Albert Speer Analysis

Despite Albert Speer’s claims, as Minister of Armaments, it is inevitable that Albert Speer was aware of the use and abuse of forced labour and the appalling conditions of inmates at concentration camps and I find it hard to believe anything contrary. As Gitta Sereny suggests, Speer knew a lot more than what he led on, he knew what he was inevitably going to find out. Although Speer states in, Inside the Third Reich, “I did not investigate, I did not want to know”, this position of knowledge places him with direct personal responsibility for the use and abuse of forced labourers.
Speer 's success as Armaments Minister can largely be attributed to the use of forced labour and the exploitation of foreign workers and prisoners of war. Responsibility of attaining munitions workers was Speer’s deputy, Fritz Sauckel. Speer gave
Historian, Gitta Sereny states, “He [Speer] spent about forty-five minutes being given the so-called VIP tour which carefully protected visitors from seeing anything that might shock their sensibilities”. This visit highlights his knowledge of the use of forced labour and concentration camps, but perhaps not the conditions. It is Speer’s recollection of his visit to Dora Underground V2 Rocket Facility in Harz Mountains on December 10th 1943, in his, Slave State: Heinrich Himmler’s Master Plan for SS Supremacy, “the air in the cave was cool, damp and stale, and it stank of excrement. The lack of oxygen made me dizzy”, unhappy with conditions, he ordered improvements that were delayed by the SS – this in itself highlight’s that he was well aware of the conditions. Within a few weeks of his visit, Speer was unwell and hospitalised suffering physical and nervous breakdown. Gitta Sereny suggests his breakdown was a result of the events he had witnessed at Dora, emphasising Speer’s knowledge of the conditions and treatment of foreign workers and