Albert Speer: Architect, Minister, and Hitler’s Closest Friend

If asked to recall the Nazi Party’s most powerful figures, certain names are likely to spring to mind. Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Goering, and Hess are typically among the men many will immediately think of, each having achieved their own personal infamy. One man, however, is often overlooked.

Quiet and reserved, he was closer to Hitler than anyone, yet through a calculated campaign of lies and deceit, he would craft a narrative that would see him emerge from the war a blameless victim of his own regime.

That man was Albert Speer.

Speer was born March 19, 1905, in Mannheim, Southwest Germany to a wealthy upper-middle-class family. His father, Albert Friedrich Speer, ran his own architectural firm, making the Speers one of the leading families in the city.

Butlers, cooks, chauffeurs—he was afforded every luxury during his childhood, but due to ill health and physical weakness, it was not a time he would look back on with fondness. His classmates and two brothers would bully him relentlessly for this frailty.

In 1918, Speer and his family moved to Heidelberg, and his health soon improved. He took a keen interest in sports soon after, particularly rowing and skiing. It was here, too, on his way to school at the age of 17, that he would meet his future wife, Margarete Weber.

His marks at school improved as well, and he quickly settled on becoming an architect like his father (rather than a mathematician, as he had originally intended). After two years studying at the University of Karlsruhe and the Technical University of Munich, he transferred to the Technical University of Berlin in 1925. Half a year after passing his final exams, he became assistant to his professor, Heinrich Tessenow, a man he described as his first “catalyst” and “inspiration.” So deep was his respect for him that, years later, in 1933, when Tessenow was barred from teaching due to his advocacy of anti-Nazi ideals, Speer would use his then-privileged position to have him reinstated.

Architect & Nazi: A Career in the Making

In late 1930, Speer first heard Hitler speak. The future Führer was addressing a group of students at Berlin University, and Speer quickly found himself under his spell. Using his powerful oratory, Hitler promised solutions to the economic turmoil caused by the Great Depression. He also offered up some convenient scapegoats: communists and Jews.

A few weeks later, Speer attended a rally led by Joseph Goebbels. Convinced by his rhetoric and the violence that followed the demonstration, he joined the Nazi Party the following day, member number 474,481.

Speer left his position as Tessenow’s assistant and returned to Mannheim in early 1932. He hoped to make a living as an architect in his own right, but Germany’s economic situation made it all but impossible. Amid his struggle, however, an opportunity would soon present itself.

While on a visit to Berlin, Speer was offered the chance to renovate the party’s district headquarters for the region’s Gauleiter (district leader), Goebbels. After the election that brought Hitler to power in March 1933, Goebbels also asked Speer to rebuild and redecorate his new Ministry of Propaganda.

His big break would come immediately after. Summoned to Nuremberg in July, Speer was asked to submit plans for the first party rally of the new government. His proposal of a giant eagle to crown the Zeppelin Field was put before Rudolf Hess, who sent Speer and his plans to Hitler himself. The Führer approved.

Following this success, Hitler had Speer work with his Munich architect, Paul Troost, to rebuild and renovate the Reich Chancellery. Hitler himself took a great interest in the construction, undertaking tours of the work almost every day. Speer would accompany him on these tours, and the Führer quickly took a liking to him. Soon after, Hitler presented him with the first of many great personal honors: an invitation to dine with him.

Such invitations would become frequent, as would more work. After remodeling the palace of Hermann Goering and the death of Troost in early 1934, Speer, now Hitler’s chief architect, was asked to oversee the funeral ceremonies of Paul von Hindenburg, who had died in August that same year. His first major commission quickly followed, with Hitler ordering him to build a more permanent installation at the Nuremberg Zeppelin Field. Speer’s design took the form of a colossal stone staircase enclosed by a long colonnade, 1,300 feet long and 80 feet high. Hitler again approved.

Speer also had grand ideas for the rallies to be held there. He envisioned marches in near-total darkness, the columns of flag-waving men lit by 130 searchlights beaming up into the night sky. This created the striking effect of a “cathedral of light,” now an enduring image of the Nazis’ architectural megalomania.

Hitler’s obsession with scale and Speer’s willingness to indulge it would result in plans that went even further in their ambition.

In 1937, Speer designed a new stadium for his Führer to be built at the party’s rally grounds in Nuremberg. With a capacity of 400,000 spectators, it was to be the biggest stadium ever built and one of the largest structures in human history. According to Speer’s calculations, it was to be 1,815 feet long and 1,518 feet wide, with towering stands over 300 feet high. The Great Pyramid of Giza, in contrast, measures 756 feet at its base. The stadium, unsurprisingly, was never completed.

In January of that same year, Speer was also commissioned to carry out Hitler’s “greatest architectural task,” the rebuilding of Berlin. He was named Inspector General of Buildings for the Renovation of the Federal Capital and given a free hand to work without informing the city government, including Berlin’s Gauleiter, Goebbels.

Hitler and Speer’s vision for the city was for its heart to be rebuilt along a massive north-south avenue, almost 400 feet wide and three miles long. Like Paris’ Champs-Élysées, it was to terminate in the south at a triumphal arch 400 feet tall, well over twice the height of the Arc de Triomphe. In the north, near the Reichstag, an even more grandiose structure was proposed: the Volkshalle. At close to 1,000 feet tall, this giant domed meeting hall was to be the city’s crowning glory.

Neither the arch nor the Volkshalle were ever built, but Berlin did get a New Reich Chancellery. Speer oversaw its design and construction in 1938, ensuring its scale and grandeur were more than to the Führer’s liking. To meet Hitler’s deadline of having it built within a year, concentration camp inmates were used to quarry the stone needed for the building’s construction. Speer had no qualms about using them as an easy source of slave labor, nor did he pay any mind to their abhorrent living conditions.

His attitude towards Berlin’s Jewish population was equally callous. In late 1938, after having just suffered one of history’s most infamous antisemitic pogroms, Kristallnacht, the community was further devastated by mass evictions of Jewish tenants instigated by Speer and his department. As part of his Berlin rebuilding project, almost half the city’s Jewish population were evicted and forcibly rehoused. Most would later be deported to ghettos in Eastern Europe, then, beginning in 1942, directly to extermination camps in Poland.

Speer’s relationship with Hitler, meanwhile, was going from strength to strength. By 1939, the two had developed an unlikely friendship, with Speer now very much a part of Hitler’s inner circle. Along with a select few others, he would join the Führer for weekly dinners and evening socials, the latter typically involving supper followed by a screening of the latest movies.

Compared to those others, however, Speer was special. He and Hitler’s relationship was built on a shared interest, a commonality he shared with no one else: architecture. It was a subject Hitler was oddly passionate about and had been for much of his life. He enjoyed nothing more than poring over sketches, models, and plans, many of which he himself personally drew up. In Speer’s own words, “in no other situation did I see him so lively, so spontaneous, so relaxed.”

The two bonded over the subject to such a degree that their relationship at this point can almost be described as, for want of a better word, a bromance. For instance, following supper at the chancellery and the obligatory late-night movie, Hitler would often go with Speer to study plans and models in his studio next door, his favorite being their model city of the new Berlin. Hitler even had doors and a path installed between the two buildings to make these twilight jaunts easier.

Speer no doubt reveled in his Führer’s attention. To him and many others, Hitler was nothing short of a phenomenon, a “hero from ancient myth” destined to be “one of the great figures in German history.”

The breakout of war in September 1939 would only strengthen his opinion of the man. Following the annexation of Poland and the successful invasions of Denmark and Norway in April 1940, Germany swept aside its old enemy, France, a month later in a campaign that lasted just over six weeks. Speer’s “hero” even had the French sign the terms of their surrender in the same railway car the Allies used for the armistice of 1918—a symbolic reversal of what many in Germany saw as the nation’s greatest humiliation.

Despite the initial victories, the war did ultimately force a pause on Berlin’s massive building projects. Speer and his department were instead reduced to the building of air raid shelters, the cleanup of debris, and demolitions. A critical shortage of manpower made such tasks extremely difficult to achieve with just German workers, most of whom had been drafted, so Speer again turned to slave labor, just as he had done with the New Reich Chancellery.

Speer’s duties expanded in 1941 and 1942 to include operations in Eastern Europe, for which he was given 30,000 workers and his own construction staff: the Baustab Speer-Ostbau. In cooperation with Heinrich Himmler, the Wehrmacht, and Organisation Todt (the Reich’s largest engineering organization), the Baustab Speer-Ostbau became what was essentially a moving concentration camp. Its inmates, mostly Jews and Soviet POWs, were used to build the Durchgangsstrasse IV, an Autobahn spanning much of western Ukraine. Tens of thousands would be worked to death during its construction.

When the head (and founder) of Organisation Todt, Fritz Todt, died in February 1942, Speer saw his power and responsibilities grow even larger. Todt had been the first Reich Minister for Armaments, and Hitler needed a replacement. Speer was not an obvious choice; he was not an engineer like Todt and knew almost nothing about armament production. What he was was Hitler’s favorite. In the Führer’s eyes, his successes up to that point (the repair of railways and roads, the design and construction of industry buildings and work camps) more than qualified him for the job, as did his youth and loyalty.

Speer inherited not only Todt’s position as Reich Minister of Armaments, but all his other positions too. With the stroke of a pen, Hitler gave him power over roads, railways, water, energy, technology, and engineering.

With such a large (and vague) remit, Speer quickly found himself in conflict with the other big hitters in Hitler’s inner circle. Spats with Hermann Göring and others over who and where his authority lay threatened to make his job frustratingly difficult, but Speer was clever, and his political instincts sharp. Using his relationship with Hitler to his advantage, it did not take long for him to consolidate his power, and by mid-1943, he had control over almost every aspect of war production.

Speer, armed with a concept he referred to as “industrial self-responsibility,” immediately set about improving the Reich’s production statistics, which did not make for good reading. Within six months of his appointment as minister, those numbers already looked to be improving: a 27% increase in guns, a 25% increase in tanks, and a near doubling of ammunition production.

He was soon hailed by Hitler, among others, for bringing about an “armaments miracle” in the face of growing difficulties. Hitler’s praise for Speer, like their relationship, would also reach new levels as a result. At the end of their monthly phone calls, for instance, when Speer signed off with the obligatory, “Heil, mein Führer!” Hitler would show his confidence in him with the jokey, appreciative reply, “Heil, Speer!”

The true reality of the Reich’s production and industry, however, was not how Speer claimed it to be. While war production did grow, it was far from the miraculous increase he readily took credit for. Using misleading statistics, inflated well beyond those above, Speer made it appear as though he had essentially doubled Germany’s entire armament output when, in reality, any improvements in production were well within what would have been expected.

The actual increase in armaments cannot be entirely credited to Speer, either. Most of the measures that led to this increase had already been instituted by his predecessor, Fritz Todt, and any production outside of Germany (notably those in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now Czechia) was simply not in his purview. Moreover, the production increases within Germany were only made possible by the procurement and use of slave labor on a massive scale, with well over one million Soviet citizens brutally seized and sent to work in its factories. Speer was more than willing to ruthlessly exploit every single one of them.

Despite Speer’s “miracle,” any increases in war production were made redundant in mid-1943 thanks to the increase in strategic bombing by the Allies. After one particularly devastating attack on Hamburg in July—an attack that crippled the city’s industry and left over 60% of its population homeless—Speer and most others could see the writing on the wall: if the bombings continued, Germany’s armament production could not be sustained.

The bombings did continue and only became more frequent. By 1944, Germany was also losing large swathes of territory to the Russians, much of which held vital natural resources (such as oil and alloy metals) that could not be replaced. With the Reich’s stockpiles dwindling, the situation was becoming desperate. As Minister of Armaments, Speer had the unenviable task of providing Hitler with increasingly bleak figures, putting a great strain on their relationship. Eventually, Hitler simply stopped receiving reports from Speer, preferring instead to receive them from his associate, Karl Saur.

Fearing for his position and overcome by stress, Speer fell seriously ill and was taken to hospital in January 1944. His condition quickly worsened, and he became intensely paranoid that those in the inner circle, namely Himmler, were behind his deterioration. Whether or not this was true, Speer did eventually recover and was back home by April. Having been away from the center of power for so long, however, his position and standing among Hitler’s intimates was greatly diminished.

Scorched Earth

As early as 1942, Speer had championed the development of programs that pushed the technological envelope, the rocketry program in particular. This would face considerable disruption from allied bombing, and it was eventually agreed that the program would be moved underground to a facility (Mittelwerk) in the Harz Mountains. Labor for the program came from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, which Speer and his staff would visit in December 1943. He was pleased with what he saw and made no protest at the appalling conditions there—conditions that would ultimately kill over one-third of its 60,000 inmates.

While the rocketry program did find some later success, it could not halt the inevitable. The D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, coupled with the endless retreats in the East, signaled the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany. By September, the Allies had reached Germany’s western border, and Hitler’s response, as it appeared in the Nazi Party’s newspaper at the time, was clear:

“Not a German stalk of wheat is to feed the enemy, not a German mouth to give him information, not a German hand to offer him help. He is to find every footbridge destroyed, every road blocked – nothing but death, annihilation, and hatred will meet him.”

For Speer, a policy of scorched earth on German soil was a step too far. He pushed back against Hitler’s orders, trying to spare as much of the nation’s industry as he could (while still advocating for a continuation of the war, it should be noted). It was now, in February 1945, that Speer claimed he plotted to assassinate Hitler. Having seen the failed attempt on his life in July of the previous year, he planned to use the nerve agent tabun rather than a bomb. He hoped to administer the gas through the air vents of the Reich Chancellery bunker but was ultimately forced to abandon his plan, he claims, because of the chimneys Hitler had had installed atop the vents. Whether this is true or a complete fabrication on Speer’s part, it is difficult to say definitively.

With Hitler in his bunker and the Reich collapsing around them, Speer visited his Führer one final time on April 22, 1945. He had no plans to stay, and the two parted with an icy goodbye. Eight days later, Hitler was dead. In his final act, he dictated his wishes for a successor government, detailing its members. Speer was not among them.

Regardless, Speer did take up a ministerial post in the new government before its dissolution on May 23. Speer and the other members of the government were then arrested and later tried at the International Military Tribunal, better known as the Nuremberg trials.

Speer and his fellow Nazi officials were indicted on charges of conspiracy to wage a war of aggression (count one), crimes against peace (count two), war crimes (count three), and crimes against humanity (count four). If found guilty, they would more than likely face the death penalty.

No doubt aware of this, Speer used the trial to distance himself from his co-defendants. He confessed to a collective responsibility and accepted his guilt in a way that the others did not. Critically, he denied all knowledge of the Holocaust—a brazen lie that would come to light only after his death.

Of the 24 major Nazi officials tried at Nuremberg, 12 were sentenced to death. Speer was not among them. He was acquitted on counts one and two of the indictment but found guilty on counts three and four. For this, he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in Spandau Prison.

The “Good Nazi”

Speer spent most of his time in prison writing his memoirs. The detail and candor with which he writes have provided historians with vital insight, but these works are to be read with caution. His recollections are rife with omissions and, at times, blatant lies fabricated to reinforce the false image of a neutral technocrat and unwitting victim. For instance, his visits to concentration camps are conveniently left out, as is his brutal disregard for the conditions in which his workers were forced to live and work. His knowledge of the Holocaust is also again denied, and any mention of his eviction of Jewish tenants beginning in 1938 is omitted.

Speer was released from prison in 1966 and spent the remainder of his life attempting to rehabilitate his image. He died of a stroke in September 1981.

The façade of the “Good Nazi” did not last for long, however, and by the late 20th century, assessments of Speer had changed. As new evidence came to light, historians were able to expose his lies and prove his personal culpability beyond little doubt. The smoking gun came in 2007, in a letter written by Speer in 1971. In it, he admitted to being present for Himmler’s second speech in Posen, 1943, in which the systematic extermination of the Jews was outlined.

Despite his brazen attempts to conceal and obfuscate, Speer’s role in the atrocities of the Third Reich will not be forgotten. He was not a “Good Nazi,” he was not a blameless technocrat, and he was not a victim. He was a ruthless, cold, and calculating war criminal.