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
Sauckel an estimate of the total number of workers needed and where they would be placed. He knew when he made his demand that they would be supplied foreign labourers serving under compulsion and admits he was aware that the labour Sauckel had recruited “came against their wish” in the 1946, Nuremberg Trials. Agreeing with prosecutors, he had no interest in the illegal side of things, but the manpower, while this may be the case, he was still well aware of the illegal means by which the manpower was being attained and treated, placing him personally responsible.
Conditions of concentration camps varied greatly among the camps and from one period to another. Early on, conditions were ‘tolerable’, further on, mortality rates rose due to maltreatment, the kind of work assigned to inmates, working conditions and hours, physical exertion, undernourishment and overcrowding. The camps were often dark, filthy, unsanitary and smelly with little oxygen and inmates were fed rations and had little or no choice in their daily actions.

As many historians have pointed out, Speer visits the Mauthausen Camp near Linz in March 1943.
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
inmates.

While the use and abuse of forced labourers and conditions of inmates at concentration camps may not be something Speer wanted to know, he knew all the same. As Sereny suggests, he knew far more than what he led on, and despite his denial of personal responsibility, his level of knowledge accounts him with much more responsibility than confessed for the use and abuse of forced labourers and conditions of concentration camp prisoners.

Bibliography:

Mason, KJ & Fielden, P, 2010, Republic to Reich, Third edition, Cengage Learning Australia, Melbourne, Victoria

Albert Speer – 1905 – 1981, 03 June 2013, http://hsc.csu.edu.au/modern_history/personalities/speer/3277/significance.htm

Nuremberg Day 160 Speer (Jackson Cross) , 21st June 1946 , YouTube video, RobertHJacksonCenter, uploaded 4th Nov, 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRgDIBUqbkM

Camp Dora, 16th Oct 2011, YouTube video, Rhianna Milburn, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naVx05POitM