On Albert Speer
Albert Speer has always fascinated me, in a negative sense (is there a word for this?). And YouTube happened to suggest this video to me: Albert Speer: The Unseen Interrogation (1971).
It’s an unauthorized recording and posting of a BBC FOUR documentary that’s currently unavailable, even in Britain. How could one not support piracy, then?! Available is an 18-minute introduction by Heike Görtemaker, Hitler’s Architect of Lies.
Did Malraux really say that a fish cannot see outside its aquarium?
In Le Musée imaginaire (part of Les Voix du silence):
…pour distinguer l’extérieur d’un aquarium, mieux vaut n’être pas poisson.
Speer simplified the idea. But I would rather have invoked this other metaphor:
A frog placed in water that is gradually heated will eventually boil to death without realizing it.
That was about Speer not realizing the abnormality of the SS state that the Third Reich had become.
Obviously, the most controversial aspect of Speer’s admissions and non-admissions was that he kept claiming he didn’t know of the Final Solution (only defined in 1941) because it was a secret, according to him.
He could have known, but he didn’t.
The problem with Albert Speer is that he was a man of many talents and an extraordinarily good organizer. Without him, Germany’s war effort might not have been possible, and so many deaths might have been avoided.
In 1939, he was all for the war, whereas everyone in Hitler’s entourage had cold feet. Surprising indeed.
Speer: “Hitler had a talent for architecture and was able to see in 3D, something that most people can’t.”
Fegelein was mentioned in the video. Another peculiar case. Mark Felton had a series of videos on his fate; all parts are collected in this 1-hr video: Fegelein! Fegelein! The Mysterious Death of Hitler’s SS Liaison COMPLETE SERIES.
I do have some ePub (OCR) versions of Speer’s book: Inside the Third Reich. Au cœur du Troisième Reich. În umbra lui Hitler.
