Without the experiences and insights I acquired as a result of those years with him [Hitler], would I ever have learned that all historical grandeur means less than a modest gesture of humaneness; that all the national honour of which we dreamed is insignificant compared to simple readiness to help others? How strangely I find my viewpoints shifting [my emphasis].
And, throughout all of this time, in their conversations Casalis and Speer repeatedly returned to the questions of guilt and responsibility, and wider ethical issues, growing in Speer ever since his knowledge of Himmler’s speech in Posen,fn2 which had increased intensely through the process of the Nuremberg Trial and the documentary evidence shown and the testimony of Holocaust survivors. Casalis describes Speer’s ‘inner torture’ in this regard:
During those years, his reading, his studies, his thoughts originated in and were dominated by his very profound sense of guilt which was entirely centred on the murder of the Jews – to such a degree, indeed, that he seemed oblivious to Hitler’s many other crimes.
But getting Speer to articulate the precise nature of his guilt was always going to be more difficult. At Nuremberg he’d accepted a form of collective responsibility for the crimes of Nazism, but he’d been extremely careful to avoid the word ‘guilt’ (which entails knowledge). Even with Casalis, whom he came to trust greatly, he found it hard to express more than a generalised sense of guilt. Through all the discussions with Casalis he evolved what could be seen as a nuanced ethical position – a position which meant he could, just about, live with himself. And Casalis, though I’m sure harbouring doubts about the abstract nature of such expressed guilt, did not see it as his role to push further – as he said:
Of course when we talked, there were untold questions I wanted to ask him, but I couldn’t; contrary to historians or psychiatrists, a pastor’s task is not to probe or to interrogate men, but to help them live. A pastor cannot request self-revelation; he can only, if it occurs by the other’s initiative, accept and respond to it.
Years later, Dorothée explained more about her husband’s nuanced attitude towards Speer, and the guilt he carried inside – which Casalis described as being ‘so enormous that it was unmanageable’ when they first met at Spandau:
Georges said that if Speer had admitted all he had known it would have killed him. And Georges would say: ‘He lied to me about facts, that’s clear – and I didn’t always notice – or only afterwards. But he never lied to me about himself, his inner life and his progress and his questioning. Because he probably thought that I could help him go forward.’
The position Speer eventually adopted in relation to his own guilt, through all the discussions with Casalis, can best be understood in the letter he wrote to his daughter Hilde in May 1953 which we encountered at the end of Chapter Ten. When I first read this, I found Speer’s apparent acceptance of guilt very persuasive. However, having learnt more about Speer now, when I reread his words they become more morally evasive. By seeming to accept a greater responsibility, isn’t he, in reality, distancing himself from the tangible guilt of knowledge?
To reassure you however, of the dreadful things, I knew nothing … Even so … I ask myself what, given my lofty position, I could have found out had I wanted to … perhaps not everything, but certainly a great deal … I saw my fate, if you like as God’s judgement – not for having infringed any laws (for my transgressions in that sense were comparatively minimal) but for the deeper guilt of having so readily and unthinkingly gone along.
Speer also wrote to Hilde, emphasising (in a way completely traceable to Casalis’ influence) the distinction between knowledge and feeling:
I have read and thought so much by now, and I suppose the knowledge I gain will remain with me later. I only hope though that I won’t lose the feeling of faith once I’m back in ordinary life … As you see, it is ethics which particularly interest me … I read again and again what Jaspers said: ‘Evil will rule unless I confront it at all times in myself and others.’
This, more metaphysical, question – of the nature of evil – was one that Speer wrestled with repeatedly in these years, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, never resolved. After all, it’s an issue that has defeated many far greater minds than Speer’s. Years later, when he is talking to Gitta Sereny, he returns to this question, remembering his father’s extreme physical reaction when Speer first introduced him to Hitler (his face went pale, his body shuddered, he couldn’t speak). He had instinctively felt something, a madness or an evil there. Speer related how he and Casalis ‘talked about it many times. You know, the origin and nature of evil … I still don’t know how to handle it.’
*
This defining period in Speer’s life ended abruptly with Casalis’ departure from Spandau on 1 June 1950. He and his wife Dorothée had been feeling increasingly uncomfortable living ‘the extraordinarily privileged life as “occupiers” in Berlin’. So they accepted an invitation to move to posts in Strasbourg, where Casalis studied for his doctorate in theology. Speer later reflected that Casalis had been ‘the most important person in my life, entirely unique’, ‘he was my conscience, that conscience which I continually manage to diminish and repress by superficial overuse’. He hoped he’d be able to continue on the moral journey with the strength that Casalis had given him, but within a few weeks he realised this wasn’t possible, and this triggered a period of crisis – two years of intense depression and apathy. As he later wrote to Hilde: ‘I had to face the fact that I am very dependent on external influences. If I have a Casalis I can manage. But without such a catalyst I fall apart: all my good intentions evaporate.’ For his part, Casalis later regretted that he had left at this point, feeling that, had he stayed longer, Speer might have made greater progress towards fully understanding his guilt. He also underestimated the relationship he’d developed with ‘Prisoner Number Five’ and the consequent sense of devastating loss that Speer felt on his departure:
Yes, I did feel I knew him very well indeed by the time I left … well enough that I should have realised that it was wrong of me to leave. Because of him, I should have stayed another three or four years.
Once he’d emerged from his deep depression, Speer only got through these next years by working intensely on creating a garden out of the wilderness at the back of the prison. He had begun this project soon after arriving at Spandau, but in 1951 and 1952 he threw himself into the work to such an extent that by June 1953 he’d planted a hundred chestnut trees, fifty hazels, a hundred lilac bushes and 800 strawberry plants, as well as creating an orchard of dozens of apple and plum trees, starting a vegetable garden and creating pretty paths through the little park, bordered by flowers. In parallel with this garden project, he continued his reading programme (1,500 books completed by 1956), alternating between architecture, novels and travel books and more demanding works on philosophy and theology. Lifted by a new sense of purpose, with the success of his garden, in early 1953 Speer begins to write the book that eventually became Inside the Third Reich and completes the first draft by January 1954 – a remarkable feat given that the whole work had to be written completely in secret (because of regular cell observations) on scraps of paper and then smuggled out with the help of a sympathetic prison guard.