'Did he know…?'
This was the question that plagued Albert Speer for all of his post-1945 life. Speer, ‘Hitler’s architect’ and Minister of Armaments from 1942-5, was the only member of the Nazi high command to express remorse for his involvement in the Nazi regime, and for the crimes committed under its name. He was sentenced to 20 years in Spandau prison, and was duly released at the end of his sentence in 1966. Throughout his trial and the rest of his life, he maintained that he did not know about the 'Final Solution' or the existence of extermination camps.
Speer's is an interesting case because it links to the perennial question of how apparently ‘normal’ human beings could be tied up in a regime that committed such unspeakable acts of cruelty. Was it the case, as Speer's story seems to suggest, that it was possible to work at the heart of Nazi Germany and still know nothing of what was happening to the Jews? If the second most powerful man in Germany, as of 1943 onwards, knew nothing, surely that exonerates most Nazis and Germans in general of any sense of guilt?
Of course, Speer himself was almost defined by his admissions of guilt and remorse. Yet that guilt often seemed to be by association: he was guilty of causing the holocaust by virtue of being part of the Nazi regime, and by not trying to find out if such things were happening, but not because of any of his own personal actions. This approach can be found most clearly in the pages of Speer’s memoirs, Inside the Third Reich. He wrote that Gauletier Hanke of Lower Silesia warned him never to accept an invitation to visit the concentration camp at Upper Silesia, as terrible things were happening there. Speer then records that he failed to enquire further, by asking either Himmler or Hitler about what took place at the camp. He continues:
‘These seconds [when Hanke told Speer this, and Speer did not inquire] were uppermost in my mind when I stated to the international court at the Nuremberg Trial that, as an important member of the leadership of the Reich, I had to share the total responsibility for all that had happened. For from that moment on I was inescapably contaminated morally; from fear of discovering something which might have made me turn from my course, I had closed my eyes ... Because I failed at that time, I still feel, to this day, responsible for Auschwitz in a wholly personal sense.”
The problem with this confession is twofold: Speer both claims responsibility for too much and yet fails to reveal the true extent of his failings.
The reader is almost made to exclaim, ‘no, no, don’t be so hard on yourself!’ Speer appears to have preempted any criticism by admitting to more than he was actually guilty of – of course he was not personally responsible for Auschwitz, yet how noble of him to claim so! Clearly this confession of guilt also held a self-serving role. In a 1971 interview with playboy magazine, Speer said that every one of his confessions made him feel ‘freer’. Yet the interviewer still said that he came away from the meeting feeling that that 'a veil has been drawn' between Speer and the truth.
Still, in that interview, and in a sworn affidavit sent to the South Board of Deputies of South African Jews, who had contacted Speer in their bid to counter an example of Holocaust denial, Speer went further than he had done at Nuremburg, and described his involvement in the holocaust in terms of ‘Billigung,’ which roughly translates as ‘passive toleration/concurrence or active condonation/approval’. This suggests a more direct knowledge than Speer had admitted in his autobiography.
And yet even this can still be slipped into Speer’s own narrative of his supposed limited knowledge of events. Is there anything that could link Speer more directly to a knowledge of the holocaust? Many accusations have centred on his presence at a speech given by Heinrich Himmler in Posen on October 6, 1943, in which Himmler explicitly described the progress of the extermination of the Jews. Although Speer had given a speech at the conference that same morning, he claimed to have left before Himmler gave his speech in the afternoon. This despite the fact that it later emerged that Himmler even referred to Speer directly (‘you, comrade Speer’) in his speech!
Speer secured sworn testimonies from fellow Nazis that he had not been present for Himmler’s speech, and yet in 2007, a set of letters went up for auction that seemed to offer a final rejection of that claim. The letters were between Speer and Hélène Jeanty, the widow of a Belgian resistance leader. In one letter from 1971, Speer confessed that "There is no doubt - I was present as Himmler announced on October 6 1943 that all Jews would be killed". He continued: "Who would believe me that I suppressed this, that it would have been easier to have written all of this in my memoirs?"
Speer is no longer alive to defend himself. No doubt if he was, he would develop another clever rouse to explain away this apparent outright confession. Perhaps this is what is so intriguing about Speer, his life is a study of the depths to which man will go to deceive not only others, but himself, of the truth.
References/ Further Reading
Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich
Speer’s autobiography
Gita Sereny, ‘Albert Speer, His Battle With the Truth’
Authoritative psychobiography of Speer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/mar/13/secondworldwar.kateconnolly
Article concerning the letters to Helene Jeanty
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_fi.php?ModuleId=10007128&MediaId=5687
Video footage of a concentration camp survivor who attested to seeing Speer visit the camp.
