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There is an old joke about two men out hunting in the American
Rockies, when they disturb a grizzly bear which charges at them.
One starts to remove his boots, and the other asks why. "I
can run faster without my boots." When his companion points
out that he will never out-run a grizzly bear, he replies "I
don't have to out-run the grizzly bear; I only have to out-run
you."
This is the situation which Albert Speer faced at Nuremberg:
unable to escape the hangman's noose by avoiding moral culpability
for the crimes of the Third Reich, Speer did so by establishing
that his own culpability was less than that of his co-defendants.
This was a smart tactic, not least because it was grounded in
truth.
It also paid off. The Nuremberg Tribunal acquitted Speer
of "Conspiracy to Wage Aggressive War" and of "Waging
Aggressive War", but convicted him of "War Crimes"
and "Crimes Against Humanity", for which he was sentenced
to 20 years' imprisonment. Significantly, the Soviet member
of the Tribunal - Nikitchenko - did not dissent from the acquittal
of Speer on the first and second counts, or in respect of his
sentence, although dissenting in many other instances where
defendants were acquitted or given non-capital sentences.
The title of Van Der Vat's biography - The Good Nazi
- is obviously intended to be ironic. The sub-title, The
Life and Lies of Albert Speer, is possibly for the benefit
of casual readers who miss the irony in the main title. But
there are two edges to Van Der Vat's irony: whilst the intended
target of the author's irony is Speer's reputation as the most
decent person amongst the Nazi hierarchy, this title may be
seen as ironic in another sense. With the possible exception
of neo-fascists and right-wing historians like David Irving,
nobody - not even Speer himself - has sought to exonerate Speer
from the evil committed by the Nazi regime of which he was a
member: nobody has ever claimed that, according to objective
standards, his conduct was that of a "good" person.
By this title, Van Der Vat has given himself a "straw man"
to attack. The negative case is an easy one, when the postulated
positive case is non-existent.
There is no doubt, on the historical evidence, that Speer
was intimately involved in appalling crimes against humanity.
At Nuremberg, he was convicted - and sentenced to 20 years'
imprisonment - largely on the basis of evidence showing his
participation (as Minister for Production and Armaments) in
the use of forced labour. The charges which he faced at Nuremberg
did not include reference to his earlier involvement, as the
architect responsible for re-planning Berlin, in the forced
removal of Jewish citizens from their homes in that city, and
Van Der Vat skillfully presents the evidence against Speer on
this issue. But the unanswered question, as to which Speer was
given the benefit of the doubt at Nuremberg, is whether he had
any knowledge of the awful fate which awaited Jews who were
"resettled".
Speer escaped conviction on the first and second counts on
the (arguably technical) basis that his contribution to the
Nazi war effort really only commenced when he became Minister
for Production and Armaments in 1942, from which time the
Third Reich's military position was entirely defensive. Yet
it is arguable that nobody, with the possible exception of Field
Marshall Erwin Rommell, did more than Speer to prolong the war.
He might have done more, if it were not for the fact that, as
Mr Justice Jackson, the chief US prosecutor at the Nuremberg
Tribunal, commented during the course of Speer's cross-examination:
"[Y]ou were struggling to get manpower enough to
produce the armaments to win a war for Germany. And this
anti-Semitic campaign was so strong that it took trained
technicians away from you and disabled you from performing
your functions. Your problem of creating armaments to win
the war for Germany was made very much more difficult by
this anti-Jewish campaign which was being waged by others
of your co-defendants."
Like Rommell, Speer was, quite simply, good at his job -
without the burden of being philosophically committed to Nazism.
It is astonishing that the German economy was not fully committed
to the war effort until Speer, in 1942/3, overcame Hitler's
resistance to the privations which this produced for ordinary
("Aryan") Germans. He managed to convince the Nazi
ideologues that German women should be permitted to work in
munitions factories - as British women had been doing since
1939 - despite the Party's view that only women of "inferior"
races should perform such work. He might even have ensured a
German victory, if his proposal to develop a nuclear capability
had not been met with Hitler's objection that atomic physics
was "Jewish science", and his preference for "German
science" utilising rockets to deliver conventional weapons.
At his trial, this exchange occurred:
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And certain experiments were also
conducted and certain researches conducted in atomic energy,
were they not?
SPEER: We had not got as far as that,
unfortunately, because the finest experts we had in atomic
research had emigrated to America, and this had thrown us
back a great deal in our research, so that we still needed
another year or two in order to achieve any results in the
splitting of the atom.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: The policy
of driving people out who didn't agree with Germany hadn't
produced very good dividends, had it ?
SPEER: Especially
in this sphere it was a great disadvantage to us.
On the credit side, any objective analysis reveals that Speer
was not only an exceptionally talented administrator and technocrat,
but also a person whose devotion to the Nazi cause was tempered
with compunction unknown to others in the Nazi hierarchy. Within
his own offices, as Inspector-General of Construction for the
Reich Capital, as Minister for Construction and Munitions, and
ultimately as Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production,
he actively protected members of his staff who were vulnerable
under the Nazi regime for racial, religious or political reasons.
He resisted the deportation of Jewish workers in his factories.
Whilst his Department had no alternative but to use the forced
labour made available by the SS, he insisted on these workers
being given increased rations and improved living conditions
- though, with disarming frankness, he readily conceded at Nuremberg
that he was motivated principally by a desire to maintain their
working capacity.
It was at the end of the war, when everyone except Hitler
and those closest to him knew that the outcome was inevitable,
that Speer displayed both cunning and courage in resisting Hitler's
orders to adopt a "scorched earth policy". For some
time, he succeeded in persuading Hitler not to implement this
policy, using Hitler's own rhetoric to convince him that, when
the tide of war again turned in Germany's favour (as Hitler
was convinced it would), Germany would recapture the bridges,
factories, etc., which were ordered to be destroyed. When Hitler
was no longer open to rational debate, even on the terms of
his own twisted logic, Speer blatantly countermanded the Fuhrer's
instructions - thereby placing himself, as the Nuremberg Tribunal
expressly found, "at considerable personal risk".
There is even some evidence - though mainly from Speer himself
- that, at a late stage in the war, he planned a coup and the
assassination of Hitler, despite the torture and horrific execution
of the participants in an earlier such plot.
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Speer with Adolf Hitler
Moreover, it is to Speer's credit that, as a member of the
interim government following Hitler's suicide, he co-operated
fully with the Western Allies in the process of surrendering
and handing over control of Germany, and that he willingly submitted
to lengthy debriefings at a time when he had no expectation
of being charged as a war criminal. His acceptance of moral
responsibility for the atrocities committed by the Third Reich
distinguished him from his co-accused at Nuremberg. And, perhaps
more importantly, he never sought to recant, even after he was
discharged from his 20-year sentence at Nuremberg. It is also
the fact that, from the substantial profits produced by the
books which he wrote after his release, he made very significant
contributions to Jewish welfare organisations around the world,
which were only disclosed by his publisher after his death.
The real mystery surrounding Albert Speer is the extent to
which he had knowledge of the atrocities committed by the Nazi
regime, and especially the Holocaust. In another recent biography,
Gitta Sereny's Albert Speer - His Battle with Truth (London:
Macmillan, 1995), this issue is addressed squarely, the evidence
being presented fairly, without apparent bias or prejudgment.
By contrast, Van Der Vat adopts a prosecutorial position, pleading
the case against Speer on what is essentially the same evidence
as Sereny presented two years earlier.
Van Der Vat seems to regard as his strongest argument the
fact that, on two separate occasions, Speer used the German
word Billigung in acknowledging his moral responsibility
for the Nazi atrocities: once in an interview with a highly
respected intellectual journal (Playboy, to be specific);
and once in an Affidavit which he furnished at the request of
the chairman of the Board of Deputies of South African Jews,
who had sought Speer's assistance in proceedings where a factual
issue arose as to whether the Holocaust had actually occurred.
Van Der Vat translates the word Billigung as meaning
either "passive toleration/concurrence" or "active
condonation/approval", and argues that "There is only
one way to interpret this revealing remark: passively tolerant
or actively approving, Billigung means Speer knew"
[original emphasis].
I do not cavil with Van Der Vat's translation of Billigung;
nor with his contention that even passive toleration implies
some knowledge, or at least a suspicion. But it is hardly a
revelation that Speer knew or suspected that Jews were being
ill-treated; after all, Speer was using forced labour, mostly
Jewish, in his munitions plants. A logical quantum-leap is required
to transmogrify this into actual knowledge of the full scope
of Nazi atrocities.
In any event, one does not need to speculate as to Speer's
intention in using the word Billigung, for he explained
exactly what he meant for the German magazine Die Zeit,
which in 1978 published Gitta Sereny's interviews with Speer:
Speer explained his intention in using the word Billigung
as meaning "connivance through looking away, not through
knowledge of an order or of [its] execution".
Van Der Vat dismisses this as if it were an attempt by Speer
to recover from a stumble: that his use of the word Billigung
revealed more of the truth than he intended, and that his explanation
of Billigung as "connivance through looking away"
was an ex post facto attempt to dissemble this Freudian
slip. Yet the notion of guilt through "turning a blind
eye" is neither semantically nor logically far-fetched:
our own legal system recognises a similar basis of liability
- "constructive knowledge" - where one is aware of
circumstances which would raise doubts in the mind of a reasonable
person, but one chooses not to make further enquiry for fear
of learning the truth.
Van Der Vat's other major piece of evidence against Speer
is his connivance in suppressing the original chronicle of his
wartime office. It is not suggested, however, that anything
in the chronicle actually contradicts Speer's repeated denials
of any knowledge about the so-called "final solution".
What the chronicle does reveal is the extent of Speer's personal
involvement in evicting Jews from their dwellings in central
Berlin, at an early stage of the war: a very serious matter,
no doubt, but no more serious than his involvement in the use
of forced labour at a later stage of the war, for which he was
duly tried and punished. Nor does it add to the very limited
evidence concerning Speer's direct knowledge of the Holocaust.
Van Der Vat's so-called "Epilogue" - "Peroration"
might be a more accurate term - throws in one final grain of
evidence, which Van Der Vat describes as "a hitherto unpublished
confession by Speer" which, "Should any doubts remain
on the matter ... is enough to see them off". This is a
letter from Speer's friend of many years, Dr. Rudolph Walters,
who turned against Speer, apparently because he disagreed with
Speer's willingness to accept collective responsibility for
Nazi war crimes. (This falling-out is treated by Van Der Vat
as reflecting poorly on Speer, though it is hard to see why.
True, Speer owed to Walters a great debt of gratitude, for looking
after his family and affairs during his 20 years' imprisonment;
but this hardly entitled the unrepentant Walters to expect that
Speer would renounce his admission of collective responsibility
at Nuremberg.)
The grain of evidence which is cited from this correspondence
- between Walters and a third party - is Walters' claim that
Speer used the word "tricks" in reference to his confession
of collective responsibility, and his shows of repentance. Even
accepting the accuracy of Walters' account, it is hard to see
how such an equivocal remark can be regarded as the "confession
by Speer" that is "enough to see ... off" any
doubts concerning the extent of Speer's guilty knowledge.
Certainly there was an element of "trickery" in
the tactics adopted by Speer at Nuremberg: alone amongst the
major war criminals, he recognised that by admitting to the
lesser wrong of "collective responsibility" for Nazi
war crimes, and showing repentance, he stood a much better chance
of escaping a capital sentence than if he shared the intransigent
refusal of his co-accused - Goering, von Ribbentrop, Keitel,
and the rest - to acknowledge any wrong-doing. This "trick"
succeeded; but to describe it as a "trick" is in no
way tantamount to a confession of greater guilt.
In the relevant context, there is a much more obvious reason
for Speer's choice of the word "tricks". Walters was
furious with Speer for continuing, even after his release from
gaol, to admit "collective responsibility" for Nazi
war crimes. One can understand why: if Speer was subject to
a "collective responsibility", then so were all (including
Walters) who contributed to the Nazi war effort. It is not hard
to imagine Speer's attempting to placate his old friend's anger,
by using the word "tricks" to describe the strategy
which had saved him at Nuremberg.
In the final analysis, Van Der Vat fails in his objective
to prove that Speer had a greater complicity in Nazi war crimes
than he explicitly admitted during his lifetime. Of course,
Van Der Vat's failure does not prove Speer's innocence; far
from it. No-one who has read the evidence could disagree with
the conclusion that there is still a large question-mark over
Speer's knowledge of Nazi atrocities, as Gitta Sereny's earlier
biography demonstrates. Despite Van Der Vat's efforts, the question-mark
remains no more than a question-mark, and it is therefore doubtful
whether his polemic represents a significant contribution to
the Speer bibliography.
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