Forbidden History - Architect of Evil: The Story of Albert Speer

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

In his role as Adolf Hitler's favourite architect, Albert Speer was a central figure in the Fuhrer's inner circle and helped cement his position in power. Cast List: Dr. Karina Urbach: Author, ‘Go-Betweens for Hitler’ Dr. Magnus Brechtken: Author, ‘Albert Speer: A German Career’ Dr. Paul Gasket: Author, ‘The Architecture of Oppression’ Dr. Alexander Schmidt: Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds Guy Walters: Author & Historian  Shalina Patel: Historian Ingmar Arnold: Berliner Unterwelten  Nigel Jones: Author & Historian  Dr. Susanne Willems: Author, ‘The Resettled Jew’ Piotr Setkiewicz: Auschwitz Memorial Research Centre Dr. Isabell Trommer: Author, ‘Justification and Discharge: Albert Speer in the Federal Republic’  Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. There is still this fascination with evil to this very day, and there is this fascination with people who knew Hitler. There was a craving for hearing more. Albert Spear comes out of prison in 1966.

He was close to Hitler, and the public wanted to know everything about him. Speer became what we would call a media celeb. And he came over a civilized European man who had seen the error of his ways. But it was an extended exercise in obfuscating his true role. An ambitious young architect eager to make his mark. Albert Speer rose quickly through the Nazi ranks.

Architecture and the war were seen as complementary and integrated goals. Hitler found in Speer the person that realized his visions in architecture. Driven to succeed no matter the cost, Speer would transcend the role of architect for the regime's benefit and his own. There's this view of Albert Speer

that he was the good Nazi. Those two words should not be put in the same sentence together. He treated people like commodities to be used. and then tossed aside to their deaths. But while many of his cohorts paid with their lives, somehow Spier bought himself a second chance. He was very successful in shaping these fairy tales, so to speak.

The most intriguing question is why he was successful. Six months after the end of the Second World War in Europe, inside the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, the trial of the century began. One by one, former high-ranking Nazis filed through. Among the 21 defendants present was Albert Speer. And like all of those on trial here, he entered the same plea. But this was where the similarities ended,

and where Spier launched a lifelong campaign to rewrite his story. Spier starts very early in 45 to create his own myths, that he is this artistic person who just somehow got into trouble and didn't really mean to. The Americans, they capture him, they interview him, and he is very helpful, and they start to like him. I mean, there's this educated middle-class guy, and he's doing his best to help. So, yeah, he charms them. When the trial starts in 1945, people particularly from Britain and the United States have a certain image of Speer. He is regarded as this technical nerd. He's not that ideological guy.

One of the great lies that Speer himself promoted at the Nuremberg tribunals and after was that he was really just captivated by Hitler and he was just following orders in many ways. On trial, Speer's life was hanging in the balance, but he was an experienced tactician when it came to getting what he wanted. Speer at every stage of his career, he knows how to please Hitler, how to strategize the relationship. His strategy works again. I mean, it worked with Hitler and unfortunately worked at Nuremberg again. Three miles from the courtroom lie the remains of the structure that truly launched Speer's career within the Nazi party and first brought him close to Hitler.

The Zeppelin Tribune. Hitler knows exactly that architecture is an important message to show not only his leadership, but that this new German is a strong state. Following election victory in 1933, Hitler began consolidating power on his path towards dictatorship. But to build an empire, he needed a solid base, a loyal and devoted following. The first rallies in the 20s presented the Nazi party as a new German political movement. But it was a thing about the party only. After 1933, it was an official event, party rally of the whole Reich.

So if you have not such place to come. together. There is something missing. Speer created a powerful cultic site for the Nazis that helped raise Hitler to the level of a worshipped leader. We stand here on the place where Hitler holds his speeches behind him. It was a place for the special guests. And under him there are standing the uniform masses. Although in the whole world, this tribune was presented as a symbol,

symbol of the new strong Germany. This commission was the starting point for Speer's meteoric rise, but he was by no means the first choice for the job. Born into a wealthy family, Speer followed in his father's footsteps to become an architect. While studying in Berlin, he witnessed Hitler's speak. He'd later claim it was this event, not the ideology, that first drew him to the Nazis. What he's telling us in his memoirs, that there was his kind of awakening experience in December 1930. This is fake. This is an invention.

When this event took place where I had already been a member of the National Socialist Automobile Club in the area where he lived, and he was even the chairman of this. When you look at his life, you always have to take it with a pinch of something. because even on minor issues, he's not telling the truth. In Berlin, Speer caught the attention of high-ranking Nazi Joseph Goebbels and quickly proved a talented designer and creative event manager. They saw there is someone, if you give him something to do, he will organize it more or less perfectly and with great ambition, and he gets things done.

In 1934, Hitler's attention was drawn to Nuremberg. But after the sudden deaths of his favorite architects, Speer sensed an opportunity to step out of Gerbil's shadow. Speer, who has been done organizational things, but he's just one among others. In using his elbows, in being very ambitious, he brings himself, so to speak, step by step into the forefront. With Nuremberg, he is able to achieve the kind of architectural success that no one in his family could have ever dreamed of. Scher was 30 in 1935, 30, 30, 3.0. It is a very, very young age for someone to have that kind of architectural responsibility and the ear of the leader of the dictatorship.

Construction of Nuremberg's national side of pilgrimage would continue into the war years. But Speer's initial focus was the Zeppelin Field. This arena has four sides, and the longest is the main stand, stand, where Hitler would be alongside his officials and other high-ranking Nazis. And you've got these tall columns along the length of it, these huge, long swastika flags draping down them. The other three sides of the arena are filled with spectators, but the real spectacle was down below in the centre. That's got enough space for around 200,000

parading, marching, saluting Nazis. It was here an atmosphere of celebration. It was not a normal place. It was a place where you can see lights, flags, the masses. The way that people would enter the stadium, the way that they would walk towards Hitler, pled their allegiance to him, is this idea that we're all here as the people,

as the Volksgermineshaft. But there's one person who is leading us, and everything at Nuremberg is geared towards perpetuating that idea. Each year, Speer's sight was transformed into a theater, showcasing the country's unity, its new ideology, and the power at its core. Speer has this great idea of these cathedral of lights. The lights turn on the moment Hitler enters the stadium.

So it's like Messiah is coming and then the lights go on. I mean, this effect is brilliant. This event was something that a normal man, a normal woman, would never forget this is a plan of the Nazi propaganda. This works without words. It works with the atmosphere. And that is what Speer here created. The various events of the week-long rallies were used to announce new laws,

bolster public support, and display Germany's new image to the world. Speer was placed in charge of overseeing the creation of a larger permanent site for this. A 130 foot wide by a little over a mile long road would stretch through the center, while grand structures were intended to line each side. It's really the engineering side of Schererber that makes his career. His ability to organize the scale of Nuremberg as it quickly expands from one building project to a much larger scale complex. This is when you see a kind of tipping point which the blurb is

between Speer's architect and Spears engineer, is in full force. Today, where a lake now sits, once stood the foundations of the most ambitious structure of all, an enormous venue designed to host war games. In this place, the German stadiums, the biggest stadium of the world, should be built. 400,000 people could go in there. The architecture was very important because Hitler said sometimes architecture is a word of stone. The message of this building, the biggest in the world,

is that nobody worldwide can fight against this Germany. The ceremony held here in 1937 signaled both the direction Europe was heading in and the importance of architecture to the regime. Success of spear was also the success of Hitler. Every year you see, okay, another step is done. So the people really think, okay, this is reality. We are successful.

It's not a nonsense what's Hitler talking about. What happens quite quickly is that Hitler and Schauer become closer and closer. They're bonding over architectural drawings and plans. They become friends. No one else had that kind of relationship. He wanted to be part of that. state, he wanted to be in the inner circle. I can only speculate that that ambition, which is clearly marked in his character and in his actions, also gave him the kind of sense of

fulfillment that drove him further and further into meeting the goals of Hitler. His desire to gain Hitler's approval, however, led him to a decision that would later define his legacy. The German stadium, this project, is the beginning of the title of the dial of the title of connection between Speer and the system of the concentration camps. Speer's authority was expanding, his workforce was growing, and his projects now reached beyond Nuremberg. But the scale of his designs meant demand for building materials far outweighed supply. A deal with Heinrich Himmler and the SS provided a solution.

In early 38 there was a meeting between Scher, Himmler and Hitler, in which the formation of the SS Company, the German Earth and Stoneworks, was discussed, and really these plans were finalized. Heinrich Himmler had the concentration camps. Albert Speer had the money. So they collaborated to build up quarries and brick factories. It's still surprising for us to think about

the reorganization of the concentration of the concentration of the concentration camp system after 1936. And to realize that some of those camps were chosen in very obscure locations. like Flossenburg and Matalzen. These locations were chosen because of the stone that was available. The use of forced labor to produce building materials grew steadily, and it marked the beginning of a horrific partnership.

This is the deal, the pact that Schwer is making with the devil, frankly. Speer crossed a line with this project. He wanted to be Hitler's architect, and he wanted to create his projects and the costs for others are nothing what he thinks about. Speer had helped Hitler set the foundations of the Third Reich in Nuremberg, but he was already working on something far larger, a project on an unprecedented scale. In the southwest of Berlin stands a structure that offers a glimpse into Speer's plans for the city. This building is made to prove the stability of the ground.

So to put the pressure on the ground to see how the soil reacts to a heavy white building like this one, which is, I don't know, 12,000 tons or so. The funny fact is this was a building that shouldn't stand here very long. Not longer than 20 weeks, but it is the only surviving fragment of this planings. Instruments recorded any structural movement due to concerns the ground was too soft to support the construction of a great triumphal arch. One feature of a far larger project. You all know the Arctic Triumph in Paris, don't you? So, and this triumph arc in Berlin would have four times as big.

Four times as big. And he wanted to show that Germany is the power number one in the world. And this should be represented in the capital. Hitler never really liked Berlin. Berlin for him was full of the kind of industrial capital and Jewish population that he really was antagonistic against. And he brought Albert Schauer in very early on to redesign the city. They were going to rebuild it so that it would become a German city, a Nazi city. At the Berliner Untervelden Museum is a recreation of a model showing a key section of this new Berlin. now referred to as Germania.

Based upon Hitler's own sketches, in the south stood the vast triumphal arch. A processional avenue then led two and a half miles to the Great Hall, Germania's centerpiece, that would have stood three times as tall as New York's Statue of Liberty. The Great Hall would have been

the most ambitious project of the whole axis, up to 300 meters in height, in height for a capacity of up to 180,000 people. It would have been used for party rallies of the big speeches of Hitler or his fellows. The people that would have come to Berlin should have the feeling, you as an individual, you are an end. But being part of an end state, you're big.

So you're part of a mass, and the mass is everything and you are nothing. In the late 1930s, despite an impending war. For Hitler, this project remained vitally important. I think it's a false assumption to think about architecture and political goals as opposite. These were cultural ambitions that had to be built. They were not merely about building a massive party structure out of stone. That was important too, but that was part of a much bigger ambition to literally rebuild Germany.

And rebuilding there is specifically about construction. So to me, the war was also about building. That was the goal of the war. Hitler always thought big in architecture. He thought, how will these buildings look in hundreds or thousands of years' time when they've been reduced to ruins? He wanted to see these grandiose buildings that people would look on them and think, And this was a great civilization surpassing Egypt, Greece and Rome.

Hitler, of course, planned a 1,000-year-old Reich. It would last forever. And Speer would have become the creator of this. To realize Hitler's dream would have made him the greatest architect of all times in his mind. For years, Germania was viewed as a largely unfulfilled fantasy. The repositioned Victory column and the White Biden Street of its east-west axis being the most visible relics. But in the late 1930s, many people were being torn from their homes to make way for Speer's project.

And within the city of Berlin, the construction that was planned through Speer's agency, all these new buildings, all of this went through quarters where people lived in. began in 1938, with up to 130,000 apartments chalked up for demolition. But Berlin was already suffering from a lack of housing. Dr. Willem's research suggests Speer took it upon himself to find a solution. Speer decided to overcome this through channeling the entire violence which is inherent to urban planning in terms of pushing people out of of one quarter into another, it was channeled against the Jewish population of Berlin.

He proposed to make Jews leave their homes to make place for tenants who had to clear these areas of reconstruction. This is something which Speer suggests without anyone giving him this idea. This is his idea. Spears' institution sets up, so to speak, the register with all these Berlin Jews, where they live, where they are moved. Speer's powers were growing,

and his actions showed he was in step with the sentiment of the time. This was two months before Kristallnacht, the nationwide pogrom against Jews. He's been given a blank check, essentially, to be able to be able to be able to be able to create the city of the Nazi dreams, really. And so with that comes the removal of people

that they don't want in that city. It's going to be a city to celebrate the Aryan race. And Albert Speer is intrinsically aware of that. By the time Speer's office ceased their evictions in November, 1942, they had commissioned some 23,000 Jewish-occupied apartments to be emptied. Mass deportations followed. The misery Jews were forced in through Spears agency wasn't seen in the city of Berlin.

It was mass deported with the people into ghettos and concentration camps and extermination camps in the end. By the time of the Nuremberg trials in 1945, Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels had each taken their own life. life. The aim at Nuremberg was to hold to account those who could still answer for their crimes. But with limited time to prepare, this proved a serious challenge. Many of the people who are either judges or researchers at this stage do not really understand the whole of the search right. They don't have sufficient documents and they don't know where to look for what these people have actually as a role. And so there's a lack of knowledge about what actually Speer had done prior to 1945.

And he, of course, doesn't say anything about this. They never talked about how he conspired to organize, how he worked with the SS to set up the punishment of people, how he and his staff in Berlin were responsible for instigating a plan to deprive of German Jews of housing rights. These were the kind of elements that he conveniently left out of his record at Nuremberg. Instead, Speer focused on distancing himself from the true horrors.

It was an approach he'd replicate years later in his memoirs. He realized that he was not going to get off and that he could limit the damage, as it were, by using the stereotype that culture was innocent. The culture was even good. Culture was something that was a side show, something that was merely propaganda.

It really didn't have much to do with the running of the Nazi state. But in the later years of the war, by increasing the use of forced labor from the concentration camps, Speer left a lasting mark on history. Albert Speer and Handra Himla were partners in crime, so to speak.

They were organizing this together. And they did so in 1938, 1935. 1939, pre-war, and they expanded this during the war. As the Second World War gripped Europe, Nazi Germany's early succession of rapid victories was soon followed by long, arduous battles. Speer's architectural plans were put on hold, and his influence began to wane. But an opportunity soon presented itself in February 1942, when Armaments Minister Fritz Tott died unexpectedly. From Hitler's point of view, Speer has already been in charge of management of infrastructure,

management of buildings, management of logistics, management of a huge workforce, which is exactly what Fritz Tot has done. Speer, he was a perfectly okay architect, but he's not regarded as being a special architect. But what he did do is get the job. was get the job done. So although Schpere doesn't have any military experience or anything like that, suddenly he's put into this position as Minister of Armaments. His new role as an armament minister is a turning point in his life

because he was with Hitler, with Himmler, a central person in the leadership of the Third Reich. He later on portrays it, of course, completely differently, that Hitler talks him into it. But no, he was eager. He wanted to take over again. The moment he becomes a Minister of Armaments, he becomes the war criminal.

Now he really commits crimes. A site that helps reveal the impact Speer had on the war is Burkinau concentration camp, a part of the larger Auschwitz complex, and the site of approximately one million murders. We are in the middle of the central parts of the main camp at Birkenau

that was composed of two major construction sectors. This one called B2, with several sections for the barracks. And on the other side of the roads, there is a planet almost identical compound called B3. Each pair of chimneys visible there represented one residential block for prisoners. Both these sectors were designed to accommodate about 60,000. prisoners. Spier authorized an expansion that included B3 in 1942. While never fully realized, this project aligned with his approach to solving a pressing issue

how to increase the output of the armaments industry. Speer was interested, of course, not only in sole expansion of Auschwitz, accommodating more and more prisoners, but rather he used to treat them as potential source of labor for his armand industry. Spier oversaw a new direction in the use of the camp network. Select major camps became distribution sites, sending out workers to sub-camps established close to privately owned industrial facilities.

The war was starting to go badly for Germany, and more and more radical measures would be needed to provide essentially the manpower to produce conventional armaments the tanks, the planes, and so on. Bergenau became the focal point for this system in Auschwitz. But with the camp also being designated as an extermination center, the plans for its expansion included other structures beyond barracks.

With the arrival of the first large transports of Jews, it became clear that the camp is not large enough to accommodate them all. There was not such need to keep them, keep them, the children, the elderly people here, and therefore the solution of the crowding of the camp at Birkenau was found in the form of the gas chambers and large crematureas. Spier always denied having knowledge of the Holocaust.

But after cross-referencing reports with a plan of the camp from the time, Dr. Villams has no doubt about how this expansion transformed the site. Now these areas in the... The plan redlined show what Speer allowed DSS to build in terms of allowance for construction material. And what is part as well are two crematoria with adjacent gas chambers and two with underground gas chambers. This was a project to turn Balkanau permanently into a camp

where those not fit for work were exterminated on the spot in the gas chambers and those who were deemed fit they were selected to become camp inmates. Exactly what Speer knew of the details has never been proven. But in May 1943, he sent a team to ensure, respect the progress and report back. When they were there, transport of roughly a thousand Polish Jews came. Most of them were killed at the very day.

And the next day, they reported in Berlin to Speer that everything was going according to what Speer was expecting in effectiveness in Auschwitz. The use of slave labor from the camps expanded rapidly in the final stages of the war. stages of the war, and played a vital part in helping sustain the German war effort. We must remember that he was very successful. In the middle of 1944, the production of fighter airplanes, for instance,

was many times higher than it was at the beginning of the war. We can argue till the counts come home about how long, but I think it's undeniably true that he did extend the war, certainly by months, if not by a year or so, because just the general. because German industry was able to function to an astonishing degree. All these things were done when Germany was under siege, when the cities of Germany were being grounded into rubble and dust, and they were done under the supervision and under the orders

and under the management of Albert Speer. Despite the increase in armaments production, by April 1945, Allied forces were closing in on Berlin. But first, they reached Nuremberg, and Speer's Nazi party rally ground. Nuremberg was well known to an international audience, through photographs, through newsreel, et cetera. And so when they get there in 45,

it was an incredibly important moment for them to kind of symbolize, we've got here, this regime is no longer functioning, and we're gonna blow this swastika up. As a representation of the fact that, whilst this may have been a place of absolute Nazi ideology in the 30s, that is no longer the case now in 1945.

In 1945. With the war over, when it came to his time on the stand, Speer did something the others did not. Spier is the only one who takes some sort of general responsibility, not guilt. He always refuses to admit that he is somehow guilty. But he says, well, I was close to Hitler. Well, I was part of the leadership as an armament minister.

And therefore, I'm overall. some sort of responsible for what happened. The records showed Speer had overseen the mass exploitation of forced labor. But questions remained. How aware was he of the conditions of the camps? How much did he really know of the true horrors taking place? Speer would claim he didn't know what was going on at the camps. And furthermore, what he did know, the conditions were acceptable.

Yeah, this is nonsense. He visited the camps. He had had reports from his team about other camps, even including Auschwitz-Birkenau. Speer knows the depths of depravity. He knows the evil. He's a part of it. To aid his defense, Speer hoped to deflect blame. One of the other people on trial was Fritz Sauckel,

who was responsible for getting all these slave laborers from all of Europe into Speer's factories. And so he was a subordinate, so to speak. Speer described that actually Sauckel was responsible for this, because Speer had had the real responsibility. On the 1st of October 1946, after more than 200 days in court, the verdicts were read. 18 of the 21 defendants present were found guilty.

11 of those were sentenced to death. But Albert Speer was not among them. The four judges, had narrowly spared his life. That decision was split. So all those efforts on Schpere's part, creating his image of himself, as someone who didn't know what was happening,

you know, it paid off. Eventually, that vote goes in his favor because one judge relented, and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Instead, his rather stupid deputy circle, he hanged for it. I think there's a strong case to be made that they hanged the wrong man.

If the judges had known what we know, it is as simple as with Hermann Goering or Heinrich Himmler or Joseph Goebbels or Adolf Hitler himself, he would have certainly been executed, absolutely certain. In Berlin, where Speer's great hall was meant to be built, today stands the modern government district, a site purposefully designed in opposition to those earlier Nazi visions. But in 1966, as Speer's release date neared, This area, like the rest of the city, still bore the scars of the fallout from the war. Berlin was a divided city, and Berlin wasn't the capital of the Federal German Republic.

And right behind the Rijstaks building, the Berlin Wall ran through the city. So everything was really different than Speer and Hitler had planned. The world had moved on. But Speer recognized there could be a place for him within it. When Speer was in prison, he and his wife received a lot of letters from journalists and publishers from all over the world. So he already knew that there was interest in his person and his story. Speer realized that he could create his own truth, if you like, his own narrative. He could write his own story.

So at midnight on October 1st in 1966, Speer was released from Spandau Prison. There were journalists from all over the world. Speer obviously enjoys the attention. And so Speer became an author and published several books. His memoirs, which was published all over the world, became a worldwide bestseller in 1969, inside the Third Reich. This is a man who's telling me. what it was really like and how he was misled and led down the garden path by Hitler. Not to put too final point on it or to beat around the push,

Speer was a very successful liar. Speer was skillful and he was opportunistic, but for his second career, I think it was more important that there was a society who wanted to believe him. When Speer came out of the prison and that, as someone who was close to Hitler, I didn't know about the Holocaust. The ordinary German could say the same. So he was something like an alibi for the German society.

Schpere was always in demand. He was publishing books, there were a magazine and newspaper interviews with him. He was on TV a lot. He was even interviewed by Playboy of all magazines. So, you know, he becomes a celebrity, if you like. Spier died in 1981, leaving behind a web of lies that took decades to unravel. I think the legend lasted as long as people wanted to believe

in Spears' version of the history. In the 90s, the whole picture of Nazi perpetrator changed. So it wasn't only the sadistic SS man who has been a Nazi. There could be a bourgeois figure like Albert Speer. While great strides have been made to overturned, turn Speer's accounts. Through their repetition over years, many parts of the myth remain, clouding the true history. Without the efforts by Speer, Himmler, Goebbels and Hitler, and by being responsible for this lasting warfare,

he is responsible for more than several million people who died through this process. In the last year of the war, roughly 16,000 people people died per day. So Albert Speer is one of the most important war criminals of the Second World War. Speer's job may have been to try and build a thousand-year right and all the buildings associated with that. That of course never really happened. The war put an end to that. But actually, Speer's greatest creation, if you like, was his own mythology.

He was never really made to account for his sins. Speer fooled the world.