Hitler and the romantic illusion

Albert Speer

In a passage of my Spandau — The Secret Diaries (Collins 1976), I described National-Socialist architecture as a last attempt to defend style against industrial form. With this attempt, or so I thought, ,tt would be possible to make up for the Inevitable ugliness of our industrial world by aesthetic form.

If I ponder this statement today, I am bound to confess that I now regard these thoughts as utopian. For decades modern architecture has been unable to ignore the realities of our times. A higher standard of living has brought higher wages, and it is no longer possible to indulge in mdividualism when constructing buildings. The building industry is ruled by Modular, ready-made, parts. The extravagantly experimental architecture of the Twenties has become the style of our era. Everywhere, in Tokyo, Moscow, Hong Kong, Teheran or Caracas, buildings rise up on an increasingly identical pattern. With a universal Style, European civilisation is swamping the entire world, just as once the politically impotent Greeks did with the icornan Empire. Do uniformity and sterility inevitably g° together? The famous and fashionable models of, say, Mies van der Rohe, are beirls7 reproduced a thousand times over, and appear in their impersonality like Phantoms. We have become technologists Of building and are on the way to losing our discernment completely. Recently I had occasion to talk to a audi-Arabian architect who has a leading position in his country. He described to me the thoroughness with which architects, trained at Berkeley or other universities, have been indoctrinated with modern design. They show no respect for What has grown naturally, although this lilay be precisely what is best suited to its Purpose. Wide roads are ploughed ithrough communities, both small and 'arge, in order to accommodate future traffic. But nobody gives a thought to the fact that, because of the sudden strong winds and the scorching sun of his countrY, a certain narrowness and shade can make life possible, or at least bearable. This stereotypical modernity at any !Pee, which has hitherto been taught by colleges of architecture, is apparent everywhere in the urge to erect high-rise sjructures – although it would be better 1,,or the families, and particularly the chilren, to create an environment where they could find a genuine home. Highrise blocks should give way to housing of two or three stories amidst small squares and intimate gardens. We have strayed far from the aims which, at the beginning of the century, produced the British garden cities, once regarded as models by the whole world.

Architects are of course aware of these needs and inadequacies, which have their roots in economic realities. Of course they would know how to remedy this, if they were given more funds.

We in Germany are proud that, by spending billions of marks, salmon once again thrive in the Rhine: a somewhat grotesque priority, if we think of the psychological suffering which the modern design of the most recent housing is inflicting on human beings. Despite the inevitable straitjacket modern technology imposes on construction, it is possible to create living conditions that would allow people to live healthily, far from the power centres of technology, which already determine a large part of their daily working lives.

Forests, lakes, clean air, and unpolluted water are not the only aspects of our environment; our housing conditions are part of it, too. They may even be the most significant of all, since they determine our daily lives positively or negatively.

We must learn to master technology and its potential by political means. We must not worry about the expenditure, if this can assist in providing optimal conditions of modern living, particularly when it comes to housing. But we must also come to terms with the fact that this new world cannot be achieved by adhering to our traditional views. Indeed, man is no longer the measure of his universe. The comprehensible proportions that existed in past centuries have been lost.

In my final 20-minute speech in which I, like every other defendant at the Nuremberg trials, was allowed to comment on my case, I tried to warn of the consequences of modern technology: 'Hitler's dictatorship was the first dictatorship in an industrial nation in this age of modern technology, a dictatorship which, in order to subjugate its own people, knew to perfection how to use the technical means at its disposal.'

I explained further that 'the nightmare of many, that nations might one day be ruled by technology', had 'in Hitler's authoritarian regime been almost realised. The danger of being terrorised by technology today faces every country, but in a modern dictatorship this appears to me to be inescapable. Thus, the more technical the world becomes, the more necessary is the individual's right to freedom and self-respect as a counterbalance.'

At that time, after the collapse of Hitler's regime, and shortly after I had tumbled from the powerful position of Armaments Minister to an existence on the lowest rung of life as a prisoner, shorn of all power, I seem to have shied away from declaring with all frankness that I myself had been the master of technology and that it had been in the short period of my three-year tenure of that office that technology came fully into its own in Germany. Until then, mass production had by no means been part of the ideological armoury of National Socialism.

Hitler was, if I come to think of it, decidedly anti-modern. Not only did he resist the machine gun, because it would induce cowardice in the soldiers, he also rejected the jet fighter plane, because its extreme velocity would hinder fighting ability. He had as little liking for jetpropulsion as he had had – until 1943 – for rockets. He even resisted our hesitant attempts to use nuclear fission to produce an atom bomb and declared it in private conversation to be the product of Jewish pseudo-science.

It was no accident that he made the sower, and not the modern sowing machine, the plough, and not the tractor, the symbols of National Socialist ideology. The thatched roof was preferred to one of man-made material; modern music, the expression of the technological age, was replaced by folklore. Hitler perpetually polemicised against the 'soulless machine'. From the point of view of cultural pessimism, some aspects of these endeavours may have been understandable. But straw thatches and antiquated ideas about artisan manufacturing processes hindered the rational use of economic potential. When I began my work as Armaments Minister in 1942, I came across these ideological hurdles. It was like fighting a rubber wall; as when my demands to promote nuclear fission by all possible means were met by an article in the party newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, headed 'Jewish Physical Science Raises its Head Again.'

I have only recently gathered from the memoirs of Dr Wagener, Hitler's economic adviser until 1934, that Hitler had in 1932 laid down his guidelines for the exercise of the power he planned to seize in Germany. His view was that the individual 'had become enslaved by industrialisation, was in bondage to capital and machine.' Industrialisation he regarded as 'a treadmill that completely grinds down any independence or individuality.' Those 'evil results of industrialisation' would have to be 'thoroughly eradicated' and 'industrial development' would have to be put once more 'into the service of humanity and the individual.' There is little doubt that Hitler meant what he said at the time, even though his financial commitment to big business caused him to postpone his plans.

Hitler did not mention the slavery he was to bring a few years later to the hapless individuals in Germany. But it is precisely this point which gives me pause when I think of similar catch-phrases that are time and again proclaimed as passwords for the future, especially by the young.

In the course of my research for a work on SS infiltration into wartime industry, I came across speeches and articles in which SS-Obergruppenfiihrer and Chief of the SS Intelligence Service Otto Ohlendorf — then considered a brilliant party thinker — had formulated his ideas. In the autumn of 1943, Ohlendorf had been appointed Assistant Secretary of State at the Ministry of Economics and it was this ministry which laid down the general guidelines of economic policy. Thus Ohlendorfs utterances may be considered as the official view. The 'trend towards serial and mass production' were, so he said, 'economic methods imposed upon us by the war.' Ohlendorf went on to argue that one should allow 'the war only to be the infallible teacher for war itself,' and that it was therefore a question to be posed in future, 'whether Germany should indeed carry through mammoth industrialisation to its fullest extent.' This viewpoint is worth noting, since it coincides with the ideas of certain radical groups, at least within Germany, just as much as it did with Hitler's. Ohlendorf continued: 'Has this war, with its need for mass-production, not introduced an entirely new era? Are we perhaps on the threshold of a completely new industrial age? Will industry, after mastering the skill of mass-producing arms, not also develop a new capacity for the massproduction of clothing or industrially processed food? Whatever the outcome of this war, the German people, if it were to dedicate itself to the idea of massproduction, would have to compete with that of Japan and America.' This contingency was to be rejected, since it would bring in its train 'highly undesirable mass trends which would destroy the very basis of existence of the German people.' These dangers would assume uncontrollable proportions, if one 'were to allow technology to develop by itself, to find its own form and thus to establish itself as the yardstick for economic development.' The law-makers would then have 'no option but to subordinate themselves to this technical organisation.'

The face of the economy, Ohlendorf continued in his reflections on economic ideology, 'would then not be determined by German existential development, but by the rationalist method of the most efficient use of technology and organisation.' His own doctrine with which he sought to counter this, in his view, pernicious development, was that 'the enemies of such a future would have to begin by seeking out these faults in the sphere of civilisation,' ('civilisation' was then used in a pejorative sense, as decadence.) and only by following his, Ohlendorf s, economic ideology would the Germans be able to 'bring to bear all cultural and human values and gain from them the strength and the capacity, which others who are limited to civilisatory values cannot possess.'

It should give pause for thought, though, that both Hitler and Ohlendorf, along with many of the party leaders, should have been dedicated to such philanthropic ideas; all the more so, as Hitler became the scourge of humanity in this century, and the apparently civilised Ohlendorf had two years earlier been the chief of an SS operations unit which had killed more than 40,000 Jews in southern Russia.

As can be seen from my final address at the Nuremberg trial, I, too, was convinced that technical development was to be regarded as the threat of our age. But since taking note of Ohlendorfs and Hitler's ideas on the subject, I have come to regard these theories with mistrust. To condemn technology and romantically to demand a return to an artisan way of life would be best left to Ohlendorf and his ilk. To indulge in romantic notions may be attractive, but is certainly a comfortable escape from reality. Romanticism and cruelty can form a symbiosis which, when it afflicts the rulers of a country, can degenerate into ruthlessness. If I remember my own buildings, I am bound to say to myself that in their untimely monster-proportions they were a romantic protest against technology.

Are we then to mourn or to rejoice that we live in an age of technological development of which the end is nowhere in sight, but where the advantages cannot as yet be measured against the disadvantages? There is no doubt that anyone who had lived at the turn of the century would encounter the greatest difficulties if he were to be transplanted into the turmoil, unrest, noise and complexity of our present existence. I do not imagine that he would derive much pleasure from our life, and suspect that he would suffer serious psychological damage from such transplantation. It does appear on the other hand that people living in the midst of modern development long for the security enjoyed by the generation living around 1900.

This is certainly true for the upper classes and it is typical for me, the product of an upper-middle-class background, that I tend to forget how the living conditions of working people have changed in these eighty years. Hard work, poor pay, catastrophic housing conditions have since been superseded by a living standard which in many areas exceeds the luxury of the rich around 1900. To give but one example: before 1914, a medium-powered Mercedes-Benz motor car of 40 h.p. cost my parents 30,000 gold marks (or £1,500). This would be about £10,000 in today's money. Today, relatively cheap motor cars in the £2,000 range by far exceed the old product in performance and comfort, and it takes a skilled worker a few months' wages to purchase one.

I must confess that my position visa-vis technology is somewhat schizophrenic. Although I was always an enemy of the thatched roof ideology, I continue to indulge in unworldly, romantic feelings. But perhaps this is merely a symptom of our time. With part of our being we are still wedded to traditions and on the other hand we long for technical perfection. Even when I think of the daily negative effects, I am still not immune to the fascination of technologY. A romantic on the one hand and an enthusiast of technology on the other? I have remained both. I am modern and love things modern and use every possibility they afford for the perfection uf life. Yet at the same time I hate contemporary technology because it is uglY, makes our world hideous and throws our life out of its familiar course. I must confess that my feelings appear to be peculiarly antiquated. I personally have lost contact with the spirit of the time and still look everywhere for instances that might satisfy my nostalgia and my desire for harmony. My feelings are thus equalIY tied to classical orders as to romantic ones.

Neutrality in the face of the problems of our time? It brings to mind the biblical text: 'Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.' Because, basically, I teat things happen, I have become guilty. Had I been an engaged, enraptured National Socialist, I might at least be able to saY: 'I erred, but with all my passion.' BItt non-engagement brings greater guilt. Is it not true that someone who looks ult when wrong is being done, becomes as entangled in the events as the active cid' prit? Does passion not justify mall.Y things and is not this standing aside, tills, neutrality, the real reproach one shoul° make, both in my own case and in general?

It is certainly necessary in our time to be quite clear about the dangers of an absu: lute belief in the benefits of every kind 011 technological progress. There is a net' myth growing up, which might follow Ul the footsteps of Rosenberg's myth. Yet It would be just as wrong to indulge in sentimental romanticism, and not only t° regret the past but to try and revive it.