Albert Speer

Albert Speer (1905-1981) was an architect who joined the Nazi Party as a young man, and soon became Adolf Hitler's protege and even friend. During World War II, he was the extremely effective Nazi Minister of Armament and Munitions (1942-1945). Airey Neave, a Nuremberg prosecutor, said

He was the only man in Hitler's entourage who sacrificed neither his will nor his reason. He also was a man of great talent who did most to enable the Nazi dream to become a reality.

While he had a special relationship with Hitler, he opposed his scorched-earth policies and plotted assassination. At the Nuremberg Trials, he was sentenced to 20 years. Eloquent in accepting responsibility, his frank statements probably saved his live, in contrast to that of his labor deputy, Fritz Sauckel. While in prison, he wrote a sometimes controversial but informative autobiography, Inside the Third Reich.

At Nuremberg

When testifying at Nuremberg, Speer said he increased production until he had 14 million workers in 1944. Some of these were prisoners of war and others were forced slave laborers provided by Fritz Sauckel. He also claimed that less than 1 percent were concentration camp inmates.

Wilhelm Keitel was overheard, during Speer's testimony, telling Sauckel, Hans Frank, and Artur Seyss-Inquart that if someone had the courage, in 1943, that the war was lost, much could have been saved. Keitel said that Speer was the only man who could have done so, because he was the only one who truly knew German industrial capacity.