Speer

Albert Speer is the great enigma of Nazi Germany. Before he was thirty he had become Hitler's architect. Soon he was building the new Reich's Chancellery and had transformed the Nuremberg rallies with his 'cathedrals of light' and gift for stage-management, at the same time developing grandiose plans to turn the city of Berlin into the 'world capital, Germania'. In 1942 Hitler appointed him Armaments Minister and, a pragmatic and brilliant organiser, he quadrupled German arms production, an astonishing achievement which kept the German Army in the field and prolonged the war.
Yet Speer's life was full of contradictions. The only member of the Nazi elite with whom Hitler developed more than a purely functional relationship, he was always an outsider in Hitler's inner circle. By autumn 1943 he believed the war lost, but continued to work for victory. He considered Hitler's anti-semitism an idiosyncracy, but did not object to it. He remained almost unaffected by the corruption and egotism of those in power all around him, despite his own immense ambition. The 20th July plotters wanted Speer to be part of a new cabinet, yet he has been called by Hugh Trevor-Roper 'the true criminal of Nazi Germany'.