Word: hitlers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Speer joined the Nazi party in 1931. After performing odd jobs, he was offered an opportunity to remodel a party headquarters building in Berlin. Then he was hired to work personally for Hitler. "I was 28 years old," he says. "I sold my soul like Faust to be able to build something great. In Hitler I found my Mephistopheles...
Final Act. Speer became part of the Nazi inner circle and was invited to join Hitler at his eyrie near Obersalzberg in the Alps above Berchtesgaden. Visits there were a numbing ordeal. Long lunches were followed by short walks to Hitler's Alpine teahouse for tea and cookies. Hitler carefully avoided sweets. "Imagine me with a paunch," he would say. "It would be political suicide." The Führer was prone to fall asleep in the middle of his own monologues...
Speer evokes one memorable night at Obersalzberg. It was Aug. 23, 1939. Hitler had just received a telegram from Stalin agreeing to the nonaggression pact that set the stage for the invasion of Poland nine days later. An unusual polar light flooded the sky and, Speer writes, "the final act of the Götterdämmerung could not have been staged with greater effect. All our faces and hands cast off an unnatural red glow. Abruptly Hitler turned to one of his military adjutants and said: That looks like much blood. This time it won't come...
...February 1942, Speer was selected to succeed him. As Minister, he found himself constantly battling colleagues. Almost at war's end, SS Leader Heinrich Himmler was using scarce materials to build a country house for his mistress. Speer's plea for women workers was vetoed by Hitler, at Martin Bormann's suggestion, on the grounds that it would keep them from producing good Aryan offspring. Half a million Ukrainian girls were brought into Germany instead, to become servants in the homes of Nazi functionaries...
After Stalingrad, Hitler stayed up later and later as insomnia overcame him. Meals, which had once been merely lengthy, now became distasteful. Hitler, a vegetarian, insisted on describing the meat soup served to his tablemates as "corpse tea." Along with Eva Braun, Hitler said, his only true friend was his German shepherd Blondi. When the dog acted friendly toward other people, the Führer would angrily order it to heel...