At the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal in October 1946, Albert Speer adopted a strategy different from that of most leaders of the defeated regime. Instead of pretending to blindly obey orders, he sought to distance himself from Adolf Hitler, accepting from the start collective responsibility for the crimes committed by Nazism. That stance helped him stand out during the trial that led to the conviction of 21 defendants for atrocities that included the newly defined crime of genocide.
On October 16, 1946, ten Nazi leaders were executed. Other central figures of the regime, such as Hermann Göring, appeared in court without showing regret. Figures such as Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels committed suicide. Speer, Hitler’s personal architect and later armaments minister, was sentenced to 20 years in prison – a sentence he served in full.
After leaving Spandau prison in 1966, Speer undertook a careful reconstruction of his image. He became a frequent presence in the international press and published the best-seller Inside the Third Reich, in which he presented himself as a technocrat unaware of the regime’s most brutal political decisions. This account earned him the label of “good Nazi”, widely disseminated in the post-war public debate.
In a 1970 interview with the BBC, Speer called Hitler “one of the wickedest people in history” but insisted that the dictator also had “human sides”, an argument he believed would serve as a warning for the future. For the former minister, the danger would be to imagine that authoritarian leaders only present themselves in a caricatured manner.
Historians, however, question this version. Speer stated at Nuremberg that he only became aware of the mass extermination of the Jews during the trial. Subsequent documents and statements indicate that he participated — directly or indirectly — in meetings in which the subject was explicitly discussed. For historian Heike Görtemaker, Speer’s case reveals a trend: “a new interview, a new book, a new story.”
As Minister of Armaments from 1942, Speer commanded a sector vital to the German war effort and used forced labor on a large scale. Millions of compulsory laborers were employed in factories, mines and quarries under his supervision. In court, he placed direct responsibility on his subordinates, a strategy that helped reduce his sentence and lead to the execution of Fritz Sauckel, then officially responsible for labor recruitment.
Speer died in 1981, aged 76, in London, following a stroke, shortly after publishing another book on the Nazi regime. At that time, new revelations about his personal and professional life reinforce the perception of duplicity. A large part of its monumental architecture, designed for a “thousand-year-old” Reich, had been destroyed. There remain ruins and museums that serve as a historical warning today.
About The Author
