Albert Speer's Inside the Third Reich

by Anders Skovly

Introduction

To start with a quick summary of who Albert Speer was: during the 1930s he was one of Adolf Hitler’s architects, and from 1942 to 1945 he was also Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production. After the war he was sentenced in the Nuremberg trial to twenty years imprisonment for his involvement in the use of forced labor in German factories.

While in Spandau prison, in 1953 he wrote a draft for his memoirs, and after his release from prison the draft was reworked into a book, originally published as Erinnerungen (Reminiscences) in 1969. This article is about the English translation, titled Inside the Third Reich.

The book covers the period from his childhood until he received his sentence at Nuremberg, but it is generally the parts where he’s with Hitler which are most interesting. Indeed, this book is probably one of the best sources for finding out what Hitler was like as a person. Here are some select quotes from the book showing different aspects of Hitler.

Hitler’s interest in architecture

[The paragraphs below concern Hitler’s trip to Paris following the defeat of France in the summer of 1940.]

That same evening I was invited to dine with Hitler's military circle. Details of the trip to Paris were discussed. This was not to be an official visit, I learned, but a kind of "art tour" by Hitler. This was the city, as he had so often said, which had fascinated him from his earliest years, so that he thought he would be able to find his way about the streets and important monuments as if he had lived there, solely from his endless studies of its plans.

... We drove through the extensive suburbs directly to the Opera, Charles Garnier's great neobaroque building. It was Hitler's favorite and the first thing he wanted to see. The great stairway, famous for its spaciousness, notorious for its excessive ornamentation, the resplendent foyer, the elegant, gilded parterre, were carefully inspected. All the lights glowed as they would on a gala night. Hitler had undertaken to lead the party. A white-haired attendant accompanied our small group through the deserted building. Hitler had actually studied the plans of the Paris opera house with great care. Near the proscenium box he found a salon missing, remarked on it, and turned out to be right. The attendant said that this room had been eliminated in the course of renovations many years ago. “There, you see how well I know my way about,” Hitler commented complacently. He seemed fascinated by the Opera, went into ecstasies about its beauty, his eyes glittering with an excitement that struck me as uncanny.

... After a last look at Paris we drove swiftly back to the airport. “It was the dream of my life to be permitted to see Paris,” Hitler says. “I cannot say how happy I am to have that dream fulfilled today.”

... That same evening he received me once more in the small room in the peasant house. He was sitting alone at table. Without more ado he declared: “Draw up a decree in my name ordering fuIl-scale resumption of work on the Berlin buildings... Wasn't Paris beautiful? But Berlin must be made far more beautiful. In the past I often considered whether we would not have to destroy Paris,” he continued with great calm, as if he were talking about the most natural thing in the world. “But when we are finished in Berlin, Paris will only be a shadow. So why should we destroy it?” With that, I was dismissed.

Hitler’s memory for details

Hitler knew all the types of ordnance and ammunition, including the calibers, the lengths of barrels, and the range of fire. He had the stocks of the most important items of armament in his head – as well as the monthly production figures.

Hitler's naive pleasure at being able to shine in the field of armaments, as previously in automobile manufacturing or in architecture, by reciting abstruse figures, made it plain that in this realm also he was working as an amateur. He seemed to be constantly endeavoring to show himself the equal of or even the superior of the experts. The real expert sensibly does not burden his mind with details that he can look up or leave to an assistant. Hitler, however, felt it necessary for his own self-esteem to parade his knowledge. But he also enjoyed doing it.

He obtained his information from a large catalogue, continually being brought up to date, of from thirty to fifty different types of ammunition and ordnance. He kept it on his night table. Sometimes he would order a servant to bring the book down when in the course of military conferences someone had mentioned a figure which Hitler instantly corrected. The book was opened and Hitler's data would be confirmed, without fail, every time, while the general would be shown to be in error.

From the very first [after becoming Minister of armaments] I did not even take the trouble to memorize figures which Hitler in any case kept in his head better than I. But knowing Hitler's respect for specialists, I would come to conferences flanked by all those experts who had the best mastery of the various points under discussion. I was thus saved from the nightmare of all Führer conferences: the fear of being driven into a corner under a bombardment of figures and technical data.

Hitler’s reaction to the Allied invasion of northwest Africa

On the afternoon of November 7, 1942, I accompanied Hitler to Munich in his special train. The atmosphere was tense. We were already many hours late, for at every sizable station a prolonged stop was made in order to connect the telephone cable with the railroad telephone system, so we could get the latest reports. From early morning on a mighty armada of [Allied] transports, accompanied by large naval units, had been passing through the Strait of Gibralter into the Mediterranean.

At every station along the way the number of reported naval units rose. An enterprise of vast proportions was obviously afoot. Finally the units passed through the Strait. All the ships reported by our air reconnaissance were now moving eastward in the Mediterranean. "This is the largest landing operation that has ever taken place in the history of the world," Hitler declared in a tone of respect, perhaps taking pride that he was the cause of enterprises of such magnitude.

Until the following morning the landing fleet remained north of the Moroccan and Algerian coast. In the course of the night Hitler proposed several different explanations for this mysterious behavior. He thought the most probable thing was that the enemy was undertaking a great supply operation to reinforce the [British] offensive against the hard-pressed [German] Africa Corps. The naval units were keeping together in this way, he concluded, in order to advance through the narrow strait between Sicily and Africa under cover of darkness, safe from German air attacks.

Or else, and this second version corresponded more to his feeling for perilous military operations: "The enemy will land in central Italy tonight. There he would meet with no resistance at all. There are no German troops there, and the Italians will run away. That way they can cut northern Italy off from the south. What will become of Rommel [the Africa Corps commander] in that case? He has no reserves and supplies will no longer come through."

Hitler intoxicated himself with thoughts of far-reaching operations, of a kind he had long been missing. He more and more put himself into the position of the enemy: "I would occupy Rome at once and form a new Italian government. Or, and this would be the third possibility, I would use this great fleet to land in southern France. No fortifications and no German troops at all down there. A great mistake that we have nothing garrisoned there. The Petain government won't put up a bit of resistance, of course." From moment to moment he seemed to forget that these forces were gathering against himself.

Downfall (2004) movie scenes

Many with an interest in world war 2 history will have watched the 2004 movie Downfall, which portrays the last days in Hitler’s bunker and in Berlin before the German surrender in May 1945. Speer was also present in the bunker in some of those last days, so after having read his book I decided to re-watch Downfall to see how many parts from the book are reproduced in the movie. And there were indeed a few scenes in the movie that can be recognized from the book, most of the scenes being reasonably close to how Speer described them. But there was one particular scene which stood out as being very inaccurate: the last meeting between Speer and Magda Goebbels (the wife of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of propaganda). In the movie, this is what happens:

[Speer enters Magda’s room in Hitler’s bunker]

Speer: “Why don’t you leave with the children?”

Magda: “Leave? And go where?”

Speer: “I can arrange for you to be taken to Schwanenwerder by barge. You can hide until everything is over. It won’t be long now anyway.”

Magda: “I thought about it. My children cannot grow up in a world without national socialism.”

Speer: “Think it over again, Magda. The children deserve a future.”

Magda: “If national socialism dies, there will be no future.”

Speer: “I can’t believe you really want that.”

[Speer leaves the room]

Whereas here are the relevant sections from Speer’s book:

Even if Hitler left Berlin, Goebbels declared, he wanted to meet his end in Berlin. "My wife and my children are not to survive me. The Americans would only coach them to make propaganda against me." But when I visited Frau Goebbels in Schwanenwerder in the middle of April, I learned that she could not face the thought that her children were to die. Nevertheless she apparently gave in to her husband's decision.

A few days later I proposed to her that at the last moment a barge of our transport fleet be tied up at night at the landing stage of the Goebbels property in Schwanenwerder. She and the children could hide below deck until the barge had been moved to a tributary on the western side of the Elbe. We would supply food enough so that she could remain there for some time undiscovered.

(Speer does not write how Magda responded to this proposal, thought evidently the response was negative.)

Later, in Hitler's bunker in Berlin:

Goebbels told me that his wife and six children were now living in the bunker as Hitler's guests, in order, as he put it, to end their lives at this historic site.

... By this time it was late afternoon. An SS doctor informed me that Frau Goebbels was in bed, very weak and suffering from heart attacks. I sent word to her asking her to receive me. I would have liked to talk to her alone, but Goebbels was already waiting in an anteroom and led me into the little chamber deep underground where she lay in a plain bed. She was pale and spoke only trivialities in a low voice, although I could sense that she was in deep agony over the irrevocably approaching hour when her children must die. Since Goebbels remained persistently at my side, our conversation was limited to the state of her health. Only as I was on the point of leaving did she hint at what she was really feeling: "How happy I am that at least Harald [her son by her first marriage] is alive." I too felt confined and could scarcely find words – but what could anyone say in this situation? We said goodbye in awkward silence.

We see thus that the movie portrays the killing of the six Goebbels-children as being Magda’s decision, while according to Speer it was Joseph’s decision, and Magda actually wanted the children to live. I wonder why the moviemakers chose to present Magda in this fashion. If they used a different source than Speer's book, and that source portrayed Magda differently, then they could surely have left out the meeting between Speer and Magda, rather than include the scene and change so drastically the content of the conversation.

Gitta Sereny’s Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth

Having finished Inside the Third Reich I was wondering to what degree we can trust Speer’s story and the details he gives. For example, in his foreword, Speer writes:

... such impressions are countered by one unforgettable experience: the Nuremberg Trial. I shall never forget the account of a Jewish family going to their deaths: the husband with his wife and children on their way to die are before my eyes to this day.

In Nuremberg I was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. The penalty, however poorly such penalties measure historical responsibility, ended my civil existence. But that scene had already laid waste to my life. It has outlasted the verdict of the court.

Does he really mean it, or is it something he says because it is “the right thing to say”? To try to get a better sense of how honest Speer is in his book, I decided to read an additional book about him: Gitta Sereny’s Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. That book is based on information obtained from interviews with Speer and many other people who knew him. It is also based on the “Spandau draft”, the draft for Inside the Third Reich which Speer wrote while imprisoned at Spandau. (Note that Sereny got access to this draft only after Speer’s death in 1981 and thus could not discuss the differences between the draft and the final book with Speer.)

At least when it comes to Speer's proclaimed feelings regarding the fate of the Jews, Sereny’s book includes some sections that suggest he is genuine. Here are some of the recollections of Georges Casalis, a French clergyman who had been active in the French resistance and served as Spandau’s chaplain during the three first years of Speer’s time in the prison:

At the end of Casalis’s first service at Spandau, Speer asked to speak to him. “And I was glad he did,” Casalis said. “I needed to speak with him too. I told him that I considered him more blameworthy than any of the others. First of all, because he was the most intelligent. But secondly, he was, to my mind, not only more responsible than the other six prisoners but perhaps more than anyone in Germany, except for Hitler himself, for extending the war. Thanks to his efforts [as Minister of armaments and war production], I told him, this terrible war had lasted at least a year longer than it might have, and as a result killed many of my friends [in the resistance movement].”

Speer thanked him for his honesty and said: “I’ll be as honest in return. I would have said this to you anyway, having listened to your sermon and watched you as you delivered it–it was because I wanted to do this that I asked to speak to you just now: I’ve been sentenced to twenty years, and I consider it just. I want to use this time that has, in a manner of speaking, been given to me. What I want to ask you is: Would you help me become a different man?”

A few weeks later:

Casalis’s first services at Spandau–the sermon always the same for the prisoners on Saturday as he would deliver to Berlin’s French Protestant congregation on Sunday–passed tranquilly enough. But on the sixth Saturday he very nearly came a cropper when he chose as his subject Jesus’s healing of the leper. “They listened in dead silence,” he recalled, “and except for Speer who smiled and shook hands as always–though even he didn’t stay behind as he usually did–they filed out, stony-faced and refusing to shake hands. I was very taken aback, and I agonized over it all week. Had I perhaps been wrong? Should I be more careful in my choice of sermons from now on? Had this lost me the only just beginning trust of these men?

The next week Raeder stood up at the end of the sermon and addressed me in the manner of the admiral dressing down the little navy chaplain. “Last week, Herr Pfarrer, you deeply offended us. It is entirely impermissible to address us as lepers. We formally protest. We are here because we have been unjustly condemned. If our protest to you should prove ineffective, we shall be forced to take official actions.” And with that they stalked out.

This time Speer stayed. “I didn’t stay last week,” he said, “because I wanted to hear what they had to say right afterwards.” And then he smiled. “Well, you certainly threw the cat among the pigeons, didn’t you?” But his tone was such that I immediately felt better. “All week,” he said, “nothing was talked about except you.” The whole group referred to themselves as “the lepers”, he said. “The lepers have to go in to dinner now; forward march, lepers, outside for the walk; lights out for the lepers. Gallows humour, of course,” he said, “but it got it out of their system. But for heaven’s sake,” he said then, “don’t stop, don’t spare our feelings; don’t now start being careful or protective of us. You are exactly on course, exactly what is needed.

Casalis continues:

In those first years I knew Speer, he was resigned to his punishment–that much was absolutely true in him. He talked to me about a great many things: private, emotional and intellectual things. The content of our conversations changed somewhat, became, let us say, less desperate as he began to read, understand and was able to discuss his reading of Barth and, of course, of other works. But during those years, his reading, his studies, his thoughts originated in and were dominated by his very profound sense of guilt which was entirely centred on the murder of the Jews–to such a degree, indeed, that he seemed oblivious to Hitler’s many other crimes.

Regarding the above quote, one may consider the possibility that Speer was merely putting on a facade and tried to manipulate Casalis so as to bolster his own chance of an early release from prison. But I don't think that's the case. Sereny writes that after Speer started earning money from his books after his release from prison, he anonymously donated "significant amounts" of his income to charities aiding holocaust survivors. Before Speer's death only four people knew of those donations (some close friends of his and, for some unexplained reason, an american prosecutor who had participated in the Nuremberg trial). I think this makes it certain that, as far as his professed guilt is concerned, he is being genuine.

The atomic bomb

But is he honest about other matters as well? There are at least two things Speer writes about that are apparently not true. The first one is kind of weird, it’s about when he decided to stop the German development of the atomic bomb. In Inside the Third Reich, this is what Speer says of the atomic bomb:

On the suggestion of the nuclear physicists we scuttled the project to develop an atom bomb by the autumn of 1942, after I had again queried them about deadlines and been told that we could not count on anything for three or four years. The war would certainly have been decided long before then. Instead I authorized the development of an energy-producing uranium motor for propelling machinery. The navy was interested in that for its submarines.

In the summer of 1943, wolframite imports from Portugal were cut off, which created a critical situation for the production of solid-core [anti-tank] ammunition. I thereupon ordered the use of uranium cores for this type of ammunition. My release of our uranium stocks of about twelve hundred metric tons showed that we no longer had any thought of producing atom bombs.

Our failure to pursue the possibilities of atomic warfare can be partly traced to ideological reasons. Hitler had great respect for Philipp Lenard, the physicist who had received the Nobel Prize in [1905] and was one of the few early adherents of Nazism among the ranks of the scientists. Lenard had instilled the idea in Hitler that the Jews were exerting a seditious influence in their concern with nuclear physics and the relativity theory. To his table companions Hitler occasionally referred to nuclear physics as "Jewish physics" – citing Lenard as his authority for this.

Now here is what Sereny writes on the topic:

In “Inside the Third Reich” Speer stated unequivocally (thereby adapting himself to the then accepted scenario) that the nuclear physicists informed him in the autumn of 1942 that an effective atom bomb could not be counted on for three or four years, and that the project was therefore scuttled.

Fifteen years earlier, however, in the “Spandau draft”, on 3 July 1953, still in ignorance of what the German physicists were claiming, he wrote that it was only around the time of the Allied landings in Normandy, in June 1944, that the nuclear physicists came to see him to admit there was no hope of an atom bomb for several years.

This timing is borne out by Speer’s discussion with Hess, on 2 December 1962, which Speer reports in [his second book] “Spandau: The Secret Diaries”. Hess was astonished that Speer had on his own responsibility switched the scientists’ efforts toward a motor instead of a bomb. “You mean to say that you didn’t send up a query about the bomb?” Hess interjected. Speer said no, he decided on his own–“At the end it was no longer possible to talk with Hitler.”

“At the end” could not have referred to 1942, as he said in “Inside the Third Reich”.

Sereny makes it sound as if Speer said the atomic bomb project had been terminated in 1942 because he didn’t want to contradict what certain scientists had previously said in public. I don’t think Speer really had a problem with contradicting people, so what could his reason be for changing the date? I guess maybe he began to doubt his memory of the event and couldn’t find any document to back up what he remembered? After all, he wrote his book draft about a decade after the event, so he may not remember correctly. Or maybe he thought people would not believe his version of when the atomic bomb development was stopped, over the version given by the scientists. Who knows.

Speer’s confession to Hitler

In the last months of his reign, Hitler had ordered scorched earth in Germany: bridges, factories, power plants, and anything else that the enemy could make use of was to be demolished. Some time around April 20^th 1945 Speer returned to Berlin for the last time and met Hitler in the Führerbunker under the Chancellery. Among other things, they talked about whether Hitler should stay in Berlin or move to his house, the Berghof, in the mountains of southeast Germany. Here’s how Speer describes the meeting:

I felt as if I had been talking with a man already departed. The atmosphere grew increasingly uncanny; the tragedy was approaching its end.

During the last months I had hated him at times, fought him, lied to him, and deceived him, but at this moment I was confused and emotionally shaken. In this state, I confessed to him in a low voice, to my own surprise, that I had not carried out any demolitions but had actually prevented them. For a moment his eyes filled with tears. But he did not react. Such questions, so important to him only a few weeks before, were now remote. Absently, he stared at me as I faltered out my offer to stay in Berlin. He did not answer. Perhaps he sensed that I did not mean it.

Here’s what Sereny writes about Speer’s confession and Hitler’s reaction:

Psychologically, it is possible that this is the way he remembered the occasion, because it was how he would have liked to behave, and the way he would have liked Hitler to react. But the fact is that none of it happened; our witness to this is Speer himself.

On 3 September 1952, the French weekly “Carrefour” published an extract of several pages from a forthcoming book titled “L’Agonie de l’Allemagne” by Georges Blond. The writer, drawing rather freely on previous publications, used theatrical language and wholly invented dialogue to present thumbnail sketches of six of those closest to Hitler during those last days, including Speer.

About Speer, the “Carrefour” wrote:

Speer hastened to the Chancellery, went down to the bunker, and was immediately received by Hitler. “My Führer,” he said, “I must speak to you.” And then Speer confessed. He revealed to Hitler every aspect of his activities against him over the past weeks, without deleting anything. Hitler listened. Speer noticed that he was “profoundly moved by his frankness”, but when he finished, nothing happened: no fury, no arrest, no relieving him of his functions. Hitler simply said that everything was now forgiven, forgotten, not to be spoken of again.

Sereny continues:

This copy of Carrefour soon reached Speer via one of his French guards. It is possible that the way his 1945 statement to Trevor-Roper had been misused contributed to his decision, a few weeks later on 8 January 1953, to begin his “Spandau draft” by writing about this trip to see Hitler, his feelings for Hitler and what really happened between them during those last meetings. He wrote to Wolters [Speer’s friend]:

I must therefore disabuse the French psychologist who wrote about “L’Extravagant Monsieur Speer” in Carrefour [...] There can be no question of a touching scene or, even more than that, of a confession such as the Frenchman reported. Even if either of us had wanted it, I doubt it could have happened: we were far more apart by then than anyone seeing it from outside could imagine.

Sereny shows this discrepancy between the book and the draft to multiple people, including Maria von Below (the wife of Nicolaus von Below, one of Hitler’s former adjutants):

Maria von Below [...] went further in analysing what probably happened. “I’m not surprised about that lie,” she said. “It fits in with everything one knows about his way of thinking. You see, he would have read this fantasy in Carrefour, laughed about it, and wrote in his draft, no doubt intending at the time to stick to this in an eventual publication, that of course he wouldn’t have made such a confession–he wasn’t crazy. But then, when he actually sat down fifteen years later to write his book, he would have mentally shrugged and said to himself, “Oh, well, why not?” It did, after all, fit in well with the impression he then wanted to convey.”

(I don't really understand what she means with that last sentence: what exact impression did he want to convey? But anyways, it's clear in this instance that Speer lied in his book.)

Final words

If you’re going to read one book about Speer, which one should it be? Speer’s own Inside the Third Reich, or Sereny’s Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth?

As mentioned, Inside the Third Reich has a lot of details about Hitler, what he was like in person. The books also shows the curious degree of in-fighting between various top nazis like Geobbels, Himmler, Goering, Bormann, and others, all vying for power. Speer additionally make some interesting comments on the strategic air war, including the Allies’ attacks on Germany’s Ruhr dams, ball bearing factories, aircraft factories, and coal hydrogenation plants (for production of synthetic fuel oil). He also writes about Germany’s failed air attacks on the Soviet power plants and the rocket attacks against London.

Sereny’s His Battle with Truth, being a biography of Speer, is in essence the same story as that told by Speer himself in Inside the Third Reich. The main focus of Sereny’s book is the extent of Speer’s knowledge of the holocaust during the war: how much did he know before all the photos, movies and witness testimonies were presented to him and the other defendants at the Nuremberg trial? Speer had maintained since Nuremberg that he did not know what was happening. Rather, he said: “Even thought he [Hitler] never said outright after 1942 what was happening to the Jews, at the same time, hints about it were clear enough that one could have understood if one had wanted to. Or, rather, that I could have understoof if I’d wanted to.” (Quote from an interview in the movie "The Memory of Justice". Watch the interview on YouTube)

Of the two books, Inside the Third Reich surely has a broader appeal. His Battle with Truth is more of a niche book, primarily for those who are interested in the extent of Speer's knowledge of Hitler's crimes. On this topic, the last sentence in His Battle with Truth can act as a sort of “too long; didn’t read”:

If Speer had said as much in Nuremberg [as he said to Sereny], he would have been hanged.