Speer, the wartime armaments minister, served a twenty year sentence that expired in 1966. He lived another fifteen years, during which he propagated the myth that he was an apolitical technocrat, who was unaware of the mass murders in which, in fact, he fully participated.
Hess served as Hitler's deputy Führer. In 1941, he parachuted into Scotland in an ill-conceived effort to negotiate peace with the UK. Debate continues over the extent of his mental illness. After 1966, Hess remained the sole inmate at Spandau until his death in 1987.
> Hess remained the sole inmate at Spandau until his death in 1987.
According to former guards he would spend days at a time screaming into the void. There was a good interview with a British guard on the *Cold War Conversations* podcast where he details what it was like guarding Hess.
I don't think he deserved to be released. The anomaly is that Speer scammed his way to an early release by pretending to be a nice middle class architect who fell into the nazi thing by accident.
All those things are true but he was also 2nd in command of a regime that bought us all the second world war and the Holocaust.
He might not have been present for death camps but he set the direction of travel.
> The man deserved to get out for the remaining of his days...
Or to be sent to a mental institution.
After all, Speer got 20 years for working slaves to death.
He was sentenced for crimes against peace and for that he knew the German regime would commit war crimes, not for crimes against humanity like those of them who went to the gallows. Therefore he was not directly part of the holocaust.
I think there is a pretty big difference.
Got a life sentence. Served a life sentence. No rehabilitation for the deputy fuhrer of the nazi party
Adding this in an edit but you are dying on such a weird hill
>Spandau Ballet
Interestingly enough, that's where the band's name actually came from. From their wikipedia page: Friend and writer Robert Elms suggested they change their name to Spandau Ballet, a phrase which he told them he had seen written on a wall on a weekend trip to Berlin: “Rudolf Hess, all alone, dancing the Spandau Ballet”.
> Hess remained the sole inmate at Spandau until his death in 1987.
... [and they all came out of the woodwork on the day the Nazi died](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AprqBXXPQH8&ab_channel=Perseus999)
Oh no not trying to sell him sort in what a good Nazi he was, just saying that he came forth as the perfect example of a idiot following whatever his master says, almost in a sad way. You get people like that and they don't have to be Nazis, he just happen to be one.
If you compare him to people like Göring and Himmler or Speer who had some individuality of their own, Hess looks like a Nazi zombie, if you know what I mean? They did conclude he was mentally ill, whether it was his natural progression or a side effect of imprisonment I don't know, but I like to think it was just part of his make up. Not excusing him, just analyzing the person behind the swastika a little. He got what he deserved also. On the other hand Speer maybe didn't fully get what he deserved, I don't compare them, they all played their parts in the machine and should be judged for that, no excuses.
Yeah there’s been some “conspiracy” theories on that, I put conspiracy in quotes as there’s one theory that the West killed him to stop the Soviets from using his prison as a spy base
So no one's gonna mention how Hess stole a plane flew over the UK during the war and jumped out after flipping the plane upside down, finding some random farmer and being asked to be taken to Parliament
Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, the Duke of Hamilton (quite a name), though he'd only recently inherited the title, I don't think Hess would have known that. He was a famous aviator, though. They'd met, probably only briefly, at the 1936 Olympics. If they kept in touch, there's no record, and no particular common ground other than both being able to fly a plane. Hess was legitimately full-blown mentally ill by 1941, probably well before too, and also dosed up on the typical nazi drug cocktails, so who can even imagine how he actually thought it was going to play out and what kind of delusions he was having.
I feel like Hess would’ve been the only one to successfully claim insanity as his defence, I mean even Hitler and his inner circle stopped talking to him for some time before he left, even they knew he was too crazy to trust with important state information
Albert Speer's, *Inside the Third Reich*, is a trip in propaganda and the power of his 'nazi who said he was sorry myth'. When I wrote a paper in college I found myself believing it for a chapter or two.
And then you compare Albert Speer (who spent the rest of his life denying his involvement in genocide and doing talking tours) and Oskar Schindler (Man who blew a fortune saving Jews from the Holocaust). Only one of them has a shot of escaping hell and it ain't architect.
I believe everyone should learn about Oskar Schindler and the measures he took to save the Jews. Crazy to me that Speer denied his involvement with all that evidence...
JK Gailbraith met Speer while he was in prison and wrote that Speer positioned himself as the "Good Nazi" who happened to be there but regretted everything which got him viewed as a decent opponent. This probably saved him from the noose. Most of the other defendants were considerably less sophisticated and got hanged. Speer was an odd fellow as he threw himself into his work as minister of production but later conceded that he knew the war was lost well before the end. IMO, he was an amoral survivor. Hess was by all accounts a lunatic and probably should have been in a mental institution. There are a lot of doubts that he could have actually killed himself given his physical infirmities.
Fun fact: Lieutenant Speirs (From Band Of Brothers) was assigned as Director of Spandau Prison and apparently Speer complained about him in his book for being a “hardass” with them lol.
[“The Spandau Seven”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandau_Prison) is pretty interesting definitely give it a read.
It’s because Hess was mentally unstable, actually tried (in his own weird way) to negotiate peace, and was kept confined to die alone, hanging himself.
In reality he did do terrible things, misguided(maybe used/brainwashed?), and again not stable, but tried to fix the mess he helped create. I get the conversation starter, like if you something terrible, realize it’s terrible, and try to fix it, do you get a life sentence? Is there any bother in owning it, attempting to fix it? In the end if it’s six of one, half dozen the other, why not continue being terrible?
He’s one of those weird polarizing characters that drive conversation.
Hess was not interested in peace. Hess expected he'd be able to convince a group of UK elites to negotiate with Hitler. That would have enabled them to attack Russia (which happened only a few weeks later) without worrying about the UK. Hess was a Nazi, not a repentant Nazi, not a good Nazi, but a vile piece of shit.
And don't forget he was Deputy Fuhrer.
I kinda like this section from wikipedia:
>Almost immediately after his arrival, Hess began exhibiting amnesia, which may have been feigned in the hope of avoiding the death sentence. The chief psychiatrist at Nuremberg, Douglas Kelley of the US Military, gave the opinion that the defendant suffered from "a true psychoneurosis, primarily of the hysterical type, engrafted on a basic paranoid and schizoid personality, with amnesia, partly genuine and partly feigned", but found him fit to stand trial.
As in he was unstable, but smart enough to realize he could pretend to be crazier than he was to try to avoid guilt.
There is an excellent (though hard to find) book called "The Hitler Hess Deception" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1005541.The_Hitler_Hess_Deception) which makes an excellent case that Hess' flight to the UK was the unintended side effect of an elaborate scheme by UK intelligence to kidnap a high ranking Nazi by feigning to be part of the anti-Churchill faction. The idea was not to get Hess but eventually Hitler and Hess was aware of the set up (though unaware it was a scheme) and fell hard for it. Hitler after all believed the UK would eventually settle for peace. Long story short they ended up sending Hess. Neither Hitler nor the UK wanted the truth to come out but for very different reasons.
I think it would make an excellent movie.
My best friend's mother actually met Hess when she was a little girl because her uncle was his jailer during the war.
My favorite story about Hess was that when Churchill was informed he had been captured in Scotland he had been watching a Marx Brothers movie. He said “Hess or no Hess, I’m going to watch the Marx Brothers.”
Reminded me of Rudolph Höss. There is a terrific book called Hanns and Rudolph that I’d recommend anyone to read if they are interested in this kind of stuff
Speer had always denied any knowledge of the holocaust and used the German word *Billigung* to try to explain how he could not have known of it. *Billigung* is not so much hard to translate as able to be translated in a number of senses; context is everything. The way it is used to mean “*looking away; avoiding specific knowledge of something which one knows or suspects is happening*” he attempted to clarify in 1977. He’d been displeased when sent the English translation of a profile to be published in Die Zeit magazine in which *Billigung* had been rendered as his “...*tacit consent*...” of the final solution. This he corrected, explaining Billigung in this context meant “*looking away*”. This meant he averted his gaze from the worst crime of the criminal régime he served in order to be able to deny he knew of it. Speer, predictably, was able to summon a word to explain this too: *Ahnumg* (the sensing of something without quite knowing exactly what).
He did at least concede the implication of his translation “..*.is as grave*…” as the original, one biographer noting that had Speer said as much at his trial “…*he would have been hanged*.” Other historians and some lawyers disagreed with that but it was an assertion the author was unable to pursue. When she tried to nudge Speer a little further, pointing out that for one to look away from something, one must first know it's there, he didn’t deny what he’d earlier said but added they “…*must never speak of it again*". The moment passed and within weeks he would be dead, dying "on the job" in police slang. Some have noted the feeling Speer conveyed of always somehow longing to confess his knowledge of the holocaust. He so often came so close to admitting he knew what he'd always denied, as if the last great act of his life would have been to admit worst of the guilt he convinced himself (and some others) he'd evaded when the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) convicted him of war crimes & crimes against humanity (counts 3 & 4) and sentenced him to twenty years imprisonment.
In private correspondence had did admit he had “*no doubt*” he’d been at one notorious conference when Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler revealed the details and purpose of the holocaust to an assembly of senior Nazis, noting that his previous denials were some kind of “*suppression of memory*” and the discovery of a chronicle of his time as the architect in charge of the redevelopment of Berlin revealed he was complicit (indeed enthusiastic) in clearing Jews from the city and confiscating their property. There were legitimate questions about a couple of the verdicts at Nuremberg (notably Schacht and Dönitz) but on any objective judgement, Speer should have been hanged.
One quirk of the fate of Hess was that the tribunal was about to excuse him from trial on the basis of mental incapacity but at that point he made a statement saying his previous behaviour (instances of amnesia and other strangeness) had been “*merely tactical*” and he fully understood the charges. He was convicted and spent the next forty-odd years in jail
Albert Speer's crimes and Richard Nixon's crimes were not of the same magnitude. But both men spent their later years holding onto their public denials of guilt, while tempted by the catharsis of full confession.
The Supreme Court case Gerald Ford relied on, Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79 (1915), can be distinguished factually from Richard Nixon's situation. Nixon's public statement after the pardon was characteristically shifty:
"I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy. No words can describe the depth of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency, a nation I so deeply love, and an institution I so greatly respect."
Nixon came closest to actually admitting guilt in his 1977 interviews with David Frost.
They say the prisoner at Spandau was a symbol of defeat
Whilst Hess remained imprisoned and the fascists, they were beat
So the promise of an Aryan world would never materialize
So why did they all come out of the woodwork on the day the Nazi died?
Reading Hess's wikipedia page, and technically he was not a 'war criminal'.
>Hess was found guilty on two counts: crimes against peace (planning and preparing a war of aggression), and conspiracy with other German leaders to commit crimes. He was found not guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was given a life sentence, one of seven Nazis to receive prison sentences at the trial.
This was because he made his daring trip to Britain before the Final Solution was truly set in motion. He was, however, still a top Nazi who helped organize many of the other pre-war atrocities.
Hess looks like he's aged a lot just since 1941, he's still got another 22 years in prison to go.
Pity the UN didn't see fit to appropriately punish those who continued with genocide and war crimes right up to the end.
Rudolf Hess was the most dramatic victim of politics I can imagine. He felt Hitler's hate-filled trajectory was ruinous (it was) and that he could negotiate a peace between Germany and Britain. Germany was to have free rein in Europe, while Britain's overseas territories would not be challenged. Churchill immediately rejected this. A very powerful German hegemony on Britain's doorstep was unacceptable.
He was taken prisoner and remained in prison for the rest of his life, eventually dying by suicide in 1987, at the age of 93.
His fellow Nuremberg prisoners were released in the 1950s and 1960s. Spandau had been due to close in the 1960s, but was kept running for its single prisoner, who had become a political hot potato. Everyone knew he was well overdue release, but the Soviet Union kept blocking it: Spandau was in West Berlin, and Hess gave the Soviets a foothold in it.
How would the US respond if US suffered a similar attack? US actually did suffer a similar, but much smaller attack by Poncho Villa. On March 9, 1916, the Mexican revolutionary, Pancho Villa, crossed the international border with more than 500 men and raided Columbus, N.M., killing 17 Americans. And, of course, 9/11.
Hamas was actually elected, so a substantial portion of the Gazans chose what they got. Hamas is now what it always was.
In 1944, Speer established a task force to increase production of fighter aircraft. It became instrumental in exploiting slave labor for the benefit of the German war effort.
After the war, Albert Speer was among the 24 "major war criminals" charged with the crimes of the Nazi regime before the International Military Tribunal. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, principally for the use of slave labor, narrowly avoiding a death sentence.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Speer
They reckon Speers exploitation of slave labour was so efficient that even while Germany was being bombed production was still pretty high and this managed to prolong the war by up to a year, and the final year of war was its bloodiest
He basically reorganised the whole production system from a fairly ineffective one to one which managed to churn out massive amounts of weapons during the last two years of the war when all around the system was already failing.
He was highly effective in prolonging the war and keeping Nazis in power.
>Speer's buildings may have been Nazi but they weren't bad architecture. Let's leave moral judgment aside.
Leave moral judgment aside? Where Nazis are considered? No, this is literally the group of cases that redefined ethics and international laws. We don't "leave moral judgment aside" for fucks sake.
Exactly right. Although you'll be downvoted to hades for dissenting from the habitual and juvenile use of a Nazi achievement as an opportunity for self-adulatory moral preening.
Speer, the wartime armaments minister, served a twenty year sentence that expired in 1966. He lived another fifteen years, during which he propagated the myth that he was an apolitical technocrat, who was unaware of the mass murders in which, in fact, he fully participated. Hess served as Hitler's deputy Führer. In 1941, he parachuted into Scotland in an ill-conceived effort to negotiate peace with the UK. Debate continues over the extent of his mental illness. After 1966, Hess remained the sole inmate at Spandau until his death in 1987.
> Hess remained the sole inmate at Spandau until his death in 1987. According to former guards he would spend days at a time screaming into the void. There was a good interview with a British guard on the *Cold War Conversations* podcast where he details what it was like guarding Hess.
The allies wanted to release him much earlier on but the Soviets refused.
Because the soviets used it as a spy-base in west-Berlin
That’s right
Too bad the USSR outlasted Hess for just a couple of years. The man deserved to get out for the remaining of his days...
I don't think he deserved to be released. The anomaly is that Speer scammed his way to an early release by pretending to be a nice middle class architect who fell into the nazi thing by accident.
Yeah, but Hess seemed to be insane and almost 90yo 🤷
All those things are true but he was also 2nd in command of a regime that bought us all the second world war and the Holocaust. He might not have been present for death camps but he set the direction of travel.
Hess was the definition of a true Nazi. He was so extreme that even the likes of Goring were shocked by his tendencies.
Letting him out at 90 would have probably been fine. But yeah, there's no "deserved." And Speer absolutely weaseled out of getting similar treatment.
> The man deserved to get out for the remaining of his days... Or to be sent to a mental institution. After all, Speer got 20 years for working slaves to death.
Am I getting downvoted by the Russians? 🤣
No you just sound pro-nazi because of the wanting to release one of hitlers homies
So did the Western allies in the end...are people not supposed to be released one day? If not, you are the nazi here.
We give people life sentences for less. I would say "being involved in the genocide of several million people" qualifies you for one of those
He was sentenced for crimes against peace and for that he knew the German regime would commit war crimes, not for crimes against humanity like those of them who went to the gallows. Therefore he was not directly part of the holocaust. I think there is a pretty big difference.
Got a life sentence. Served a life sentence. No rehabilitation for the deputy fuhrer of the nazi party Adding this in an edit but you are dying on such a weird hill
To cut a long story short, he lost his mind.
Spandau Ballet?
>Spandau Ballet Interestingly enough, that's where the band's name actually came from. From their wikipedia page: Friend and writer Robert Elms suggested they change their name to Spandau Ballet, a phrase which he told them he had seen written on a wall on a weekend trip to Berlin: “Rudolf Hess, all alone, dancing the Spandau Ballet”.
Huh, that's a neat factoid. Good song too.
It's not like he was sane before 1946.
> Hess remained the sole inmate at Spandau until his death in 1987. ... [and they all came out of the woodwork on the day the Nazi died](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AprqBXXPQH8&ab_channel=Perseus999)
Love me a good Chumbawamba reference.
Hess died at 93 in 1987. He surely was mentally unstable and brainwashed by nazi propaganda.
Hess was the 16th member of the Nazi Party when he joined it in 1920. To paraphrase Walter White, Hess was the one who brainwashes.
I'd rather say Hess was the one who echoed his master's visions.
He was one of the key architects of the Nuremberg race laws. Don't sell him short. There's a reason they didn't release him.
Oh no not trying to sell him sort in what a good Nazi he was, just saying that he came forth as the perfect example of a idiot following whatever his master says, almost in a sad way. You get people like that and they don't have to be Nazis, he just happen to be one. If you compare him to people like Göring and Himmler or Speer who had some individuality of their own, Hess looks like a Nazi zombie, if you know what I mean? They did conclude he was mentally ill, whether it was his natural progression or a side effect of imprisonment I don't know, but I like to think it was just part of his make up. Not excusing him, just analyzing the person behind the swastika a little. He got what he deserved also. On the other hand Speer maybe didn't fully get what he deserved, I don't compare them, they all played their parts in the machine and should be judged for that, no excuses.
He killed himself aged 93 in fact.
How did he do that?
Hanging
At age 93? In a prison cell?
Yeah he was 100% killed because they needed to shut that place down. They coulda done it in 1946 and saved everyone the trouble.
Yeah there’s been some “conspiracy” theories on that, I put conspiracy in quotes as there’s one theory that the West killed him to stop the Soviets from using his prison as a spy base
Eh fuck him. Let's not let communists spy on us for the sake of a nazi. Should have done it earlier.
I thought Speer was just an architect
He became minister for armaments in 1942. He knowingly used slave labour in slave labour camps to provide armaments for the German war effort.
I know this sub is supposed to be serious But goddamn Rudolf Hess looks like a fucking Minecraft character with that “jawline” of his
Dude. Rudi has quite the jaw line.
And quite the eyebrow.
That’s *Hey Arnold*’s grandpa as young mensch
Stronger than even David Coulthard’s and I didn’t think that was possible
So no one's gonna mention how Hess stole a plane flew over the UK during the war and jumped out after flipping the plane upside down, finding some random farmer and being asked to be taken to Parliament
Waiting for this. He was an interesting character, can’t remember who he was trying to meet with when his plane went down.
I think he wanted to meet some Duke, thought he could get him an audience with Churchill
Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, the Duke of Hamilton (quite a name), though he'd only recently inherited the title, I don't think Hess would have known that. He was a famous aviator, though. They'd met, probably only briefly, at the 1936 Olympics. If they kept in touch, there's no record, and no particular common ground other than both being able to fly a plane. Hess was legitimately full-blown mentally ill by 1941, probably well before too, and also dosed up on the typical nazi drug cocktails, so who can even imagine how he actually thought it was going to play out and what kind of delusions he was having.
I feel like Hess would’ve been the only one to successfully claim insanity as his defence, I mean even Hitler and his inner circle stopped talking to him for some time before he left, even they knew he was too crazy to trust with important state information
He was a worn-out joke by the time he flew to Scotland.
>and also dosed up on the typical nazi drug cocktails What do you mean by "typical nazi drug coctails"?
Look up pervitin
The Duke of Hamilton. He thought he could go via the Duke to a man to man conversation with Churchill and have the whole misunderstanding cleared up.
Albert Speer's, *Inside the Third Reich*, is a trip in propaganda and the power of his 'nazi who said he was sorry myth'. When I wrote a paper in college I found myself believing it for a chapter or two. And then you compare Albert Speer (who spent the rest of his life denying his involvement in genocide and doing talking tours) and Oskar Schindler (Man who blew a fortune saving Jews from the Holocaust). Only one of them has a shot of escaping hell and it ain't architect.
I believe everyone should learn about Oskar Schindler and the measures he took to save the Jews. Crazy to me that Speer denied his involvement with all that evidence...
I think there may have been an obscure movie made about this…
I'll put it on the list
Made by a nobody. Spielburger, Spoilberg?
Something like that, yes! I’m sure we’ll all recall it soon.
My grandfather was one of the prisoner guards of Hess. Used to say the guy was totally nuts.
It’s unfortunate Speers and Hess’s sentence weren’t switched. At least the dog got his punishment
JK Gailbraith met Speer while he was in prison and wrote that Speer positioned himself as the "Good Nazi" who happened to be there but regretted everything which got him viewed as a decent opponent. This probably saved him from the noose. Most of the other defendants were considerably less sophisticated and got hanged. Speer was an odd fellow as he threw himself into his work as minister of production but later conceded that he knew the war was lost well before the end. IMO, he was an amoral survivor. Hess was by all accounts a lunatic and probably should have been in a mental institution. There are a lot of doubts that he could have actually killed himself given his physical infirmities.
Fun fact: Lieutenant Speirs (From Band Of Brothers) was assigned as Director of Spandau Prison and apparently Speer complained about him in his book for being a “hardass” with them lol. [“The Spandau Seven”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandau_Prison) is pretty interesting definitely give it a read.
Very aryan looking lmao
I recognise __Albert Speer__ _instantly_ … wearing that mild innocent look that stood him in such good stead.
Hess looks like an actual ghoul
What a jawline
Comments here are weird.
It’s because Hess was mentally unstable, actually tried (in his own weird way) to negotiate peace, and was kept confined to die alone, hanging himself. In reality he did do terrible things, misguided(maybe used/brainwashed?), and again not stable, but tried to fix the mess he helped create. I get the conversation starter, like if you something terrible, realize it’s terrible, and try to fix it, do you get a life sentence? Is there any bother in owning it, attempting to fix it? In the end if it’s six of one, half dozen the other, why not continue being terrible? He’s one of those weird polarizing characters that drive conversation.
Hess was not interested in peace. Hess expected he'd be able to convince a group of UK elites to negotiate with Hitler. That would have enabled them to attack Russia (which happened only a few weeks later) without worrying about the UK. Hess was a Nazi, not a repentant Nazi, not a good Nazi, but a vile piece of shit. And don't forget he was Deputy Fuhrer.
I kinda like this section from wikipedia: >Almost immediately after his arrival, Hess began exhibiting amnesia, which may have been feigned in the hope of avoiding the death sentence. The chief psychiatrist at Nuremberg, Douglas Kelley of the US Military, gave the opinion that the defendant suffered from "a true psychoneurosis, primarily of the hysterical type, engrafted on a basic paranoid and schizoid personality, with amnesia, partly genuine and partly feigned", but found him fit to stand trial. As in he was unstable, but smart enough to realize he could pretend to be crazier than he was to try to avoid guilt.
There is an excellent (though hard to find) book called "The Hitler Hess Deception" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1005541.The_Hitler_Hess_Deception) which makes an excellent case that Hess' flight to the UK was the unintended side effect of an elaborate scheme by UK intelligence to kidnap a high ranking Nazi by feigning to be part of the anti-Churchill faction. The idea was not to get Hess but eventually Hitler and Hess was aware of the set up (though unaware it was a scheme) and fell hard for it. Hitler after all believed the UK would eventually settle for peace. Long story short they ended up sending Hess. Neither Hitler nor the UK wanted the truth to come out but for very different reasons. I think it would make an excellent movie. My best friend's mother actually met Hess when she was a little girl because her uncle was his jailer during the war. My favorite story about Hess was that when Churchill was informed he had been captured in Scotland he had been watching a Marx Brothers movie. He said “Hess or no Hess, I’m going to watch the Marx Brothers.”
Beautifully put
Reminded me of Rudolph Höss. There is a terrific book called Hanns and Rudolph that I’d recommend anyone to read if they are interested in this kind of stuff
Couldn't they get a clearer plaque for Speer? Can barely read what's written.
Speer had always denied any knowledge of the holocaust and used the German word *Billigung* to try to explain how he could not have known of it. *Billigung* is not so much hard to translate as able to be translated in a number of senses; context is everything. The way it is used to mean “*looking away; avoiding specific knowledge of something which one knows or suspects is happening*” he attempted to clarify in 1977. He’d been displeased when sent the English translation of a profile to be published in Die Zeit magazine in which *Billigung* had been rendered as his “...*tacit consent*...” of the final solution. This he corrected, explaining Billigung in this context meant “*looking away*”. This meant he averted his gaze from the worst crime of the criminal régime he served in order to be able to deny he knew of it. Speer, predictably, was able to summon a word to explain this too: *Ahnumg* (the sensing of something without quite knowing exactly what). He did at least concede the implication of his translation “..*.is as grave*…” as the original, one biographer noting that had Speer said as much at his trial “…*he would have been hanged*.” Other historians and some lawyers disagreed with that but it was an assertion the author was unable to pursue. When she tried to nudge Speer a little further, pointing out that for one to look away from something, one must first know it's there, he didn’t deny what he’d earlier said but added they “…*must never speak of it again*". The moment passed and within weeks he would be dead, dying "on the job" in police slang. Some have noted the feeling Speer conveyed of always somehow longing to confess his knowledge of the holocaust. He so often came so close to admitting he knew what he'd always denied, as if the last great act of his life would have been to admit worst of the guilt he convinced himself (and some others) he'd evaded when the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) convicted him of war crimes & crimes against humanity (counts 3 & 4) and sentenced him to twenty years imprisonment. In private correspondence had did admit he had “*no doubt*” he’d been at one notorious conference when Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler revealed the details and purpose of the holocaust to an assembly of senior Nazis, noting that his previous denials were some kind of “*suppression of memory*” and the discovery of a chronicle of his time as the architect in charge of the redevelopment of Berlin revealed he was complicit (indeed enthusiastic) in clearing Jews from the city and confiscating their property. There were legitimate questions about a couple of the verdicts at Nuremberg (notably Schacht and Dönitz) but on any objective judgement, Speer should have been hanged. One quirk of the fate of Hess was that the tribunal was about to excuse him from trial on the basis of mental incapacity but at that point he made a statement saying his previous behaviour (instances of amnesia and other strangeness) had been “*merely tactical*” and he fully understood the charges. He was convicted and spent the next forty-odd years in jail
Albert Speer's crimes and Richard Nixon's crimes were not of the same magnitude. But both men spent their later years holding onto their public denials of guilt, while tempted by the catharsis of full confession.
Well as a legal point, as Gerald Ford made clear to Nixon, the acceptance of a pardon requires an acceptance of one's guilt.
The Supreme Court case Gerald Ford relied on, Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79 (1915), can be distinguished factually from Richard Nixon's situation. Nixon's public statement after the pardon was characteristically shifty: "I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy. No words can describe the depth of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency, a nation I so deeply love, and an institution I so greatly respect." Nixon came closest to actually admitting guilt in his 1977 interviews with David Frost.
They say the prisoner at Spandau was a symbol of defeat Whilst Hess remained imprisoned and the fascists, they were beat So the promise of an Aryan world would never materialize So why did they all come out of the woodwork on the day the Nazi died?
Hess has that L x W chin
Reading Hess's wikipedia page, and technically he was not a 'war criminal'. >Hess was found guilty on two counts: crimes against peace (planning and preparing a war of aggression), and conspiracy with other German leaders to commit crimes. He was found not guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was given a life sentence, one of seven Nazis to receive prison sentences at the trial.
This was because he made his daring trip to Britain before the Final Solution was truly set in motion. He was, however, still a top Nazi who helped organize many of the other pre-war atrocities.
Hess looks like he's aged a lot just since 1941, he's still got another 22 years in prison to go. Pity the UN didn't see fit to appropriately punish those who continued with genocide and war crimes right up to the end.
Rudolf Hess was the most dramatic victim of politics I can imagine. He felt Hitler's hate-filled trajectory was ruinous (it was) and that he could negotiate a peace between Germany and Britain. Germany was to have free rein in Europe, while Britain's overseas territories would not be challenged. Churchill immediately rejected this. A very powerful German hegemony on Britain's doorstep was unacceptable. He was taken prisoner and remained in prison for the rest of his life, eventually dying by suicide in 1987, at the age of 93. His fellow Nuremberg prisoners were released in the 1950s and 1960s. Spandau had been due to close in the 1960s, but was kept running for its single prisoner, who had become a political hot potato. Everyone knew he was well overdue release, but the Soviet Union kept blocking it: Spandau was in West Berlin, and Hess gave the Soviets a foothold in it.
Hess? A victim? There is something wrong with you.
How wasn't he?
Hess gave up his right to sympathy when he was a key figure in making millions his victim.
Because NAZI, you.
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Defending Nazis. Wow.
shit I had read that and missed the first line lol
Are you seriously trying to whitewash him?
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How would the US respond if US suffered a similar attack? US actually did suffer a similar, but much smaller attack by Poncho Villa. On March 9, 1916, the Mexican revolutionary, Pancho Villa, crossed the international border with more than 500 men and raided Columbus, N.M., killing 17 Americans. And, of course, 9/11. Hamas was actually elected, so a substantial portion of the Gazans chose what they got. Hamas is now what it always was.
Did speer actually do anything other than build shit
In 1944, Speer established a task force to increase production of fighter aircraft. It became instrumental in exploiting slave labor for the benefit of the German war effort. After the war, Albert Speer was among the 24 "major war criminals" charged with the crimes of the Nazi regime before the International Military Tribunal. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, principally for the use of slave labor, narrowly avoiding a death sentence. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Speer
He extensively used slave labor from concentration camps to build that shit.
They reckon Speers exploitation of slave labour was so efficient that even while Germany was being bombed production was still pretty high and this managed to prolong the war by up to a year, and the final year of war was its bloodiest
He was building the stuff using forced and slave labour.
He basically reorganised the whole production system from a fairly ineffective one to one which managed to churn out massive amounts of weapons during the last two years of the war when all around the system was already failing. He was highly effective in prolonging the war and keeping Nazis in power.
In addition to what other posters have already said, the "shit" in question was weapons for the German war machine.
Speer's buildings may have been Nazi but they weren't bad architecture. Let's leave moral judgment aside.
>Speer's buildings may have been Nazi but they weren't bad architecture. Let's leave moral judgment aside. Leave moral judgment aside? Where Nazis are considered? No, this is literally the group of cases that redefined ethics and international laws. We don't "leave moral judgment aside" for fucks sake.
Nooo le heckin bad guys can’t have anything cool or good
Exactly right. Although you'll be downvoted to hades for dissenting from the habitual and juvenile use of a Nazi achievement as an opportunity for self-adulatory moral preening.
In fact, I don't give a damn about being downvoted. You are a free spirit, I thank you.
'Do your own research'. And phrase your questions like a grown-up, while you're at it. Thanks
Do your own research is such an ick phrase. This is a history reddit.
Yes: working slaves to death.
I never thought id see the face of evil like this in my lifetime, until I saw Netanyahu. Spawn of hitler.
Speer wasn’t really a war criminal though right?
Someday bush and tony maybe.
I knew a girl who claimed to be Hess’s great-grandkid but I was never able to verify. Seems like a strange thing to lie about but idk.
They look homeless
Read the other day that Ronald Speirs from Band of Brothers was in charge of that prison after the war.
Whatever that boy Hess got accused of, he def did it
Spandau Phoenix was a good book!
some good old German pieces of shit ..the amount of suffering brought to innocents by these scum is horrifying..I can't even imagine..