Speer by Martin Kitchen

Author:Martin Kitchen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300190441
Publisher: Yale University Press

CHAPTER ELEVEN

DEFEAT

SPEER INSPECTED THE Western Front from 26 September to 1 October 1944.1 He travelled with his adjutant, Manfred von Poser, Willy Liebel and his assistant, SS-Standartenführer Karl Cliever. Milch and Rohland joined the party later. He drove so fast in his convertible BMW that von Poser and Cliever soon lost sight of him. They eventually met up at the delightful Hotel Simonis at Kobern on the Mosel. The following day they moved to the Hotel Porta Negra in Trier for a conference with the local Organisation Todt brigade. During a visit to the front Speer won high praise for his handling of a captured Willys Jeep. The local Gauleiters – Friedrich Florian and through their deputies Albert Hoffmann and Fritz Schlessmann – proved to be surprisingly cooperative. A meeting was arranged with Field Marshal Walter Model at a former rehabilitation centre for alcoholics in Krefeld. ‘In a fractious manner’ Speer demanded more tanks and weapons. The party then moved on to Arnhem to view the battlefield. Speer lost his temper when he was warned to move back when under artillery fire and had to be calmed down by von Poser. He concluded the trip with a visit to his friend, the sculptor Arno Breker.

Speer returned to the Ruhr on 15 November where he spent a week in close consultation with Model. On 26 November he handed Hitler a list of requests for immediate action. Anti-aircraft defences needed to be strengthened. All available Me 163s – a rocket-propelled fighter that proved to be virtually useless – should be sent to the Ruhr.2 Long take-off and landing strips had to be built for the Me 262 jet fighter. Between 100,000 and 150,000 additional workers were needed to clear bomb damage. The demand for steel in the Ruhr was such that U-boat construction had to be given a lower priority. Hitler agreed to all these suggestions.3

Speer now concentrated on supplying the needs of Model’s Army Group B in a desperate attempt to hang on to the Ruhr. On 1 December he gave another of his pep talks to the heads of the Armaments Commissions.4 They must have been somewhat bemused when he told them there was no need to worry too much about the future. He returned to the Ruhr on 15 December to discuss the final details for supplying Model. He had come to the conclusion that it would indeed be possible to defend the Ruhr. Model’s manic self-confidence matched Speer’s. They agreed that an all-out effort could meet most of his needs. Bormann managed to convince himself that Speer and Model might succeed. He ordered the Gauleiters in the Ruhr to stop building defences behind the front and put the men to work repairing roads and communications that were coming under heavy attack from the air, the weather having greatly improved. By March Speer had two million workers, most of them foreigners, working on railway repairs.5 He told Himmler that the operation by Model’s Army Group B was the ‘decisive battle for Germany’ that would enable the Ruhr to continue producing armaments.

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