Speer, Albert (1905-1981)

German architect and minister in the Nazi government during World War II. He was appointed Hitler's architect and, like his counterparts in Fascist Italy, chose an overblown classicism to glorify the state, for example, his plan for the Berlin and Nürnberg Party Congress Grounds in 1934. He built the New Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 1938-39 (now demolished), but his designs for an increasingly megalomaniac series of buildings in a stark classical style were never realized.

As armaments minister he raised the index of arms production from 100 in January 1942 to 322 by July 1944. In the latter months of the war he concentrated on frustrating Hitler's orders for the destruction of German industry in the face of the advancing Allies. After the war, he was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for his employment of slave labour. His memoirs, Inside the Third Reich (1969), gave a highly influential account of the period, but in portraying their author as a technocrat they understated his participation in the Nazi project.