Albert Speer – Escaping the Gallows

Secret Conversations with Hitler's Top Nazi

Adrian Greaves

• Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781399009546
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

At the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, Albert Speer, Hitler’s one-time number two, persuaded the judges that he ‘knew nothing’ of the Holocaust and related atrocities. Narrowly escaping execution, he was sentenced to twenty years in Spandau Prison, Berlin. In 1961, the newly commissioned author, as the British Army Spandau Guard Commander, was befriended by Speer, who taught him German. Adrian Greaves’ record of his conversations with Speer over a three year period make for fascinating reading. While the top Nazi admitted to Greaves his secret part in war crimes, after his 1966 release he determinedly denied any wrongdoing and became an intriguing and popular figure at home and abroad. Following Speer’s death in 1981 evidence emerged of his complicity in Hitler’s and the Nazi’s atrocities. In this uniquely revealing book the author skilfully blends his own personal experiences and relationship with Speer with a succinct history of the Nazi movement and the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. In so doing new light is thrown on the character of one of the 20th century’s most notorious characters.

Chapter One

The Role of Albert Speer: Germany and Berlin Between the World Wars

‘Heerlos, Wehrlos, Ehrlos’.

(Disarmed, Defenceless, Dishonoured.)1

By October 1918, the First World War was nearly over. Nevertheless, the German Admiralty’s chief of staff, Reinhard Scheer, decided to make his own point, and without any authority launched a final strike against the Royal Navy blockading German North Sea ports. He saw the operation as a means of both restoring the German navy’s reputation, and lifting the Royal Navy’s blockade. German civilians were hungry, they had suffered a poor harvest and there were no workers to bring in the scant crops; the population was on the verge of starvation but somehow remained stoic. Scheer’s order to engage the Royal Navy ended with the words:

An honourable battle by the fleet – even if it should be a fight to the death to sow the seed of a new German fleet of the future. There can be no future for a fleet fettered by a dishonourable peace.2

The German fleet was ordered to sail from Kiel on 28 October. The sailors knew it was a suicide mission, and five times they collectively refused to sail. Over 1,000 sailors were arrested for mutiny as their actions successfully immobilised the fleet. Over the following days, the revolt spread across the country with civilians and sailors rioting in Bremen, Hamburg, Lubeck and Munich. Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated and fled the country, leaving Germany in chaos. The fleet stayed in port.

In November 1918, Albert Speer was 13 years old when the German war effort finally ceased due to increasing Allied successes and a collapse of German morale, both civilian and military. Germany had suffered 37 million casualties, including 9 million dead combatants. Matters were made worse by the 1919 world-wide influenza epidemic, which killed more Germans than had died during the war. There appeared to be little hope for the surviving German people, who then faced severe poverty and disease, all made worse by the uncontrolled spread of tuberculosis and rickets. With the war won, the war-weary Allies were disinterested in German suffering, or German politics; the USA retreated back into its previous isolation from Europe, Russia experienced the Revolution and Stalin’s purges, and Britain and France were exhausted and weakly concentrated on rebuilding their own economies. Germany and its people were effectively abandoned to their fate.

In the first four years following the First World War, the very existence of the German people remained precarious; even its nation status was unclear, as before 1918 Germany was a federal Empire composed of twenty-five federal states. Political leadership was weak and severe food shortages improved little. Many German civilians and ex-soldiers mistakenly expected life to return to pre-war normality following the struggles suffered during the First World War. The German government from 1919 to 1933, the period between the First World War and the rise of Nazi Germany, went initially from uncertain beginnings with domination in Bavaria and Munich by the communists, and progressed to a brief season of success followed in 1923 by a devastating depression; this ensured sufficient chaos to position Germany ready for the rise of the Austrian Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) and his growing Nazi Party.3

Hitler came on the scene by cunning, stealth and deploying his mesmeric charm. In 1913, and fearing being called up for service in the Austrian army, Hitler left Vienna, but on returning for a rare family visit to his mother he was arrested for draft avoidance and taken before a local court. On being medically examined to assess his fitness for duty, he was rejected on unknown medical grounds and discharged. Free of military liability he returned to Munich where, for reasons unknown, he joined the Bavarian Army. His induction into the Bavarian Army was most likely an error by army recruiters, and a later investigation by the authorities failed to determine how Hitler was allowed to enlist, having been previously medically rejected as physically unfit for military service. Nevertheless, finding himself on the Western Front, Hitler was twice decorated for bravery. He received the relatively common Iron Cross Second Class in 1914, and the Iron Cross First Class in 1918, an honour rarely given to a corporal. It is noteworthy that his second decoration was recommended by Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann, his Jewish regimental adjutant.

In 1919, Hitler joined the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, the DNVP (Deutschnationale Volkspartei) group which promoted anti-Semitism and sought a restoration of the monarchy, together with a repeal of the hated Versailles peace treaty, which had seized Germany’s financial assets, her overseas territories and colonies, and banned German re-militarisation. Hitler became the party leader in 1921 through his utter determination, emotional and captivating speeches. He proposed national pride, militarism, and a commitment to the people for a racially ‘pure’ Germany. Hitler condemned the Jews, exploiting anti-Semitic feelings, which had prevailed across Europe for centuries, even writing ‘the final aim must be an uncompromising removal of Jews altogether’.4 He changed the name of the party to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, called for short, the Nazi Party (or NSDAP). A year later, like a psychopathic God, Hitler became its official leader, adopting the title of Führer (leader).

Rise of the Nazi Party

Since the 1920s, much of Berlin and Munich had been under the sway of Russian-linked communist groups, to the extent that Berlin was known across Germany as ‘Red Berlin’, the name was adopted across the country by German communists. From Munich in southern Germany, Hitler sought to counter communist philosophy by promoting the ‘good old days’, a strong incentive for hungry war-weary Germans hankering after peace, which further appealed to the younger generation by speaking with utter conviction that the young would again find pride in being German. Indeed, in desperation, the people began turning to extremists for salvation, and there were two organisations that welcomed desperate or angry young men.

The SA and the SS

The Schutzstaffel SS

In 1925, Hitler established the Schutzstaffel, or protection group, otherwise known as the SS. The SS were initially created as Hitler’s personal bodyguards although they would go on to police the entire Third Reich, and its subjugated countries.

Until 1929, the SS was a small sub-division of the SA, with approximately 300 members. In 1929, Heinrich Himmler took command of the organisation and expanded it dramatically. By 1933, the SS had 35,000 members. Criteria for membership of the SS was based on applicants’ ‘racial purity’, blind obedience, and fanatical loyalty to Hitler.

The SS saw themselves as the ultimate defenders of the ‘Aryan’ race and Nazi ideology. They terrorized opponents and aimed to destroy any person or group that threatened this belief.

The Sturmabteilung SA

The Nazi Party’s paramilitary organisation, the Sturmabteilung, or attack response group, was more commonly known as the SA. Formed in 1921, the organisation grew out of the unemployed and Freikorps groups of exmilitary, and was known as ‘Stormtroopers’ or ‘Brownshirts’ due to their brown uniform as worn by Hitler. Violent and often disorderly, the SA was primarily responsible for the protection of leading Nazis and disrupting other political opponents’ meetings; they had a free rein and local police were under orders to ignore their activities. If Hitler was to gain power democratically, he needed to somehow curb their violent activities, which alarmed the public, and set out to change their reputation. A new leader, Franz von Salomon, was recruited. Rather than the violent free rein the SA had previously enjoyed, Salomon was strict and gave the organisation a more defined role. The SA and SS were still symbols of fear, and both were used by the Nazi Party to terrify their opposition into subordination, then to eliminate them entirely, or scare people from supporting opponents.

In March 1923, the First World War fighter plane ace, Hermann Goering, became the leader of the SA, which then had about 3,000 members based in and around Munich. The SA’s primary responsibilities were to serve as Hitler’s personal security detail, to provide military support to enforce Hitler’s orders, and prevent the functioning of opposing parties, all by whatever means necessary. An example was the SA’s Munich Beer Hall Putsch (coup) of 9 November 1923. The putsch was an attempted coup in which Hitler unsuccessfully attempted to seize control of the Bavarian government. On 8 November, Hitler and his SA mob marched and seized the unoccupied Munich army headquarters and a local newspaper office. The putsch could have succeeded, but failed after Hitler left the beer hall to attend to other business. At dawn the following day, and believing in their unopposed success, about 3,000 putsch supporters, who were all well versed in murderous street battles between the Nazis and their opponents, marched into the centre of Munich, heading for the Bavarian defence ministry to meet up with Hitler.

Meanwhile, the city police brought in army reinforcements, and from behind a barricade, met the advancing Nazis at close range with well-aimed rifle fire. Sixteen members of the SA died from the engagement and four police officers were killed during some vicious hand-to-hand fighting. Hitler fled having suffered a dislocated shoulder, but was arrested two days later to be charged with other Nazi leaders, including General Ludendorff and Rudolf Hess, with high treason, and sentenced to five years imprisonment; the NSDAP was banned, which led to the formal dissolution of the SA.

Hitler was released from prison after one year. It was while he was in prison that he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle), aided by his secretary, soon to be his deputy, the nationally famous pilot, Rudolf Hess. The SA members who died became revered as ‘martyrs’ in party mythology.

While Hitler was imprisoned and Goering hiding in exile, Hitler’s longtime friend, Captain Ernst Röhm, an adventurer who had supported Hitler over the suspicious death of Hitler’s young niece and flat-mate, Geli Raubal. Röhm continued organizing the disparate but sympathetic paramilitary groups, persuading them to join the SA under an umbrella organisation, known as the Frontbann. This was nothing more than a reorganized Sturmabteilung, created to replace the SA, which had been banned in the aftermath of the failed Munich putsch. In February 1925, the Frontbann was dissolved after the ban on the SA was lifted. It was in 1930 that Albert Speer first came on the scene, when he attended a Hitler speech in Berlin. The following day he joined the Nazi Party, and, as a result, found work with senior Nazi officials in Berlin. Röhm became chief of staff of the SA in 1931, and to strengthen Röhm’s position, Hitler made him his personal chief of staff. By 1932, the SA had grown to 400,000 members. Just two years later, Hitler was named chancellor while the SA’s numbers swelled to over 3 million, some ten times larger than the German Army. Speer was now working as Hitler’s personal architect, while, at the same time, there were tens of thousands of dissatisfied young men without work, without money, and without a purpose. The Nazis rewarded Speer with a top position, while the SA gave the young rebels a cause.

The Nazi Party was not yet in the position to overthrow the state, but it was getting progressively closer by infiltrating government departments and plotting to bring the police and army under their control. There was no national German police force; policing was haphazard and regional, which presented the Nazis with an easy opportunity to consolidate law enforcement under the Nazi Party. Hitler tasked a team with special responsibility for police standardisation; its leader was a senior Nazi, Heinrich Himmler, assisted by an up-and-coming junior Nazi, Reinhard Heydrich, a Hitler fanatic with an overt anti-Semitic attitude.5

Under orders from Hitler’s officials, the SA played a major part in the Nazis’ increasing public popularity by taking firm action to repress dissidents; its backbone consisted largely of violent anti-leftist and antidemocratic former soldiers who were only too enthusiastic to lend their muscle to the growing Nazi Party. With a strict form of internal discipline to encourage obedience, and brutality to opponents, they acquired the nickname ‘Brownshirts’, copied from the shirt worn in public by Hitler. As the auxiliary police body, they practised repressive terror against anyone they chose. No one was safe, especially opponents, political or otherwise, and groups such as the Jews. Their acts and behaviour were protected by law; they had the protection of the civil police and military to behave as thugs of the worst kind against whosoever they chose to treat as criminals; many victims had already been secretly condemned to death before their victims even knew they were in trouble. Anyone who questioned the arrival or purpose of the SA, usually at night, could be severely beaten, while those targeted for elimination were either murdered on the spot or taken off, never to be seen again. The rationale behind their legal brutality was to publicise their savage punishment of opponents in order to terrorise the German public into submission; it also silenced any opposition, or the mentioning of widespread public fear of the situation. The SA encouraged the willingness of Germans to settle old scores by rewarding those denouncing friends and neighbours; such denunciations gave every citizen the power to ‘get even’ with whosoever they chose, and such malevolence was rewarded by the SA. Hitler Youth children were part of Nazi intelligence gathering, with party officials regularly completing questionnaires at youth camps and meetings designed to reveal details of parents, relatives or school teachers who might have opined against the party. This is understandable when remembering the Hitler Youth slogan was ‘We are born to die for Germany’.

Although he was fast becoming a leading politician, until January 1933 Hitler was never approved of by the majority of Germans to become their leader. His power base was in the eastern half of Germany, whereas just 17 per cent of voters in the predominately Catholic west ever voted for him. Then, after a brief struggle for power, and when public elections failed to produce a leading party, President Paul von Hindenburg resorted to appointing Hitler as the new German chancellor.

With Hitler now controlling the German parliament, the Reichstag, opposition members became powerless when they were refused access to the building by members of the SA. Hitler had total control and there were no more debates, unless Hitler wished to pronounce. Within weeks, nearly 100 Reichstag members disappeared or died, with nearly 200 exiled from Germany. Hitler then invoked totalitarian laws to quash civil rights and suppress members of the Communist Party. Goering increased police strength with 40,000 thugs from the SA and SS authorised police to fire on gatherings of political opponents. In February, the Reichstag building was destroyed by fire, undoubtedly organised by the Nazis themselves, giving them the excuse to unleash the mass and frequently brutal arrest of detractors, especially Communists.

In March 1933, when Albert Speer was 28 years old and well established on Hitler’s staff, Hitler introduced the ‘Enabling Act’ to allow him to pass laws without the approval of Germany’s parliament or president, and stated it was ‘the new German kingdom of greatness and power and glory and justice. Amen’.6 ‘Amen’ would shortly become Sieg Heil!

During 1933, one effect of Nazis’ suppression of all other political parties was the construction by the SS of concentration camps across Germany. Camp staffs were encouraged by their senior officers, who, having been specially trained at the Dachau camp, began enforcing a widespread in human policy of instilling fear and practising brutality towards inmates. Prisoners could be shot, but guards were reminded that each bullet cost two pfennigs (a farthing). Alternatively, prisoners could be hanged, beaten and tortured at will without question. These pre-war camps were successful at removing Nazi Party antagonists from society. If and when such unfortunates survived to reach the end of their sentences, those still considered ‘dangerous’ were placed in ‘protective custody’ and detained in lunatic asylums or murdered in concentration camps. These early camps were indeed brutal beyond belief, but they were not yet supporting the transfer of prisoners to the mass extermination camps that would follow. The press were encouraged to report certain executions under the guise of the victims having been criminals, which the public tended to believe and accept for the benefit of the greater good. With the belief established that these camps served a useful purpose in German society, inmates were widely forced to work in industry and were moved around in full view of the public. Hitler still lacked public support and something was needed to swing public opinion in favour of the Nazis.

How Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power

In the nine years between 1924 and 1933, the Nazi Party transformed from a small, violent, revolutionary party to the largest elected party in the Reichstag. Whilst Hitler was in prison, following the Munich putsch in 1923, Alfred Rosenberg took over as temporary leader of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was an ineffective leader, and the party became divided over key issues. The failure of the Munich putsch had shown Hitler that he would not be able to take power by force. Hitler therefore decided to change tactics and instead focus on winning support for his party democratically, then being elected to power. Following his release from prison on 20 December 1924, Hitler convinced the chancellor of Bavaria to remove the ban on the Nazi Party.

In February 1926, Hitler restructured the Nazi Party to make it more efficient. Firstly, the Nazi Party adopted a new framework, which divided Germany into regions called Gaue. Each Gau had its own leader, a Gauleiter. Each Gau was then divided into subsectio...