The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944–1945

76. DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), pp. 764–6. For Bormann’s antagonism, see Louis Eugene Schmier, ‘Martin Bormann and the Nazi Party 1941–1945’, Ph.D. thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1969 (University Microfilms Inc., Ann Arbor), pp. 304–8, 312–13.

77. TBJG, II/13, p. 388 (2.9.44).

78. BAB, R3/1526, fos. 3–19, Speer to Hitler, 20.9.44. See also Hancock, p. 167.

79. Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1969, p. 407.

80. See DZW, 6, p. 228, Speer’s Posen speech, 3.8.44; BAB, R3/1527, fo. 13, Speer to Hitler, 3.10.44.

81. BAB, R3/1527, fos. 8–9, Stellungnahme zur Führerinformation v. Dr. Goebbels, 26.9.44; fo. 10–10^v, Speer to Bormann, 2.10.44; fos. 12–15, Speer to Hitler, 3.10.44 (quotation, fo. 12).

82. TBJG, II/14, pp. 329–30 (2.12.44).

83. See TBJG, II/14, p. 383 (9.12.44).

84. DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), p. 754.

85. DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), pp. 755–61; DZW, 6, pp. 364–5.

86. BAB, R3/1740, fo. 111, Speer-Chronik, mentions some of these aims.

87. Speer’s suggestion in his Erinnerungen, p. 411, that this emphasis was a tactical device, in case Hitler should hear that installations close to the front had not been destroyed sounds like a later rationalization of something that at the time he genuinely advocated.

88. Speer, p. 410. See also Gregor Janssen, Das Ministerium Speer: Deutschlands Rüstung im Krieg, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna, 1968, pp. 304–7; Matthias Schmidt, Albert Speer: Das Ende eines Mythos, Berne and Munich, 1982, pp. 146–7; and Hans Kehrl, Krisenmanager im Dritten Reich, Düsseldorf, 1973, pp. 412–13. Hitler had agreed in August, during the retreat from France, that industrial plant in danger of falling into enemy hands should be temporarily immobilized, not destroyed.—BAB, R3/1512, fo. 57, notes from armaments conferences 18–20.8.44; printed in Deutschlands Rüstung im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Hitlers Konferenzen mit Albert Speer 1942–1945, ed. Willi A. Boelcke, Frankfurt am Main, 1969, p. 402. Speer (pp. 411–12) had, however, then been alarmed at signs in early September that Hitler intended a ‘scorched earth’ policy in Germany. This was from a leading article in the Völkischer Beobachter on 7 September, written by Helmut Sündermann, deputy Reich Press Chief, on Hitler’s direct instructions, Speer said (p. 577 n. 13). Goebbels was displeased with the article, written without his agreement, which had been badly received by the public.—TBJG, II/13, p. 493 (16.9.44). See also von Oven, p. 137 (18.9.44), who described the article as ‘idiotic’.

89. BAB, R3/1539, fos. 7–14, 17–31, reports on visit to the west, 14.9.44, 16.9.44 (quotation, fo. 28); R3/1740, fos. 106–7, Speer-Chronik; BAB, R3/1623, fos. 22, 24–7, 50–52, 66–8, 77–77^v, directives on disabling industry in the west.

90. BAB, R3/1540, fos. 6–23, report on the visit to the western areas, 26.9.–1.10.44 (5.10.44); description of the visit in R3/1740, fos. 112–25, Speer-Chronik. See also Speer, p. 408.

91. BAB, R3/1583, fos. 110–11, Speer to Himmler, Bewachungs-Mannschaften für KZ-Häftlinge, 29.10.44.

92. Speer, p. 409; Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, London, 1995, p. 460. And see the critical assessment of Speer’s claim to have accepted at an early stage that the war was lost, by Alfred C. Mierzejewski, ‘When Did Albert Speer Give up?’, Historical Journal, 31 (1988), pp. 391–7.

93. A point he makes in Erinnerungen, p. 411. For the industrialists’ preparations for peace, see Ludolf Herbst, Der Totale Krieg und die Ordnung der Wirtschaft, Stuttgart, 1982, pp. 345–7 and part V generally.

94. DRZW, 5/2 (Müller), p. 302.

95. IWM, Box 367/27, Speer Interrogations, Karl Saur, 11–13.6.45; Box 368/77, Kurt Weissenborn, December 1945–March 1946. And see, for Saur’s brutal mode of operation, Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, London, 2006, pp. 628–9.

96. DZW, 6, p. 266.

97. Around 2.5 million additional foreign workers and prisoners of war were put to work in Germany between the beginning of 1943 and autumn 1944, two-thirds of these from the east. Nearly a third of the labour force in the mining, metal, chemical and building industries in August 1944 consisted of foreign workers.—Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des ‘Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches, Bonn, 1985, pp. 258, 270.