Albert Speer Research Paper

The Nuremburg Trial outcome is our vital evidence that Albert Speer was a man who was corrupted by the events at the time. He is the epitome of the saying “events shape people more than people shape events” as he merely rode the wave of Nazism. As German historian Joachim Fest stated, “He [Hitler] drew Speer to him like no one else, he singles him out and made him great” (Fest, The Face of Third Reich, pg 340). In any other situation it is inconceivable that an architect could have come to hold the title of Minister of Armaments and War Production. The event of Nazi Germany transformed an architect, whose destiny seemingly lay in continuing the family business, to a man answerable only to the ‘Fuhrer’. Albert Speer did not shape Nazi Germany: Nazi Germany shaped Speer.

Nazism was the facilitator of Speer’s success throughout his life. His membership with the
Hitler’s plan to destroy German infrastructure, to render German un-occupiable after the loss of the war seemed to Speer an act of insanity. He tried writing to Hitler yet his efforts were futile. He then travelled around the country systematically undermining Hitler by convincing the Gauleiters not to follow the orders. When Speer began wading upstream he found his previous power had vanished. He was only strong when being swept along by Nazism.

After Hitler’s suicide the momentum of Nazism died; there was no force to push Speer forward. At the Nuremburg trials to avoid the death penalty, Speer adopted the persona of a victim, a mere technocrat, forced to act to conditions of the time. He was sentenced to only 20 years imprisonment in Spandau on the grounds of his denial of any knowledge of the ‘Final Solution’. The great controversy around Speer is, was he truly ignorant? As not only a Nazi, yet a close friend of Hitler’s, it is alluded that Speer did know, however, it has never been thoroughly