Albert Speer

by David Edgar

  ANNEMARIE. She rang again today. Five times. She said you can’t do this to him.

  ANNEMARIE disappears.

  SPEER. I had been given what was probably the second most important job in Germany, at a time of national peril. And I was supposed to put my family before my country?

  CASALIS. Your country?

  SPEER. Yes of course.

  CASALIS. Or your career.

  SPEER. And my career. Yes. And why not?

  CASALIS says nothing.

  But still . . . when as the battle raged, I was invited to the grand reopening of the Berlin State Opera, sumptuously restored . . .

  Enter MARGRET, pregnant, in an evening gown. SPEER joins her in their row of seats at the opera. They speak quietly to each other.

  MARGRET. Albert, what’s Sixth Army disease?

  SPEER. Jaundice. My mother telephoned.

  MARGRET. More than once. Apparently your brother’s in a field hospital. With whatever.

  SPEER. I know. He wrote to me.

  MARGRET. Why can’t they fly him out?

  SPEER. Because . . . it’s not that simple.

  MARGRET. Albert, is there something going wrong?

  SPEER. No, of course not. Have we ever lost a battle? Have the Russians ever won?

  MARGRET. Well, that’s all right then. So, what opera are we seeing?

  SPEER. The Magic Flute.

  MARGRET. Oh good. A fairy tale.

  As the overture begins, SPEER to CASALIS.

  SPEER. And so we sat there in our box in those softly upholstered chairs among this festive audience, and all I could think about was the crowds at the Paris opera during Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow.

  CASALIS. Did he survive?

  SPEER. Towards the end, I asked the people who were flying supplies in to the troops at Stalingrad to try and find him. Apparently, he’d left the so-called field hospital, and dragged himself back to his observation post. And in fact there was one last letter, full of bitterness and rage, against me, his brother.

  Pause.

  But no they never found him. And my mother told me the wrong brother died.

  The opera breaks up and MARGRET goes.

  1.10.1  Germany 1943

  CASALIS. And after Stalingrad? Did you think that maybe Dr Todt was right? And that far from being saviour of Germany, Hitler’s actions would destroy your country and its people?

  SPEER. Herr Pastor, I have to tell you, that there is an intoxication in the very fact of power. To have the final word, to deal with expenditure in billions . . . But I knew the war would not be won if we continued to refurbish hunting lodges and manufacture ladies’ summer outerwear. As I was forced, over the coming months and years, to repeat ad nauseam. Until I finally confronted the assembled Gauleiters of Greater Germany, at the lovingly and lavishly refurbished castle Posen in the Warthegau.

  SPEER is moving to a lectern, lit by candelabra. A little afterthought.

  Where my friend Karl Hanke, now Gauleiter of Lower Silesia, had been primed to put a question.

  SPEER to the lectern. A group of GAULEITERS sit in ornate chairs, among them HANKE.

  Yes?

  HANKE. Herr Reichsminister. Are you seriously suggesting that those Gauleiters who are not prepared immediately to shut down all consumer goods production in our provinces might face arrest and and even – penal servitude? In concentration camps?

  SPEER. Yes, that is exactly what I mean. As the Reichsführer-SS Himmler will underline this afternoon. Next question?

  CASALIS. That doesn’t answer me.

  SPEER. It was the only way to see it, at the time. I was Hitler’s Minister of Armaments.

  SPEER leaves the lectern. Enter HITLER, furious, to SPEER, waving a document.

  HITLER. So what is this?

  SPEER takes the document.

  SPEER. It is a memorandum, on the manganese situation.

  HITLER. Which you copied to my chief of staff.

  SPEER. My Führer, it’s good news. It confirms we have eleven month’s supply in Germany.

  HITLER. This is intolerable. I have ordered all forces to be concentrated in defence of Nikopol, to the last man and at any cost, precisely to protect its vital manganese. Now I appear a liar and what’s worse a fool. You will not communicate directly with my chief of staff. You will not proceed beyond your own domain.

  SPEER (thrown). My Führer, naturally, I had no intention of giving out a false –

  HITLER. Your fault! Your responsibility! Why not admit it, just this once? There are those who say you are the second man in Germany. Do not delude yourself, Herr Speer!

  HITLER storms out.

  CASALIS. But surely the important thing was not your relationship with Hitler but the twenty million foreign workers you had commandeered. Who unlike the Gauleiters were really subject to arrest and servitude in concentration camps.

  SPEER. Yes, some of them, of course. This was not the Salvation Army.

  CASALIS. And did you know that Hitler ordered physical destruction of the commissars in Russia? That this order was extended to the Jews and gypsies? That his troops were told they would not be held responsible for killing innocent civilans in defiance of the rules of war?

  SPEER. No. I did not know of this order.

  CASALIS. But surely you had seen a concentration camp?

  SPEER. I visited Mauthausen, I think, in March of 1943. But of course, you are a VIP. You see what you are shown. There was a quarry.

  CASALIS. Whereas of course thousands of civilians were being sent to camps where the ‘special treatment’ they received was very different.

  SPEER. Of which of course I knew nothing at the time.

  CASALIS. But you knew that women, children, old men, were transported . . .

  SPEER. Yes of course I did. Every day, as I drove down to the Ministry, I would see crowds of people on the platform of the Nikolassee station. Wearing yellows stars. Presumably, awaiting . . . transportation as you say.

  Behind SPEER we see, through the smoke of the railway station, a WOMAN and her elderly FATHER, not badly dressed but with meagre luggage and wearing the yellow star.

  CASALIS. And did you not imagine what might lie in store for them?

  SPEER. As I said, I had no idea what happened inside concentration camps.

  CASALIS. What no idea? From anything you saw or any place you visited? What, no idea at all?

  Pause. Now, the WOMAN and her FATHER have gone, and further back in the darkness, through clouds of dust, we can see a long tunnel, full of still, emaciated creatures, and hear the insistent sounds of a cement mixer and an electric saw.

  SPEER. It was the worst place I had ever seen.

  Pause.

  It was code-named Dora. It was the plant that made the V-2 rocket, built in caves and tunnels in the Harz Mountains. It was worked by prisoners from a nearby concentration camp. Which had of course all kinds of security advantages.

  I visited in December 1943. The condition of the prisoners was utterly . . . well, the word barbaric is . . . Typhoid was rampant. The prisoners were quartered there, in the sodden, caves, and of course mortality was extremely high. Not least because . . . their ‘rations’ were rancid slop. And the sanitary arrangements . . . There were these barrels, with planks, they had to sit on, literally on top . . . and of course, from time to time, apparently, they’d slip and fall into . . . And of course, the smell . . .

  As the vision fades, SPEER is tottering.

  So, what? Did I ‘imagine’?

  CASALIS. And that was in December 1943? And you fell ill in January?

  SPEER collapses. WOLTERS and ANNEMARIE rush in to him. As, helped by ORDERLIES, they take him out, CASALIS turns to the entering MARGRET.

  1.10.2  Hohenlychen Hospital, February 1944

  MARGRET and Dr Professor Friedrich KOCH, with NURSES, looking down on SPEER’s hospital bed. An SS-MAN stands in the corridor.

  MARGRET. Herr Doctor, how is my husband?

 
KOCH. Well, his temperature and pulse are very high.

  MARGRIT. He’s spitting blood?

  KOCH. He’s haemorrhaging, yes.

  MARGRIT. So this is not what Himmler’s doctor diagnosed? This is not ‘rheumatism’?

  KOCH. Frau Speer, your husband is extremely ill.

  MARGRET. Will he survive?

  KOCH. His temperature has stabilised.

  Slight pause.

  Yes, I think, now, that he will survive.

  Pause. MARGRET breathes deeply. Then she recovers.

  KOCH. Frau Speer. In the midst of . . . the crisis which we hope has passed . . . Your husband looked up to me, quite suddenly and said: ‘I’ve never been so happy’.

  1.10.3  Spandau, 1947-1950

  KOCH, MARGRET and the NURSES still looking down on SPEER’s bed. SPEER, standing watching, turns to CASALIS when he speaks.

  CASALIS. Do you remember saying that?

  SPEER. No, but I remember feeling . . . no.

  CASALIS. What do you remember feeling?

  SPEER. Things which I fear you would respond to with a healthy scepticism. As did my wife.

  CASALIS. Try me.

  Pause. During this the group round the bed gradually turn to look at SPEER.

  SPEER. Well, apparently, it’s fairly common. It was on the worst night, in the hospital, when my temperature and pulse were God knows what, I was haemorrhaging, my skin was blue. And I was suddenly above myself, and looking down, and seeing everything so clearly . . . the doctors and the nurses, hovering, my wife, looking soft and slim, quite beautiful . . . and the ceiling, which was plain and white, was suddenly magnificently ornate, like a mediaeval castle, like indeed the mediaeval castles which my colleagues had so lovingly restored . . . And feeling, yes, that I had never been so happy in my life. But then quite clearly . . . and for me, then, sternly and implacably, I heard two words. ‘Not yet’.

  Slight pause.

  You don’t believe me.

  CASALIS. I believe that’s what you remember.

  SPEER a little laugh. The hospital scene breaks up behind him.

  And I believe that your illness was the result of things outside you.

  SPEER. Herr Pastor, my illness began with the recurrence of a knee injury, on a Christmas trip to Lapland.

  CASALIS. Your wife thought you were wrongly diagnosed.

  SPEER. I was. And then I was correctly diagnosed.

  CASALIS. And other people feared you had been poisoned.

  SPEER. Herr Hess believes he’s being poisoned every day.

  CASALIS. But nevertheless. You nearly died.

  SPEER. And nevertheless, recovered.

  CASALIS. And when you had recovered, changed?

  Pause.

  SPEER. You are trying to connect my illness with the things I’d seen. Of course, I understand. It is the fashion of the age.

  Slight pause.

  And yes, things changed. But the change did not originate with me.

  1.10.4  Klessheim Castle, 19 March 1944

  HITLER enters to SPEER, who sits in a wheelchair in a dressing gown with a blanket over his knees. MARGRET there.

  HITLER. My dear Speer, how are you?

  SPEER (to CASALIS). He was in Austria for a conference with the Hungarians.

  HITLER. I am delighted that you are recovered.

  SPEER. As ever, he kissed my wife’s hand.

  HITLER kisses MARGRET’s hand.

  HITLER. Now you see, what I have always told your husband, dear Frau Speer. It is this love of sliding down the sides of mountains in the snow. These long boards on your feet – it’s madness! In the fire with them! Please assure me, Speer, you will throw them all away!

  HITLER holds out his hand. SPEER does not take it, but speaks again to CASALIS.

  SPEER. And it was his face.

  HITLER. And I believe . . . it is your birthday?

  SPEER. And I looked at him – his sallow skin, his ugly nose, and thought – how could I not have seen?

  HITLER smiles, pats SPEER’s arm.

  HITLER. Well, then. Well, there it is. Well done.

  HITLER and MARGRET go out. SPEER stands, takes off his dressing gown, puts on his overcoat.

  SPEER. And for the first time, the magic hadn’t worked. And I thought: who is this man, who had meant so much to me?

  CASALIS. So this was – essentially aesthetic?

  SPEER. It was the moment that I realised – he’d changed. That he’d betrayed those great ideals with which he had inspired us all.

  CASALIS. And you don’t think that this was connected with the labourers –

  SPEER. With the workmen in the mountains? No. I wish it was. Mine was not a moral opposition. It was because from that point on – as the Russians, British and Americans closed in on us – he extended his intentions to my area of responsibility.

  We begin to sense the firework display of a distant air-raid, coming closer.

  And I finally realised that he intended to pull the German people down into perdition with him. That far from saving it, he was preparing to destroy his Fatherland.

  And worst of all that there were people – good people, friends – prepared to let him drag them down.

  1.11  The Town Hall, Breslau, late January 1945

  The air-raid continues. Enter HANKE to SPEER.

  HANKE. Speer. Welcome.

  SPEER. Hanke, my dear friend. This is so beautiful.

  HANKE. We begin by refurbishing a Karl Friedrich Schinkel building on the Wilhemsplatz, all those years ago. And we end destroying one in Breslau.

  Looking out.

  Well, if the Americans don’t do it first.

  SPEER. ‘Destroy’?

  HANKE. The order is quite clear. Monuments. And palaces, castles, telephone exchanges. Theatres, opera houses, industrial plants. I have it pinned up on every noticeboard.

  SPEER. What, alongside ‘every man need only know what is going on in his domain’?

  HANKE. So you think the war is lost?

  SPEER. But if it isn’t lost . . . then why destroy what we must recapture?

  Pause.

  HANKE. ‘The enemy will be defeated by weapons that are superior to his’.

  SPEER. I have told Goebbels he must stop promising ultimate salvation through miracle weapons which do not exist. We must face up to what is happening and not destroy our people’s vital means of life.

  HANKE. And leave a perfect Schinkel building to be trashed by the Red Army?

  SPEER. I believe that beauty is a vital means of life. And we have to stick to not destroying it, whatever we have to face up to, in the future.

  HANKE. Sometimes I wonder – if the Führer only knew . . .

  SPEER. Oh, Karl. My friend.

  A moment.

  HANKE (gesturing around him). All right. For you. I’ll leave your precious Schinkel standing. Prove your point.

  Pause. The bombing very loud, the explosions lighting up the sky.

  SPEER. My friend. Your name will live in the German Pantheon forever. You are going to a fine and worthy end.

  HANKE. You know, there is a kind of . . . dreadful beauty in all this.

  SPEER. I know. As does the Führer.

  HANKE looks at SPEER, then turns and goes quickly out. SPEER turns to CASALIS.

  SPEER. But it got worse. On the 19th of March Hitler issued another decree, ordering the physical destruction of all German industry, and the forcible evacuation of the German population in the west ahead of the advancing American and British armies. And so whatever the risks to me and to my family, I knew I had to go back to the ruined Chancellory to make one final effort to persuade him to relent.

  1.12.1  The Bunker, 29 March 1945

  SPEER turns to see FRÄULEIN WOLF, hurrying along a corridor in the bunker. She is not pleased to see SPEER.

  SPEER. Ah, Wolf, I have a document for the Führer –

  FRAULEIN WOLF. He has your document, Herr Speer.

  SPEER. R
eichsminister. This is another document, I want you to type up on the 12 point typewriter . . .

  FRÄULEIN WOLF. I can’t, Reichsminister.

  SPEER. Whyever not?

  FRÄULEIN WOLF. I have been ordered not to.

  She hurries on. SCHAUB appears.

  SCHAUB. Follow me.

  SPEER. And so I was led along the narrow corridors, surrounded as I knew by walls 3.6 metre thick, beneath the five metre, solid concrete roof, to the room where he awaited me.

  1.12.2  The Bunker, 29 March 1945

  The room where the pieces of the Germania model are now kept. SPEER enters to HITLER, who sits on the base of the great domed hall, holding a document.

  HITLER. Well, Herr Speer, you see that despite the efforts of the enemy above us we may still converse surrounded by your architecture.

  SPEER nods graciously. HITLER puts on his spectacles.

  An irony, in view of your defection to the ranks of the whiners and fainthearts.

  SPEER. Um may I ask –

  HITLER. Yes, here it all is, your report, the usual stuff . . . Final collapse of the German war economy . . . war cannot continue on the military plane . . . our obligation to maintain the people’s means of life . . . We have no right, it is not our duty, no one can take the viewpoint that the fate of the German people as a whole is tied to his fate personally.

  He takes his spectacles off and glares at SPEER.

  SPEER. My Führer. I am merely echoing what you yourself said so eloquently in Mein Kampf . . .

  HITLER. You haven’t read Mein Kampf.

  SPEER. You will not wish me to deceive you.

  HITLER. It is not a matter of what you say to me. I am told that you have told the Ruhr Gauleiters that the war is lost. Are you aware that that is treason? And what measures I would have to take? If you were not my architect?

  SPEER. My Führer you must act as you think fit. Without consideration for my person.

  Pause.

  HITLER. I must act ‘without consideration for your person’.

  A sudden change of tack.

  Speer, you have worked too hard. You should take some leave.

  SPEER. No, my Führer. I am fit and well. If you want to get rid of me, you must dismiss me.