Albert Speer, Hiding from Hitler in the Ruhr

Speer suddenly remembered an incident from ten years earlier when Hitler’s takeover of the government was still not entirely complete. Speer’s organization had been given offices in a building whose occupants were at variance with their orders to immediately vacate. When they didn’t move fast enough, someone sent in stormtroopers. Speer remembered coming in to look over his new office and finding a large bloodstain on the oriental rug on the floor. ‘Don’t worry about that, we’ll take care of it immediately,’ they told him. Sure enough, the next time he went in, the blood-stained carpet was replaced by another. The incident was never mentioned and he hadn’t given it any thought until now.

But then it’s easy to have no conscience when all you’re is an acceptor, someone who does what he’s told and leaves it at that.

That night, sitting around the campfire, Speer decided to try to get Manni Loerber to talk.

“I have a question,” he said. “Do you mind telling me what all that stuff is you keep talking about at the factories, which always seems to compel everyone to throw away all caution? What does it all mean?”

Manni grinned. “It doesn’t mean anything, Herr Reichsminister. Look, let’s just keep this simple. You do your job, I’ll do mine. All right?”

Speer tried another tack. “You know, I saw you and your brothers perform many times back in the old days,” he said. “You seemed like such a fun bunch.”

Manni sat silently reflecting on it for a while, the light from the fire dancing on his face. “Yeah, well, it was a long time ago,” he said, like they were talking about someone he’d never met.

Then von Poser spoke up. “If I remember, Herr Manni, didn’t your brother Ziggy go into the Navy? He became a U-Boat captain, sank a lot of enemy ships. I don’t recall hearing of his death. Is he still alive?“

“I wouldn’t know colonel, we haven’t talked since before the war.”

“And your brother Franzi? What about him? Didn’t he join the SS? Wasn’t he doing some kind of research?”

A tiny spark of humor showed in his eyes, causing the curtains of his reserve to part just the slightest. “Yes, he’s one of the Reichsfuhrer’s seers.”

“Seer?”

“Alchemist, actually. That was his training. But mostly they use him for horoscopes.”

Von Poser laughed. “Heinrich Himmler uses alchemists? That is too funny, Herr Manni.”

“You might not think it was funny if you were an alchemist having your talents squandered making horoscopes for people who have no future.”

“I can see your point,” chuckled von Poser. Everybody feared and hated Himmler and the thought of him shivering in front of an astrologer seemed particularly rich.

“What about your brother Sebastian?” asked von Poser. “He disappeared, didn’t he? For all the gossip the afternoon papers used to print about you boys, when he vanished no one said anything. Some people thought it might have been something, political.”

Manni shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, Colonel. Father refused to talk about it.”

“And you, Herr Manni, what have you been doing all these years?”

“Oh? This and that.”

“Meaning precisely?”

“Meaning precisely, don’t ask.” But he said it without rancor.

“And now you’re part of a three-man campaign to save the Ruhr.”

“That’s right, and if you ask any more questions, it’ll be a two-man campaign in about thirty seconds.”

At around ten, they got back on the road heading to Nuremburg, but a couple hours into it, it began raining so heavily that they finally gave up. They found an abandoned farmhouse on the side of a hill overlooking Detmold and went to sleep there. When they awoke, shortly after dawn, it had stopped raining and the heavy gray cloud cover opened up to blue skies and swarms of enemy fighters. “I don’t think we’re going anywhere today,” declared von Poser. They found some dry wood and got a fire going. They made coffee, sliced some bread and opened their last remaining cans.

“What have we got?” asked Manni.

“Fish, potatoes, and gooseberries,” answered Speer.

“Sounds perfect,” said Manni.

“Colonel von Poser tells me that today is your birthday. Allow me to offer you many happy returns of the day.”

“Thank you,” said Speer, a little uncomfortably. They’d been traveling for a week and this was the first time the young man had directed anything personal towards either of them.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “In honor of the occasion, I shall teach you the single most important skill I know, one that will definitely guarantee your success in the postwar world.” But then he waved his finger at Speer. “But you must promise never to ask any more stupid questions.”

Speer stared at him, stunned, feeling a mixture of curiosity and fear. He hoped this would not have to involve making a pact with the devil. As it was he was already trying to weasel out of an existing one.

A chapter from Germania (Simon & Schuster, 2008) that didn't make the final edits. Kindle download available here.

Americans Cross the Rhine and Speer's Ruhr Rebellion Goes Nowhere

At first, a war is a cause, a crusade. But ultimately it becomes nothing more than an intersection of x and y axes; a cost-benefit analysis, a calculus of conditions and circumstances. In this particular war, the lines had been crossed a long time ago and there was no longer any benefit, just cost. It wasn’t a question of belief or will, only numbers. And the numbers had said only one thing: the was is lost.

While the Western Allies stayed to the Western bank of the Rhine, people kept hoping it might somehow stay that way, as it had been two thousand years earlier when the Rhine had marked the Roman Empire’s northernmost border. They wondered what it might take to ultimately convince the British and Americans to stay put. The French could keep Strasbourg and the Alsace, the Russians the eastern bank of the Vistula. As far as fallback positions went, it almost bordered on the agreeable, Not that the Fuhrer would have seen it that way. But then again the Fuhrer wouldn’t be around for ever.

But of course now the Rhine was breached and the Americans were racing the Russians to Berlin. Now it was a question of trying to limit the destruction so that there might be something left for the future. It should be something everyone could agree to.

He and von Poser had gone in thinking it would be easy, since by then, Speer was on a personal basis with nearly every factory director in the Ruhr. Despite his youth, they all looked to him as a guiding light, someone who understood their needs and concerns, who respected their expertise and knew what could and could not be done. And he was someone they could speak frankly to about the suicidal course the war had taken. They’d all been acutely aware of what Hitler had done to the industrial areas in the east and were adamant the same thing not happen to their beloved Ruhr. Some had even dropped broad hints about their willingness to go against the regime should Speer elect to break with Hitler and lead a revolt. But now that Speer had come to do just that, they were suddenly overcome with reticence.

"Had I said that, Herr Reichsminister? You must be mistaken.”

"Don’t say these things, Herr Reichsminister. It’s treason.”

"Perhaps we should stop the conversation right here, Herr Reichsminister.”

"Herr Reichsminister, what you are suggesting is quite impossible.”

"Herr Reichsminister, you must not ask this thing!”

"Herr Reichsminister, I’ve always had the utmost respect for you, but if you do not leave at once, it will be my duty to inform the local Party militia of your subversion.”

"Now please, you must leave, immediately.”

"Get out.”

"Leave now!”

"Go!”

Not that it was surprising that everyone was now so scared. With everything in complete disarray and communication with Berlin hopelessly tangled, the local Nazi Party chiefs, the gauleiters, now held absolute power. Their “flying squads” seemed to be everywhere, examining travel documents, searching vehicles, questioning people about what they were doing away from the front lines, and then acting as judge, jury and executioner against anyone whose enthusiasm for the war they found wanting. Their victims were either taken away for torture interrogations or simply strung up from the nearest lamppost where they remained for weeks as a reminder to everyone else.

By the end of the first day, Speer was ready to throw in the towel and head back, and he would have except that von Poser’s steely determination showed no hint of flagging. So they went on, day after day, visiting chemical plants, steel mills, coal mines, electrical generating stations, ammunition works. Most of the distance driving they did at night, since during the day the sky teemed with enemy aircraft. Sometimes they traveled with military convoys, but more often alone. The roads were always kept dark and with their headlights masked down to tiny illuminated squares, they had to proceed slowly, since the roads were full of bomb craters and debris.

It was always a big guess where the roads would take them, since everything was rerouted and changed. Where the front actually was, was kept secret and more than once they ended up at the front lines with less than half a kilometer between themselves and the nearest enemy tank. Even more confusing was the fact that nothing looked familiar anymore. In his years as armaments minister, Speer had visited every factory town there countless times and knew the region like the back of his hand. But with half the buildings flattened and the sprawling industrial plants transformed into forests of twisted metal girders, frames and broken pipes, Speer and von Poser often found themselves disoriented. But as wrecked as everything looked, Speer knew that a surprising amount was repairable. Factories were often up and running again in a matter of days, machine tool works sometimes within hours. Of course if the militiamen really tried, they could render everything completely unfixable. And that was Speer’s biggest worry.

They drove around, visiting the factories that came their way. They’d talk to whoever was around, sound them out, listen to their excuses, nod sympathetically and then move on to the next location, hoping they’d get lucky. They’d knock off late in the afternoon, sleep a little, then drive through the night. Usually toward the dawn they’d find a command post where there were cots or they’d simply pull over and rest for a few hours. Sometimes they ate from their stock of canned food, but mostly they tried to eat whatever was being spooned out for the troops.

Then one night they were driving between Ludenscheid and Dessau on a particularly badly bombed stretch of autobahn. Speer sat beside von Poser in the front seat, an air defense map spread on his lap, while the radio alternated between piano concertos and a lifeless voice reading out positions of enemy aircraft; fighters reported in Grid E-6 heading westward, enemy fighters in Grid F-12 bearing east. Enemy fighters in Grid D-9 heading east, enemy bombers in Grid C-7, C-8 and C-10, high overhead heading west.

Then suddenly they heard the metallic scream of aircraft engines as machinegun fire ripped up the ground in front of them. Von Poser slammed on the brakes and before they knew it, the car was plummeting down the embankment. They pushed open the doors and jumped out onto the ground. A twin-engine Heinkel roared over them, with a smaller American fighter tight on its tail, firing away. The Heinkel’s starboard engine was aflame. Then its wing crumpled and it turned over, plunging into the darkness. A second later they heard the dull explosion and saw the flash of fire in a distant field.

They tried getting their car out of the ditch, but the mud was too thick and the four back wheels only spun uselessly. They stood around in the darkness unsure of what to do next. In another hour it would be light enough for the American Mustangs and Thunderbolts to return and begin strafing anything that wasn’t already blown up.

(Excerpt from Germania, Simon & Schuster, 2008, Kindle ebook version now available here).

Speer's Rebellion Against Hitler: Consorting with Assassins while Driving through the Ruhr

It happened again the following afternoon, only this time instead of coming out the front door he emerged from the alley, moving even quicker than he had the day before. On the third occasion he went into a regional police prefecture only to reappear a few minutes later, leading a frightened-looking man by the elbow. The man was wearing a raincoat which fit him so poorly Speer guessed they’d nicked it on their way out. Manni opened the rear door and let the man get in beside Speer. “He’s a friend of mine. I told him we’d give him a ride,” he said. Then he got behind the wheel, put the car into gear and they were off again. For the next two hours the man remained rigid, wild-eyed and trembling, like he thought he was still under the interrogator’s lamp. Eventually Manni glanced back from behind the wheel and asked Speer to find him something to eat. Speer went into his bag, and pulled out a can opener and a tin of mixed vegetables. He went to work opening it, then pulled back the lid and handed it to the man, who stared at it warily before taking it in his hands, and gulping down its contents in a few seconds. Once he finished, he looked around ravenously, then sank back in embarrassed silence. Finally, just as it was getting dark, they drove into a forest and let him out near a logging road. Without saying goodbye or waving the man hurried up the path and disappeared into the trees.

After that it got even stranger. He’d pull up to different party offices, and for several minutes would wait, meditatively staring into the building, never saying anything. And then he would either get out and go in or simply change his mind and drive off. Either way, he never explained anything.

During one such time, it occurred to Speer that perhaps the young man was an assassin, whose real mission was killing off Nazi Party officials. But he immediately told himself he was being silly. But then the next time the young man went out, it occurred to him again, and again the next time and the time after. And each time Speer dismissed the idea, until one day, just as he was getting ready to go, the young man took out his pistol and casually screwed a silencer onto the barrel before returning it to his jacket. As they watched him disappear into the building, von Poser suggested they could drive away at that moment. But for some reason Speer said no.

An hour later as they were driving down the road, hidden inside a military convoy, Speer asked himself what it was that actually bothered him about it, other than the prospect of getting caught. Was it that he murdered somebody or that it was someone whose only crime was slavishly obeying the Fuhrer just as he had been only a few days earlier?

When Speer had finally decided to go against Hitler, he never imagined it would suddenly put him in league with murderers and assassins. But then, why should he have such a problem with that? The fact was he’d been consorting with thugs and murderers for twelve years now anyway. Of course the difference was the SS and Stormtroopers were supposed to be the good guys. They’d been on the side of the law. They were following orders. They were supposed to stand for what was right and decent in the world. Manni Loerber was a lone crazy acting on his own, without orders or moderating influence or any kind of official justification. But was that the only real difference? It sure didn’t feel that way.

Or was it the way he operated? Was it knowing that when he put the bullet in their head he had them laughing and reminiscing about the good old days at the Blue Star Cabaret and the Admiralspalast? Was it better to be assassinated when you were happy than when you were scared?

Speer tried to remember what he knew about the Magical Loerber Brothers. Like most Germans he’d seen them perform easily a dozen times and certainly he’d enjoyed their act. It was impossible not to. But at the same time he’d never been part of the Loerber Brothers Mania which went on through the 1920s and ‘30s. He remembered seeing the cover of one particular variety magazine with their four clean-scrubbed, blonde haired, blue-eyed, smiling and utterly indistinguishable faces arranged in a half-moon. Which one is your favorite? it asked. Until then he had never imagined that such a thing as a favorite Loerber Brother could exist. Since he’d never been able to tell any of them apart, it hadn’t occurred to him that they might possess individual personalities. But everyone else apparently could and they obsessed endlessly over the supposed minutia of their lives. Franzi’s Secret Crush! Twenty things you don’t know about Manni! How does somebody like that turn into someone like this? What had happened?
(An abbreviated version of this chapter appears in Germania, Simon & Schuster, 2008, now also available on Kindle here).

Juggling Through the Capitulation: The Four Magical Loerber Brothers, May 1945

THE FABULOUS FLYING MAGICAL LOERBER BROTHERS RENDERED IN PAPER

The Loerber Brothers: Which One Is Your Favorite?

He remembered seeing the words in white lettering inside a black circle on a magazine page. And a crooked headline snaking across it asking Which One is Your Favorite?

And suddenly the names started hitting him like waves: Ziggy, Franzi, Sebastian and suddenly Speer knew exactly which one he was.

Yes?” asked the young man.

"You’re Manni of the Flying Magical Loerber Brothers.”

The young man turned back and dazzled them with his smile. Then he turned back to keep his eyes on the road.

That first day they visited ten different factories and at each of them, whoever was running it; the owner, the general director, the workers’ committee, or in one case, an elderly, one-armed, ex-infantry general, all immediately agreed to join Speer’s campaign. It was as if everyone’s fear suddenly evaporated. The day after that, they visited two mines, a railroad roundhouse, an electrical generation station and the Bayer Pharmaceutical Works, which was now host to an artillery battery. There too, everyone agreed not to obey the scorched-earth orders when they came in. “Let ‘em come here and try to tell us what to do,” shouted a bunch of electrical workers waving machine pistols in defiance. “We’ll show those Nazi pigs what for!” And even the artillery battery commander, under strict orders not to move an inch, readily agreed to relocate his guns away to a less sensitive spot. “They don’t have to know anything,” he told Speer. “None of it makes any difference anyway. Let’s keep the chemical works intact.”

And in each case, Speer and von Poser hadn’t done anything any different than what they’d done in previous visits. The only difference was that at some point, Manni would step in and say something completely unremarkable like, “I can understand your misgivings on this, but if you’d just let me explain something to you...” And then he’d say something that, on the face of it, wasn’t that different from what Speer had tried himself. But this time it worked. Whatever they asked for, they got.

Excerpt from Germania, Simon & Schuster, 2008, now also available on Kindle here.

Hitler Tells Albert Speer to Have a Little Faith

He paced back and forth in front of his desk, not looking at Speer. “Sit down!” he ordered.

"Mein Fuhrer, I prefer to stand.”

"Sit down.”

Speer lowered himself into the chair.

"After all I’ve done for you and you repay me like this. You were nothing, Speer. Do you remember? An unemployed graduate without a pot to piss in.

"Do you know what I do to people who betray me? What makes you think you’re any different?”

Speer looked up at him. “The answer is yes, Mein Fuhrer, I know what happens to people who go against you. And I am no different.”

Hitler didn’t like that one bit. His head started twitching. He pulled his bad hand out to claw at the air. Everything was behind him now. His years of victory, of moving from strength to strength, were all gone. His charm, his wit, his animal vitality had deserted him. All that was left was this quavering shell. But even now, his determination and will, the two things that defined him, were undiminished. He sat down at the desk and studied its surface for a long time. What comes next, Speer wondered. Will he declare me apostate? Throw me to the lions, the SS? Is Himmler going to get to smile at me? So Speer, we were never good enough for you, were we? But now we’ll just see how much better you really are.

It might have been better to have been shot by the gauleiter’s deputy that time. For the first time he remembered his wife and children and how he’d loved being called Uncle Hitler by them. He hoped they wouldn’t be included.

Hitler looked up from the table. Suddenly he looked forgiving. “Speer, you think I don’t know things look bad? I’ve been a soldier for thirty years and I’ve seen more bad times than you’ll ever know.” The angry tone was gone. He sounded more like someone offering encouragement to a wayward friend. ”But I’ll tell you something else, bad times never last. Things turn around, sometimes very quickly. But the only way you can be there to take advantage of them is to have faith. Faith, Speer! Faith in yourself, faith in your volk, faith in your leader, faith in me!”

Faith, thought Speer. Faith doesn’t matter when you’re out of fuel, out of bullets and out of everybody but seventy-year-old Volkssturmers.

"Mein Fuhrer, what I saw in the Ruhr...”

Hitler quickly waved him to silence. “None of that matters, Speer. What matters is inside you. Don’t you see?” Hitler stood up from his desk, leaning forward so that he was close to Speer, his face a kindly grimace. “Now tell me, Speer, tell me you have faith.”

"I’d be lying, Mein Fuhrer,” answered Speer, making no attempt to sound contrite.

"Then tell me you have hope. Don’t you at least hope everything will work out?” He looked imploringly at Speer.

Say yes. His eyes looked so sad, as if every other tragedy, every other turn of fortune he could bear. But not this. How could you do this to me? After all our dreams? Your hoping means more to me than anything, Speer. Hope. How could you not hope for a turnaround? Please say yes.

Speer saw the eyes, the trembling frame. He thought of how vigorous he’d been then, how full of life and joy. And now he was just a sad old man asking for a tiny favor from his only friend; a favor only a complete unfeeling bastard could say no to.

"I’m sorry, Mein Fuhrer,” said Speer. “But the facts do not lie.” He wanted to add, “The war is lost,” but somehow he couldn’t bring himself.

Hitler’s face darkened and once again he grew cold. “I’m giving you twenty four hours to think about what I’ve just said to you,” he said brusquely. “I want you here tomorrow telling me you have faith in victory.”

Back in his office at the ministry, Speer tried to write down what he wanted to tell Hitler. He thought about all the things he’d seen in the Ruhr that he wanted to describe to him. If he could have seen the elderly volkssturmers or the disorganized, fragmentary divisions. If he could have seen people like Jakob who still had faith in him, who still believed in victory, maybe then Hitler would see the utter travesty in what he was asking. But the words wouldn’t come to him and he knew Hitler wouldn’t listen anyway. It was impossible to write it down just as it was impossible to tell him to his face. What was he going to do? Speer didn’t know. All he knew was that he was dead tired. He went back to his quarters and went to bed.
(Excerpt from Germania, Simon & Schuster, 2008, now also available on Kindle here).

With a Magician's Help, Albert Speer Bugs Out of the Joint

“I’m sorry, colonel,” mumbled Speer.

Colonel von Poser looked away.

The laughter continued in sporadic bursts. Speer kept listening for other sounds, someone yelling, screaming, arguing. But all he heard was the laughing, loud and growing more hysterical, like whatever it was, had them busting their guts. Then suddenly it stopped and everything went quiet. Von Poser looked at Speer. This is it! They heard a lock turning on the steel door. Then it opened and out stepped the young man, only this time he wasn’t smiling or trying to look menacing. He handed them their identification books and gestured them to follow him. “Quickly,” he said.

They followed him down the corridor to another steel door. He took out a key on a long chain. He put a key in the lock, turned it and popped the door open. Dull gray daylight burst in. The young man stuck his head out but then pulled it back in and shut the door.

“Back,” he told them.

They went back up, past their cell, all the way to a place with three steel doors. Choosing the one on the left, he put his hand on the handle and looked at Speer and von Poser. “Just walk through quickly,” he told them in a quiet voice. “Don’t look around, don’t stop. Okay? Let’s go.”

He pushed the door open and quickly led them up another corridor through a small comfortable office with two desks at one side and on the other a low table surrounded by stuffed club chairs where the four men with automatics were sitting slumped over and leaning back, their mouths gaping open, the rest of their faces shot off. There was blood and brains everywhere. Speer did his best not to look.

The young man opened the far door and ushered them through, locking it behind them. They went up another corridor, much wider and lined with shelves and file cabinets. Halfway up, two men were going through an overhead cabinet. The young man turned back and fixed his eyes on Speer and von Poser. “All right,” he whispered. “One, two, three...”

They followed him past the two men who barely acknowledged them when they walked past. The next room was full of people at desks and typewriters and people carrying papers. Some people looked up, but nobody said anything. Twice people acted like they were going to say something. But somehow the young man’s nod quieted them and made them forget they were about to ask something pointed. Speer watched  the young man nod to different people and he guessed he had been somebody back when he was younger. Somebody whose face had been in photo magazines, always smiling, clean, bright-eyed, youthful Aryan laughter.

Who was he?

He took them through a lobby, past desks and rows of chairs and rifles and Party militiamen in brown coats with holster harnesses and black ammunition bandoliers strapped from their shoulders. He waved to a couple of burley men in feldgrau coats and constable’s hats. “Next time I’ll bring you some photographs,” he said like it would probably never happen. They nodded back like they didn’t really believe it either but looked forward to it just the same.

Outside, they went over to where Speer’s Mercedes had been left. The young man opened the back door and let them get in. Then he shut the back door, opened the front and put himself behind the wheel. The engine started up, he shoved it into gear and drove out.

They motored past milling groups of militiamen who ignored them, then went out a gate where no one bothered stopping them for papers. A few minutes later, they’d gone past streets full of bombed out buildings and then found themselves out of town and speeding up an empty road. Speer and von Poser sat back and exchanged looks of astonishment.

They drove past fields and pastures where cows were busily grazing, oblivious to everything but the grass.

Then the young man turned back to address them.

“All right, so here’s the deal,” he said. “I’m going to be your driver from now on. You’re trying to keep the Nazis from blowing everything up. Isn’t that right?” He said it like it was something everyone already knew. “Well you’re going about it the wrong way.”

“Apparently,” grunted von Poser.

“I can get you what you want,” the young man said. “I’ll have them eating out of your hands."

“How are you going to do that?” asked Speer.

“I’m magic,” the young man said. “No one ever refuses me.”

They looked at him dumbfounded.

“Why?” asked von Poser.

“I need to get around,” the young man explained. “Business to take care of.”

“Who are you?” asked Speer.

“Never mind who I am,” the young man snapped and returned to his driving.

Nobody said anything after that. Speer and von Poser settled into their bewildered silences. Speer stared out at the passing countryside. In the late afternoon sun, the winter fields no longer looked so bleak. He thought he saw hints of green beginning to emerge.

As he drove, the young man began whistling something Speer remembered orchestras playing back when he was still a young man with lots of dreams, but no job. A lyrical and melancholy number that expressed how everyone seemed to feel back then. Then he remembered it was called Harlem Rhapsody.

He remembered seeing the words in white lettering inside a black circle on a magazine page. And a crooked headline snaking across it asking Which One is Your Favorite?

And suddenly the names started hitting him like waves: Ziggy, Franzi, Sebastian and suddenly Speer knew exactly which one he was.

“Yes?” asked the young man.

“You’re Manni of the Flying Magical Loerber Brothers.”

The young man turned back and dazzled them with his smile. Then he turned back to keep his eyes on the road.
(Excerpt from Germania, first published in 2008 by Simon & Schuster, now also available on Kindle here).

Speer in the Ruhr: Sharing Confidences with a British Spy

Back in the car, driving through the night, rain spattering against the windscreen as the pneumatic wipers made faltering sweeps on the glass, they had the radio turned up high, blaring enemy fighter coordinates along with Bruckner. Speer was in the front seat, staring ahead into the garbled gray horizon, past the flashes of artillery and streams of tracer rounds, and wondering what was going to happen with them. He didn’t want to go back to Berlin. He didn’t want to answer to Hitler for what he’d been doing here. He didn’t want to be forgiven and be allowed to worm his way back into Hitler’s good graces so they could again spend endless hours talking about architecture or movie musicals or how someday the two of them were going to design and build the finest neo-gothic cathedral back in his hometown of Linz.

At the moment they were driving toward Duisburg, not that there was anything waiting for them there other than a fueling station where they could fill up their tanks with diesel. In the three days since the incident, their crusade had deteriorated into an aimless shuffling about. The Battle of the Ruhr Pocket, as it was being called, was already in full force and with it, the fate of the region’s factories and chemical plants had passed from the hands of the gauleiters and militias to the Americans, who seemed content to bomb and shell it all to bits. Even so, it felt better to remain there than go home. Here they were beyond Hitler’s reach and the Russians weren’t likely to get there anytime soon.

He glanced over at Manni Loerber at the wheel and wondered what he was thinking. Having ended his own personal retribution campaign, Manni also didn’t seem to have any idea what to do next. Odd guy, thought Speer. One minute he could be as remote as an iceberg, the next as energetic and affable as your oldest friend. They might spend hours driving about without exchanging a word, then stop somewhere, brew up some coffee, have a bite, and suddenly he would start cracking jokes, break out the balls and insist they spend the next hour juggling. And whenever they did, Speer, who was normally reticent about sharing confidences with anybody, would end up spilling his guts, telling Manni things about Hitler he hadn’t even told his wife. Afterwards he’d always regret the things he’d said. Speer wanted his rebellion to be on his own terms and didn’t like the idea of being so easily manipulated. But being finally around someone so quick and witty was like a drug for him and he couldn’t help telling him things. It also made it all the more obvious just how mediocre and tiresome even the best conversations he’d had with Hitler had been.

“Night fighters in grid C-1, Mosquitoes in grid B-9, squadron of bombers flying east south east Grid B-14,” the voice on the radio announced, then returned to a piano etude.

That day he’d told Manni about the time Hitler had, on a whim, given the order to melt down all the Luftwaffe’s bombers and build nothing but fighter planes. The day before he told him about Germania, and all the endless hours they’d spend together revising cupolas and shopping arcades and imagining the way the great dome would look in the light of a setting sun. He even told him of the time when he’d been gravely ill the summer before, and Hitler had allowed Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and Speer’s chief nemesis, to have him transferred to a special SS clinic where Himmler almost succeeded in having him poisoned.

Manni in turn told Speer a few secretsof his own; how Old Gustav was actually from Bulgaria, and their mother’s great uncle had been a rabbi in Riga. The Loerber Brothers, the blue-eyed, quintessentially Aryan Loerber Brothers, were Jews.

“Night fighters in grid D-16 heading north,” said the radio announcer. “Mustangs in grid D-4 heading east. Mustangs in grid A-6, A-7, and A-9, circling.”

Morning found them on the outskirts of Ludenscheid. They’d driven till three, then taken shelter inside a half-wrecked building which a Volkssturm battalion was using as its command post. Partially demolished buildings had become valuable since they were less likely to be directly targeted for additional pounding. Speer stood at its entrance, huddled in his overcoat, staring out at the drizzle and the gray bleakness and wondering if this was the day he’d finally get caught.

In the yard below, some soldiers had a fire going, using wood pulled from the wreckage, with a large cooking pot dangling from an iron tripod above the flames. Nearby stood the volkssturmers, gray and grizzled, shivering in their heavy coats. They were old men, retired bakers and clerks and librarians. Men who’d fought their own wars long ago and having survived them, didn’t see the point in dying now. Speer wondered what Hitler would think if he saw them. Would he continue proclaiming that they were what was going to turn the war around or would he give a wave of his hand and send them all home?

“He can be quite magnanimous when it suits him,” he remembered telling Manni the day before. At that, Manni gave a cruel snicker which still rankled Speer. He didn’t like having to defend Hitler, but at the same time, he felt miffed by such glaring absence of awe. He was, after all, Hitler, not some puffed-up party hack.

(An abbreviated version of this chapter appears in Germania, first published in 2008 by Simon & Schuster, now also available on Kindle here).

Speer on Hitler's Secret Weapons

One night they were driving between Ludenscheid and Dessau on a particularly badly bombed stretch of autobahn. Speer sat beside von Poser in the front seat, an air defense map spread on his lap, while the radio alternated between piano concertos and a lifeless voice reading out positions of enemy aircraft; fighters reported in Grid E-6 heading westward, enemy fighters in Grid F-12 bearing east. Enemy fighters in Grid D-9 heading east, enemy bombers in Grid C-7, C-8 and C-10, high overhead heading west.

Then suddenly they heard the metallic scream of aircraft engines as machinegun fire ripped up the ground in front of them. Von Poser slammed on the brakes and before they knew it, the car was plummeting down the embankment. They pushed open the doors and jumped out onto the ground. A twin-engine Heinkel roared over them, with a smaller American fighter tight on its tail, firing away. The Heinkel’s starboard engine was aflame. Then its wing crumpled and it turned over, plunging into the darkness. A second later they heard the dull explosion and saw the flash of fire in a distant field.

They tried getting their car out of the ditch, but the mud was too thick and the four back wheels only spun uselessly. They stood around in the darkness unsure of what to do next. In another hour it would be light enough for the American Mustangs and Thunderbolts to return and begin strafing anything that wasn’t already blown up.

Then they became aware of the easy clopping of horses’ hoofs. They peered into the mist to see what it was. The clopping came closer until suddenly he was in front of them; a tall thin figure in a long coat and floppy-brimmed hat, leading a team of four large sputtering farm horses. “Hey there,” he called out. “I see you had an accident. Let’s see if my boys here can’t get you out.” He said his name was Jakob and he was a farmer. He’d been tending his cows in a nearby field when he heard the noise. So he went back to the barn and hitched up his team. It used to be that there were hardly ever any accidents on this stretch of the autobahn, he told them. But now it seemed like barely a night went by without someone smashing up.

It didn’t take five minutes to pull the car back up the embankment and onto the road. Jakob worked his horses with a good-natured firmness that struck Speer as the utter embodiment of German peasant virtue. Speer imagined Germania and the pilgrimages which all the Jakobs of the Greater German Reich would make at least once in their lives so they could see the city and stand inside the Great Hall. Supposedly this war had been for them. Now all it would do was chew them up in its maw.

“Jakob, what will you do when the Americans come?”

Jakob gave a big smile. “It’ll never happen,” he said. “The Fuhrer has those secret weapons of his. And once the Americans have gotten themselves too far in to escape, boom!” Jakob clapped his hands together joyfully. “He’ll fire those secret weapons and then their goose will be cooked!” Jakob smiled guilelessly at them. Von Poser looked away uncomfortably.

“Where did you hear about this?” asked Speer.

“Oh you know, around,” said Jakob. “Everybody agrees about that.”

“They do?”

“Of course,” he said. “The Fuhrer knows what to do. People just need to have faith, that’s all.”

Speer felt sick. They’d really done a good job indoctrinating people. “Jakob, listen to me,” said Speer. “All that stuff they’re telling you. It’s all a lie. There are no secret weapons.”

Jakob stared at them uncomprehendingly. “But I’ve heard them say it,” he insisted. “Over and over... on the radio... that they’re almost ready.” Then he laughed nervously. “You’re joking with me, aren’t you? I know, this is all a test. You’re testing my faith, to see if I’m worthy.”

Von Poser stepped in. “Speer, we need to get going.”

But Speer waved him off. “No, we’re not testing you, Jakob. We’re trying to help you, just like you’ve helped us. When the Americans come, just find a place to hide with your cows and let it all just pass you by. That nonsense they’re telling you will only get you killed. Please Jakob, hide. Save yourself.”

He watched Jakob shifting back and forth on his feet as he stared down at the ground. But then he looked up and his eyes were blazing with anger.

“Traitors!” he spat the words out. “You betray our Fuhrer. You betray Germany! And to think I helped you out. Look at you! You’re betraying your uniforms, your country, your people. You’re worse than Jews! And you,” he said, pointing his finger at von Poser. “Look at you, an army officer, of all people. You should be ashamed of yourself!

“I’m getting my gun,” he shouted. “And if you are still here when I get back, so help me, I’ll kill you both!” Giving a shake of his reins, he put his horses into a brisk trot and left them.

“Speer, are you insane?” shouted Von Poser. “You’re going to get us hanged.”

Speer felt like an idiot. “I’m sorry, Colonel. I just couldn’t stand thinking about somebody like that getting killed.”

“Well don’t ever do it again! Things are dangerous enough as it is. I don’t need you screwing it up with some weak-hearted do-gooding. Get in the car. Let’s get out of here.”

For the next half hour, von Poser drove quickly as he could. Speer made several attempts to apologize, but was rebuffed. He sank into an uncomfortable silence. An hour later, outside Dessau, they came to a roadblock where grim-faced Party militiamen came at them with machineguns and yanked them both out of the car.

“How dare you?” roared Speer, feeling their hands at his shoulder. “Do you know who I am?”

That got him a hard punch in the jaw. “Shut up!” the militiaman grunted, knocking him to the ground. Speer rolled on the pavement, hands, elbows and shoulder stinging. He tried to push up onto his knees, only to feel a boot heel coming down hard against his side.

“Stop!” wailed Speer. ”You’re making a mistake. I’m Minister for War Production ...” He waited for the militiaman to step back, but the militiaman didn’t. Speer felt the man’s boot stomp down on his shoulder.

“You think we don’t know what you’ve been doing?” he heard the man hiss. The boot came down again, this time hard into Speer’s ribs. Speer stopped moving. Raising up his hands, he got onto his knees and looked up at the two men standing over him, their machine guns pointing down at him while a third had a pistol pointed at von Poser. He looked angry and tired.
(Excerpt from Germania, first published by Simon & Schuster in 2008, now also available on Kindle here).

Good-bye Berlin, Hello ... Welthauptstadt Germania!

That evening, still having several hours to kill before it was safe to drive off, they had another campfire. Manni and von Poser had snared a fat rabbit during the afternoon and now it was roasting over the fire. Somehow Manni had also acquired several bottles of dark beer and when the rabbit had turned crispy golden brown, the three had a feast.

For the first time, Manni was quite conversational. They talked about movies and the kind of cars they’d liked and which film actresses had the most oomph. Manni told them how he used to like to hike in the Hartzwald and about a sailboat he’d had for a few months. Listening to him, it was almost as if a spell had been broken and once again he had joined the world of humans. Still Speer kept wondering what the young man’s story was, what he wasn’t telling them.

Von Poser talked about a dog he had for a while in Russia. It was a black mongrel that he kept in his bunker. Then they talked about Indians and building teepees. Then Manni turned to Speer. “I know what you can tell me about, Herr Reichsminister,” he said.

“What?” asked Speer.

"Germania.”

Speer couldn’t hide his surprise. “Germania?” he gave a wary laugh.

“Yes, wasn’t that the name for the new Berlin you and the Fuhrer had designed?”

Speer waved him off. “Honestly, I don’t want to talk about that. The whole thing was ridiculous. It was an opium dream that I wasted five years on.”

“Five years? That must have been a lot of work you put into it. You shouldn’t let it all just go to waste.”

“That is precisely what I intend to do,” snapped Speer. “Pretend it never happened and hope no one remembers it.”

“Not much chance of that happening,” laughed Manni. “It was something you and the Fuhrer dreamed up together. Do you think that once this is over, people won’t be clamoring to know all about it? Face it, Herr Reichsminister, if you manage to survive this war, and they don’t hang you as a war criminal, you’ll be explaining Germania to audiences all over the world just like you’ll be telling them about being the Fuhrer’s only friend. The least you can do is get your story straight. People hate inconsistencies.”

Hanged? thought Speer. For what? For being Hitler’s architect? His friend? He couldn’t see what Manni was trying to get at. Could he be an Allied spy? What did he know?

"Germania,” repeated Manni. “Tell me or it’ll be the Three Musketeers Minus One.”

Speer had to laugh. “All right,” he said. “How shall I describe it?” He stared into the fire and in the glowing embers, the images of the different buildings and monuments and grand boulevards began laying themselves out before him. “Start with a street, a grand boulevard running from north to south, three miles long and seventy feet wider that the Champs Elysées. At its southern end would stand the triumphal arch, bigger than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, with the names of all the war dead chiseled onto it.

"At the northern end would stand the dome. Sixteen times larger than Saint Peter’s in Rome, with enough space inside for one hundred and fifty thousand people. Its mass resting on a granite edifice two hundred and forty feet high and over a thousand feet long, surrounded with stone pillars sixty-six feet high. On top there’d be a turreted skylight, crowned by a giant eagle and swastika. The dome would be surrounded by water on three sides with a large public square on the fourth side.”

“At the southern end of the street, just below the triumphal arch, would be the main train station, larger than New York’s Grand Central Station and in striking contrast to all the stone construction, it would be wholly modern, built of steel and copper and glass and have four traffic levels connected by escalators and elevators. Emerging from it, the visitor would face a basin of water thirty-three hundred feet long and eleven hundred and fifty-five feet wide. It would be clean enough for swimming and lined with boat houses, dressing cabins and refreshment terraces.”

Speer described them all one by one; Adolf Hitler Platz, the eleven ministry buildings, Soldiers’ Hall; a combination armory, veterans’ memorial and crypt for Germany’s field marshals, past, present, and future. Then there’d be the Grand Boulevard with its luxury movie houses and symphony halls, the twenty-one story hotel with the large roman-style pool, plus the opera house, the variety theatres, the numerous interior courtyards with their luxury shops where prestigious German goods would be on continuous display.

All this time Speer had been gesturing with a haunch of rabbit in his hand, like it was a pointer. Taking a big bite out of it he added, “The idea was to build it and keep it empty until the 1950 World’s Fair, which would be held there. Then it would belong to the world.”

“It sounds so wonderful,” said Manni. “Just think, an entire city without Jews.”

In an instant the meat in Speer’s mouth turned to sand. Why bring up Jews? Nobody talked about them any more. Speer saw Manni smiling devilishly at him.

“Are you a Jew?” asked Speer.

“What if I was?”

“Well you should know I had nothing to do with any of it.”

“Any of what, Herr Reichsminister?”

“We had to move people out to begin construction. It was only logical to give them the flats confiscated from the Jewish residents that had left.”

“Did they leave voluntarily?”

“I don’t know, that was something the Goebbels ministry handled.”

“Oh,” said Manni. “I guess that explains that.” There was an uneasy silence for a while and then he added: "Germania. I always thought Berlin was such a cheap, tawdry name.”

They got going soon after that, reaching Nuremberg just as dawn was breaking. The last five kilometers the autobahn was lined with the burning wreckage of army convoys that had been shot up during the night. Much of it had simply been pushed off the road where it joined older wreckage.

In the faint early light, the wreckage’s ghostly silhouettes resembled a field filled with the skeletal carcasses of ancient extinct beasts, though the stench of the burning ammunition, rubber, combined with that of dead and dying men, kept it from even a moment seeming like a fantasy. Even so, they all knew that in a little while their entire world would become just as extinct. Enemy daytime fighters were already beginning to appear with the dawn, flying low, attacking any vehicle which hadn’t already found cover.

They found the army headquarters hidden among the half-bombed factories just inside the city. Field Marshall Kesselring hadn’t arrived yet, they’d learned, but was expected at noon. With nothing else to do for the next five hours, they got themselves directed to a darkened corner of the factory where dozens of cots had been laid out and quickly went to sleep.
(A shorter version of this chapter appears in my novel Germania, Simon & Schuster, 2008, now also available on Kindle here).

Speer in the Ruhr: When Magic Fails

They were visiting the local offices of a deputy gauleiter, a short, fat, red-faced man, who they’d hoped would block an order to blow up a nearby series of canal locks. At first everything seemed to go well. “Whatever can I do for Herr Reichsminister?” he asked solicitously. Speer started with his usual bit about heavy industry being the lifeblood of the German nation, and then about “ultimate victory” and how the Ruhr’s infrastructure would be vital once the Americans got thrown back by the Fuhrer’s secret weapons, which, Speer let the deputy know, were now only days from completion.

But try as he might to come off humble and unpretentious, Speer could tell that the deputy really only saw things in terms of weak and strong; of someone mighty and sophisticated like Speer begging favors from a relative nobody like himself. There was something of the inequity of it which he couldn’t accept. The whole time Speer talked, he kept staring at Speer’s tailored gray suit and crumpled as it was, it still somehow made his own sumptuous party uniform seem liks a doorman’s.

At first Speer thought that perhaps he should just stand up and thank the man without ever coming to the point of his visit. Make an excuse, say he’d be back later. But he hesitated and before he knew it, Manni had taken over. “What we need from you is to sign these declarations to prevent the unnecessary destruction of the canal locks.” The man nodded. “It’s for the future,” Manni added. The man nodded again. He took his pen and flipped open the lid of a rather ornate eagle-on-a-swastika inkwell, dipped the pen into it and then started contentedly scratching his signature onto the first of several documents.

But then he stopped. He blinked and shook his head like a horse trying to jolt off a fly. It was like Jakob all over again; a detonation which couldn’t be controlled. His eyes flared at Speer.

“You! You! You betray the Fuhrer! Of all people, you Herr Reichsminister! You are the Fuhrer’s friend and you do this to him?” He stood up from his chair. “I’m going to have you killed!” he declared. Again and again he tried to pull his pistol out from its holster, but for some reason, his hand wasn’t able to find it. He opened his mouth to shout out something, but then suddenly, his eyes went blank and jaw dropped and he slumped back into his chair with a heavy plop.

“Quick,” barked Manni, grabbing the sheaf of papers off the desk. “We’ve got to get out now!” They ran down the corridor, causing the secretaries and typists and party functionaries to look up from their desks.

Once outside, Manni tossed von Poser the keys. “Colonel, you’re driving,” he shouted. “Drive fast!”

He got in the back beside Speer, pulling out several automatic pistols from under the seat, while looking out the back window. Just as Von Poser fired up the engine, the deputy gauleiter stumbled out of the building entrance, pistol in his upraised hand as he screamed at them like a rabid dog. He shot at them as he ran down the steps, striking the car, shattering its rear window.

Von Poser began easing the huge car out into the street, only to suddenly slam his foot on the brake when he saw a truck barreling toward them. More shots rang out, but this time none of them hit the car. Speer saw the deputy running out into the street, right into the path of the oncoming truck. It ran over his like he wasn’t there and kept going past Speer’s Mercedes. Von Poser waited until it had gone past, then pulled out, heading in the opposite direction. The last thing Speer saw as they drove away, was people running up to the deputy’s body.

Then he looked over at Manni and saw he was slumped against the door, the pistol fallen from his hand. “He’s been shot,” he gasped.

“Stay calm Speer,” barked von Poser. “Try to see where he’s been hit.”

Speer bent over the young man to check his face and chest for wounds, but other than some glass cuts he didn’t see anything. “I don’t see any wound,” he said, his voice quivering with panic. “But he looks like he’s dead.”

“Is he breathing?” asked von Poser.

Speer put his ear to Manni’s chest. He could hear breathing but it was shallow, like he was in shock. His face was ashen. Speer pulled open his eyes, but they were not reacting. “He’s breathing, but he’s out,” he told von Poser.

“Just keep an eye on him.”

Von Poser kept driving as fast as he could, swerving occasionally to avoid the potholes and debris. Speer pulled out a blanket and draped it over the young man. He tried to feel his pulse, but he couldn’t tell if it was even there.

A few minutes later they came to a checkpoint. The militiamen looked at the bullet-holes and the shattered windows without interest. Von Poser let them examine his papers.

“Where are you going?” one of them asked.

“We’re trying to find Field Marshal Kesselring’s headquarters,” answered von Poser. “Any idea?”

“How would we know?” one of the militiamen answered. “Everything keeps moving around. The Field Marshal probably doesn’t even know.” He pointed at Manni still lying unconscious in the backseat. “What’s with him?”

“He had too much to drink. His wife just died,” Speer answered.

The militiaman gave a wave of his hand. “You can go,” he told them.

They drove through the night, changing direction frequently and sticking to back roads where there were fewer checkpoints. Manni Loerber remained unconscious the whole time. Every hour or so, Speer would check on him. His pulse had returned and his breathing seemed almost normal, but nothing would rouse him. The roads were mostly empty now. There wasn’t fuel for convoys to move around much anymore. But in contrast to the stillness on the ground, the sky was full of constant buzzing. The allied fighters were everywhere, roaring low overhead without a moment’s warning. Somewhere before dawn they found an abandoned farmhouse on a hillside overlooking Detmold. Von Poser helped Speer carry Manni inside. They put him in the large bed and covered him with a blanket. Then they ate something, opened their bedrolls and went to sleep.
(Excerpt from Germania, first published in 2008 by Simon & Schuster, now also available on Kindle here).

Himmler Asks Speer to Sound Hitler Out on Stepping Aside So He Can Negotiate a Peace Deal with the West

Back in his office at the ministry, Speer tried to write down what he wanted to tell Hitler. He thought about all the things he’d seen in the Ruhr that he wanted to describe to him. If he could have seen the elderly volkssturmers or the disorganized, fragmentary divisions. If he could have seen people like Jakob who still had faith in him, who still believed in victory, maybe then Hitler would see the utter travesty in what he was asking. But the words wouldn’t come to him and he knew Hitler wouldn’t listen anyway. It was impossible to write it down just as it was impossible to tell him to his face. What was he going to do? Speer didn’t know. All he knew was that he was dead tired. He went back to his quarters and went to bed.

He woke up a few hours later with a dry mouth and a cold sweat and rather than try to go back to sleep, he put on his robe and went back to his office to work on his response. Faith? Hope? Do I say yes or no? If I say no, I’ll at least get to maintain my integrity. Of course at this point his integrity had to be about the most useless thing there was. But on the other hand, his reward for discarding it was hardly worth having.

Speer wrote a few sentences, then crumpled the paper and stared out into the darkness. The electricity was out again. The empty window frames either hadn’t been re-papered or what they’d put in had already been blown out. Perhaps the papering crews had all been mobilized and sent off to the front. Faith? Hope? Come on! There was nothing left.

After two weeks in the Ruhr, he was back here like the whole thing had never happened. He’d staged his own revolt against Hitler and now Hitler was going to take even that away from him by forgiving him. But Speer had changed. He was a different person now and Hitler’s power over him wasn’t what it had been. He’d learned to see things differently. He now saw things from the perspective of a juggler.

Juggling, perhaps that was what Speer should do. He hadn’t juggled in two days. He didn’t want to lose his edge. He wished he had some balls lying around. Of course they don’t have to be balls, they don’t even have to be round or the same size or weight. Just remember the feel and the weight. What did he have? He lit another candle and went looking for objects. There was a small bakelite ashtray, a pocket flask, a leather eyeglass case. What else? He rummaged through his desk drawer and found a small steel box. Why not?

He stood up and started juggling the ashtray and the eyeglass case. Then, once he had them going well, he snatched the steel box off the desk and threw it up to join the other objects in the air. Then the flask.

Keep it up, keep it going, one thing at a time. He kept it going and going and going and for the first time his head felt clear, his heart lighter.What will I tell Hitler? Flask, ashtray. Tell him all I have left is my integrity and ability to juggle, not that there is any difference between the two. Leather case, steel box, flask.

Tell him he’s dropped too many balls. The single ball he keeps throwing up into the air does not constitute juggling. That he should get off the stage. Ashtray, case, flask. Here comes the steel box, and now the ashtray and now the case.

And maybe if he’d bother to read Mein Kampf again he might remember what he himself had said about leaders who can no longer lead. Steel box, ashtray. And he’s asking me to reaffirm my faith in a man who’s dropped all the balls and is just pretending they are all in the air when they’re actually rolling around on the ground. I don’t think so, Mein Fuhrer.

And what would Hitler tell me? All I’ve got left is you, Speer. The others don’t matter. Lapdogs are a dime a dozen. I need a man who will tell me the truth. All I require is this one lie. Ashtray, flask. One lie is all I require, one lie, Speer. After all I’ve done for you, I’m not asking much, one little lie. Tell me you have faith.

Here comes the steel box – and up it goes again! Ashtray, flask, case.

Faith? Hope? Obey? No, said the disobedient angel, I will not obey. My integrity is reduced to this act of rebellion and if you take it away from me all I have left is this...Steel box, flask, leather case, ashtray.

Only then Speer became aware of the presence of somebody else in the room. There was somebody standing in the shadows by the doorway. He must have slipped in. Somebody from his staff, perhaps; one of the secretaries, a deputy, a section chief. But he wasn’t going to let his eyes off the flying objects. He didn’t want to stop yet. He still had a few things to think through.

“Could you come back in ten minutes, please,” Speer called out. “I’m busy with something right now.”

But the visitor did not stir, though Speer noticed he had reached up with his hand to touch his forehead. Speer kept on juggling and hoped the intruder would take the hint and leave. Finally the figure stepped out of the shadow and into the dim candlelight. It was Himmler.

In an instant Speer’s focus evaporated and the objects crashed onto the floor.

“Reichsfuhrer,” he said embarrassedly. “What a surprise.”

With the candlelight dancing upon the thick lenses of his glasses, Himmler’s eyes were all but invisible to Speer. But then it was easy to guess what they looked like, because his eyes were always the same; cold, expressionless cobra’s eyes.

“So, Speer,” he began matter-of-factly. “I hear you have become quite the folk hero in the Ruhr. Going around, charming the populace, getting them to disobey the Fuhrer’s directives, talking about tomorrow instead of today.”

But to Speer’s surprise, Himmler’s manner wasn’t threatening. If anything he seemed nervous, like he was looking for someone to confide in. It made Speer wonder what might have happened while he was gone.

“Is there something I can help you with, Reichsfuhrer?” he asked politely.

Himmler stared at Speer for a long time before finally saying, “These are exceptional times, are they not, Herr Reichsminister?”

“Yes, Reichsfuhrer, very exceptional,” answered Speer. Catch it, toss it back.

“These are dark times also, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, Reichsfuhrer, very dark times.”

“But then, isn’t it true that it is always darkest right before the dawn?”

“Yes, I’ve heard that said,” allowed Speer.

“They also say that when you get to the bottom of a valley, there is nowhere to go but up.”

“Yes, they also say that.” Speer tossing it back. He wished Himmler would come to the point. Absentmindedly Speer picked up some pencils from the desk and began flipping them into the air, then catching them and flipping them back again. “Is there something you wanted to ask about, Reichsfuhrer?” he asked. “Something about darkness?”

He caught them and then tossed them up from his shoulder, then sticking his other hand behind his back and catching them as the came down.

“Yes! Would you stop doing that!” snapped Himmler.

Speer put the pencil down. “Pardon me,Reichsfuhrer, but I’m really nervous right now. What you were saying?”

“I was, ah, saying how, some people are saying,” Himmler paused.

“Yes?”

“That it may be time for a change.”

“People, Reichsfuhrer? What people?”

Himmler hesitated again before continuing. “People who are, ahh, concerned with the way things are going right now with the war. People who believe we might be missing out on unprecedented opportunities with the West.”

Speer suddenly realized what Himmler was trying to say. He was talking about peace negotiations with the West. Was it even possible?

“Reichsfuhrer, are you talking about a peace deal with the West?”

Himmler stared open mouthed at Speer.

“I’m talking about opportunities for Germany’s future.”

“Opportunities, Reichsfuhrer?”

Himmler looked at Speer. “When you talk to the Fuhrer again would you do something for me?”

Speer nodded for him to go ahead. “Try to sound him out on him stepping aside for a brief period to allow for a realignment.”

“I promise I’ll get back to you with it,” said Speer.

“Good Luck, Speer.” At that, Himmler left quickly.

Speer went to his desk and tried writing out his thoughts again, but his concentration was gone. He ended up pushing the paper and pencil aside and then went back to reading the industry reports he’d been looking at before going to the Ruhr. Then the meeting started up again. Hours later, when the call came for him to report back to the Fuhrerbunker, Speer still had no idea what he was going to tell Hitler.

(Excerpt from Germania, first published by Simon & Schuster in 2008, now also available on Kindle here)

Albert Speer Searches for Landmarks in Bombed-Out Berlin

Back in his office, Speer hung up his helmet but kept his overcoat on. The paper on the front windows had been blown out in the bombing and all that remained were a few jagged triangular strips fluttering along the edges like race pennants. It had been at least a year since anyone had replaced a window. Usually the electricity didn’t work and since the roof was mostly holes at this point, everything had a perpetually damp, musty smell. Speer lit a cigarette and stared out the window. It was early March and the skies over Berlin were perpetually gray. He wondered if by the time the actual spring came the war might already be over. He’d already had a number of the women in the office come up and ask if, with his connections, he could get them suicide pills. He promised he would look into it but he still hadn’t started asking around.

The intercom on his desk buzzed. Speer went over and pressed down the switch. “Yes?”

A female voice crackled on the other end. “Colonel von Poser is here to see you.”

“Send him in,” said Speer. A few seconds later the office door opened and in strode a short, frowning, white-haired soldier easily twenty years his senior. Colonel von Poser was Speer’s military liaison to the Army General Staff and by now one of the few men he trusted completely. Von Poser was of the old school. He hated Nazis and dilettantes and he hated discussing things in rooms he assumed were bugged. “Speer,” he grunted, “it has happened.”

Speer knew it could only mean one thing; that the Americans were now across the Rhine: Germany’s last barrier in the west. He got up from his desk and followed von Poser to the wall map. “Where?” he asked in a low voice.

Von Poser put his finger on a town called Remagen. “Apparently efforts to blow up the railroad bridge had not been as successful as originally claimed,” he muttered.

“Any chance they’ll be thrown back?”

Von Poser shook his head. “Speer, we don’t have anything to throw them back with. But you see what lies next.” His finger made a circle around the area just east of Remagen. It was the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heart, the biggest concentration of mines, steel mills, chemical plants and manufacturing anywhere in the world. “You know what’s going to happen next, don’t you?”

Speer nodded. Hitler would now have all the excuse he needed to unleash a spate of scorched-earth orders, just like he did when the Russians had moved into East Prussia a few months earlier. All the factories, all the mines, the rail yards, electrical plants, telephone exchanges, everything, would get blown up, smashed and destroyed, leaving behind a mangled, smoldering wasteland.

Blowing up the Ruhr’s factories was not going to keep the enemy from winning the war. Nothing could at this point. All it would accomplish was to ensure that the Germans who survived would spend the rest of their lives in the dark ages. This was Hitler’s new vision for Germany. It had to be stopped.

“So are you still willing to go ahead with our plan?” asked von Poser.

Speer nodded.

Von Poser gave a grim smile. “You know what your friend will do if he finds out?”

Speer shrugged. He knew.

“All right,” said von Poser. “I’ll get the auto ready. We leave when it gets dark.”

After that Speer had meetings that went on through the afternoon. When everyone had finally gone, Speer went back to his quarters and packed all his things into two pigskin traveling bags. In his valise he stuffed some reports and letterhead stationery, along with a thick sheaf of “Stay of Demolition Orders,” which his ministry had no authority to possess, let alone hand out, along with an inkpad and an assortment of rubberstamps from different governmental authorities. Then he gathered all the canned food from his personal larder and bundled it into a pillowcase from his bed.

With still an hour to kill, Speer lit a cigarette and went over to the couch and sat down.

You know what your friend will do if he finds out? They always referred to Hitler that way. Speer had always hated that. Hitler wasn’t his friend, Perhaps Speer was Hitler’s friend, perhaps even his only friend. But that wasn’t the same thing, was it? Besides, Speer knew what Hitler would do when he found out.

Reasonably speaking, all they could hope for now was to keep as much of Germany’s industrial base together so that some level of civilized life could continue after it was all over. He’d carefully broached that matter with Hitler during the winter, but Hitler dismissed it. “There is no need to preserve anything for the survivors, Speer,” he told him. “They will have proven themselves unworthy.”

Speer went over to the window and stared out. By now the bombing had taken out most of the city’s landmarks, leaving him without his usual points of reference. Locating Alexanderplatz had always been a matter of simply finding the old Town Hall’s clock tower and then going a little bit left. But now the tower was gone. So was the Karstadt department store, the Columbus building on Potsdamerplatz, the twin steeples of Saint Nicholas church. He tried to remember what they looked like, but they were already excised from his memory.

Instead what blazed unforgettably was the skyline of a city which had only existed on paper and tabletop scale models. He saw the dome, stretched out before him, larger than a sunrise, with its dozens of gigantic columns and a massive bronze eagle perched ominously atop its cupola.

And he heard Hitler’s voice reciting the numbers to onlookers, Sixteen times the size of Saint Peter’s in Rome!

And he saw the rest of the imaginary city, the broad avenues, the monuments, the palaces and plazas, the gigantic ministry buildings, cinemas, concert halls, hotels and storefronts, miles and miles of it. The two of them had spent years dreaming it up; a city greater than Rome, a light among nations, a capital fit to rule the world for a thousand years; Germania!

Speer had actually believed in it back when Germany’s future still loomed bright, enough so that he went ahead with demolition orders for whole neighborhoods in order to make way for it. Berlin’s destruction hadn’t started with the first British bombing raids, but with the bulldozing he had himself engineered.

Once the war had started the whole thing should have been shelved, but the war only stoked Hitler’s enthusiasm. And when the enemy bombing did come, Hitler acted gleeful. “They’re only doing our work for us, Speer,” he’d say. And Speer accepted it without question. Even after things went bad in Russia, Hitler insisted it be kept on as a top priority, summoning Speer to the studio in the middle of the night so they could discuss the changes which still kept occurring to him on a daily basis. They’d spend endless hours bent down at eyelevel to the miniature streets and buildings, peering under archways, discussing each gallery and staircase.

Even now, with the enemy at their door, Hitler still wouldn’t let it go. In his mind, Germania was still every bit as real as the miracle weapons, Inevitable Victory and all the other shabby fantasies which he insisted everyone believe in. And it was all Speer’s fault for wanting a thousand years of glory.

Going to pick up his bags, he paused for a moment to look at himself in the mirror. Was this the face of a future world leader? Except for some rings under his eyes and a receding hairline, there was still far too much boyishness in it. He was neither handsome nor ugly, his face was round, his chin soft. It was only the face of a technocrat. No, that’s not completely true, he told himself. His eyes had it. Dark, brooding, even without a night’s sleep, they had a sharpness to them, inquisitiveness, too, and sardonic humor. The face of a man who could put things into perspectice.

Speer went downstairs to the garage where Colonel von Poser was waiting beside a supercharged, six-wheeled Mercedes. They drove out after nightfall, heading west.

(Excerpt from Germania, Simon & Schuster, 2008, now also available on Kindle here).

Albert Speer Tries Telling Hitler the Truth

When Albert Speer gets ordered back to Berlin from the Ruhr to answer charges that he's been instigating a rebellion against Hitler, he is determined for once to face down Hitler and tell him the truth, come hell or high water. Only it doesn't quite work out that way. An excerpt from my novel Germania (first published by Simon & Schuster in 2008, now also available as a Kindle ebook, for CHEAP!)


The Fuhrer glared furiously at Speer. For the first time that they’d known each other, there was neither a greeting nor a handshake. He waited for the adjutants to leave before speaking.

“So Speer,” he began icily.

“Mein Fuhrer?” asked Speer, knowing he didn’t sound even remotely innocent.

Hitler looked terrible. His eyes, much rheumier than before, drooping eyelids, bags, gray, oatmeal skin. He looked a lot older than his fifty-five years. That bomb last summer had taken a lot out of him. Hitler kept his palsied left hand clenched behind him so it wouldn’t shake uncontrollably. His green uniform jacket had stains and Speer noticed breadcrumbs sticking to one of the cuffs.

“Bormann has given me a report on your recent activities. He says you’re telling people the war is lost and that they shouldn’t carry out my orders.” He paused and waited for Speer to say something. But Speer said nothing. Well?”

“Mein Fuhrer, I can’t lie to you,” Speer said finally.

But Hitler would have none of it. “Are you aware what the punishment is for that?”

Standing stiffly at attention, looking straight into Hitler’s eyes. “I am aware of the penalties for disobedience, Mein Fuhrer. “And you may, if you wish, apply them as the law demands without any regard to our personal relationship.”

It was not the answer Hitler had wanted. He slammed his good fist against the desk. “How could you do this, Speer?” he shouted. “How could you? You! Of all people!” He paced back and forth in front of his desk, not looking at Speer. “Sit down!” he ordered.

“Mein Fuhrer, I prefer to stand.”

“Sit down.”

Speer lowered himself into the chair.

“After all I’ve done for you and you repay me like this. You were nothing, Speer. Do you remember? An unemployed graduate without a pot to piss in.

“Do you know what I do to people who betray me? What makes you think you’re any different?”

Speer looked up at him. “The answer is yes, Mein Fuhrer, I know what happens to people who go against you. And I am no different.”

Hitler didn’t like that one bit. His head started twitching. He pulled his bad hand out to claw at the air. Everything was behind him now. His years of victory, of moving from strength to strength, were all gone. His charm, his wit, his animal vitality had deserted him. All that was left was this quavering shell. But even now, his determination and will, the two things that defined him, were undiminished. He sat down at the desk and studied its surface for a long time. What comes next, Speer wondered. Will he declare me apostate? Throw me to the lions, the SS? Is Himmler going to get to smile at me? So Speer, we were never good enough for you, were we? But now we’ll just see how much better you really are. It might have been better to have been shot by the gauleiter’s deputy that time. For the first time he remembered his wife and children and how he’d loved being called Uncle Hitler by them. He hoped they wouldn’t be included.

Hitler looked up from the table. Suddenly he looked forgiving. “Speer, you think I don’t know things look bad? I’ve been a soldier for thirty years and I’ve seen more bad times than you’ll ever know.” The angry tone was gone. He sounded more like someone offering encouragement to a wayward friend. ”But I’ll tell you something else, bad times never last. Things turn around, sometimes very quickly. But the only way you can be there to take advantage of them is to have faith. Faith, Speer! Faith in yourself, faith in your volk, faith in your leader, faith in me!”

Faith, thought Speer. Faith doesn’t matter when you’re out of fuel, out of bullets and out of everybody but seventy-year old Volkssturmers.

“Mein Fuhrer, what I saw in the Ruhr...”

Hitler quickly waved him to silence. “None of that matters, Speer. What matters is inside you. Don’t you see?” Hitler stood up from his desk, leaning forward so that he was close to Speer, his face a kindly grimace. “Now tell me, Speer, tell me you have faith.”

“I’d be lying, Mein Fuhrer,” answered Speer, making no attempt to sound contrite.

“Then tell me you have hope. Don’t you at least hope everything will work out?” He looked imploringly at Speer. Say yes. His eyes looked so sad, as if every other tragedy, every other turn of fortune he could bear. But not this. How could you do this to me? After all our dreams? Your hoping means more to me than anything Speer. Hope. How could you not hope for a turnaround? Please say yes.

Speer saw the eyes, the trembling frame. He thought of how vigorous he’d been then, how full of life and joy. And now he was just a sad old man asking for a tiny favor from his only friend; a favor only a complete unfeeling bastard could say no to.

“I’m sorry, Mein Fuhrer,” said Speer. “But the facts do not lie.” He wanted to add, “The war is lost,” but somehow he couldn’t bring himself.

Hitler’s face darkened and once again he grew cold. “I’m giving you twenty four hours to think about what I’ve just said to you,” he said brusquely. “I want you here tomorrow telling me you have faith in victory.”

Back in his office at the ministry, Speer tried to write down what he wanted to tell Hitler. He thought about all the things he’d seen in the Ruhr that he wanted to describe to him. If he could have seen the elderly volkssturmers or the disorganized, fragmentary divisions. If he could have seen people like Jakob who still had faith in him, who still believed in victory, maybe then Hitler would see the utter travesty in what he was asking. But the words wouldn’t come to him and he knew Hitler wouldn’t listen anyway. It was impossible to write it down just as it was impossible to tell him to his face. What was he going to do? Speer didn’t know. All he knew was that he was dead tired. He went back to his quarters and went to bed.

He woke up a few hours later with a dry mouth and a cold sweat and rather than try to go back to sleep, he put on his robe and went back to his office to work on his response. Faith? Hope? Do I say yes or no? If I say no, I’ll at least get to maintain my integrity. Of course at this point his integrity had to be about the most useless thing there was. But on the other hand, his reward for discarding it was hardly worth having.

Speer wrote a few sentences, then crumpled the paper and stared out into the darkness. The electricity was out again. The empty window frames either hadn’t been re-papered or what they’d put in had already been blown out. Perhaps the papering crews had all been mobilized and sent off to the front. Faith? Hope? Come on! There was nothing left.

Speer in the Ruhr: Speer's Rebellion Against Hitler's Scorched-Earth Orders Ends

In the town square, a solitary soldier stood by a dry fountain, calmly smoking a pipe, two panzerfaust rockets resting at his side. At von Poser’s direction, Manni stopped the car, got out and walked across the square toward him. He seemed to regard their approach with little interest.

“Hello soldier,” said Speer.

The man said nothing.

“Where is everybody?”

He jerked his head around to indicate all the executed. “They’re all here.”

“Who did this?” demanded von Poser.

“Koehl, the Party Chief,” answered the soldier. “He declared the town a fortress, demanded everyone fight to the death. Nobody wanted to.”

“So where is Koehl?”

“He left.” The man grinning like he’d wholeheartedly endorsed Koehl’s decision at the time.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“My orders are to wait for the Americans,” he said, pointing down the street with his chin. For the first time Speer was aware of the nearby rumbling of tanks.

“So what are you going to do when they get here?”

The soldier smiled. “Oh, they’re here.”

The rumbling grew louder. The soldier tapped the ashes out of his pipe and put it away in his side pocket. Then without saying anything, he picked up the two Panzerfausts and walked to the edge of the square, taking up a position behind the corner of a building. Up in the distance a large tank with a white star had turned the corner and come into view.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” said von Poser.

But Manni had an idea. “You know, we can just let them take us,” he suggested. “Five minutes from now it’ll all be a different story. Come on. What do you say?”

“For Christ’s sake,” said Manni. “All that stands between us and the safety of the American lines is that shovelhead? Let’s go!”

Von Poser looked at him angrily. “You can do anything you want,” he hissed. “But this is not what we came here for. We are not deserters. Let’s go, Speer.”

Speer turned to leave. He looked at Manni. Manni shook his head. “It’s been fun, Speer.”

Speer nodded.

“Keep practicing.”

“I will,” said Speer and started hurrying to get back to the car before the tank had made it to the square. Von Poser looked relieved when he saw Speer was alone. “Well, so much for that,” he grunted as he turned the car around. Speer didn’t say anything.

“Speer! We could juggle our way to freedom.”

“Goodbye, Loerber.”

They found the rest of the German army a few miles to the East. An expectant mood had come over the soldiers, like they believed their war was nearly over and in just a few more days they’d be home free. “Would you mind moving your car somewhere else, Herr Reichsminister,” one of them asked. “We don’t want their artillery spottersunnecessarily zeroing in on us.” A couple soldiers laughed. Then a wild pig came out of the woods, bleeding from a stray bullet, squealing wildly as the soldiers chased it around. Not bothering to ask directions, Speer and von Poserdrove east. They ate supper with a factory director he’d known from the old days. Afterwards he produced a bottle of cherry liqueur and they finished it off watching the sun set over a horizon of bombed-out factories. They got going soon after that, driving through the night and reaching Nuremberg just as dawn was breaking.

The drive itself was uneventful, except for the last five kilometers where the autobahn was lined with the burning wreckage of army convoys that had been shot up an hour earlier. In the faint early light, its ghostly silhouettes resembled a field filled with the skeletal carcasses of ancient extinct beasts, though the stench of the burning ammunition, rubber, and men, kept any of it from seeming remotely like a fantasy. And they’d all been his animals, his machines. And now in a few more days they’d all be just as extinct.

That was when von Poser turned to Speer. “Do you know how many times I took my daughter to see them? We must have seen them twenty times. We did it for years. The Flying Magical Loerber Brothers. I wonder what the others are doing? Ziggy, Franzi and the other one. Sebastian.”

“I wonder. And Manni.

Enemy daytime fighters appeared with the dawn, flying low, attacking any vehicle which hadn’t already found cover. But by then he and von Poser had already put the netting over the car.

They found the army headquarters hidden among the half-bombed factories just inside the city. Field Marshall Model was expected at noon. With nothing else to do for the next five hours, they got themselves directed to a darkened corner where dozens of cots had been laid out for officers and quickly went to sleep.

An hour later someone was tapping his side impatiently. “Reichsminister Speer?” It was a stern-looking captain with a pocket torch.

“What is it?”

“I’m to escort you to the airfield,” he said. “There’s a plane waiting to take you back to Berlin. Fuhrer’s orders.”
(Excerpt from Germania, by Brendan McNally, Simon & Schuster, 2008, now also available on Kindle here)

Albert Speer Juggling in the Middle of an Air Raid

They drove through the night, changing direction frequently and sticking to back roads where there were fewer checkpoints. Manni Loerber remained unconscious the whole time. Every hour or so, Speer would check on him. His pulse had returned and his breathing seemed almost normal, but nothing would rouse him. The roads were mostly empty now. There wasn’t fuel for convoys to move around much anymore. But in contrast to the stillness on the ground, the sky was full of constant buzzing. The allied fighters were everywhere, roaring low overhead without a moment’s warning. Somewhere before dawn they found an abandoned farmhouse on a hillside overlooking Detmold. Von Poser helped Speer carry Manni inside. They put him in the large bed and covered him with a blanket. Then they ate something, opened their bedrolls and went to sleep.

After weeks of never getting more than an hour or two of sleep, Speer fell into a deep uninterrupted slumber. If at any point he dreamed, he wasn’t aware of it. It was late morning when he finally awoke. For more than an hour he remained under his blanket, vaguely aware of snatches of conversation going on between two voices. Finally getting up, he found von Poser and Manni in the other room sharing a cigarette at the hearth, where a small fire was burning.

Manni looked over. “Hello,” he said in a small voice.

“How are you feeling?” asked Speer.

“Terrible,” he answered sourly, but still managing a grin. “I was just telling the Colonel that I think I’ve pulled my last trick for a long time.”

“That’s all right,” answered Speer. “I think we’re all done with it.”

Von Poser held up a battered-looking coffee pot. “It’s fresh, compliments of Herr Manni.”

“You have coffee?” asked Speer. As far as he knew, it had been a nonexistent commodity for more than a year.

Von Poser handed him a steaming cup. “Here’s to new beginnings,” he said.

For a long time, Speer luxuriated in the coffee’s deep aroma, then took a sip. “So what do we do now?” he asked.

They spent the afternoon milling around the farmhouse, not doing anything in particular. The few conversations they had were sparse and inconsequential. The young man himself spent most of the time in silence, but it seemed to have none of the brittle edginess which had marked his previous regime. He seemed relieved that whatever he’d been doing was now over. He was relaxed, shared his cigarettes and coffee and though he didn’t join in much of the conversation, by the same token his presence didn’t deter it either. Once when Speer was in the other room half-dozing on the bed, he heard the two of them briefly laugh at something. They’d take turns sitting by the fire or standing at the windows or doorway, staring outside as American Mustangs and Thunderbolts roared low overhead in continuous waves, hunting for things to kill. They seemed to operate with almost reptilian brains, going only after shiny things that moved. The Mercedes stood in the middle of the field, with only a thin layer of netting over it, and though its profile was still unmistakable, it didn’t seem to register with them. Speer wondered where the front was. Von Poser’s map was by now several days out of date, and it was likely that in that time the situation had changed radically. What was certain was that they were inside a shrinking fishbowl.

By afternoon it stopped raining. They made more coffee, sliced some bread and opened their last remaining cans, which they passed around, spooning out beets and potatoes and chunks of fish onto their plates. They ate with the reserved familiarity of three strangers of the same class sharing a table in a dining car. When they were finished Colonel von Poser took out a cigarette from his silver case, lit it and after taking a puff, passed it to Manni.

“Did they ever find out what happened to your brother?” he asked.

Manni Loerber looked back at von Poser in languorous silence. “No we never did.”

“No explanation one way or the other?”

Manni shook his head.

“My daughter wept for many days. He was her favorite.”

Manni let a slight smile cross his lips. “Who was her second favorite?”

“I believe it was Franzi,” said von Poser. “Would you like to hear what else she said?”

Manni gestured with his eyes to tell him.

“After much thought on the matter, my daughter concluded you four were not actually quadruplets but two sets of identical twins.”

For once, Manni looked completely taken aback. For several minutes, he fell into deep, meditative silence. Then he stood up from his chair. “That’s it,” he declared, brightly. “Herr Reichsminister, come with me please.” He headed for the door.

“What are you doing?” asked Speer.

“Herr Reichsminister,” said Manni. “It’s time you learned to juggle. I’m going to teach you. At times like this, a man needs to know how to juggle. That’s the problem with the world. Nobody in charge of anything can juggle. It’s a scandal. I’m getting my balls out of the car now!”

“Don’t go outside, you’ll get killed!” said von Poser.

“Watch me,” laughed Manni as he strode outside.

Speer looked from the doorway, while Manni went out to the car. Immediately an American fighter roared low overhead. More screamed past while he rummaged around the boot, pulling a number of gaily colored balls out of one of his bags. Heaping them in his arms, he began walking back.

Then he stopped. “What are you waiting for, Herr Reichsminister? Come on out.”

“Are you crazy?” answered Speer. “It’s not safe out there.”

Manni looked around, like he was trying to see what danger Speer could be referring to. Down the hill, Detmold was on fire. Fighters and twin-engine bombers swooped down low over the city’s factories, dropping bombs as they did, which exploded with an evil burst that didn’t sound anything like thunder.

“I know, but the ceiling inside the farmhouse is too low,” Manni answered. “It’ll never work in there. Come on out. You’ll be fine.”

“We’ll get killed. Come inside right now!”

Another fighter swept low over the field but Manni didn’t flinch. “Forget them,” he said. “They’re not interested in us. Come on out!”

“No,” said Speer and turned to go inside.

“Herr Reichsminister, this moment will never happen again. Aren’t you interested in knowing how magic works? Well this is how it starts. Right here.”

“Herr Reichsminister, just turn around.”

Speer didn’t know why he didn’t just go inside and hide himself in the farthest corner of the farmhouse. He really should have, but instead he turned around. A ball flew at him and he caught it, but barely.

“Now toss it back to me,” urged Manni.

Speer tossed it back. But Manni had already tossed another ball at him. He caught it.

“Quickly toss it back,” said Manni. “Don’t stop. As soon as you have it, shoot it back the exact same trajectory that you caught it. Don’t think! It’s easier that way.”

Speer did as Manni instructed. He caught the ball and tossed it right back. A second later another ball came, and then another and then another.

Manni took a step backward and Speer took one forward to catch the ball that was coming toward him. Manni took another step backward. Speer took another step forward. Manni added another ball, then another. “That’s it! Keep it up!”

The balls were coming faster now, one after the other in quick succession. But even so, Speer was surprised at how much time he had to catch them and shoot them back.

He was aware of the airplanes flying just over their heads, of bursts of machinegun fire and explosions which had none of thunder’s innocence. But Speer knew that as long as he could fix his attention on the balls, on catching them and throwing them back, he would be immune. He wasn’t the Reichsminister for War Production standing in an empty field, he was a tree, a brick wall, a part of a machine; a cog, a cam follower, a take-up spool, a reciprocating gear. Another one, another one, another one. More enemy planes screamed over their heads. More balls kept flying towards him.

“How many balls are we doing now?”

“Can’t you count?”

“No,” answered Speer with a laugh. “How many?”

“Five.”

Five. Five balls. Speer wondered what his wife would think. Juggling five balls in the middle of an air raid.

“Are you afraid?”

“Of what?” Speer shouted back.

Catch it, throw it back, catch it, throw it back. There was a perfect logic to it, focused on the moment, on the "now". Nothing else mattered, but the moment, the motion. The spaces between the moments became vast, even though he knew they couldn’t be more than a second apart. Enough time for flawless reaction. Enough time for an eternity of thought.

And somewhere in this wilderness of space was room to alter outcomes. Here somewhere magic lay. And here, with Manni, Speer sensed he was walking the very edge of it.

 (Excerpt from Germania, Simon & Schuster, 2008, now also available on Kindle here)