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

Speer paid two visits to the western border regions in September, the first, from 10 to 14 September, taking in Karlsruhe, Saarbrücken, 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 Röchling, 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 levée 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