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Partly-printed DS, in German, signed “Speer,” one page, 8 x 12.5, December 6, 1945. Document headed (translated), "The International Military Tribunal, Defendant's Application for Document," made while preparing his defense for the Nuremberg trials. In part: "I, Albert Speer, hereby request that the Tribunal require the production of the following document to be used for my defense: Announcement by the American Atlantic Transmitting Station of April, 1945. Must be obtained from the archives of the Transmitting Station (probably from the archives of the B.B.C.)…One of the Allied Transmitting Stations in German, probably the Atlantic Transmitting Station, broadcast at the beginning or middle of April, that Hitler had ordered the destruction of all industrial undertakings, and that Speer had prevented this by his counter-orders."
He then lays out exactly what he needs the broadcast to prove: "Hitler, in an order of 19.3.45, had ordered the destruction of all industrial undertakings, electricity, water and gasworks, of everything of value, of the bridges and the Post Offices. Through the personal intervention of Speer this purpose was prevented. Only the bridges were destroyed. This was done, however, by the Armed Forces. The prevention of this demolition was, by the Defendant Speer, confined not only to the original German territory, but he also took care that no demolitions took place also in the occupied territories still in German hands, in Polish Upper Silesia, in Czecho-Slovakia, in Hungary and Austria." Signed at the conclusion in pencil by Albert Speer, and countersigned by his defense counsel. Backed by lightweight cardstock and in fine condition. Accompanied by a contemporary English transcription.
Speer’s request is remarkable for the source he hoped to use in his own defense: an Allied wartime radio broadcast. His argument was straightforward—if British or American broadcasters had reported in April 1945 that he had defied Hitler’s destruction orders, while the war was still underway, the claim could not easily be dismissed as a postwar fabrication devised for the Nuremberg tribunal. Filed amid Speer’s broader effort to document his opposition to Hitler’s scorched-earth policy, the application shows him looking beyond German records for independent corroboration already created by the enemy.
At issue was Hitler’s March 19, 1945 'Nero Decree,' which ordered the destruction of industrial plants, power facilities, water and gas works, bridges, communications infrastructure, and other resources that might fall into Allied hands. Speer maintains here that his intervention prevented much of that destruction not only in Germany, but also in territories still under German control, including parts of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Austria. The document thus captures one of the central themes of Speer’s Nuremberg defense: that in the final weeks of the war he had broken with Hitler and acted to preserve the industrial and civic infrastructure on which postwar Europe would depend.
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