Inside the Third Reich
Encyclopedia
Inside the Third Reich is a memoir
written by Albert Speer
, the Nazi
Minister of Armaments from 1942 to 1945, serving as Hitler's main architect before this period. 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 his degree of awareness or involvement with them.
, Speer was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his use of slave labor while Minister of Armaments. From 1946 to 1966, while serving the sentence in Spandau Prison
, he penned 1,300 manuscript pages of personal memoirs. Because he was not allowed to write such memoirs while in prison, he smuggled these notes out, and returned to them after his release. He was aided by Joachim Fest
. The manuscript led to two books: first Erinnerungen ("Recollections") (Propyläen/Ullstein, 1969), which was translated into English and published by Macmillan in 1970 as Inside the Third Reich; then Spandauer Tagebücher ("Spandau Diaries") (Propyläen/Ullstein, 1975), which was translated into English and published by Macmillan in 1976 as Spandau: The Secret Diaries
.
Speer, by his account, entered the Nazi hierarchy by an unusual chain of events. He said that he first joined after attending a rally, at the behest of some of his students, at which Hitler spoke. Early on Speer was used mainly as a driver due to his being the only member with a car in the Wannsee
area. As an architect
commissioned by the party, he achieved an excellent turnaround time on a building project, which attracted attention from senior leaders. Because Adolf Hitler
saw himself as both an architect and artist
, he warmed to Speer and gradually brought him into his inner circle.
Due to his relative closeness to Hitler, Speer found himself in an enviable but precarious position. He later remarked, "I would have been Hitler's best friend… if Hitler had been capable of having friends."
His duties until 1942 were occupied exclusively by architectural work, mainly large works that Hitler planned but would never build. Then, after the Minister of Armaments, Fritz Todt
, died in a plane crash, Hitler unexpectedly tapped Speer for the position.
Under Speer, German arms production improved greatly. Prior to his appointment, the economy
was run by Hermann Göring
. However, Göring had fallen out of favor. After a power struggle, Speer managed to get most of the economy under his control. (Some aspects of it had fallen under the control of Heinrich Himmler
's secret police
, and remained so until the collapse of government.)
Speer introduced economic reforms that the United States
and Great Britain
had implemented long before—namely, the full mobilization
of factories for war purposes and the use of female workers. However, although more arms were produced, by the time Speer accomplished this, the war was already lost. Many people among the Western allies believed that the dictatorship in Germany gave that country's wartime economy frightening advantages by creating great efficiencies throughout the economy (in comparison to the cacophony of forces that shaped the production possibilities curve in democracies). Speer took pains in his memoirs to argue that this theory was not supported by the facts. In fact, he felt that in some ways the democracies ended up with better efficiencies in production than Germany did. He judged that the pathological secrecy and corruption within a dictatorial system more than canceled out the theoretical benefits of greater centralization.
By the end of the war, Speer was disillusioned by the war, by the Nazis, and with Hitler himself. Despite being one of the few people to stay close to Hitler until the end, he sabotaged Hitler's scorched earth
policy to prevent the complete destruction of Germany. The main body effectively ends when Speer, by this point having joined Karl Dönitz
's government seated in Schleswig-Holstein
, receives news of Hitler's death. This is followed by an epilogue dealing with the end of the war in Europe and the resulting Nuremberg Trials
, in which Speer is sentenced to a two-decade prison sentence for his actions during the war.
The memoirs Inside the Third Reich end as Speer begins his 20-year term in Spandau Prison
. His memoirs Spandau: The Secret Diaries
cover the following span of incarceration.
, described by both sides as one of the few highly intelligent people in the Nazi hierarchy. Because of these factors, Inside the Third Reich has become the definitive work on the inner workings of Nazi Germany.
Due to his position, Speer was able to describe the personalities of many Nazi officials, including Joseph Goebbels
, Hermann Göring
, Heinrich Himmler
, Rudolf Hess
, Martin Bormann
and, of course, Adolf Hitler
himself.
, and incompetent leaders. Most surprisingly, he portrayed Hitler not as an intelligent, decisive leader, but rather as a lazy, artistically tempered bohemian
who worked in spurts. He had also described Hitler as an incompetent, unprofessional, self-taught layman: "Without any sense of the complexities of any great task, he boldly assumed one function after another."
Speer's personal insights into Nazi leaders themselves are nothing short of remarkable, especially since many other Nazis and their families chose him as a neutral confidant. Speer described how Joseph Goebbels' wife, Magda
, complained about her husband's infidelity, and how she in turn had had an affair with one of Speer's old friends, Karl Hanke
. Personally meeting with Göring on his estate, Speer wrote how the by-then overweight Luftwaffe
marshal spent his days hunting, eating, and quite literally playing with stolen jewels as if they were toys.
According to Speer, even during the mid-1930s, after he attained dictatorial powers, Hitler had extremely unstable work habits that included staying up very late (typically until 5:00 or 6:00 a.m.) and then sleeping until about noon, spending hours upon hours at meals and tea parties, and wasting both his time and that of colleagues with movies and long, boring monologues. He was incapable of normal office work. In the memoirs, Speer openly wondered when exactly Hitler ever found time to do anything important. On his personal life, Speer remarked that Eva Braun
had told him, in the middle of 1943, that Hitler was too busy, too immersed, and too tired to have sex with her.
Listening to the Führer, Speer concluded that Hitler was incapable of growth, either emotional or intellectual. Because Hitler could charm people (including Speer himself), Speer also believed Hitler was a sociopath
and megalomaniac
. Even in 1945, when Germany's armed forces were all but destroyed, Speer could not convince Hitler to admit defeat, or even to go on the defensive.
According to Speer, Germany's position in the war went into decline during the siege of Stalingrad, when Hitler, faced with defeat, tried to hide himself from reality. In Hitler's reticence, Speer claimed that Hitler's personal secretary, Martin Bormann
, took advantage of the vacuum and controlled all information going to Hitler in a bid to gain power for himself.
Likewise, Speer painted an extremely unflattering portrait of the Nazi government
. Because of Hitler's indecisiveness—and his belief that struggle led to strength—the government was never properly coordinated. Different ministries were often assigned to the same task and Hitler refused to clarify jurisdictions. As a result, for anything to get done, ministers often had to engage in court politics. Speer himself had to ally with Goebbels and other ministers to counter Göring's incompetent economic leadership. Also, commentators on the memoirs have pronounced it likely that Speer himself came close to being assassinated by Himmler
after he unwittingly put himself in the care of an SS
doctor.
Even his editorial aide, Joachim Fest
, noted in later editions of Inside the Third Reich that much of what Speer wrote disagreed with his testimony at Nuremberg. Most notably, Speer originally made up excuses as to why he stayed with Hitler until the end, but in his memoirs, admitted he did so out of personal loyalty.
In the book, Speer claimed to have contemplated Hitler's assassination in early 1945 to end the war. However, aside from an affidavit
from one of his friends, Dieter Stahl, there is no evidence to substantiate this.
Moreover, Speer consented to numerous interviews after his release from prison, and some of the things said in these interviews, like those with Gitta Sereny
, contradicted with both his court testimony and memoirs.
Supporters of Speer, such as Fest, claim Speer felt personal guilt about the Nazi genocide, and that he spent his remaining years trying to justify both to himself and the public why he had let himself be deceived. Before his death, Speer compared his work on behalf of the Nazis to that of a man who made a deal with the Devil
.
Speer's detractors argue that his omissions and denials were based on his efforts to avoid execution at Nuremberg. Many accounts of the trial depict Speer as a crafty and intelligent defendant who pulled any string he could in his defense. Moreover, other Nuremberg defendants in positions similar to Speer's were hanged, most notably Fritz Sauckel
, who actually worked under Speer's orders. His claim to have tried to kill Hitler is usually cited as one of the main reasons he was spared the noose.
While arguments over Speer's guilt are ongoing, Inside the Third Reich is used by historians on all sides as a primary source on the inner workings of the Nazis. Speer's supporters have sardonically noted that even historians who claim Speer is untrustworthy nonetheless incorporate the memoirs into their work.
(ABC). The movie departs significantly from the memoirs, most notably in how it portrays Speer's perception of Nazi atrocities. In his memoirs, Speer mentions the growing persecution of Jews
during the 1930s. He then goes on to say that there was no way that he could have known what was happening to the Jews. However, one did not need any secret knowledge of the exact details of government programs to know that Jews were being beaten and expropriated and were disappearing from German society. The movie recognizes this contradiction; for example, it portrays Speer's reaction, or, to be specific, lack of reaction, to Kristallnacht
.
Speer was portrayed in the movie by Rutger Hauer, Goebbels by Ian Holm
, and Hitler by Derek Jacobi
, a role for which he was nominated for an Emmy. The miniseries did win 2 Emmys, one in outstanding achievement in film sound editing and outstanding directing in a limited series or a special DGA; also outstanding directorial achievement in dramatic specials.
Additionally, almost every movie that deals with Hitler (especially near the end of his life) draws at least partly on Inside the Third Reich, a long list that includes Der Untergang
.
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
written by Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, 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...
, the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
Minister of Armaments from 1942 to 1945, serving as Hitler's main architect before this period. It is considered to be one of the most detailed descriptions of the inner workings and leadership of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
but is controversial because of Speer's lack of discussion of Nazi atrocities and his degree of awareness or involvement with them.
Creation
At the Nuremberg TrialsNuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
, Speer was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his use of slave labor while Minister of Armaments. From 1946 to 1966, while serving the sentence in Spandau Prison
Spandau Prison
Spandau Prison was a prison situated in the borough of Spandau in western Berlin, constructed in 1876 and demolished in 1987 after the death of its last prisoner, Rudolf Hess, to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine. The prison was near, though not part of, the Renaissance-era Spandau Citadel...
, he penned 1,300 manuscript pages of personal memoirs. Because he was not allowed to write such memoirs while in prison, he smuggled these notes out, and returned to them after his release. He was aided by Joachim Fest
Joachim Fest
Joachim Clemens Fest was a German historian, journalist, critic and editor, best known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany, including an important biography of Adolf Hitler and books about Albert Speer and the German Resistance...
. The manuscript led to two books: first Erinnerungen ("Recollections") (Propyläen/Ullstein, 1969), which was translated into English and published by Macmillan in 1970 as Inside the Third Reich; then Spandauer Tagebücher ("Spandau Diaries") (Propyläen/Ullstein, 1975), which was translated into English and published by Macmillan in 1976 as Spandau: The Secret Diaries
Spandau: The Secret Diaries
Spandau: The Secret Diaries was a 1976 best selling book by Albert Speer. While it principally deals with Speer's time while incarcerated at Spandau Prison, it also contains much material on his role in the Third Reich and his relationship with Adolf Hitler....
.
Overview
Inside the Third Reich is written in a semi-autobiographical style. While Speer begins with his childhood, he spends most of the memoirs describing his work in the Nazi hierarchy.Speer, by his account, entered the Nazi hierarchy by an unusual chain of events. He said that he first joined after attending a rally, at the behest of some of his students, at which Hitler spoke. Early on Speer was used mainly as a driver due to his being the only member with a car in the Wannsee
Wannsee
Wannsee is a locality in the southwestern Berlin borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Germany. It is the westernmost locality of Berlin. In the quarter there are two lakes, the larger Großer Wannsee and the Kleiner Wannsee , are located on the river Havel and are separated only by the Wannsee bridge...
area. As an architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
commissioned by the party, he achieved an excellent turnaround time on a building project, which attracted attention from senior leaders. Because Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
saw himself as both an architect and artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, he warmed to Speer and gradually brought him into his inner circle.
Due to his relative closeness to Hitler, Speer found himself in an enviable but precarious position. He later remarked, "I would have been Hitler's best friend… if Hitler had been capable of having friends."
His duties until 1942 were occupied exclusively by architectural work, mainly large works that Hitler planned but would never build. Then, after the Minister of Armaments, Fritz Todt
Fritz Todt
Fritz Todt was a German engineer and senior Nazi figure, the founder of Organisation Todt. He died in a plane crash during World War II.- Life :Todt was born in Pforzheim to a father who owned a small factory...
, died in a plane crash, Hitler unexpectedly tapped Speer for the position.
Under Speer, German arms production improved greatly. Prior to his appointment, the economy
Economic system
An economic system is the combination of the various agencies, entities that provide the economic structure that defines the social community. These agencies are joined by lines of trade and exchange along which goods, money etc. are continuously flowing. An example of such a system for a closed...
was run by Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, was a German politician, military leader, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. He was a veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, and a recipient of the coveted Pour le Mérite, also known as "The Blue Max"...
. However, Göring had fallen out of favor. After a power struggle, Speer managed to get most of the economy under his control. (Some aspects of it had fallen under the control of Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
's secret police
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
, and remained so until the collapse of government.)
Speer introduced economic reforms that the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
had implemented long before—namely, the full mobilization
Mobilization
Mobilization is the act of assembling and making both troops and supplies ready for war. The word mobilization was first used, in a military context, in order to describe the preparation of the Prussian army during the 1850s and 1860s. Mobilization theories and techniques have continuously changed...
of factories for war purposes and the use of female workers. However, although more arms were produced, by the time Speer accomplished this, the war was already lost. Many people among the Western allies believed that the dictatorship in Germany gave that country's wartime economy frightening advantages by creating great efficiencies throughout the economy (in comparison to the cacophony of forces that shaped the production possibilities curve in democracies). Speer took pains in his memoirs to argue that this theory was not supported by the facts. In fact, he felt that in some ways the democracies ended up with better efficiencies in production than Germany did. He judged that the pathological secrecy and corruption within a dictatorial system more than canceled out the theoretical benefits of greater centralization.
By the end of the war, Speer was disillusioned by the war, by the Nazis, and with Hitler himself. Despite being one of the few people to stay close to Hitler until the end, he sabotaged Hitler's scorched earth
Scorched earth
A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...
policy to prevent the complete destruction of Germany. The main body effectively ends when Speer, by this point having joined Karl Dönitz
Karl Dönitz
Karl Dönitz was a German naval commander during World War II. He started his career in the German Navy during World War I. In 1918, while he was in command of , the submarine was sunk by British forces and Dönitz was taken prisoner...
's government seated in Schleswig-Holstein
Flensburg government
The Flensburg Government , also known as the Flensburg Cabinet and the Dönitz Government , was the short-lived administration that attempted to rule the Third Reich during most of May 1945 at the end of World War II in Europe...
, receives news of Hitler's death. This is followed by an epilogue dealing with the end of the war in Europe and the resulting Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
, in which Speer is sentenced to a two-decade prison sentence for his actions during the war.
The memoirs Inside the Third Reich end as Speer begins his 20-year term in Spandau Prison
Spandau Prison
Spandau Prison was a prison situated in the borough of Spandau in western Berlin, constructed in 1876 and demolished in 1987 after the death of its last prisoner, Rudolf Hess, to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine. The prison was near, though not part of, the Renaissance-era Spandau Citadel...
. His memoirs Spandau: The Secret Diaries
Spandau: The Secret Diaries
Spandau: The Secret Diaries was a 1976 best selling book by Albert Speer. While it principally deals with Speer's time while incarcerated at Spandau Prison, it also contains much material on his role in the Third Reich and his relationship with Adolf Hitler....
cover the following span of incarceration.
Significance
Speer was one of the highest-ranking Nazi officials to survive both the war and the Nuremberg trials. He was also, even during World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, described by both sides as one of the few highly intelligent people in the Nazi hierarchy. Because of these factors, Inside the Third Reich has become the definitive work on the inner workings of Nazi Germany.
Due to his position, Speer was able to describe the personalities of many Nazi officials, including Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
, Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, was a German politician, military leader, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. He was a veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, and a recipient of the coveted Pour le Mérite, also known as "The Blue Max"...
, Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess was a prominent Nazi politician who was Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party during the 1930s and early 1940s...
, Martin Bormann
Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann was a prominent Nazi official. He became head of the Party Chancellery and private secretary to Adolf Hitler...
and, of course, Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
himself.
Description of the Nazi hierarchy
Speer's memoirs revolutionized the study of Nazi Germany. Despite the popular vision of the country as a monolithic, totalitarian state that ran smoothly at first, Speer revealed that the country was actually sharply divided by overlapping responsibilities, court politicsPolitics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, and incompetent leaders. Most surprisingly, he portrayed Hitler not as an intelligent, decisive leader, but rather as a lazy, artistically tempered bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
who worked in spurts. He had also described Hitler as an incompetent, unprofessional, self-taught layman: "Without any sense of the complexities of any great task, he boldly assumed one function after another."
Speer's personal insights into Nazi leaders themselves are nothing short of remarkable, especially since many other Nazis and their families chose him as a neutral confidant. Speer described how Joseph Goebbels' wife, Magda
Magda Goebbels
Johanna Maria Magdalena "Magda" Goebbels was the wife of Nazi Germany's Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels...
, complained about her husband's infidelity, and how she in turn had had an affair with one of Speer's old friends, Karl Hanke
Karl Hanke
Karl August Hanke was an official of the National Socialist German Workers Party . He served as governor of Lower Silesia from 1941 to 1945 and as the final Reichsführer-SS for a few days in 1945.- Early life :Hanke was born in Lauban in Silesia, on 24 August 1903, the son of a locomotive...
. Personally meeting with Göring on his estate, Speer wrote how the by-then overweight Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
marshal spent his days hunting, eating, and quite literally playing with stolen jewels as if they were toys.
According to Speer, even during the mid-1930s, after he attained dictatorial powers, Hitler had extremely unstable work habits that included staying up very late (typically until 5:00 or 6:00 a.m.) and then sleeping until about noon, spending hours upon hours at meals and tea parties, and wasting both his time and that of colleagues with movies and long, boring monologues. He was incapable of normal office work. In the memoirs, Speer openly wondered when exactly Hitler ever found time to do anything important. On his personal life, Speer remarked that Eva Braun
Eva Braun
Eva Anna Paula Hitler was the longtime companion of Adolf Hitler and, for less than 40 hours, his wife. Braun met Hitler in Munich, when she was 17 years old, while working as an assistant and model for his personal photographer and began seeing him often about two years later...
had told him, in the middle of 1943, that Hitler was too busy, too immersed, and too tired to have sex with her.
Listening to the Führer, Speer concluded that Hitler was incapable of growth, either emotional or intellectual. Because Hitler could charm people (including Speer himself), Speer also believed Hitler was a sociopath
Psychopathy
Psychopathy is a mental disorder characterized primarily by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow emotions, egocentricity, and deceptiveness. Psychopaths are highly prone to antisocial behavior and abusive treatment of others, and are very disproportionately responsible for violent crime...
and megalomaniac
Narcissism
Narcissism is a term with a wide range of meanings, depending on whether it is used to describe a central concept of psychoanalytic theory, a mental illness, a social or cultural problem, or simply a personality trait...
. Even in 1945, when Germany's armed forces were all but destroyed, Speer could not convince Hitler to admit defeat, or even to go on the defensive.
According to Speer, Germany's position in the war went into decline during the siege of Stalingrad, when Hitler, faced with defeat, tried to hide himself from reality. In Hitler's reticence, Speer claimed that Hitler's personal secretary, Martin Bormann
Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann was a prominent Nazi official. He became head of the Party Chancellery and private secretary to Adolf Hitler...
, took advantage of the vacuum and controlled all information going to Hitler in a bid to gain power for himself.
Likewise, Speer painted an extremely unflattering portrait of the Nazi government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
. Because of Hitler's indecisiveness—and his belief that struggle led to strength—the government was never properly coordinated. Different ministries were often assigned to the same task and Hitler refused to clarify jurisdictions. As a result, for anything to get done, ministers often had to engage in court politics. Speer himself had to ally with Goebbels and other ministers to counter Göring's incompetent economic leadership. Also, commentators on the memoirs have pronounced it likely that Speer himself came close to being assassinated by Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
after he unwittingly put himself in the care of an SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
doctor.
Controversy about the Holocaust and slave labor
In the book, as at the Nuremberg Trials, Speer denied any knowledge of the Holocaust. While he does admit to his knowledge of slave labor used in his ministry, Speer claimed that he tried to improve the slave laborers' condition, and that he preferred not to use such labor.Even his editorial aide, Joachim Fest
Joachim Fest
Joachim Clemens Fest was a German historian, journalist, critic and editor, best known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany, including an important biography of Adolf Hitler and books about Albert Speer and the German Resistance...
, noted in later editions of Inside the Third Reich that much of what Speer wrote disagreed with his testimony at Nuremberg. Most notably, Speer originally made up excuses as to why he stayed with Hitler until the end, but in his memoirs, admitted he did so out of personal loyalty.
In the book, Speer claimed to have contemplated Hitler's assassination in early 1945 to end the war. However, aside from an affidavit
Affidavit
An affidavit is a written sworn statement of fact voluntarily made by an affiant or deponent under an oath or affirmation administered by a person authorized to do so by law. Such statement is witnessed as to the authenticity of the affiant's signature by a taker of oaths, such as a notary public...
from one of his friends, Dieter Stahl, there is no evidence to substantiate this.
Moreover, Speer consented to numerous interviews after his release from prison, and some of the things said in these interviews, like those with Gitta Sereny
Gitta Sereny
Gitta Sereny is an Austrian-born biographer, historian and investigative journalist whose writing focuses mainly on the Holocaust and child abuse. She is the stepdaughter of the economist Ludwig von Mises....
, contradicted with both his court testimony and memoirs.
Supporters of Speer, such as Fest, claim Speer felt personal guilt about the Nazi genocide, and that he spent his remaining years trying to justify both to himself and the public why he had let himself be deceived. Before his death, Speer compared his work on behalf of the Nazis to that of a man who made a deal with the Devil
Deal with the Devil
Deal With The Devil is the fifth studio album by the American heavy metal band Lizzy Borden released in 2000 .A return to form, featuring a cover by Todd McFarlane.2 covers were recorded...
.
Speer's detractors argue that his omissions and denials were based on his efforts to avoid execution at Nuremberg. Many accounts of the trial depict Speer as a crafty and intelligent defendant who pulled any string he could in his defense. Moreover, other Nuremberg defendants in positions similar to Speer's were hanged, most notably Fritz Sauckel
Fritz Sauckel
Ernst Friedrich Christoph "Fritz" Sauckel was a Nazi war criminal, who organized the systematic enslavement of millions from lands occupied by Nazi Germany...
, who actually worked under Speer's orders. His claim to have tried to kill Hitler is usually cited as one of the main reasons he was spared the noose.
While arguments over Speer's guilt are ongoing, Inside the Third Reich is used by historians on all sides as a primary source on the inner workings of the Nazis. Speer's supporters have sardonically noted that even historians who claim Speer is untrustworthy nonetheless incorporate the memoirs into their work.
Miniseries
The book was made into a miniseries of the same title in 1982, originally broadcast on network television by the American Broadcasting CompanyAmerican Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
(ABC). The movie departs significantly from the memoirs, most notably in how it portrays Speer's perception of Nazi atrocities. In his memoirs, Speer mentions the growing persecution of Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
during the 1930s. He then goes on to say that there was no way that he could have known what was happening to the Jews. However, one did not need any secret knowledge of the exact details of government programs to know that Jews were being beaten and expropriated and were disappearing from German society. The movie recognizes this contradiction; for example, it portrays Speer's reaction, or, to be specific, lack of reaction, to Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
.
Speer was portrayed in the movie by Rutger Hauer, Goebbels by Ian Holm
Ian Holm
Sir Ian Holm, CBE is an English actor known for his stage work and for many film roles. He received the 1967 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for his performance as Lenny in The Homecoming and the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of King Lear...
, and Hitler by Derek Jacobi
Derek Jacobi
Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and film director.A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in...
, a role for which he was nominated for an Emmy. The miniseries did win 2 Emmys, one in outstanding achievement in film sound editing and outstanding directing in a limited series or a special DGA; also outstanding directorial achievement in dramatic specials.
Additionally, almost every movie that deals with Hitler (especially near the end of his life) draws at least partly on Inside the Third Reich, a long list that includes Der Untergang
Downfall (film)
Downfall is a 2004 German/Italian/Austrian epic war film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, depicting the final ten days of Adolf Hitler's life in his Berlin bunker and Nazi Germany in 1945....
.
Literature
}} [Translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston.] Originally published in German as Erinnerungen [Recollections], Propyläen/Ullstein, 1969. Republished in paperback in 1997 by Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-0-684-82949-4.- Persico, Joseph (1995). Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial. New York: Penguin Books Reprint Edition. ISBN 0-14-016622-X.
- O'Donnell, James (2001). The Bunker. New York: Da Capo Press (reprint). ISBN 0-306-80958-3.
- Sereny, GittaGitta SerenyGitta Sereny is an Austrian-born biographer, historian and investigative journalist whose writing focuses mainly on the Holocaust and child abuse. She is the stepdaughter of the economist Ludwig von Mises....
(1995) Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. London: Macmillian. ISBN 0-330-34697-0.
External links
- Inside the Third Reich online ebook.