Albert Speer
1905 – 1981 German Reich Minister of Armaments and Hitler's architect
Hitler's architect and armaments chief who later claimed ignorance of the Holocaust.
- Religion
- Protestant upbringing; broadly secular and non-observant, with no mystical leanings. He notably recorded Hitler's contempt for Himmler's and Rosenberg's occultism.
- Affiliations
- Nazi Party; Hitler's chief architect; armaments minister who ran war production on slave labor. No occult ties.
Speer designed the regime's monumental architecture and, as armaments minister, vastly expanded war production using forced and slave labor. At Nuremberg he accepted general responsibility while denying knowledge of the genocide, a plea historians have since largely discredited. He served twenty years at Spandau and became a bestselling but self-serving memoirist.
Connections
- associate of Adolf Hitler — Enjoyed unusual personal closeness as Hitler's architect.
- ally of Joseph Goebbels — Backed total-war mobilization together in 1943.
- ally of Joseph Goebbels — Coordinated total-war measures together late in the war.
- associate of Karl Donitz — Served together in the short-lived Flensburg government.
- rival of Robert Ley — Competed over control of labor and housing policy.
In the timeline
- 1942 Fritz Todt killed in air crash mentioned
- 1942 Albert Speer takes control of armaments central figure