "Speer's portrayals of the Nazi leadership, of the constant intrigues and rivalries among Hitler's entourage, and of Hitler himself, his histrionic virulence, his banality, and his peculiar magic, are engrossing and revealing. It became instrumental in exploiting slave labor for the benefit of the German war effort. [21] As Chancellor, Hitler had a residence in the building and came by every day to be briefed by Speer and the building supervisor on the progress of the renovations. Speer was appalled by this order, and persuaded several key military and political leaders to ignore it. The Soviet Union, having demanded a death sentence at trial, was unwilling to entertain a reduced sentence. [108] On 29 April, the day before committing suicide, Hitler dictated a final political testament which dropped Speer from the successor government. While they were there his friend, Nazi Party official Karl Hanke recommended the young architect to Joseph Goebbels to help renovate the Party's Berlin headquarters. He studied under Bestelmeyer, Billing, and Tessenow, and rose to prominence on the death of Troost, becoming Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945) friend, confidant, and architect from 1934.His interest in archaeology led him to evolve a style of architecture that would be as expressive as anything left by Ancient Rome, and his . The house had a studio were Hitler (see Hitler parents) often came to draw his . [109] Speer was disappointed that Hitler had not selected him as his successor. sort by. It was for the maltreatment of these people, that Speer was principally convicted at the Nuremberg Trials. This was probably the start of the downfall of the Reich. [66], As Minister of Armaments, Speer was responsible for supplying weapons to the army. - London, 1. rujna 1981.) [107] Speer visited the Fhrerbunker on 22 April for the last time. The myth began to fall apart in the 1980s, when the armaments miracle was attributed to Nazi propaganda. [119] While three of the eight judges (two Soviet and American Francis Biddle) advocated the death penalty for Speer, the other judges did not, and a compromise sentence was reached after two days of discussions. Son of Albert Friedrich Speer and Luise Mathilde Wilhelmine (Hommel) Speer. [148] In October 1973, he made his first trip to Britain, flying to London to be interviewed on the BBC Midweek programme. [160] This construction was accepted almost at face value by historian Hugh Trevor-Roper when investigating the death of Adolf Hitler for British Intelligence and in writing The Last Days of Hitler. He had walked more than 30,000 kilometres (19,000mi), ending his sentence near Guadalajara, Mexico. [86] On 1 August 1944, Speer merged the Fighter Staff into a newly formed Armament Staff committee. As "the Nazi who said sorry", he accepted moral responsibility at the Nuremberg trials . [73] Sauckel obtained new workers often using the most brutal methods. like so many other Germans his body was never found or returned to . [146] Adam Tooze in his book The Wages of Destruction said Speer had manoeuvred himself through the ranks of the regime skillfully and ruthlessly and that the idea he was a technocrat blindly carrying out orders was "absurd". Instead, development turned to a "uranium motor", for use in the navy's submarines. Sauckel had whole villages in France, Holland and Belgium forcibly rounded up and shipped to Speer's factories. Detailed plans were completed in July 1937 and the first shell of the new chancellery was complete on 1 January 1938. It is considered to be one of the most detailed descriptions of the inner workings and leadership of Nazi Germany but is controversial because of Speer's lack of discussion of Nazi atrocities and questions regarding . A groundbreaking 26-part documentary series narrated by the actor Laurence Olivier about the deadliest conflict in history, World War II. He took a role in that short-lived regime as Minister of Industry and Production. He lost yet more authority. He remained so even after his release from imprisonment in 1966, despite their efforts to forge closer bonds. Figlio e nipote di architetti, Spee. Having served his full term, Speer was released in 1966. [100] Speer gained control over the railways in February, and asked Heinrich Himmler to supply concentration camp prisoners to work on their repair. [139] Although he stated he hoped to resume an architectural career, his sole project, a collaboration for a brewery, was unsuccessful. [46] Eventually, 75,000 Jews were displaced by these measures. Speer made no mention of it in the first draft of Inside the Third Reich. In the summer of 1942 Paulus advanced toward Stalingrad with 250,000 men, 500 tanks, 7,000 guns and mortars, and 25,000 horses. Instead, he issued the "Nero Decree" on 19 March, which called for the destruction of all infrastructure as the army retreated. For other uses, see, Party architect and government functionary, Berlin's General Building Inspector (19371942). The oldest brother turned into a thorn in his youger brother But the children-my two brothers and I-had to use the back stairs. The book was a worn, thick burgundy paperback, spine splintered in three parts, tiny print . [171] Brechtken said Speer only admitted to a generalized responsibility for the Holocaust to hide his direct and actual responsibility. [6] He followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and studied architecture. [162], After Speer's death, Matthias Schmidt published a book that demonstrated that Speer had ordered the eviction of Jews from their Berlin homes. Four years into their relationship, in September 1981, Speer died. It had been edited by Wolters and made no mention of the Jews. Speer's mother asked Albert to do something to get Ernst out. If Speer, who had been so close to Hitler, had not known the full extent of the crimes of the Nazi regime and had just been "following orders", then they could tell themselves and others they too had done the same. No buildings designed by Speer during the Nazi era are extant in Berlin, other than the 4 entrance pavilions and underpasses leading to the Victory Column or Siegessule,[180] and the Schwerbelastungskrper, a heavy load-bearing body built around 1941. [124], The prisoners were forbidden to write memoirs. [176] Speer is mentioned several times in the speech, and Himmler addresses him directly. Speer in response used his propaganda expertise to display a new dynamism of the war economy. Brother of Hermann Speer and Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer. It is considered to be one of the most detailed descriptions of the inner workings and leadership of Nazi Germany but is controversial because of Speer's lack of discussion of Nazi atrocities and questions regarding his degree of awareness or involvement with them. Albert was active in sports, taking up skiing and mountaineering. Albert Speer's account of all his experiences during the war was to me, totally fascinating. Labor to build the A4 rockets came from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. "[4] His brothers, Ernst and Hermann, bullied him throughout his childhood. [53] Speer's offices undertook building work for each branch of the military, and for the SS, using slave labor. Albert Speer (fdt Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer den 19. marts 1905 i Mannheim, dd 1. september 1981 i London) var en tysk arkitekt, der under 2. verdenskrig var rustningsminister (Reichsminister fr Bewaffnung und Munition) i Nazi-Tyskland.Lnge inden ministerudnvnelsen havde Speer vret Adolf Hitlers foretrukne arkitekt.. Speer blev medlem af nazistpartiet i 1931. Speer (Albert Speer's brother) and his life. [110] After Hitler's death, Speer offered his services to the so-called Flensburg Government, headed by Hitler's successor, Karl Dnitz. Speer enthusiastically supported the program and in March 1942 made an order for A4 rockets, the predecessor of the world's first ballistic missile, the V-2 rocket. [128] Spandau had a large enclosed yard where inmates were allocated plots of land for gardening. Feigned repentance at Nuremberg, saving his own neck. Inside the Third Reich (German: Erinnerungen, "Memories") is a memoir written by Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister of Armaments from 1942 to 1945, serving as Adolf Hitler's main architect before this period. This image dominated his historiography in the decades following the war, giving rise to the "Speer Myth": the perception of him as an apolitical technocrat responsible for revolutionizing the German war machine. [130] Speer also read, studied architectural journals, and brushed up on English and French. This is an apolitical forum for discussions on the Axis nations and related topics hosted by the Axis History Factbook in cooperation with Christian Ankerstjernes Panzerworld and Christoph Awender's WW2 day by day. [181] The tribune of the Zeppelinfeld stadium in Nuremberg, though partly demolished, can also be seen. Speer's Heidelberg school offered rugby football, unusual for Germany, skiing, and Speer was a participant. Ultimately, when their emergence involved the ruin of all his work, Speer accepted the consequences and acted. [177] He produced spectacular statistics, claiming a sixfold increase in munitions production, a fourfold increase in artillery production, and he sent further propaganda to the newsreels of the country. Russia in the battle for Stalingrad. Albert Speer, the Nazi architect who built a Cathedral of Light for Hitler and commanded millions of prisoners in the forced production of weaponry, had a comfortable second life. body was never found or returned to the family and there are some At the southern end of the avenue, a great triumphal arch, almost 400 feet (120m) high and able to fit the Arc de Triomphe inside its opening, was planned. [5], Following his release from Spandau, Speer donated the Chronicle, his personal diary, to the German Federal Archives. [131], Speer's supporters maintained calls for his release. After serving. At that time, he asked the Milch at the Luftwaffe to find Ernst and retrieve him. From 1939 on, Speer's Department used the Nuremberg Laws to evict Jewish tenants of non-Jewish landlords in Berlin, to make way for non-Jewish tenants displaced by redevelopment or bombing. [120], On 18 July 1947, Speer was transferred to Spandau Prison in Berlin to serve his prison term. Three days later, he also proposed to Hitler that Germany's remaining military resources be concentrated along the Rhine and Vistula rivers in an attempt to prolong the fighting. Speer's full length portrait of Hitler has unnerving reality. Speer returned to London in 1981 to participate in the BBC Newsnight programme. Under his leadership, the Nazis implemented a brutal regime of slave labour in armaments factories across Germany. [8] In 1924, when the crisis had abated, he transferred to the "much more reputable" Technical University of Munich. All of the Germanic peoples will be included in it. Speer was born in Mannheim, into an upper-middle-class family. [182], During the war, the Speer-designed Reich Chancellery was largely destroyed by air raids and in the Battle of Berlin. "[3], On the other hand, in a 1973 Bryn Mawr College review, Barbara Miller Lane wrote, "Scholars have observed so many gaps in his account of the operation of his ministry as to shed considerable doubt on the whole. happened. After he failed to do so, his father gave him a part-time job as manager of his properties. However, his other brother Ernst had died in the Battle of Stalingrad, despite repeated requests from his parents for Speer to repatriate him. This allowed an extra 300 huts to be built at Auschwitz, increasing the total human capacity to 132,000. He has risen to the top of the . It was only on the urgent advice of his publisher that he added a mention of seeing the ruins of the Central Synagogue in Berlin from his car. [38] The outbreak of World War II in 1939 led to the postponement, and later the abandonment, of these plans. In this capacity he was responsible for the Central Department for Resettlement that evicted Jewish tenants from their homes in Berlin. He was able to curtail the discussion that the war should be ended. Contributor: C. Peter Chen ww2dbase Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer was born in Mannheim, Germany, into a wealthy middle class family to Albert and Luise Speer. Albert Speer ( 19. bezna 1905 Mannheim - 1. z 1981 Londn ), celm jmnem Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, byl hlavn architekt Adolfa Hitlera a pozdji ministr zbrojnho a vlenho prmyslu nacistickho Nmecka. Speer with his children Albert and Hilde, front, and Margret, Arnold and Fritz, back. Albert Speer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland", Francisco Boix identifies Speer at Nuremberg, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albert_Speer&oldid=1139875005, This page was last edited on 17 February 2023, at 08:56. [145], Speer's memoirs were a phenomenal success. [39], Plans to build a new Reich chancellery had been underway since 1934. In this position, Speer used millions of forced laborers to raise economic production. Speer, Albert (1905-81). [1]:55,71,7879,83,105,115116,138,188,651,674,696, Starting in April 1942, Speer became aware of the potential of German nuclear research in developing, in his words, "a weapon which could annihilate whole cities." This delayed the program, and Speer was unable to remedy the situation. Speer-Weber, Magarete, born 08-09-1905 in Heidelberg, lived there all her live, they also had a house near Hitler's Berghof on the Obersalzberg and was a girlfriend of Eva Braun (see Braun parents) and a regular visitor on the Berghof of Berchtesgaden. , tiny print Milch at the Nuremberg Trials Germany, skiing, and,... Said Speer only admitted to a `` uranium motor '', for use in the first were! 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