Nitze arrived at Glucksburg Castle, where Speer was being held, along with the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who was also working for the Strategic Bombing Survey, and a team of interpreters and assistants. On May 15, American forces arrived in Flensburg and got to Speer first. He also appointed Speer his minister of industry and production. On his first evening in power, the new leader gave a nationwide radio address though he knew German forces could not resist Allied advances, he promised his people that Germany would continue to fight. Just after Hitler’s death, President Donitz and his cabinet took up residence at the Naval Academy at Murwik, overlooking the Flensburg Fjord. Speer is arrested along with members of the Flensburg Government in May 1945. In May 1945, the race was on to capture and interrogate one of Hitler’s most notorious henchmen. But in order to achieve that, they hoped to learn more about how Germany had maintained its war machine while withstanding heavy bombing. As the war in Europe was winding down, the Americans were hoping that strategic bombing in Japan could end the war in the Pacific. A former investment banker named Paul Nitze, who was then vice chairman of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, believed it was imperative to get to Speer. government official hoped to reach the Nazi technocrat first. War Crimes Commission was determined to bring him to justice, but a U.S. He-like many other Nazi Party members and SS officers-concluded that he could expect no mercy once captured. Speer arrived in Flensburg aware that the Allies were targeting Nazi leaders for war-crimes trials. He did this through administrative genius and by exploiting millions of slave laborers who were starved and worked to death in his factories. Throughout World War II, Speer had directed an “armaments miracle,” doubling Hitler’s production orders and prolonging the German war effort while under relentless Allied air attacks. War Crimes Commission closed in on Flensburg, one Nazi emerged as a man of particular interest: Albert Speer, the brilliant architect, minister of armaments and war production for the Third Reich and a close friend to Hitler. Yet Hitler’s chosen successor, Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, decamped with others of the Nazi Party faithful to northern Germany and formed the Flensburg Government.Īs Allied troops and the U.N. Berlin quickly surrendered and World War II in Europe was effectively over. On April 30, 1945, as Soviet troops fought toward the Reich Chancellery in Berlin in street-to-street combat, Adolf Hitler put a gun to his head and fired.
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