World War II Day by Day

Posen, Occupied Poland · October 6, 1943

On this date in 1943 in occupied Posen (Poznań), Poland, Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler’s Minis­ter of Arma­ments and War Pro­duc­tion, stun­ned an assem­bly of Nazi Party big-wigs when he stated that he in­tended to con­vert all fac­to­ries pro­duc­ing for the Ger­man civil­ian mar­ket to war pro­duc­tion. Having dis­cussed his in­ten­tions before­hand with Reichs­fuehrer-SS Hein­rich Himm­ler, the second most power­ful man in Nazi Ger­many, Speer em­pha­sized that he would brook no dis­sen­sion. “I am pre­pared to apply the autho­rity of the Reich Govern­ment at any cost,” he told the “Gold Pheas­ants,” as the nation­al leader­ship was deri­sively known. “From now on, dis­tricts that do not carry out with­in two weeks the mea­sures I request will be dealt with firmly.” The gifted former “Archi­tect of the Reich”—he designed the enor­mous pre­war Nurem­berg Nazi Party Con­gress tri­bune and rally grounds, as well as the new Reich Chan­cel­lery—suc­ceeded to his ele­vated cabi­net posi­tion in Febru­ary 8, 1942, despite knowing nothing about arma­ments pro­duc­tion. (It didn’t hurt that Speer had a close per­sonal relation­ship with Hitler; he was some­times refer­red to as “Hitler’s un­requited love.”) According to the minutes of a con­fer­ence at Wehr­macht High Com­mand the following month, “It is only Speer’s word that counts now­a­days. He can inter­fere in all depart­ments. Already he over­rides all depart­ments.” Hitler diarist Joseph Goebbels wrote in June 1943, “Speer is still tops with the Fuehrer. He is truly a genius with organ­i­za­tion.” Near the end of the war, Speer became the Nazis’ prin­ci­pal exploi­ter of forced labor, whose mil­lions en­abled Ger­man pro­duc­tion of planes, tanks, and guns to exceed pre-1943 levels. Indeed, Speer’s achieve­ment at allo­ca­ting resources under the con­stant rain of Anglo-Amer­i­can bombers and the en­croach­ment by land forces of the Red Army in the East has been credited with keeping the Ger­man Wehr­macht in the field and pro­longing the war by at least a year. Sen­tenced to 20 years’ impri­son­ment for his role in the ruth­less Nazi regime, Speer died in 1981 in Lon­don at age 76, ironi­cally on the 42nd anni­ver­sary of the Ger­man inva­sion of Poland, the starting date for the outbreak of World War II in Europe.

Albert Speer: The Man Who Kept Germany Armed and the War Machine Running

Left: On June 23, 1940, one day after signing the Franco-Ger­man armis­tice at Com­piègne, France, Hitler visited the French capi­tal, Paris, accom­panied by “Archi­tect of the Reich” Speer (left) and sculp­tor Arno Bre­ker, whom Hitler had named “offi­cial state sculp­tor” in 1937. A camera­man (lower right in photo) filmed the trio against the back­drop of the Eiffel Tower for German newsreels.

Right: In June 1943 Hitler awarded his Minister of Arma­ments and War Pro­duc­tion, Speer, the Fritz Todt sig­net ring (en­closed in a silver box deco­rated with the por­trait of deceased Dr. Fritz Todt) in recog­ni­tion of Speer’s “unique achieve­ments in the field of Ger­man tech­no­logy.” The award of the ring was spon­sored by the National Socialist Union for Ger­man Technology, which Speer headed.

Left: Having convened a working meeting of the leading men of the Ger­man arma­ments indus­try, Arma­ments Minis­ter Speer (right, with arms folded and swas­tika arm­band) and Luft­waffe Inspec­tor Gene­ral Field Marshal Erhard Milch (left) stand behind pro­tec­tive shields during a wea­pons test at an air­field some­where in the east of the Reich (pro­bably in occu­pied Poland) in October 1943.

Right: May 23, 1945, arrest of leading members of the Flens­burg Govern­ment, the short-lived admin­is­tra­tion of seve­ral weeks that attempted to rule Nazi Ger­many following Hitler’s sui­cide on April 30. Reich Presi­dent Adm. Karl Doenitz (center, in long, dark coat) is followed by Speer (bare­headed), and Gen. Alfred Jodl (left of Speer). All three men were indicted as major war crimi­nals at the Nurem­berg Inter­national Mili­tary Tri­bu­nal (Novem­ber 20, 1945 to Octo­ber 1, 1946). Speer, who exer­cised direct con­trol of the under­ground V-2 roc­ket fac­tory at Nord­hausen/­Dora among other slave-labor facili­ties, and Doenitz, who headed the Kriegs­marine, were given pri­son sen­tences of 10 and 20 years, respec­tively; Jodl, the Chief of the Opera­tions Staff of the Armed Forces High Com­mand (Ober­kom­mando der Wehr­macht), was sen­tenced to death and hanged on October 16, 1945.

Albert Speer, Hitler’s Architect, Master Builder, and Minister of Armaments and War Production