Word: speers
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INSIDE THE THIRD REICH: MEMOIRS by Albert Speer. 596 pages. Macmillan...
...that his achievements were more than canceled out by the demonic evils of Nazism. But many of those over 50, who remember the humiliation after World War I and the chaos of the Weimar Republic, maintain that Hitler's positive accomplishments outweigh the negative. The memoirs of Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and wartime production czar, are still a bestseller in West Germany eight months after publication (TIME, Sept...
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...