World War II Day by Day

Berlin, Germany · March 29, 1945

By 1945 everything was falling apart for the Nazi regime. Most of the con­quered areas in the Soviet Union and West­ern Europe had been re­cap­tured from the Nazis. The Wehr­macht’s last gam­bit in the west, the Ar­dennes Offen­sive, better known as the Battle of the Bulge (mid-Decem­ber 1944 to mid-Janu­ary 1945), had failed with the loss of hun­dreds of pre­cious air­craft and tanks and up­wards of 100,000 killed, missing/­captured, or wounded. As the Soviet Army approached the Nazi capi­tal and epi­center of the tot­tering regime from the east and Amer­i­can units from the west neared the Elbe River, 60 miles south of Ber­lin, Adolf Hitler issued his “Nero Decree” (“Nero­befehl,” or scorched earth decree) on March 19, 1945. The decree was offi­cially titled “Demo­li­tions on Reich Terri­tory” (“Befehl be­treffend Zer­störungs­mass­nahmen im Reichs­gebiet”). The first time Albert Speer, Nazi Minis­ter for Arma­ments and War Pro­duc­tion, had heard the words “scorched earth” in refer­ence to Hitler was nearly eleven months before. Hitler had been im­pressed with Soviet dic­ta­tor Joseph Stalin’s use of “scorched earth” in suc­cess­fully halting the Ger­man drive on Moscow in 1941. Hitler’s sec­ret in­struc­tions of March 19 ordered the de­struc­tion of all mili­tary trans­port and com­mu­ni­ca­tion facili­ties, in­dus­trial estab­lish­ments, and supply de­pots that had not yet been de­stroyed by the Allies, as well as the de­struc­tion of any­thing else of value with­in Reich terri­tory that could in any way be used by the enemy. The Fuehrer of the Thou­sand Year Reich was re­solved that, if he was taken down, Ger­many would be de­stroyed too. Ten days later, on this date in 1945, Speer con­vinced Hitler to appoint him (Speer) to im­ple­ment the scorched earth decree. Un­known to Hitler until his final days, Speer worked at cross-pur­poses to per­suade senior gen­erals and Nazi Party admin­is­trators to evade the Nero Decree. Forty-two days after its is­suance, the Nero Decree was moot: Hitler was dead by his own hand, one among 200,000 Ber­liners who were casual­ties of his war of per­dition. Speer him­self was arrested on May 23, 1945, con­victed by the Inter­national Mili­tary Tribunal in Nurem­berg for his role in the Nazi regime, prin­cipally for the use of forced labor, and sen­tenced to 20 years’ imprisonment.

Albert Speer, Hitler Protégé, Reich Architect, and Minister of War Production

Above: Standing before a kneeling news cameraman, “Architect of the Reich” Albert Speer (left), Adolf Hitler, and German sculptor Arno Breker take in the sites of conquered Paris, June 28, 1940.

Left: In a May 1, 1943, ceremony, Hitler presented Reich Minister for Arma­ments and War Pro­duc­tion Speer the Fritz Todt Ring for Ger­man Engi­neering in grati­tude for the “extraor­di­nary in­crease in wea­pons, ar­mored vehi­cles, and muni­tions pro­duc­tion during the pre­vious year.” With no back­ground in eco­no­mics or pro­duc­tion planning, Speer made himself czar of Ger­many’s war­time eco­no­my. Pro­pa­ganda Minis­ter Joseph Goebbels called Speer “a genius with organ­i­za­tion.” Despite the Allies’ stra­te­gic bombing cam­paign of Ger­man in­dus­trial cen­ters, war pro­duc­tion in­creased until the latter half of 1944, when arma­ments pro­duc­tion ex­ceeded nearly twice the capa­bility of the in­creas­ingly pressed Wehr­macht to con­sume manu­fac­tured out­put. By then Speer con­sidered the war lost.

Right: Behind pro­tective shielding Speer (arms folded with swastika armband) and Luftwaffe Field Marshal Erhard Milch (hand on support) observe a demon­stra­tion of a newly developed wea­pon (eines neu­entwickel­ten Kampf­mittels). The demon­stra­tion took place in Octo­ber 1943 at an “air­port in the East” during a sym­po­sium of leading German arma­ment experts called together by Speer.

Armaments and War Production Minister Albert Speer: Third Reich Revisionist