Document Analyst's Report

During April I completed the analysis of the defense documents for Albert Speer, the armaments and war economy minister, and began those of Constantin von Neurath, the foreign minister in 1932-1938. I will comment on Neurath’s evidence in next month’s report.

Workers and accountability: One post-war report on the exploitation of French workers noted that Speer enjoyed a “superiority” in the regime’s hierarchy over Fritz Sauckel, who recruited or conscripted European workers for Germany’s war economy (which was largely under Speer’s management), and that Speer used this advantage to protect French workers in the armaments factories Speer controlled in France, which Speer cited in his defense. But given Speer’s superiority over Sauckel in the control of labor, it seems illogical to me that Sauckel was executed for the exploitation of foreign workers while Speer, who had more responsibility for it, received a prison sentence. Some of Speer’s actions outside the labor program may explain part of the difference.

Some assistance from an unexpected source: In a speech about production management in 1944 Speer noted the problems that his engineer-managers had faced with the government bureaucracy. But “we were fortunate enough to see, through one of the first big air attacks on Berlin a great portion of the files of the Ministry destroyed.” The burdensome paperwork went up in flames.

Managing the defeat: Once the Allies achieved their landing in Normandy and advanced on the western front, Speer concluded that the war was inevitably lost. He anticipated a steady decline in armaments production and then the collapse of the whole economy. His response, according to his evidence, was to try to protect the economy in order to keep the population fed and sheltered. Speer cited an old declaration by Hitler that in a crisis, leaders should sacrifice themselves to protect the people. (Hitler told him the opposite in March 1945, asserting that “If the war is to be lost the nation will also perish,” and that any survivors would be “only the inferior ones.”) As the regime collapsed, Speer tried to fill the vacuum, asserting control over the economy in a radio speech in mid-April and directing that economic infrastructure was not to be destroyed (contrary to Hitler’s scorched-earth orders), that political prisoners were to be protected, and that sabotage was not to be committed in areas occupied by the Allies.

Hastening the end: As the Allied armies closed in but Hitler refused to concede in February and March 1945, Speer—according to his testimony and some documentary evidence—planned on desperate measures to end the war by eliminating the Nazi extremists who controlled the regime. In mid-February, according to Dietrich Stahl, Speer tried to procure a poison gas grenade to assassinate Bormann, Himmler, and Goebbels in the chancellery building; on the witness stand Speer said his targets were Bormann, Goebbels, and Hitler. The poison gas method proved to be unworkable. According to Stahl, in late March Speer proposed to kill Bormann, Himmler, and Goebbels in an ambush outside the chancellery, but could not carry out the plan.

Matt Seccombe, 30 April 2024