Description of The Nazi Hierarchy
Speer's memoirs are best known for having revolutionized the study of Nazi Germany. At the time, the popular vision of Nazi Germany was that of a country as a monolithic, totalitarian state that ran smoothly at first before gradually breaking down under the strains of war. Speer revealed that the country was actually sharply divided from the start by overlapping responsibilities, court politics, and incompetent leaders. Most surprisingly, he portrayed Hitler not as an intelligent, decisive leader, but rather as a lazy, artistically tempered bohemian who worked in spurts. He had also described Hitler as an incompetent, unprofessional, self-taught layman: "Without any sense of the complexities of any great task, he boldly assumed one function after another."
Speer's personal insights into Nazi leaders themselves are nothing short of remarkable, especially since many other Nazis and their families chose him as a neutral confidant. Speer described how Joseph Goebbels' wife, Magda, complained about her husband's infidelity, and how she in turn had had an affair with one of Speer's old friends, Karl Hanke. Personally meeting with Göring on his estate, Speer wrote how the by-then overweight Luftwaffe marshal spent his days hunting, eating, and quite literally playing with stolen jewels as if they were toys.
According to Speer, even during the mid-1930s, after he attained dictatorial powers, Hitler had extremely unstable work habits that included staying up very late (typically until 5:00 or 6:00 a.m.) and then sleeping until about noon, spending hours upon hours at meals and tea parties, and wasting both his time and that of colleagues with movies and long, boring monologues. He was incapable of normal office work. In the memoirs, Speer openly wondered when exactly Hitler ever found time to do anything important. On his personal life, Speer remarked that Eva Braun had told him, in the middle of 1943, that Hitler was too busy, too immersed, and too tired to have sex with her.
Listening to the Führer, Speer concluded that Hitler was incapable of growth, either emotional or intellectual. Because Hitler could charm people (including Speer himself), Speer also believed Hitler was a sociopath and megalomaniac. Even in 1945, when Germany's armed forces were all but destroyed, Speer could not convince Hitler to admit defeat, or even to go on the defensive.
According to Speer, Germany's position in the war went into decline during the siege of Stalingrad and the battle of El Alamein, when Hitler, faced with defeat in both battles, tried to hide himself from reality. In Hitler's reticence, Speer claimed that Hitler's personal secretary, Martin Bormann, took advantage of the vacuum and controlled all information going to Hitler in a bid to gain power for himself.
Likewise, Speer painted an extremely unflattering portrait of the Nazi government. Because of Hitler's indecisiveness—and his belief that struggle led to strength—the government was never properly coordinated. Different ministries were often assigned to the same task and Hitler refused to clarify jurisdictions. As a result, for anything to get done, ministers often had to engage in court politics. Speer himself had to ally with Goebbels and other ministers to counter Göring's incompetent economic leadership. Also, commentators on the memoirs have pronounced it likely that Speer himself came close to being assassinated by Himmler after he unwittingly put himself in the care of an SS doctor.
Read more about this topic: Inside The Third Reich
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