The End

workers from the armaments sector. And as the autumn drew on, and Hitler recognized the achievements of Speer—‘an organizer of genius’—in surmounting extraordinary difficulties to maintain armaments production, the latter’s bargaining hand became stronger.⁸² His efforts had reinstated him in Hitler’s favour. Try as he might, Goebbels failed to persuade Hitler to come to a decision to compel Speer to release a further 180,000 exempted workers from the armaments industry.⁸³ Speer’s attritional, and time-consuming, battle with Goebbels over the retention of his workers had led in the end, therefore, to something approaching stalemate. Hitler had, as so often, proved reluctant to reach a decision in a dispute of significance between two of his leading paladins. The infighting between the heavyweight ministers could, however, find no resolution if Hitler was not prepared to offer one.

The long-running dispute over scarce manpower was regarded by Speer as a major drain on his energy and resources. Despite this, he made extraordinary efforts in the wake of the setbacks in the west to enable Germany to fight on.

The high point of armaments production for the entire war had been reached in July 1944. The level attained, however, flattered to deceive. It has aptly been described as being like the last sprint of the marathon runner before he sags, energy expended.⁸⁴ During the autumn, all spheres of production fell sharply. The main reason was the huge increase in Allied bombing—60 per cent of all bombs dropped over Germany fell after July 1944. Following the Allied breakthrough in France, September brought a crucial acceleration in the devastating air raids. With Allied aircraft now able to use bases closer to the German borders, and the Luftwaffe more and more paralysed through destruction and through lack of fuel, sustained attacks on industrial installations and transport networks had become far easier. Raw materials production fell by almost two-fifths in the autumn months. Allied attacks on seven mineral-oil works on the same day, 24 August 1944, resulted in a drop of two-thirds in production of aircraft fuel in September, contributing greatly to the ineffectiveness of remaining air defences. Massive damage was caused to the industrial infrastructure as power stations were put out of action. Gas and electricity supplies were badly affected. Gas output in October was a quarter down on what it had been in March. Repeated attacks on the rail network of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, on the lines, locomotives, other rolling stock, bridges and marshalling yards, as well as waterways and Rhine shipping, caused massive disruption to transport arteries with huge knock- on effects in supplies to industry, not least coal provision from the Ruhr. At least, as yet, the coal mines themselves in the west remained largely unscathed. The decline in output of vital weaponry was not to be stopped, despite levels of production attained still outstripping those of 1942.⁸⁵

What remains little less than astounding, however, is not why armaments production fell drastically, but how, given the extent and well-nigh insuperable nature of the problems, Speer was able to keep it at such a relatively high level.

Speer’s rapid grasp not just of problems, but their possible solutions or at least amelioration, his enormous energy coupled with unquestioned talent for organization, and the authorization he had to push through changes, thanks to his manipulation of his frequent armaments briefings with Hitler, all contributed to his ability in autumn 1944 to paper over the widening cracks. He was preoccupied with doing all he could to maximize fuel supplies (badly affected by air strikes against the hydrogenation plants in central Germany since the spring), to build up air defences through increased fighter production, to keep transport moving and to save all that was possible for industry in the evacuation of border areas.⁸⁶ In pressing the demands of the armaments industry, he strived constantly to protect his own domain from the other ‘big beasts’ in the Nazi jungle, to prevent the Party from undermining the ‘self-responsibility of industry’, and to avoid deliberate ‘home-made’ destruction to industrial installations as German troops retreated, to add to that of the enemy.

Speer paid two visits to the western border regions in September, the first, from 10 to 14 September, taking in Karlsruhe, Saarbrucken, the vicinity of Metz, the Westwall to Trier, then Aachen to Venlo. He identified significant weaknesses in munitions and fuel supplies, and serious problems as territories were evacuated. He established, for instance, that the quartermaster-generals of the armies in the west had too little contact with business agencies and were failing to make use of the experience of the latter in the western regions to help, for example, master transport problems. He pointed, as a way forward, to how Hermann Rochling, the steel magnate, had liaised daily with military leaders in the Saar to ascertain their munitions requirements and organize deliveries accordingly. He recommended setting up an office attached to the headquarters of the Commander-in- Chief West which could directly incorporate business in producing and delivering the equipment needed by the troops. A simple measure to improve supplies was to use the columns of lorries deployed in bringing back important salvaged equipment from the front and returning empty, to carry supplies for the frontline troops the other way. And clarifying organizational lines to make maximum use of the industrial area close to the border in supplying the western front directly would, he indicated, save wasteful journeys by lengthy transport routes used for carrying armaments from other parts of Germany. His main concern was ‘that production would continue in the endangered areas to the last minute’ and he opposed, therefore, what he saw as premature evacuation. Even under artillery fire, munitions production could go on just behind the front to a very late stage.⁸⁷ He sent a series of orders to the western Gauleiter in September, instructing them to see that production was not curtailed prematurely, and that—given the possibility of recovering the territories vacated (mere rhetoric to placate Hitler, to judge from Speer’s later account⁸⁸)—the evacuation of industry eastwards should follow only the disabling, not destruction, of industrial plant. Speer’s report to Hitler also stressed the shortage of weapons, repeating a point in his running dispute with Goebbels that troops without heavy weaponry were pointless and that ‘in this war, which is a technical war, a levee en masse is not decisive’.⁸⁹

Speer’s second journey to the western front, from 26 September to 1 October—carried out at such a tempo that his travel companions found it difficult to keep up with him—emphasized the urgent need to shore up the border zone west of the Rhine, and his anxiety about the threat to the Rhineland-Westphalian industrial area, which provided half of German armaments. ‘If significant losses of territory occur here through enemy operations,’ he warned, ‘it would be far more serious than all the losses in the other theatres of war.’ His report to Hitler was a further advertisement for his own achievements. The troops were enthusiastic, he commented, about the improved model of the Tiger tank that had been produced. The supplies of new weapons had contributed greatly to restoring morale after the retreat from France, and there was now confidence that a new line of resistance could be held, underlining the importance of delivering more weapons and munitions to the front line. This could not be done, he pointed out, if, as had happened previously, valuable skilled workers were taken out of tank production, something which tank commanders themselves did not want to happen. His conclusion was effectively, then, a further plea to make no more withdrawals from the armaments industry to provide recruits for the Wehrmacht.⁹⁰

In fact, to a limited extent at least, he was prepared to see manpower go the other way. Desperate to mobilize all labour resources to sustain armaments production, he complained to Himmler at the end of October that full use of concentration camp prisoners was being hindered through shortage of guards, and suggested— probably to little effect—that a contingent of suitable Wehrmacht soldiers could be transferred to the SS to take on guard-duty.⁹¹

Without Speer’s extraordinarily strenuous efforts to sustain armaments production and organize the repeated rapid repair of railway lines and bridges destroyed in bombing, the war would have surely been over earlier. He later gave the impression that he viewed the continuation of the war as senseless from the time of the Allied invasion, and that by September it was a ‘hopeless situation’.⁹² In recognition of this, everything he did, according to his subsequent account, was directed at preventing the destruction of German industry. Doubtless, this was indeed one objective. Speer had at least one eye on a Germany after Hitler (in which, probably, he hoped to play some significant part). Germany would need her industry, and in his emphasis on immobilization rather than destruction, Speer was naturally working in full agreement with leading industrialists, who, unsurprisingly, combined an all-out effort to manufacture armaments with thoughts, not to be aired in public, of survival after defeat.⁹³ But contemporary records from his ministry do not suggest that this was the sole, or even the dominant, aim. Rather, it seems, Speer was genuinely doing everything in his power to enable Germany’s war effort to continue. The extremes of energy and endeavour he deployed are not consonant with someone who thought fighting on was senseless and the situation hopeless. He could have done less without endangering himself. It would have brought the end, which he claimed to see as inevitable, closer. Without doubt, he recognized by this time that ‘final victory’ was out of the question. Did he also believe, at this point, that total defeat was the only alternative? He appears to have been far from ready to admit that the Reich was doomed. For some months yet, he thought it possible that Germany could avoid the worst. Had he done less to prolong the war, the worst might