Quotes About Speer

Reading contemporary sources, there can be no doubt that the Battle of the Ruhr marked a turning point in the history of the German war economy, which has been grossly underestimated by post-war accounts.29 As Speer himself acknowledged, the RAF was hitting the right target.30 The Ruhr was not only Europe's most important producer of coking coal and steel, it was also a crucial source of intermediate components of all kinds.

The avenue was designed by Reichsminister Albert Speer and completed in 1957. It is one hundred and twenty-three meters wide and five-point-six kilometers in length. It is both wider, and two and a half times longer, than the Chaps Elysees in Paris. Higher, longer, bigger, wider, more expensive...even in victory, thought March, Germany has a parvenu's inferiority complex. Nothing stands on its own. Everything has to be compared with what the foreigners have....

Speer's staff and department chiefs and the heads of the businesses that fell within his jurisdiction had to be protected from the attentions of Bormann and the Gestapo. This Speer successfully achieved, until the failed attempt on Hitler's life in July 1944, by getting Hitler to issue a decree that exempted them from political interference, which, in effect, allowed critical discussion. However, Dorsch disapproved and often

Göring had hoped to expand his own power base by taking over much of what Hitler's appointee, Speer, was now unequivocally given. It was further complicated by the fact that Walter Funk was the Reichsminister of Economics so that there was a threefold overlap. Those in Hitler's immediate circle manoeuvred and intrigued to increase their own power and prestige

THE OBSESSION of Speer's life after Nuremberg, as I have pointed out, was Hitler's murder of the Jews. The ambivalence, however, was that while he sincerely grasped every opportunity to reiterate his sorrow and his pain at having been–the automatic formula he used–"a part of a government that committed such crimes", he was totally incapable of saying that he had known about them at the time.

If one wanted to gain real understanding of Speer, one had to realize first that almost everything he did–though, as shown by some of our talks, not quite everything–had a purpose, generally directed towards his own benefit.

The gentleman sitting on my left was young, very tall and blond, and had the posture of a sphinx reimagined by Albert Speer.

Speer… seemed like an athletic university professor who had turned to public administration.