Albert Speer Quotes

Albert Speer delivers a blunt, reflective view on war, justice and history.

24 quotes

1. I felt this war coming. I tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Hitler in 1945. I am not concerned with jurisdiction of the court as Hess or others are. History will show the trials to be necessary.

2. Twenty years. Well...that's fair enough. They couldn't have given me a lighter sentence, considering the facts, and I can't complain. I said the sentences must be severe, and I admitted my share of the guilt, so it would be ridiculous if I complained about the punishment.

3. Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical means like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man.

4. In the burning and devastated cities, we daily experienced the direct impact of war. It spurred us to do our utmost...the bombing and the hardships that resulted from them did not weaken the morale of the populace.

5. Hitler was basically an artist.

6. My only true friend here in the prison among the defendants is Albert Speer. He is a great architect and has a great genius for organization. When I came to Berlin in 1943 to take charge of the navy, there was a housing shortage. The navy assigned me a poor-looking house in Dahlem. I phoned my friend Speer and told him I needed a house. He said he would do his best. Next day he phoned and said my wife should come over to inspect the house he had for me. It was a beautiful manor house, on a hill, with two wide windows on either side and great gardens all around it. It was two stories high, with a fine broad staircase connecting the two floors. Often in the evenings Speer and his wife would visit me and my wife, and we would return the visits. Speer would bring along pianists and violinists, who were perfect. We would spend many a musical evening together.

7. Speer is more of an artist by nature. Admittedly he has great organizational talent but politically he is too inexperienced to be totally reliable in this critical time.

8. Speer, as Minister of Armaments and Production, joined in planning and executing the program to dragoon prisoners of war and foreign workers into German war industries, which waxed in output while the laborers waned in starvation.

9. He was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games.

10. I would rather not tell you here things which every German has at heart.

11. One seldom recognizes the devil when he is putting his hand on your shoulder.

12. Cases of sickness made up a very small percentage which in my opinion was normal. However, propaganda pamphlets dropped from aircraft were telling the workers to feign illness, and detailed instructions were given to them on how to do it.

13. All I know is that these two gases both had a quite extraordinary effect, and that there was no respirator, and no protection against them that we knew of. So the soldiers would have been unable to protect themselves against this gas in any way.

14. Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. It was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man.

15. The Americans had not played a very prominent part in the war of 1914-1918, he (Adolf Hitler) thought, and moreover, had not made any great sacrifices of blood. They would certainly not withstand a trial by fire, for their fighting qualities were low. In general no such thing as an American people existed as a unit; they were nothing but a mass of immigrants from many nations and many races.

16. One seldom recognizes the devil when he has his hand on your shoulder.

17. It is certain that concentration camps had a bad reputation with us.

18. In all my activities as Armament Minister I never once visited a labor camp, and cannot, therefore, give any information about them.

19. At headquarters, where everyone lived under the tremendous pressure of responsibility, probably nothing was more welcome than a dictate from above. That meant being freed of a decision and simultaneously being provided with an excuse for failure.

20. Temporarily in 1934 I became a department head in the German Labor Front and dealt with the improvement of labor conditions in German factories. Then I was in charge of public works on the staff of Hess. I gave up both these activities in 1941.

21. I was not a member of the SS.

22. No doubt concentration camps were a means, a menace used to keep order.

23. All sensible Army people turned gas warfare down as being utterly insane since, in view of your superiority in the air, it would not be long before it would bring the most terrible catastrophe upon German cities, which were completely unprotected.

24. Hitler had a great gift for adjusting - consciously or intuitively - to his surroundings. ... With enormous histrionic intuition he could shape his behavior to changing situations.