Albert Speer Insists He Was Never Hitler's Friend

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, Kindle version available for download 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).

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).

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).

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, Juggling Fool!

"If the image of Albert Speer, a prominent Nazi, juggling rubber balls as a way to relieve stress in the waning days of the Third Reich doesn't make you sit up and say, "Mein Gott, vas is los?" then Brendan McNally's debut novel, Germania, might not be for you. On the other hand, if rollicking adventures of Jews masquerading as Nazis, secret wartime shipments of gold, SS officers dreaming of hunting walrus in Greenland, and the tense emotional dynamics of theatrical families intrigue you, then Germania will fit the bill quite nicely." (from a review by David Abrams for Barnes and Noble)

Germania by Brendan McNally was first published by Simon &  Schuster in 2008. Now it is also available as a Kindle ebook here.

Magic and Mayhem During the Third Reich's Final Hours

My novel Germania is about soon-to-be dispossessed Nazi bigwigs at the end of the World War II trying to re-invent themselves during the three-week "Flensburg Government" of Hitler's successor Grand Admiral Doenitz. It combines hard history and elements of the surreal and paranormal. Here is an interview I did about it a while back with Irving Public Television

Lemmy Loves Germania!

Lemmy Kilmister reading WWII novel Germania

This picture of Lemmy Kilmister from Motorhead posing with the WWII novel Germania (by Brendan McNally) was taken in L.A. shortly after the book first came out in the U.S. from Simon & Schuster. Lemmy's interest in WWII is well known and I am honored to have him read my book. Here is a link to the Kindle ebook version.

Watch out, Czecho-Slovakia, Here Comes Germania!

Today, the Czech translation of my novel Germania has launched in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, under the title Germanie, from Nakladatelstvi XYZ. Here is a short synopsis of the story. If you'd like to check it out in English, here is the link Germania by Brendan McNally.

It's May 1945. Hitler is dead and the war is suddenly all but over. All the Nazi bigwigs who have managed to get out of Berlin now gather in Flensburg, a small port city in the north where Grand Admiral Doenitz, Hitler's successor, has set up a new "post-Nazi" government. Not knowing anything about politics, Doenitz mistakenly believes his new regime might be acceptable to the Western Allies, whom, he's been told, are now ready to begin fighting the Russians.

Despite the enormity of the defeat they've just suffered, Flensburg is alive with a strange atmosphere of optimism. With Hitler out of the way, the survivors are free to imagine whichever bright futures they fancy. Into this surreal place come Manni, Franzi, Ziggy, and Sebastian Loerber, the singing, dancing, acrobatic (and quite possibly magical) Flying Magical Loerber Brothers. Once the toast of Berlin's cabaret scene, they were so beloved, their Jewishness was conveniently overlooked by everyone, including Hitler. Now they're back, reunited, and out for revenge!

Although it is a fanciful work, in which the paranormal is normal, Germania is historically highly accurate and the product of many years of research and interviews.

About Germania's author

Brendan McNally had been a journalist at the Pentagon in Washington before coming to Prague in 1992. He was a reporter for the Prague Post, Defense News, and the New York Times and was part of an informal club of local reporters who often worked together to investigate arms sales and government corruption.

Brendan McNally divides his time between Dallas and the Czech Republic. He is currently working on a novel about Martha Dodd, the Cold War Soviet spy, whose 30-year exile in Prague ended shortly after the 1989 Revolution.

Best-selling author David Abrams ("Fobbit") loves "Germania"

 David Abrams, author of New York Times best-selling novel "Fobbit", says this about Germania:

"If the image of Albert Speer, a prominent Nazi, juggling rubber balls as a way to relieve stress in the waning days of the Third Reich doesn't make you sit up and say, "Mein Gott, vas is los?" then Brendan McNally's debut novel, Germania, might not be for you. On the other hand, if rollicking adventures of Jews masquerading as Nazis, secret wartime shipments of gold, SS officers dreaming of hunting walrus in Greenland, and the tense emotional dynamics of theatrical families intrigue you, then Germania will fit the bill quite nicely."

To read the rest of the review, click here: 
http://davidabramsbooks.blogspot.cz/2012/02/juggling-for-nazis-germania-by-brendan.html

It's still not too late to learn Czech and buy this book

The Czech edition of Germania has just come out, a month early! If you'd like to check out the original English version (first published by Simon & Schuster in 2008, now also available on Kindle), here is the link: Germania

When the Nazi Government finally convened

One of the strange things about going back to study and learn about Nazi Germany after a couple decades of doing other things (like, for instance, having a job) is finding out how much the field has changed while I was gone. Back when I was all obsessed with the subject in the late-1970s, the subject of  "Future Nazi weapons" AKA  "Luftwaffe 1946" was stuck at a really rudimentary level. There was interest, to be sure, but the nerds and geeks into it had no way of finding each other and sharing information, at least not on the scale necessary to really move the subject forward. Then the internet got invented and that allowed communities to form and information to fly back and forth.

A field similar to this is The Nazi Germany that was planned and designed, but never brought into existence. The best example of this is Germania, the future capital city dreamed up by Hitler and designed by Albert Speer. There was always a lot of interest in that, probably beginning the moment that the plans were found. For years and years all there was were some drawings and this film clip that the Nazis had made at some point before the war,  showing a tiny working fountain spewing water and expert use of lighting and shadow. It is particularly strange and almost sad to look at especially when compared to the sheer gross tonnage of  the geek-boy computer animations which in recent years have sprung up all over YouTube. Speer did all these designs for stuff that never existed, except in the minds of men who remain 12-year olds at heart. It takes that sort of adolescent imagination to jump into that world and dream about what it would have been like. The rest of us haven't got the attention span.

But Speer did design things that were actually built. He designed the new Reichschancellery building and a number of other impressive buildings, none of which survived the war.  About all there is left standing of his architectural legacy are a couple of street lamps.  But there are the drawings and photographs and they're all easily accessible.  Rather than go into an orgy of assessing how good or bad an architect Speer acually was, it is enough to say he was a highly competent designer.  He sold his soul for the opportunity to design a city that was supposed to last a thousand years.  He got to work on the big canvas and he wasn't shy about making the most of it. Of course, the joke ultimately was on him.

What I myself always found fascinating in Speer's designs was the degree to which he was willing to sweat the small details with the same attention and care that he put into the large, megalomanical stuff.  Look at the grand corridors of the Reich Chancellery,  how at one side was an immense bank of windows, while on the inside, there were a long line of couches, stuffed chairs and coffee tables. I could always imagine diplomats and ministers sitting and conferring on them.

There were also the drawings and photographs of Hitler's offices, but one of my favorites was the massive rectangular table where the government ministers would sit during government meetings. The photographs always noted that the table was never used since the Nazi government never actually convened a single session in their twelve years of existence. It tells a lot about Hitler's particular genius. More than one historian observed that the Nazis weren't truly totaliarian, because nothing about it was ever clearly enough delineated to actually be totaliarian. There was never an official Number Two after Hitler.  What it really was was a German version of an Oriental court.

Hitler didn't like order. Schedules were for other people to adhere to. Some of his old-school critics in the Army would secretly refer to him as the "Bohemian Corporal," because of his free-wheeling, non-organized ways.  He was at heart an artist, and he ran his Reich exactly that way. He liked keeping people off balance, rules and points of order went against his way of doing things.

The real funny thing is that ultimately the Nazi government only started convening after Hitler was dead. Hitler's successor, Grand Admiral Doenitz, ran his version of the Reich, for a little over three weeks and on every one of those days, the cabinet met and held meetings, with himself, the Reich's President, dutifully presiding over them.

He continued to do so even after it became clear that their juristiction only went as far as the gates of the Flensburg Marineschule, which served as the Third Reich's final capital. Since the Germans had by then already surrendered, Allied officers often sat in on the government meetings to observe the proceedings. When Eisenhower finally decided that enough was enough and directed the British Army to roll up the Flensburg Government and arrest everyone they could find,  they made a point of doing it in the middle of a morning cabinet meeting. The tommies burst in with bayonets on their rifles and helmets on their heads, shouting at everyone to put their hands up. They stripped the Germans, beat them up, relieved them of all their medals, watches, rings, pistols, and daggers, which they claimed as souvenirs. All a bit of fun on Jerry and a fitting way to end the last chapter of the Third Reich.

Anyone wanting to learn more about the bizarre, surreal, three-week "Flensburg Reich"  might want to read my bizarre, surreal novel GERMANIA, published by Simon & Schuster, available in hardcover, paperback, and as an ebook.