Albert Speer

[January 30, 1964] Thirty-one years ago today Hitler took power ... a few months later I met Hitler by chance. And from that moment on everything changed; my whole life was lived under a kind of high tension. Strange, how quickly I gave up everything that had been important to me up to then: private life with my family, my leanings, my principles of architecture. Yet I never had the feeling I was making a break, let alone betraying anything I cherished; rather the feeling was one of liberation and intensification, as though only then was I coming to my proper self. In the following period Hitler accorded me many triumphs, acquaintanceship with power and fame - but he also destroyed everything for me. Not only a life work as an architect and my good name, but above all my moral integrity. Condemned as a war criminal, robbed of my freedom for half a lifetime, and burdened with the permanent sense of guilt, I must in addition live in the awareness that I founded my whole existence on an error. ...So then I ask myself: would I like to fall out of history? What does a place in it mean to me, slight though it may be? If thirty-one years ago today I had been confronted with the choice of leading a quiet and respected life as city engineer of Augsburg or Gottingen, with a house in the suburbs, two or three decent buildings done a year, and vacations with the family in Hahnenklee or Norderney - if I had been offered all that or else everything that has happened, the fame and the guilt, the world capital and Spandau, together with the feeling of a life gone awry - which would I choose? Would I be prepared to pay the price all over again? My head reels when I pose this question. I scarcely dare to ask it. Certainly I cannot answer it at all. Show less «

[May 4, 1965] Recently, in these days full of memories, I have considered how I would characterize Hitler today after the passage of twenty years. I think I am now less sure than I ever was. All reflection magnifies the difficulties, makes him more incomprehensible. Of course I have no doubts at all about the judgment of history. But I would not know how to describe the man himself. No doubt I could say that he was cruel, unjust, unapproachable, cold, capricious, self-pitying, and vulgar; and in fact he was all of those things. But at the same time he was also the exact opposite of almost all those things. He could be a solicitous paterfamilias, a generous superior, amiable, self-controlled, proud, and capable of enthusiasm for beauty and greatness. I can think of only two concepts that include all his character traits and that are the common denominator of all those many contradictory aspects: opaqueness and dishonesty. Today, in retrospect, I am completely uncertain when and where he was ever really himself, his image not distorted by playacting, tactical considerations, joy in lying. I could not even say what his feeling toward me actually was - whether he really liked me or merely thought how useful I could be to him. Show less «

[November 30, 1952] Whatever turn my life takes in the future, whenever my name is mentioned, people will think of Hitler. I shall never have an independent existence. And sometimes I see myself as a man of seventy, children long since adult and grandchildren growing up, and wherever I go people will not ask about me but about Hitler. Show less «