Under his leadership, the Nazis implemented a brutal regime of slave labour in armaments factories across Germany. letters that exist between ernst and the parents which he wrote and "[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. [50] In his final statement at Nuremberg, Speer gave the impression of apologizing, although he did not directly admit any personal guilt and the only victim he mentioned was the German people. [71] Speer and Sauckel cooperated closely to meet Speer's labor demands. Sept. 21, 2017. [8] In 1924, when the crisis had abated, he transferred to the "much more reputable" Technical University of Munich. Albert Speer Jr. was born on July 29, 1934, one year after Hitler had consolidated power in Germany. [101], By mid-March, Speer had accepted that Germany's economy would collapse within the next eight weeks. His father, the son and grandson of architects, had joined the Nazi party in 1931 and soon . By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In his writings, Speer claimed to have finished five thousand books while in prison. [43], During the Chancellery project, the pogrom of Kristallnacht took place. [83] His political rivals used the opportunity to undermine his authority and damage his reputation with Hitler. Neither the organizers nor Rudolf Hess were willing to decide whether to approve the plans, and Hess sent Speer to Hitler's Munich apartment to seek his approval. Speer arrived there the previous evening and accepted Todt's offer to fly with him to Berlin. On 31 January 1931, he also joined the Motor Unit of the SA being a member until autumn 1932. by PanzerKavallerie 27 Jul 2005, 07:49, Post [19] This work won Speer his first national post, as Nazi Party "Commissioner for the Artistic and Technical Presentation of Party Rallies and Demonstrations". This allowed an extra 300 huts to be built at Auschwitz, increasing the total human capacity to 132,000. 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. [1]:314320, Speer describes Wunderwaffen such as the Me 262 project, flying wing jet planes, a remote-controlled flying bomb, a rocket plane, a rocket missile based on infrared homing, designs for a four-motored jet bomber with the range to strike New York, and a torpedo based on sonar. 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. This led to the development of Germany's first cyclotron. An upcoming BBC documentary is set to highlight the remarkable story of Albert Goering the brother of Nazi minister and air force chief Hermann Goering who is said to have saved hundreds of. Speer's father ran one of the more prosperous architecture firms in the area. The concrete cylinder, 14 metres (46ft) high, was used to measure ground subsidence as part of feasibility studies for a massive triumphal arch and other large structures planned within Hitler's post-war renewal project for the city of Berlin as the world capital Germania. 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. The journalist described an invented scenario in which Speer had refused Hitler's orders and Hitler had left with tears in his eyes. According to Speer's daughter Hilde Schramm, "One by one my sister and brothers gave up. [79] This belief proved incorrect, and Speer and Merker's attempt to build the Kriegsmarine's new generation of submarines, the Type XXI and Type XXIII, as prefabricated sections at different facilities rather than at single dockyards contributed to the failure of this strategically important program. like so many other Germans his [135] Speer's efforts for an early release came to naught. He continued to deny explicit knowledge of, and responsibility for the Holocaust. [127], Much of Speer's energy was dedicated to keeping fit, both physically and mentally, during his long confinement. It was to prevent harming his son's budding career that Speer came to not re-enter architecture upon his 1966 release. On 23 May, two weeks after the surrender of German forces, British troops arrested the members of the Flensburg Government and brought Nazi Germany to a formal end. FRANKFURT Albert Speer Jr., an internationally prominent architect who sought throughout his life to distance himself from the dark legacy of his father, a member of Adolf . [81] He was under the dubious care of Professor Karl Gebhardt at a medical clinic called Hohenlychen where patients "mysteriously failed to survive". This formed a key element of the myths Speer encouraged. One thing that happened in early 1840 of Victoria time was that [124], The prisoners were forbidden to write memoirs. Speer, Jr., an eighty-two-year-old with a perennially serious expression and a fondness for energetic hand motions, is one of Germany's best-known urban planners. Albert was active in sports, taking up skiing and mountaineering. Hello. Albert Speer, nemki arhitekt in politik, * 19. marec 1905, Mannheim, 1. september 1981, London, Zdrueno kraljestvo . Two senior servants of the Third Reich, Albert Speer, Hitler's Armaments Minister, and Baldur von Schirach, former leader of the Hitler Youth and Gauleiter of Vienna, were released at midnight. Fun facts: before fame, family life, popularity rankings, and more. Speer's Heidelberg school offered rugby football, unusual for Germany, skiing, and Speer was a participant. the eldest went to visit his brother while in spandau prison and Gring was reluctant to grant this. Speer was appalled by this order, and persuaded several key military and political leaders to ignore it. ", The main body of the book effectively ends when Speer, by this point having joined Karl Dnitz's government seated in Schleswig-Holstein, receives news of Hitler's death. [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". As an example, he wanted to be given power over all armaments issues under Hermann Gring's Four Year Plan. Albert Speer was the Nazi Party's chief architect, a close confidant of Adolf Hitler and the brains behind the Nazi military production machine. [32], On 30 January 1937, Hitler appointed Speer as General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital. Hitler became interested in Speer through his own interest in the arts. Speer was formally arrested on May 23rd. Carefully measuring distance travelled each day, he mapped distances to the real-world geography. Ultimately, when their emergence involved the ruin of all his work, Speer accepted the consequences and acted. He added a stone exterior that pleased Hitler. Speer was aided in shaping the works by Joachim Fest and Wolf Jobst Siedler from the publishing house Ullstein. Albert Speer, Hitler's architect, who became Minister of Armaments and War Production in World War II, died today at St. Mary's Hospital. [72] Hitler gave Sauckel a free hand to obtain labor, something that delighted Speer, who had requested 1,000,000 "voluntary" laborers to meet the need for armament workers. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. He had become one of the most powerful people in Nazi Germany. [167] Brechtken wrote that his most brazen lie was fabricated during an interview with a French journalist in 1952. However, his other brother Ernst had died in the Battle of Stalingrad, despite repeated requests from his parents for Speer to repatriate him. Instead, development turned to a "uranium motor", for use in the navy's submarines. [54], In 1941, Speer was elected to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 2 (Berlin-West). "[4] His brothers, Ernst and Hermann, bullied him throughout his childhood. [159], Speer had carefully constructed an image of himself as an apolitical technocrat who deeply regretted having failed to discover the monstrous crimes of the Third Reich. 46.104 since 1942 - according to himself he declined all Ehrenrnge offered, but in the end accepted the Rank of a SS-Mann. I thought he was to be relieved quite early from the Kessel, from influence of Albert Speer. [148] In October 1973, he made his first trip to Britain, flying to London to be interviewed on the BBC Midweek programme. (Black and white photographs from Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth by Gitta Sereny, published by Picador) To date, the foundation has given more than 500,000 in grants to more than 100 Jewish women for projects. - London, 1. rujna 1981.) In consequence, despite tank production having the highest priority, relatively little of the armaments budget was spent on it. Thanks! [98] Nevertheless, Speer believed that Germany should continue the war for as long as possible with the goal of winning better conditions from the Allies than the unconditional surrender they insisted upon. In this capacity he was responsible for the Central Department for Resettlement that evicted Jewish tenants from their homes in Berlin. [149] In the same year, he appeared on the television programme The World at War. On 20 July 1942, Speer was enrolled by order of Heinrich Himmler as a SS Man/member of. Stalingrad was a classic example where he refused to provide the equipment necessary to supply his army on the Eastern front during the terrible winter of 1941. After hearing Hitler speak at a Berlin . Nazi armaments minister Albert Speer's younger brother Ernst was trapped in the Kessel, lying in a freezing stable without walls, gravely ill with jaundice. But the children-my two brothers and I-had to use the back stairs. [174] Heinrich Breloer, discussing the construction of Auschwitz, said Speer was not just a cog in the workhe was the "terror itself". The idea for this myth came to him after he recalled the panic when car fumes came through an air ventilation system. In July1932, the Speers visited Berlin to help out the Party before the Reichstag elections. 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. [9] In 1925, he transferred again, this time to the Technical University of Berlin where he studied under Heinrich Tessenow, whom Speer greatly admired. First Architect of the Third Reich. [110] After Hitler's death, Speer offered his services to the so-called Flensburg Government, headed by Hitler's successor, Karl Dnitz. An architect by training, Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931. He was acquitted on the other two counts. In 1918, moved to Schloss-Wolfsbrunnenweg, Heidelberg, Germany. by punktlich02 29 Oct 2009, 11:35, Return to The Dieter Zinke Axis Biographical Research Section. [165] Trommer said he was not an apolitical technocrat; instead, he was one of the most powerful and unscrupulous leaders in the Nazi regime. "[48] Matthias Schmidt said Speer had personally inspected concentration camps and described his comments as an "outright farce". [65] Production of every type of weapon peaked in June and July 1944, but there was now a severe shortage of fuel. Despite his opposition to the 20 July plot, he falsely claimed in his memoirs to have been sympathetic to the plotters. 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. His claim was revealed to be false in a private correspondence written in 1971 and publicly disclosed in 2007. Russia in the battle for Stalingrad. [26], Speer also sought to portray himself as an opponent of Hitler's leadership. During the winter of 194142, in the light of Germany's disastrous defeat in the Battle of Moscow, the German leadership including Friedrich Fromm, Georg Thomas and Fritz Todt had come to the conclusion that the war could not be won. [78] In August 1943, he took control of most of the Ministry of Economics, to become, in Admiral Dnitz's words, "Europe's economic dictator". [157] In return they were paid handsomely in royalties and other financial inducements. He suffered a stroke and died in London on 1 September. [89] To increase production, Speer introduced a system of punishments for his workforce. Speer was loyal to Hitler, and his experience building prisoner of war camps and other structures for the military qualified him for the job. He admitted only to being uncomfortable around Jews in the published version of the Spandau Diaries. The building was able to hold 340,000 people. [2] In 1918, the family leased their Mannheim residence and moved to a home they had in Heidelberg. Speer liked the scenario so much that he wrote it into his memoirs. For propaganda Hitler claimed during the topping-out ceremony on 2 August 1938, that he had ordered Speer to complete the new chancellery that year. The large capital investment was not repaid in military effectiveness. The houses still look very much the same. . [128] Spandau had a large enclosed yard where inmates were allocated plots of land for gardening. [55] On 8 February 1942, Reich Minister of Armaments and Munitions Fritz Todt died in a plane crash shortly after taking off from Hitler's eastern headquarters at Rastenburg. August 1, 2017. This movie is based on Speer's autobiography of the same name. Trevor-Roper frequently refers to Speer as "a technocrat [who] nourished a technocrat's philosophy", one who cared only for his building projects or his ministerial duties, and who thought that politics was irrelevant, at least until Hitler's Nero Decree which Speer, according to his own telling, worked assiduously to counter. [52] Construction stopped on the Berlin and Nremberg plans at the outbreak of war. Speer made no mention of it in the first draft of Inside the Third Reich. never got along so good before or after. [183], This article is about the Nazi minister. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, principally for the use of slave labor, narrowly avoiding a death sentence. I knew that these must be Berlin Jews who were being evacuated. Oil production became so low that any possibility of offensive action became impossible and weaponry lay idle. This was probably the start of the downfall of the Reich. by PanzerKavallerie 27 Jul 2005, 16:15, Post Until 2 September 1943 the position's official name was Reich Minister of Armaments and Munitions. From 1946 to 1966, while serving the sentence in Spandau Prison, he penned more than 2,000 manuscript pages of personal memoirs. Speer first heard Adolf Hitler speak during an address to the combined students and faculty of Berlin University and his institute. The relationship will always amaze. It takes the reader inside Nazi Germany on four different levels: Hitler's inner circle, National Socialism as a whole, the area of wartime production and the inner struggle of Albert Speer. His formal title was changed on 2 September 1943, to "Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production". [113] Speer was indicted on four counts: participating in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of crime against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace; war crimes; and crimes against humanity. [179], Little remains of Speer's personal architectural works, other than the plans and photographs. [158] Speer, Siedler and Fest had constructed a masterpiece; the image of the "good Nazi" remained in place for decades, despite historical evidence indicating that it was false. Speer created an elaborate garden complete with lawns, flower beds, shrubbery, and fruit trees. The myth began to fall apart in the 1980s, when the armaments miracle was attributed to Nazi propaganda. He lost yet more authority. "[16] The historian Magnus Brechtken, discussing Speer, said he did not give anti-Jewish public speeches and that his anti-Semitism can best be understood through his actionswhich were anti-Semitic. [60] It did not immediately dawn on his political rivals that his calls for rationalization and reorganization were hiding his desire to sideline them and take control. Progress was slow because fuel was rationed and Army Group A were given priority. Entrance to Spandau Prison, 1951. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, he was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Speer in response used his propaganda expertise to display a new dynamism of the war economy. While dozens of submarines were built, few ever entered service. [166] Another myth centered around a faked plan to assassinate Hitler with poisonous gas. Martin Kitchen, a British historian, says that the choice was not surprising. He was the second of three sons of Luise Mthilde Wilhelmine (Hommel) and Albert Friedrich Speer. 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