homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Battle of Britain + Battle of Britain II Here's what happened (Continued)

Folks,

Dux:

I've read both volumes of Speer's memoirs and they are quite interesting given that they probably leave out some incriminating evidence. They were best sellers going into many printings and they certainly made loads of money for Speer. Was this fair? I dunno.

Speer was the only leading NAZI I am aware of who unequivocally and apparently contritely accepted blame for his actions. That may have saved his life. Hitler always wanted to be an accomplished fine artist and more than that an architect. Speer was by all accounts a very good architect. He was commissioned by Hitler to design heroic buildings for the 'New Germany" which he did to the dictator's great satisfaction. A few of these edifices escaped the bombing and they still stand today.

Hitler liked the man and they spent long hours discussing architecture and Hitler's vision for the new capital of the world that would be called Germania. Speer was more or less accepted into Hitler's inner circle so that his view of the goings on was quite candid. Later on of course, and as you would know, he became armaments Minister and through his superior organizational skills and due in a very large part to his many ingenious innovations Germany was able to continue prosecuting the war after D-Day when the Allies were pushing back their armies on two fronts and they were able to bomb the hell out of German cities and factories with overwhelming strength.

Speer was eventually released from Spandau Prison in plenty of time for him to live a comfortable life for many years. We should contrast that to those poor doomed wretches pressed into slave labor by him to work and to die for the NAZI cause during the war. Hitler supposedly killed himself with cyanide and a pistol shot into his brain. All the other leaders of the regime died by hanging save for Goering, Hess, Speer and the chicken hearted chicken farmer Himmler who took cyanide as soon as he was captured, some say he was wearing a dress at the time. Perhaps it is true, however, the photos I've seen of the dead man do not confirm it.

OK, no one truly knows what happened to Martin Bormann. A skeleton was found in the Berlin subway that reportedly is his. I do not know if that has been confirmed by DNA test. Hess is still an enigma to me. I have read much about the man and still I do not know his mind. Perhaps he was demented; but weren't they all? It might be a matter of degree I suppose. I cannot exactly work out what happened to him and why he flew to England. On the surface one might suspect that Hitler, whom Hess adored with a passion usually reserved for one's best liebling, sent Hess to England to try to get some sort of peace agreement that would allow him to have a free hand in Europe.

Just as in the TV series "Mission Impossible" with the recently deceased Peter Graves, Hitler disavowed all prior knowledge of Hess's actions and suggested that the man was suffering from delusions. Really? And he and the all other NAZIS were not??? Indeed, if Hess were not non compos mentis he certainly did a great job of acting the part for many long years. Whatever was the case he was one of Hitler's disciples from the very beginning who survived both the war and the righteous vengeance of the world.

There was a double standard in affect after the war. A just wrath can be set aside it seems when it serves the purpose. What happened to important NAZIS after the hostilities ceased seems to have been somewhat unbalanced. Some NAZIS were imprisoned, some were hanged and some were carted back to other countries to work for one side or the other during the icy cold war that followed the hot one. The political persuasions and wartime actions of top scientists and those involved in the intelligence service were overlooked no matter how heinous they may have been. Politics and self-interest make strange bed-fellows indeed.