Inside The Third Reich: Memoirs by Albert Speer

And if today we ar on the d haveward path, it is not be consume we are a mixed travel rapidly. For we were already that in the Middle Ages when we still had a vigorous source in us and were expanding, when we drove the Slavs by of Prussia, or afterward transplanted European culture to America. We are going downhill because our energies pull in been consumed; it is the same thing that happened in the past to the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. There is vigor to be done about that. (Memoirs 11)

It is interesting to note Speer's proto(prenominal) disinterest in race as a cause of Germany's troubled economy prior to Hilter's ascention. He later was to disavow any get alongledge of Hitler's plans for the Final Solution, although most scholars would find seeming cause to doubt his claim; here, however, was early "proof" that race was not an issue for Speer.

In his Adolf Hitler, John Toland wrote in 1976, that Speer (in his own words) knew nothing of the Final Solution. According to Toland, "Some scholars have impeach him of attending Himmler's speech [discussing the Final Solution] since during it the Reichsfuhrer specifically addressed him (Speer)" (768). Toland recounts that Speer insists he left for Rastenburg immediately after his own speech (768). Toland insists, " granted that Speer was not present, it is difficult to believe he did not know of the concentration camps. From the text of Himmler's speech, it is clear

Hitler intended that the industries of occupied territories, such as France, be feeble or shut down completely, but Speer was socially apprised enough to recognize their worth in efforts at post-war rebuilding. In an unnationalistic stance, Speer makes a plea for regeneration:

Speer's technical school, the Institute of Technology, had bring a center of National Socialist endeavors. One of the Institute's professors, a man named Tessenow, became the unwitting mouthpiece for Hitler's own nationalistic views on culture. Tessenow was not aware of the manner in which Hitler would use his teachings in a recruitment speech given to impressionable students such as the schoolgirlish Speer.

According to Speer in his memoirs, "Among other things, Tessenow taught: 'Style comes from the people. It is in our nature to love our native land. There can be no true culture that is international. True culture comes besides from the maternal womb of a nation'" (Memoirs 14). It is frightening to consider that students were immersed in such anti-rational rhetoric, yet Hitler took such thoughts and turned them into a dreadful reality for all those who were not native-born.

Ohlendorf doubted 'whether Germany [could] actually carry out a mammoth industrialization' all the way. And he even cited arguments base on the superiority of the rustic over the industrial mentality. 'Where are we to get, say, a guarantee of food for the people who are ask for industrialization and who, on the whole, are to be drawn from the cracker-barrel areas; and where, finally, are these people to come from when the inner wellspring of German peoplehood, the farm population, has dried up because of total industrialization. (Infiltration 80).

Hitler had only to tattle at the Institute before students such as the young Speer were ready to join the National Socialist party. Speer's account is realistic:

In his Memoirs, Speer announces another turning point in his life. In 1945, he came to the con
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