Word: speers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
Broken Bridges. After Munitions Minister Fritz Todt was killed in a plane crash in 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...
Each setback in the war brought the same reaction from Hitler: "We can only go forward. The bridges behind us are broken." The Führer belabored his generals openly as "notorious liars as well as notorious cowards," and took charge of the war himself. He refused to allow Speer to build jet fighters to defend Germany against Allied aircraft, wanted jet bombers instead to attack the enemy. He persuaded Speer to develop the V-2 rocket. "It was probably one of the greatest errors I made," Speer writes. "We should have concentrated our efforts on the production...
That was not Speer's only error. One day a friend, confused and stuttering, advised Speer never to accept an invitation to visit a concentration camp in Upper Silesia. He had seen things there, he said, that he dared not describe. "I did not pursue the matter. I did not want to know what was happening there. He must have been talking about Auschwitz. From that moment on, I was inextricably involved in these crimes because, out of fear that I might discover something which would have forced me to certain steps, I shut my eyes. Because I failed...
...Speer's work, nothing remains except the Zeppelin Stadium in Nürnberg, where Speer created Europe's first light-and-sound spectaculars during prewar party rallies. "I am glad none of my plans were realized," he says today. Speer would like to practice architecture again, but because of his past he is unlikely to get commissions.' He accepts the situation. "In the life of the state, there is responsibility for your own area. Beyond this, there has to be a collective responsibility for the decisive things if you are among the leaders...