Leaders of Nazi Germany Part Two

[Music] the man known to history as heinrich mueller was born on the 28th of april 1900 in the city of munich in the region of bavaria in southern germany his parents were poor catholics from bavaria his father working as a rural police officer muller consequently attended a state-run folk schooler where he received a fairly rudimentary primary education before taking up an apprenticeship with a mechanic when he had barely entered his teenage years little else is known about his early life and muller remained a man whose personal affairs were largely inscrutable throughout his life miller was entering his teenage years at a tumultuous time in european history the continent had been drifting towards outright conflict between its great powers for many years two armed alliances consisting of germany the austro-hungarian empire and italy on one side and britain france and russia on the other had developed fueled by rivalry over naval supremacy between britain and germany for dominance of the balkans between austria-hungary and russia and over colonial possessions in africa between every power and now in the summer of 1914 a regional diplomatic crisis in the balkans following the assassination of the heir to the austro-hungarian empire archduke franz ferdinand in sarajevo by a serb nationalist quickly ballooned into a full-blown european showdown over the space of a few days in late july and early august the great powers declared war on one another with the conflict soon involving nations from beyond europe including japan and the united states the resulting conflict known as the first world war would last for over four years the central powers were led by germany and the worst of the fighting would take place in the trenches of northern france on the western front eventually ending in defeat for germany and its allies and victory for britain and france in particular despite his very young age of just 14 at the time that the war erupted in 1914 miller saw active military duty before the conflict came to an end in november 1918 his training as a mechanic had led to him specializing in aircraft maintenance a burgeoning field at the time when air flight of even the most rudimentary kind was little more than a decade old as a result of this expertise he was drafted into the deutsche lufstreit crefta the german air force during the last stages of the war he saw active duty on the western front in northeastern france in 1918 his role in this was as an attache to the artillery spotting unit at a time when observation balloons as well as basic reconnaissance planes were still being used to determine where artillery units should aim their fire across the trenches a necessity for artillery units which could fire several kilometers but could not see what they were aiming at across no man's land his service was well regarded and by the time the war ended he was awarded the iron cross for bravery and also the bavarian military merit cross for his service thus he left the army in 1918 with honours and was somewhat unusual amongst the future senior ranking members of the nazi regime in not carrying a lifelong bitterness about how the war had ended like many other former soldiers in germany in the late 1910s and 1920s muller found himself drifting towards the phi corps in the aftermath of the war the weimar republic which had been established to govern the country following the collapse of the german empire had been commanded under the terms of the treaty of versailles which brought the war to an end to demilitarize and decommission the vast majority of its troops thousands of soldiers now joined the phi corps or free corps a german paramilitary organization of military volunteers which had existed in prussia and then germany as far back as the 18th century in the period immediately after the cessation of the war the new republic was beset by communist unrest as the german communist movement buoyed up by the success of their brethren in russia since 1917 sought to seize power in the very country which karl marx had originally conceived his communist utopia for the freikorps were deployed in large numbers countrywide in 1919 and 1920 to crush such communist agitation and muller was active amongst them and saw active duty with the freikorps in crushing the short-lived bavarian soviet republic which established itself in power in munich in april 1919. mueller's involvement with the phi corps and his family background in policing his father having been a police official in bavaria led him into the same occupation in the early 1920s he rose fast and was soon advanced to a senior position within the political office of the munich police department and it was owing to his involvement in munich's policing that he would first come into contact with adolf hitler and the national socialist german workers party or nazi party though somewhat ironically given his later role in the nazi regime which would come to rule germany his initial encounters with them was as an opponent the nazi party had been established in 1920 out of the german workers party it had emerged as a political party for right-wing german nationalists who favored a type of workers revolution based on opposing communism its membership was largely comprised of veterans of the war who were profoundly disillusioned at the terms of the treaty of versailles which had been negotiated by the weimar republic viewing it as a stain on german honour the party attracted support from veterans in munich in the early 1920s and under its leader the austrian adolf hitler it had soon risen to have tens of thousands of active members and tacit supporters throughout bavaria muller would have been fully aware of the growth of this subversive group within munich in the early 1920s as a result of his police duties but this loose interaction became altogether more serious in the early winter of 1923 on the 8th of november that year approximately 2 000 armed nazis attempted a coup d'etat in munich with the goal of seizing control of bavaria and then marching on berlin to overthrow the weimar republic but the munich push or beer hall push as it became known was a complete failure from a military perspective on the morning of the 9th of november it was quickly broken up by german army detachments which had been deployed in munich and muller was amongst the munich police officers who were involved in investigating who had been responsible in the weeks that followed admittedly hitler and several of the other senior commanders needed no investigating and after a quick manhunt he was captured in the bavarian countryside a few days later yet his trial provided him with an opportunity to broadcast his views to the german public and he would only serve nine months of a five-year prison sentence which he received ultimately the most striking thing about the munich push is that the weimar republic failed to take advantage of the episode to crush the nazis when they had the opportunity to do so for mueller his involvement in the police investigations which followed the munich revolt of 1923 ensured that in the 1930s he was mistrusted for years by many senior nazis following this his activities in the mid to late 1920s and into the early 1930s are again rather unremarkable he continued his work as a police officer in munich activity which was in itself somewhat significant in the long run as muller was studying the methods being employed by soviet russian police organizations notably the ogpu or joint state political directorate the senior secret police organization within the soviet union between 1923 and 1934 and the forerunner of the nkvd and the kgb through his work muller became attuned to the latest surveillance methodologies available to secret police agencies in europe and familiarized himself with how totalitarian states could monitor huge numbers of people in order to maintain power and stifle political descent these were methods he would put to use himself in later years in his role as head of germany's own secret police the gestapo for the meantime in the 1920s and early 1930s he was using such methods to better surveil communist organizations in bavaria miller appears to have developed a striking antipathy to communists or what were increasingly referred to as bolsheviks in germany after the russian communist party this antipathy would fuel much of his work with the nazis later though muller spent much of the late 1920s and early 1930s in relative obscurity there were wide-ranging changes occurring in the wider country after nearly a decade of rapid economic growth following the first world war the global economy had overheated and crashed badly in 1929 the so-called wall street crash a great depression followed it and this hit germany especially badly millions of people lost their jobs and fell into poverty life savings were wiped out and basic foodstuffs and goods became difficult to afford and in this environment extremist political parties gained ground on the more moderate establishment parties in particular the nazi party which muller had encountered back in bavaria in 1923 exploited german resentments about the post-war settlement in this new atmosphere of economic turmoil they were soon gaining widespread support throughout the country and by 1932 this was translating into nearly 40 percent of the vote in the reichstag elections held that year this declined to under 35 percent in early 1933 but a deal with the leaders of german industry allowed hitler to become chancellor at that time and within weeks the nazis exploited their new position to begin outlawing all other parties and forming a one-party totalitarian state in this manner the nazis seized power in germany in nineteen thirty three muller's political views did not entirely align with the nazis during these years he was a member of the bavarian people's party or bvp a conservative pro-monarchy party which favored bavarian separatism but which was willing to work within the confines of the weimar republic in the 1920s the bvp was also a staunchly catholic party and this probably also appealed to mueller whose political outlook at this stage was grounded in his roots as a catholic bavarian indeed he was not alone in this perspective and the party was consistently the most popular in bavaria during the weimar era furthermore it held regional power in bavaria at the time when the nazis gained control in berlin early in 1933 germany then as now was a federalist state where power in regions such as bavaria was devolved to a considerable extent to local administrations as such the bvp minister president of bavaria heinrich helt exercised considerable regional authority in munich in 1933 but he was quickly challenged by the nazis in february and march muller committed his second transgression against the nazis at this time by proposing to halt that he militarily resist the nazi's efforts to overthrow the bvp helt though declined to do so and resigned from office the power of the minister president of bavaria was subsequently stripped away and the regional autonomy of bavaria was completely subordinated to berlin thus by mid 1933 muller found himself in a precarious position he had twice once in 1923 and now again in 1933 found himself in a compromising position in relation to the nazi party which had now taken control of germany he might have expected to be removed from his senior position within the munich police department and blacklisted as an opponent of the regime but he was to be saved by an unlikely patron despite his compromising role in the munich push muller had caught the eye of reinhard heiderich the chief of the zika heights dinst the nazi security service or sd for short which had been established in 1931. in 1933 the sd and the ss headed by heinrich himmler began taking over the police services of the former weimar republic and nazifying them and they began in munich where heidrich became aware of miller's skills in advanced surveillance techniques after determining that he could be useful the head of the sd decided to take muller under his wing rather than purging him from the munich police indeed muller was quickly promoted becoming a senior inspector by the end of 1933. muller for his own part was willing to adapt to the new situation as a man who has been characterized as extremely malleable in his beliefs and one who wanted to progress in his career above all else muller's career thereafter in the 1930s and beyond was intimately tied to both heiderich and the gestapo the gestapo or gahaimashtats polizzai which means the secret state police was created in april 1933 by hermann goering it was originally confined to prussia the largest federal constituent state of germany which made up much of the north and northeast of the country however its remit and areas of operation quickly expanded on the 20th of april 1934 guring handed over control of the gestapo to the head of the ss hainachimla and two days later himmler named haiderich as head of the secret police and its remit expanded to cover the entire country under hydra's leadership the gestapo became a specialized police service often staffed by academically gifted investigators rather than rank and file police officers muller was quickly brought on board and by 1936 he had risen to become operations chief of the gestapo effectively making him hide a second in command and yet there was a paradoxical element to this although he had joined the ss in 1934 muller did not join the nazi party and indeed an official report on him from the mid-1930s by a nazi official noted his dubious relationship within the party in the past despite these complications he continued to be promoted in the years that followed mueller's work within the gestapo covered many areas of german life under the nazis early on the secret police was particularly active in crushing political dissent against the nazi regime this focused on german communism and the trade unions to a very considerable extent and it was muller's long-standing work in prosecuting communists in bavaria in the 1920s and early 1930s which made him especially useful within the gestapo during these years throughout the mid-1930s the gestapo surveilled and often arrested former trade union officials the unions themselves having been largely broken up in 1933. these efforts culminated during mueller's early years at the gestapo in the breaking up of the markwitz circle this was a group of moderate socialists that had established ties to former members of the nazi party who had been pushed out by hitler in the 1920s much of the gestapo's methods at this time focused on the policy of protective detention whereby individuals of suspect political allegiances were detained and sent to the concentration camps which were springing up around the country here they were held indefinitely for protracted periods of time without having charges actually placed against them other groups which were monitored within what was known as department a for political opponents within the gestapo included reactionaries liberals and intellectuals muller had a particular antipathy towards the latter religious organizations were also closely scrutinized by the gestapo and department b was tasked specifically with monitoring the same bishops and other senior members of the roman catholic church were monitored particularly closely by the gestapo not least because they had political allegiances which lay outside of germany itself in the vatican in rome other groupings which muller was charged with monitoring included those sections of the media which had managed to maintain some independence from the increasingly dominant state-run media headed by the minister for propaganda and public enlightenment joseph gurples finally the gestapo also oversaw the monitoring of people's personal lives and any activity which was considered offensive by the nazis for instance in 1934 around the time that muller was drafted into the gestapo by heiderich a special office was set up to identify and monitor gay and lesbian people in germany in the years that followed thousands of gay men and some lesbian women were identified and arrested often being sent to concentration camps where many died or were sentenced to hard labor miller's personality was well suited to work of this nature not only had he developed advanced skills in surveillance and other secret police methodologies in munich during the 1920s and early 1930s but he was also naturally disposed to the tasks he was charged with in the 1930s muller was a workaholic one who several other senior nazis remarked upon as always being available to take their calls day or night seven days a week in part this may have been driven by his home life in 1924 he had married sophie disner the daughter of a newspaper man in bavaria and they had two children a son reinhardt who was born in january 1927 and a daughter elizabeth who was born almost 10 years later in september 1936 elizabeth was born with a physical impairment the exact details of which are unclear after she was born mueller's family life became very strained and his contemporaries in the gestapo and other security offices uniformly noted that muller's marriage was unhappy and that he never appeared in public with his wife and children moreover several individuals attested after the war but muller was perpetually in the office returning home only to sleep it seemed in addition to being a workaholic who wished to avoid his home life muller was immensely ambitious and driven to advance himself in his career an ambition which seems to have been his primary perhaps even his soul drive or motivation furthermore his politics were otherwise completely malleable and it is very hard to discern what he actually thought about any issue other than what he might gain from it and how he could amass further power and influence within the nazi regime through it in actuality his only really discernible personal views during this time at the gestapo did not involve any affinity for nazism but rather his loathing for communism a trait which emerged during the formative period of his life in the late 1910s and early 1920s whilst working with the freikorps and the then police service in bavaria above all he was a meticulous administrator the kind of imaginationless bureaucrat who could operate in a world of surveillance torture and persecution if he felt it was lending a sense of balance and regulation to a society contemporaries were struck by his ability to spend hours or even days passively questioning suspects until a crack in their defense might show muller became involved in 1938 in a power struggle within germany which had major implications for the direction of the country's foreign policy the nazis were determined to dismantle each of the terms of the treaty of versailles and rebuild the german military or vermacht to the point where war could be initiated to build a greater germany one which would cover much of central europe as a first step towards conquering eastern europe in order to obtain lebensraum or living space in years to come however despite hitler and the nazis controlling the state apparatus the vermacht retained its independence to a considerable extent many of the generals who considered themselves the successors of the old prussian military rather than being nazi commanders had substantially different political outlooks to hitler goebbels himmler goering and other senior nazi leaders and several of these were opposed to the rapid re-militarization of the country and the plans for an inevitable war with britain france and russia foremost amongst these obstinate commanders were the war minister general verna von blomberg who was critical of hitler's plans to initiate a european war no later than 1942 and the commander-in-chief of the german armed forces thomas verna von fritch muller became central to their removal what has become known as the blomberg french affair began in the opening days of 1938 when it was discovered that airna grun a woman whom von blomberg had recently married had posed for pornographic photos many years earlier and had been suspected of being a prostitute when this came to light hitler exploited the scandal to force the war minister to resign plans were now initiated to dig up similarly compromising information on fonfritch muller was charged with undertaking this work in the days that followed information was collected which suggested that the commander-in-chief was homosexual this was based on the report compiled within the gestapo offices which actually concerned the cavalry commander achim von frisch the false allegations combined with further insinuations that von fricht had been involved in discussions about launching a military revolt were enough to force his resignation in february 1938 though he was later found to have been falsely accused in all respects nevertheless muller and the gestapo had done an effective enough job that hitler could now establish great control over the wehrmacht and with the appointment of the compliant field marshal wilhelm keitel to oversee the army in the aftermath of the blomberg fritch affair hitler was able to establish greater control over the german military the blomberg french affair and the removal of the more skeptical elements within the german army occurred at a time when the nazis were accelerating on their march towards war ever since seizing power in 1933 the nazis had been becoming more and more aggressive in their foreign policy no sooner had they established themselves then they began incrementally rebuilding the german army and the air force known as the luftwaffe in violation of the terms of the treaty of versailles then in march 1936 another core part of the peace was breached when the rhineland was re-militarized under the terms of versailles this region which bordered france and the low countries were supposed to remain almost entirely empty of any german military presence things escalated from there in march 1938 austria was annexed while just months later the nazis also sought to annex the sudetenland from czechoslovakia in 1938 and were duly allowed to do so by the allies who believed they could still appease hitler and the nazis at that stage then in the early months of 1939 the rest of czechoslovakia and hungary were formed into puppet regimes eventually on the 3rd of september 1939 in response to hitler and the nazis invasion of poland two days earlier britain and france finally declared war on germany signaling the commencement of the second world war muller was central to the outbreak of the war in the summer of 1939 it was not clear that the invasion of poland would finally spark the war hitler and the senior party members believe that if intervention in the country could be justified in some fashion to the international media then maybe poland too could be occupied without a wider war breaking out this would provide an even longer window for the regime to continue building up its military forces as such it was decided to invent a justification for invading poland responsibility for this was handed over to himmler heiderich and muller in what was called operation himmler this would be a false flag operation which would seek to provide a justification for a german invasion of poland by staging several alleged polish attacks on german border stations and officials around the same for one of these muller personally had several prisoners removed from dachau concentration camp dressed in polish uniforms and killed and their bodies were then planted at a german radio station at gleivitz on the polish border and a story was concocted that these individuals were polish soldiers who had been killed during an attack on the station this false flag operation was carried out on the 31st of august germany invaded poland the next day miller's role in operation himmler was a boon to his career advancement at exactly the right time with the outbreak of the war a decision was taken amongst the senior nazi membership and the heads of the various security forces to consolidate the gestapo and other police organizations under a new umbrella organization named the reich security main office the idea being that this would centralize the security apparatuses throughout the growing amount of german territory in europe and create greater efficiencies as well as this heydrich was now promoted from his post as head of the gestapo to become head of the new reich security main office despite his suspect political past mueller's role in creating the basis for war with poland and heydrich's patronage was enough to ensure that he was appointed to succeed as head of the gestapo to ease his promotion he also finally joined the nazi party in 1939 a belated action which highlights the strange situation he was in whereby somebody who rose to such seniority within the regime seemed to be a very tepid supporter of the nazi party itself in addition muller was promoted to the position of oberfura or senior leader within the ss as a result of these promotions muller became one of the most senior figures within the german security apparatus only himmler and heidrik were more senior as head of the gestapo between 1939 and the end of the war in 1945 muller was responsible for discovering and suppressing opposition to the regime his particular skill in this regard honed since the 1920s focused on identifying threats connected with the soviet union and communism within germany more generally a notable episode in this regard was the identification of the red orchestra in 1941 this was a broad circle of communist sympathizers based in berlin and elsewhere which distributed leaflets and posters promoting socialist values and civil disobedience within germany this involved figures from within the officer class of the army and air force as well as members of the german judiciary such as harold schultz and arvind hanak these people were not really connected in any substantive fashion with the soviet regime in russia at all but suspicions abounded within the gestapo that they did and were planning something more sinister following the german invasion of russia in 1941 having discovered the extent of the group in 1941 they were kept under surveillance by mueller for months before mass arrests were initiated from the autumn of 1942 onwards by the spring of 1943 well over a hundred individuals had been arrested and the orchestra was broken up in the early 1940s the range of areas where mueller was operating expanded considerably beyond germany though police work within the home country always remained his primary duty following the outbreak of war in september 1939 poland had been conquered and occupied by germany in a matter of a few weeks months of inaction followed throughout the winter and early spring of 1940 so much so that many began to talk of a phony war in europe but then in the late spring a rash of conquests were undertaken denmark and norway were quickly occupied by german troops from april 1940 and then in may the conquest of the low countries and france was undertaken in a whirlwind campaign which brought much of western europe under german control in the space of just six weeks early 1941 then saw hitler aid his italian ally benito mussolini in italy's conquest of the balkans while the invasion of russia from june 1941 onwards brought a huge expanse of land covering ukraine belarus and much of western russia under german occupation as these meteoric conquests occurred muller found himself dealing with a range of matters outside of germany particularly those regions of central europe in czechoslovakia and western poland which were being most closely assimilated into the german reich no sooner had the war broken out then muller found himself increasingly involved in the regime's policy towards the jewish population of the lands under german control the nazis were rabidly anti-semitic and domestic persecution of germany's jewish community had been underway since the party first came to power in 1933. throughout the pre-war years this had largely focused on politically disenfranchising german jews through measures such as the so-called nuremberg laws of 1935. these prohibited marriage between jews and germans and restricted the employment and economic opportunities of germany's jewish people the laws also effectively robbed german jews of their citizenship much of the purpose of these economic and political sanctions was to coerce the country's jewish people into emigrating either to the middle east where jewish people were trying to establish their own communities in the holy land or else to countries such as britain and the us and this intensified in the months leading up to the outbreak of the war most notably on crystalnacht the night of broken glass when state organized attacks throughout germany led to the death or serious injury of hundreds of german jews and attacks on thousands of jewish-owned businesses and synagogues muller was heavily involved in this episode and was the individual within the gestapo who oversaw the arrest of upwards of 30 000 german jews in association with kristallnacht yet as bad as this persecution had been in the pre-war days germany's jewish community was relatively small with the conquest of eastern europe in the early years of the war where a majority of europe's jewish people lived during the early and mid-20th century millions more jewish people ended up under nazi rule in tandem the nazi state's persecution became more and more intense from 1939 onwards already in january 1939 with the annexation of austria and other lands in central europe the reich central office for jewish immigration had been established in berlin with a subsidiary office already having been set up in vienna in the autumn of 1938 its objective was to expand the policy of forced migration of jewish people which had been in operation in germany throughout the 1930s to the newly acquired territories in central europe heydrich was appointed to oversee the berlin office and adolf eichmann was his counterpart in vienna the central office's area of operation would expand significantly in the years that followed particularly into poland and muller would play a key role in the functioning of the central office first as heydrich's deputy and then in his own right as head of the gestapo at first the increasing persecution of europe's jews centered on more intense efforts to force mass migration figures such as himmler haider and muller were largely overseeing these efforts as early as october 1939 muller was supervising initiatives to relocate tens of thousands of polish jews into ghettos in cities like warsaw in this he collaborated closely with eichmann the individual within the security service or sd in poland charged with overseeing policy towards the jewish people in the conquered country again forced emigration remained the preferred tactic to reduce the jewish population of eastern europe at this time but there were millions of jews in eastern europe and the war had severely disrupted migration routes consequently nazi policy began to coalesce in 1940 around an outlandish scheme championed by eichmann to transport europe's jews to the east african island of madagascar where a kind of giant open-air prison would be created however this plan was abandoned in the course of 1941 as it became clear that germany would be unable to seize the suis canal from britain in north africa making such mass deportations of millions of european jews impractical it is unclear when he was informed but it is evident from surviving statements that muller was one of the first senior ranking figures within the nazi regime to learn during the course of 1941 that a new and horrific approach to the so-called jewish question had been decided upon by hitler and others such as himmler and goebbels what has become known as the final solution and which led to the holocaust would involve the forcible deportation of europe's jews into concentration camps located throughout eastern and central europe though principally in poland where they would be murdered by the nazi regime in massive numbers already in the late summer and autumn of 1941 experiments had been carried out at concentration camps such as auschwitz in western poland with gases such as zyklon b which would be used to carry out the executions and the bodies would then be burnt in crematoria located within the camps muller had also been kept fully informed of the einsatzgruppen or death squads which have been put into operation throughout eastern europe in 1941 and which over the next four years would be responsible for the murder of upwards of 1.3 million jews as well as hundreds of thousands of political prisoners he was also a leading figure in organizing and overseeing these activities in the months and years that followed on the 20th of january 1942 muller attended a conference at vansay a suburb outside berlin this was organized by heiderich and eichmann and miller also played a prominent role during the course of this many of the upper echelons of the nazi party and the ss who were in charge of the concentration camp system were informed about the final solution which had been developed and resolved upon over the previous eight months and from this point onwards muller played a very senior role in orchestrating the genocide of europe's jews much of his work as it was devolved to him by himmler focused on making sure that the evidence of the mass murder which was occurring was covered up by burning the bodies of those who had been killed in the camps a task which became difficult in camps such as treblinka and auschwitz birkenau where the crematoria often could not burn the bodies quickly enough despite this problem he was commanded in 1943 to travel to italy to force the government of benito mussolini there to increase the numbers of italian jews who were being deported to the camps to the north and north east ultimately muller was with the likes of himmler heiderich eichmann and rudolf huss the commandant of auschwitz largely responsible for overseeing the mass murder of europe's jews between late 1941 and the end of the war in the summer of 1945 while the final solution was ultimately decided upon by hitler goring goebbels himmler and others at the very top of the nazi regime its actual implementation on a day-to-day basis was largely left to administrators and bureaucrats like muller huss and eichmann and the end result of the policy was catastrophic during the three-year period between the vansay conference in january 1942 and the period when most of the concentration camps were liberated in the opening weeks and months of 1945 roughly 6 million of europe's jews were murdered either in camps such as auschwitz birkenau sobibor and treblinka or by being executed by the einsatzgothen had he ever stood trial after the war there is little doubt that mueller would have been convicted as one of the most egregious of germany's war criminals and also would almost certainly have faced the death penalty for his role in the holocaust in the summer of 1942 muller was sent to czechoslovakia to oversee a ruthless investigation there in late 1941 heiderich had been appointed as an interim governor of the region he had soon established a reputation for cracking down brutally on any form of political descent and he was quickly identified by britain and the czechoslovakian resistance movement as a target for assassination and as a consequence some months later on the 27th of may 1942 in a mission codenamed operation anthropoid heidrich was attacked on his way to his office near prague by two resistance fighters josef gabcik and yam kubish was badly injured in the attack and died a week later of his wounds making him the only senior nazi leader who was successfully assassinated during the second world war muller was quickly dispatched to prague to investigate gabcik and kubish having escaped after wounding heidrich in an absolutely vicious crackdown in the weeks that followed muller not only tracked down and killed the two assassins and the resistance fighters who had sheltered them but carried out reprisals across czechoslovakia which resulted in approximately five thousand deaths over thirteen thousand imprisonments and the effective destruction of the entire villages of lidica assassination also changed mueller's position within the security forces in january 1943 ernst kaltenbrunner was appointed as the new head of the reichsecurity main office in succession the heiderich he was now muller's direct overseer but muller evidently exercised greater independence under kaltenbrunner than he had during heider's day as a result of these developments muller now became arguably the second most senior individual in the implementation of the final solution as head of the ss which had overall control of the concentration camps throughout europe himmler was at the top of the pyramid of those who were overseeing the holocaust but mueller's role in providing intelligence on the locations and movements of europe's jews made him arguably junior only to himmler in this respect and senior to figures such as eichmann who oversaw the logistics of transferring europe's jews to the death camps and figures such as rudolf hearst the commandant of auschwitz or france stanle the commandant of sobibor and then treblinka consequently muller's career as head of the gestapo in the 1940s is inseparable from his role in the holocaust much of muller's work between 1943 and 1945 would focus on rooting out conspiracies against the nazi state plans to overthrow hitler and his accomplices from both within the military and elements of civil society were proliferating during these years in large part because the war effort had sound and with it the chance of germany coming out victorious in the conflict after the initial rapid conquest of ukraine belarus and much of western russia in the late summer of autumn of 1941 the german armies had stalled outside saint petersburg moscow and stalingrad in the winter of 1941 and were decimated in the weeks that followed without adequate protective clothing in the brutal russian winter efforts in 1942 centered on capturing stalingrad but when that failed in the autumn and winter of that year the tide turned inexorably on the eastern front and the russians began pushing the germans back into ukraine and belarus in 1943. elsewhere the italians and germans were expelled from north africa early in 1943 and a southern front was opened in italy that summer finally a western front was opened by the us britain and the western allies in france in the summer of 1944. it was now only a matter of when not if the nazis would be defeated as this reality dawned in germany many groups began plotting ways to overthrow hitler and the nazis and tried to negotiate an end to the war with the allies muller was soon dealing with many of these conspiracies as well as unrest concerning his role as head of the gestapo one such episode involved the breaking up of the south circle this was a group of german intellectuals and academics which had formed around hana solve the widow of dr wilhelmself a prominent german politician and diplomat during the second german reich and someone who had made his opposition to the nazis clear in the years before his death in 1936. in the early 1940s even as the war raged hannah solf held meetings for people who were opposed to hitler and the nazis in her salon in berlin although they were not plotting any armed revolt the circle members had actively tried to protect german jews and tried to help them escape out of germany when the holocaust began on the 10th of september 1943 a gestapo agent infiltrated a tea party held by the circle following which most senior members thereof were arrested several were sent to concentration camps while others suffered torture by mueller's gestapo and even execution then throughout 1943 and early 1944 muller also had gestapo agents arrest thousands of german students who were involved in protest groups such as the white rose student group and the swing youth again although these were largely engaging in non-violent protest hundreds were tortured or even killed as pressing as many of the security concerns were for mueller none threatened the nazis grip on power quite so much as one which the head of the gestapo was charged with investigating in the summer of 1944 what has become known as the 20th of july plot was a conspiracy organized by numerous senior figures within the german army with the goal of assassinating hitler and several other senior ranking members of the regime and then seizing power it was hoped that a new military government could then obtain favorable surrender terms from the allies as quickly as possible the conspiracy which was led by the german officer lieutenant colonel klaus von staufenberg and others such as general friedrich albrecht became known as operation valkyrie on the 20th of july 1944 stauffenberg attended a meeting at hitler's wolf's lair near rashtenberg in eastern prussia when he entered he placed a briefcase filled with explosives under the conference table he subsequently left to take a pre-arranged telephone call and it was during his absence that the bomb exploded however while there was one fatality and dozens of people were injured in the room the explosion failed to kill hitler possibly because the briefcase was moved after von stauffenberg left the room and as a result of this the 20th of july plot was doomed before it ever really started after leaving the meeting in the wolf's lair von stauffenberg quickly headed back to berlin plans for a wider seizure of power in berlin by the conspirators now kicked in but with hitler and the senior commanders having survived and the plot being quickly uncovered it all proved abortive by the end of the day the plans to seize key buildings in berlin by albrecht and von stauffenberg had failed both von stauffenberg albrecht and several other of the leading rebels were arrested and were executed at approximately 1am that night and muller as one of the senior gestapo officials now came center stage in investigating just how deep the entire conspiracy ran in the days and weeks that followed anyone with even the merest hint of an association with the plotters was arrested over 5000 people in the end a very large proportion of these appear to have had little or no knowledge of the plot such was the severity with which miller prosecuted the investigation that individuals who could not categorically prove their innocence were nevertheless persecuted indeed over 200 of the core plotters were executed while it was judge roland freisler the head of the german people's court who pronounced sentence on those who were implicated it was ultimately muller who decided who ended up in front of this kangaroo court in the late summer and autumn of 1944 muller was also becoming increasingly fanatical in the final stages of the war by the winter of 1944 it was plain for all to see that germany was defeated the russians were barreling through poland and would cross the river oda into the heartland of germany early in 1945. more strikingly the western allies were rapidly liberating western europe following the d-day landings in the summer of 1944 and paris had been retaken in a short campaign in mid to late august followed by a further drive eastwards which liberated brussels and most of belgium in september the way was now cleared for a drive into germany and the rhineland in the winter of 1944. the only real hope now for germany was that the western allies would have a fatal falling out with stalin and the russians before berlin was captured accordingly the german military command was playing for time and attempted a counter-offensive in the ardennes forest in belgium and luxembourg in december 1944. this proved initially quite successful but it was at best a delaying tactic which could have resulted in more favorable peace terms but muller seems to have actually believed that the tide of the war was turning again in the final days of 1944 he is recorded as telling one of his officers in the gestapo's offices in berlin that the offensive in the ardennes would soon push the western allies back into france and nazi flags would be flying over paris again in 1945. this was pure fantasy in the final months of the war muller who had spent much of the war in berlin was joined in the capital by a growing number of the senior nazi officials who had been stationed elsewhere in conquered europe for several years he occupied himself in trying to utilize his network of double agents to try to drive divisions between the allied leaders rumors arose at this time that the head of the gestapo had entered secret negotiations with the soviet secret services but this is implausible one of the few genuine political beliefs miller had was his hatred of the soviet regime and the rumors seemed to have been entirely fabricated by a rival for power within the reich's security main office walter schellenberg yet the rumor would fuel later theories that miller was taken into custody and protected by the russians at the end of the war muller was one of the officials at hitler's bunker in central berlin in the final days of april he is recorded as being seen there on the 30th of april shortly before hitler killed himself that day and there is also a report of him being in the vicinity the next day when goebbels the fuhrer's successor also committed suicide the following day the battle of berlin ended when general helmut weidling surrendered to the russians following germany's surrender and the declaration of the end of the war on the 8th of may 1945 the arduous process of identifying arresting and prosecuting the leading members of the nazi regime and those who were guilty of having committed war crimes was initiated by the allies and given its central role in the holocaust the maintenance of the totalitarian state and the torture and execution of thousands of political prisoners over the years members of the gestapo were foremost amongst those who were prosecuted by the allies the gestapo itself had ceased to exist with the end of the nazi regime and had been branded by the allies as a criminal organization when an international military tribunal was established by the allies in november 1945 it identified three key groups within germany as those which needed to be held accountable for their conduct during the war and these were the senior membership of the nazi party the ss and the gestapo and individuals who were tried in the nuremberg trials which followed and who had been members of the gestapo including guring kaltenbrunner and the austrian nazi leader arturo sais inquired but muller would never be tried or convicted as in may 1945 as the war was entering its final days and hours the head of the gestapo had simply vanished muller was last seen on the evening of the 1st of may 1945. it was that evening that hitler's designated successor joseph goebbels committed suicide leaving the nazi regime leaderless muller had been overheard to say at this time that he had no intention of being captured alive by the russians as the head of an agency which had persecuted russian sympathizers and russian prisoners of war muller had more reason than most to be fearful of what would happen to him thus he vanished right around the time of goebbel's suicide though there are unsubstantiated claims that he was with himmler near the danish border on the 11th of may shortly before the head of the ss is capture just over a week later no trace of his whereabouts had been detected by the allies weeks later but muller had been listed by the allies as a person of major interest and one who would stand trial at nuremberg for his actions if captured accordingly on the 27th of may 1945 the counter intelligence war room listed him amongst its priority targets who was still not apprehended despite concerted investigations in the weeks and months that followed muller remained missing his disappearance made him the most senior figure in the nazi regime whose location could not be determined muller would never be located but the abrupt manner of his disappearance has sparked numerous theories as to what happened to him ever since one of the most popular driven in large part by schellenberg's earlier claims that miller had been involved in negotiations with the soviets towards the end of the war was that he was captured by the russians shortly after the fall of berlin and taken into secret protective custody in the aftermath of the war this theory was further fueled by unsubstantiated claims that muller had been seen in moscow and elsewhere in the years following the war another theory which was given fresh interest in the early 1960s following the capture of adolf eichmann in argentina was that miller had like many other nazis fled to south america in the aftermath of the war nazi war criminals had been given protection here by the administration of juan peron in the aftermath of the war and as a result of this renewed speculation investigations were carried out throughout latin america in the 1960s to locate muller resulting eventually in the identification of a suspect a francis keith willard who was living in panama city and was briefly believed to be muller fingerprint analysis eventually revealed that there was no basis to this theory and there is no evidence to this day to suggest that miller ended up in latin america after the war many investigations were subsequently undertaken to both locate miller and to determine exactly what had happened to him in 1945 for instance eichmann's arrest and trial in the early 1960s triggered fresh investigations by both the israeli government and that of west germany then in 1999 the u.s central intelligence agency threw open its records on muller for fresh examination these were largely contradictory some contained reports which seemed to suggest that muller had died shortly after the war others contained reports from informants in the 1950s and 1960s which speculated that he had indeed defected to the russians while others still suggested that muller might have been at large as late as the 1960s an independent report produced by a committee of historians and other figures at the time concluded that while they could not say definitively what had happened to miller it seemed likely that the u.s government had not harbored him a theory which russian counterintelligence agencies had tried to promote during the cold war the mystery of miller's disappearance was further added to in 2013 when the head of the memorial for jewish resistance in berlin johannes tujo issued a statement which asserted that muller had died or been killed shortly after the german surrender in may 1945 his body tohil claimed had been buried in a mass grave with around 2500 others at the jewish cemetery in the mitta district of berlin and had been discovered there by allied investigators in august 1945. this claim was further substantiated through newly discovered documents which indicated that the supposed location of miller's body was in fact identified by allied investigators at the time tischel further claimed that mueller had been recorded as still wearing his police uniform and his id was found on his person it has not proved possible to corroborate tukhul's claims as jewish religious laws prohibit the exhumation of bodies but if true this would seem to make it clear that the head of the gestapo throughout the second world war was killed or committed suicide shortly after he was last seen in hitler's bunker on the 1st of may 1945 the truth though is that with the passage of over 75 years and numerous investigations we will almost certainly never know for sure what happened to mueller whether he died in 1945 was taken into custody by the russians fled to south america or ended up somewhere else his fate remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of the second world war of all the leading figures within the nazi regime and the third reich heinrich muller was surely one of the most reprehensible he was seemingly possessed of no interests or personality beyond the meticulous investigative and bureaucratic work which he undertook around the clock from the moment he joined the gestapo in 1934 down to the end of the war 11 years later but politically he was something of an enigma earlier in his career he had been involved in investigating hitler and the nascent nazi party in bavaria following the botched munich push in november 1923 moreover he was affiliated with the bavarian people's party in the late 1920s and early 1930s and even advised the regional government in munich to resist the nazis when they were seizing power in 1933 in the end he only survived and prospered within the gestapo as a result of heinrich's personal patronage and he resisted joining the nazi party himself until 1939 when it became a prerequisite to his succeeding heydrich as head of the gestapo thus we are left with a lukewarm nazi one who seems more to have been politically malleable if it suited his career ambitions yet whatever muller's own political leanings were they made little difference in mitigating the violence of his actions muller was one of the figures within nazi germany who was most responsible for the persecution and bloodshed which was unleashed between 1939 and 1945 as head of the gestapo he systematically rooted out any perceived opponents of the regime be they left-leaning communist sympathizers or anti-war student protesters a great many suffered arrest torture imprisonment or even death sometimes for relatively minor offences and the brutal manner in which mueller oversaw the repercussions in czechoslovakia following heydrich's murder in 1942 is symptomatic of muller's methods but it was ultimately his role in the holocaust with which muller will be lastingly associated from as early as cristal nacht in 1938 muller was playing a significant role in the persecution of europe's jews and this expanded very considerably in the years that followed his centrality to the holocaust which it led to is evinced both by his having been one of the first senior german officials to be informed of the final solution in 1941 and his key role in the vansay conference of january 1942. ultimately the mysterious circumstances of his disappearance in 1945 are somewhat unfortunate as they ensured that mueller was never to stand trial for his crimes at nuremberg what do you think of heinrich muller how significant a figure do you think he was in orchestrating the holocaust and what do you think happened to him following his disappearance in 1945 please let us know in the comment section and in the meantime thank you very much for watching the man known to history as albert speer was born on the 19th of march 1905 in the town of mannheim in the german state of baden-wurttemberg in southwest germany albert's mother was louisa matilda villamina and his father was albert friedrich speer an architect who ran an architecture firm in the town and whose works adorn mannheim's urban landscape to this day albert senior's grandfather had also been an architect and so albert jr was born into a household with a heritage of being builders and urban planners owing to albertsenia's position as head of a successful firm of architects the family were resoundingly upper middle class and materially comfortable writing over a half a century later when in prison after the war speer noted of the family home that it was an imposing house built around a courtyard guarded by elaborate wrought iron gates automobiles would drive into this courtyard and stop in front of a flight of stairs which provided a suitable entrance to the richly furnished house however the home life they had was somewhat cold speer noted that quote the children my two brothers and i had to use the back stairs these were dark steep and narrow and ended unimpressively in a rear corridor children had no business in the elegant carpeted front hall albert's relationship with his two brothers ernst and hermann was particularly strained on account of albert being somewhat weaker than them but he claimed that this provided him with a great resourcefulness as he grew up stating that quote an inadequacy often calls forth compensating forces in any case these difficulties made me learn how to adjust better to the world of other boys if i later showed some aptitude in dealing with difficult circumstances and troublesome people i suspect that the gift can be traced back to my boyhood physical weakness speer's childhood was lived in the shadow of war the unification of germany in 1871 into the german empire and the rise of the country as a major power on the continent had severely disrupted the political balance of europe for years britain had been the pre-eminent power but now germany challenged it while other countries such as the austro-hungarian empire and russia were vying for their own political dominance in regions such as the balkans added to this was immense rivalry between the european powers for colonial possessions in africa and asia the net result of all this was that by the time speer was reaching school age the continent was divided into two armed alliances one led by germany and including austria-hungary while the other was comprised of britain france and russia finally in the summer of 1914 a regional political crisis in the balkans erupted into war across the continent and then the world when the first world war ended four years later in november 1918 germany had been utterly defeated the empire was replaced with a german republic named after the town of weimar and britain and france had subsequently imposed punitive peace terms on germany under the terms of the treaty of versailles all of these events would have profound implications for germany and spear in the years ahead spears education was provided by various institutions his primary education was in mannheim but when he was about 13 years of age just as the first world war was coming to an end the family moved to the city of heidelberg where he finished his basic schooling thereafter he elected to follow in his father's footsteps and become an architect accordingly in 1923 he began his studies at the university of karlsruhe a polytechnic university which was regarded as one of the best learning institutions in germany both then and now despite its glowing reputation speer moved on quickly to what the family believed was a superior institution at the technical university of munich and from there he went on to the technical university of berlin in 1925 here speer became the assistant of heinrich tesino one of the leading architects of the weimar republic's panorama architectural style many years later speer reflected on how tessano's teaching style was informal and discursive with his belief that architecture should express national culture and be expressed in simplified forms tessano was highly influential in shaping speer's work as an architect and yet tessano would soon be persecuted by the nazis losing his job at the technical university in berlin in 1934 jester spear was becoming the official architect of the third reich speer graduated from the technical university of berlin in 1927 and was subsequently offered a position at the university by tessanov filling in on some of his classes and acting as his assistant for others while he continued his own studies during this time he also married on the 28th of august 1928 years earlier when he was just 17 years of age in 1922 speer had begun dating margareta weber although the relationship was not approved of by his family speer now married a woman who was effectively his childhood sweetheart they would go on to have six children who would play a prominent role in his later life making speer a curiosity as one of the few higher ranking nazis who lived long enough to have adult children together the family lived in berlin throughout the late 1920s and into the early 1930s and so much was going well for the young spear at this time he had attained a very good position at a pre-eminent technical institute in berlin while still in his mid-twenties and was settling down into family life speer's career was blossoming as a middle-class architect in the late 1920s but much of the rest of german society was not so lucky germany remained a country with a large industrial working class one which produced many adherents to the communist movement which in 1917 had seized power in russia others of different political persuasions were discontented with the terms of the treaty of versailles which had brought the war to an end and imposed harsh fines and terms on germany and groups such as the national socialist german workers party or nazi party led by their austrian-born leader adolf hitler were among these such groups remained either peripheral in the weimar republic's politics in the 1920s or at least had insufficient support to challenge the dominant centrist and establishment parties of the republic but this all began to change in 1929 after years of global economic growth in the autumn of 1929 the stock market on wall street in new york crashed severely in the months and years that followed the world's economy entered a great depression and germany was impacted particularly badly as ordinary germans lost their jobs and their life savings and groups such as the communists and the nazis began to gain a much greater level of support than they had ever previously had in the country spears first direct engagement with the nazis came in 1930 when he first attended a nazi rally and heard hitler deliver a speech in his later writings speer would seek to emphasize how in his youthful naivety he believed that hitler and the nazi party's policy platform offered an answer to the rise of communism and the futile political future of the crumbling weimar republic as a consequence he applied to join the nazi party in january 1931 and his application was accepted the following march of his decision to join the nazi party speer would later recollect that quote i was not choosing the nsdap but becoming a follower of hitler whose magnetic force had reached out to me the first time i saw him and had not thereafter released me his persuasiveness the peculiar magic of his by no means pleasant voice the oddity of his rather banal manner the seductive simplicity with which he attacked the complexity of our problems all that bewildered and fascinated me i knew virtually nothing about his program he had taken hold of me before i had grasped what was happening this however was written many years later when speer was trying to excuse his involvement with the nazis and there was a clear effort here to suggest that he was largely oblivious about what the nazis policies even were when he joined the party speer would continue to foster his associations with the nazi party in the early 1930s as hitler and his followers were growing in support throughout germany when the first reichstag elections in two years were held in july 1932 the country's unemployment rate had risen to nearly 30 percent exploiting the discontent hitler and the nazis were able to emerge from the election as the largest party in germany for the first time winning 230 seats and nearly 40 percent of the vote the communists offered the strongest opposition and the choice in germany was now seemingly between the nazis and the communists and in the months that followed a political stalemate and a failure to form a coherent government led to further elections and negotiations but eventually in the early weeks of 1933 elements in the traditional right-leaning business community in germany elected to throw their weight behind hitler in order to avoid a communist regime seizing power this coalition believed that they could control hitler but it was a dreadful strategic error within months a manufactured political crisis had been employed to pass an enabling act whereby hitler and the nazis were effectively able to govern germany without any recourse to parliament the country was now effectively a dictatorship speer had been forced in 1931 to leave his position as tessanov's assistant in berlin owing to cutbacks at the university caused by the economic crisis he subsequently moved back to mannheim to work for his father but on a visit to the capital in the summer of 1932 speer was employed by the nazi propaganda chief joseph goebbels to renovate the party's main offices in the german capital speer returned to mannheim afterwards but when the nazis rose to power in the spring of 1933 he was quickly hired again for further work in particular speer was employed to work on the designs for the nazis fifth party congress to be held at the southern city of nuremberg between the 30th of august and the third of september 1933 or as the annual showpiece of the party is popularly known today the nuremberg rally this was not strictly architectural work but was centered on design and arrangement with schematic drawings all things which played to spears strengths the work went well and following a personal meeting with hitler later in 1933 speer was appointed as commissioner for the artistic and technical presentation of party rallies and demonstrations it was the first of a number of swift promotions within the nazi hierarchy in the years that followed in the early spring of 1934 speer was promoted to the position of chief architect of the nazi party succeeding paul toast a neo-classical architect who had died on the 21st of january that year toast had envisaged several buildings which speer would subsequently work on himself along with a new role speer also succeeded to a close relationship with hitler the nazi leader had a keen interest in architecture and believed that the supposed paramount position of the german people amongst the people of europe which was central to the nazis aryan ideology could be expressed through immense buildings and powerful architectural statements features such as flat roofs uniformity and immense facades were often used to create the impression of a country and culture which espoused simplicity and uniformity and which aimed for a solidity which spoke of a long-lasting empire to come accordingly hitler had been closed to trost and indeed he continued to find time for his widow gear detrost in the years that followed thus it is perhaps unsurprising to find that from 1934 onwards speer was someone who met with hitler on an almost daily basis often in the mornings they would meet for a conversation or a walk in which they discussed the architectural projects being undertaken by spear and future even grander building work the work which spear and hitler would have discussed was expanding both numerically and in scale from the mid-1930s onwards much of this focused on rebuilding the center of berlin a plan which as will be seen became even grander still in the late 1930s for instance there were plans for building a new chancellery building near the reichstag as early as 1934. others lay outside the capital for instance speer took over the building of a vast new zeppelin field or party rally grounds at nuremberg for the holding of the party's annual congress there a giant complex covering over 11 square kilometers and consisting of several buildings parade grounds and walkways the zeppelin field featured prominently in the 1935 propaganda film by eleni riefenstahl the triumph of the will and speer also designed the pavilion for the international exposition of art and technology in modern life which was held in paris between may and november 1937 having convinced hitler who wished to withdraw german involvement altogether to proceed with the event the pavilion culminated in a tall tower topped by the symbols of the nazi state an eagle and a swastika and was allegedly conceived of as a statement of quote german pride and achievement speer was also responsible for refashioning the berlin olympic stadium in 1931 the international olympic committee had determined to hold the 1936 summer olympics in berlin this decision was not reversed upon the accession to power of the nazis verna march had been hired to build a new olympic stadium in berlin on the site of the old stadium which his father ottomach had built there in preparation for the aborted 1916 berlin olympics however when hitler visited the site in 1934 he was thoroughly unimpressed and ordered spear to alter the plans thus it was speer who was responsible for completing the olympiad stadion which became the centerpiece of the 1936 olympics and it was here that jesse owens the african-american track and field athlete won his four gold medals an occurrence which is rumored to have infuriated hitler despite this in the aftermath of the games hitler developed grand plans for holding every olympics in germany once the nazis were victorious in the coming war and to this end speer was commissioned to come up with plans for a new stadium again resulting in his designs for the deutsches stadion or german stadium which would be built at nuremberg to fit over 400 000 people however nothing other than the groundwork was ever completed on the 30th of january 1937 speer was appointed as general building inspector for the rich capital this placed him in charge of what would have been the most wide-ranging building project undertaken by the nazis hitler had conceived of completely rebuilding central berlin as germania a grand new capital for the coming reich which would stretch across and dominate the european continent records of hitler's table conversations from the early 1940s highlight how it was conceived that this new city of germany would be designed to surpass london and paris and stand as an equal in relative terms to what rome had been at the height of that empire in the first and second centuries a.d central to this vision were plans to create a vast east-west city axis commanded by one huge three-mile long boulevard at one end of which would be the reichstag and at the center of which would stand the berlin victory column the 220 foot tall victory column which had been erected in the late 1870s to celebrate prussian victory in the war against denmark in the 1860s as well as this a vast arc of triumph no doubt modeled to some extent after that which napoleon had begun erecting in paris in the early 19th century was also intended that the plans for this arch indicate that the paris arch would have fitted completely within the entrance way had it been built surely the most spectacular aspect of the whole of the plan for germania was the elaborate scheme to build a new domed hall in central berlin the falk's holler or people's hall which was sometimes also referred to as the great hall or hall of glory was planned as a monumental domed structure which would be able to accommodate 180 000 people speer was apparently influenced in his design for it by the pantheon in rome built by the emperor hadrian in the 1st century a.d a building shpeer had made notes on as early as 1925 the planned building would be over 210 meters high with the oculus of the dome stretching to 46 meters in diameter accordingly the main rotunda of the building would have been able to house both hadrian's pantheon in rome and saint peter's basilica in the vatican three concentric tiers of seating would have enclosed an arena inside with statues of classical and germanic mythology located around the building at various intersections this was effectively designed as a temple-like structure which would become the most significant building in berlin in its reimagined form as germania 80 years on few buildings of this immense size have been conceived of let alone built but most informed estimates believe that spears building could have supported the weight of its vast dome speer was in charge of the plan for developing both the folks hala and the wider germania project from its inception as head of the comprehensive construction plan for the reich capital work was initiated in 1938 with plans for it all to take five or so years to complete the initial proceedings were slow not least because of the densely built nature of berlin's urban landscape the plans called for vast amounts of housing and businesses to be pulled down and streets to be widened or otherwise redirected to accommodate the vast building program notably the east-west street axis moreover the soil and water table of berlin were a serious issue as it was unclear if the ground could support the vast structures of the volkshaller and the ark of triumph to test this speer had a vast concrete block known as the schwerbalastung's kerper built on the proposed site of the arc of triumph one which did indeed sink some small amount in the years that followed but despite these setbacks some work on building the new city was accomplished by spear up to 1943 but after this all work ceased nevertheless the grand plans for germany never came close to being realized and they are a telling indication of the manner in which the building ambitions of the third reich ran far beyond what actually occurred one element of the berlin redevelopment plan which was completed in the mid-1930s was the new chancellery building a significant development as the construction of it involved spear for the first time in the widespread use of slave labor to complete his architectural work for hitler work on the chancellery had been underway since 1934 and preliminary work was completed by the early summer of 1936 with work on the shell of the building beginning a year later thereafter hitler determined that extra resources should be given to speer to complete the project by the 1st of january 1939 however this was far beyond the capacity of the normal workforce as increasing numbers of young men were being drafted into the armed forces accordingly the project began to rely on labour from prisoners from concentration camp where a brick factory was established speer's attitude towards the jewish people and his complicity in the holocaust years later has been a matter of considerable speculation but on this occasion he is rumored to have remarked of the jewish inmates at or anybody that such individuals had become accustomed to brickmaking while in captivity in egypt a biblical reference which indicates a complete lack of concern for the welfare of those who are being used as slave labor to build his chancellory building and this was not the last time shpeer would use slave labor extensively a spear was undertaking all of his vast building projects during the course of the 1930s the nazi regime had been working to dismantle the terms of the treaty of versailles and prepare for a war of revenge and expansion first the army was gradually rebuilt and a new air force the luftwaffe was created then in the spring of 1936 the rhineland in western germany was re-militarized a clear violation of versailles although one which the allies allowed nearly 20 years after the end of the first world war and worse followed in march 1938 germany annexed austria and the following autumn the government in berlin began asserting its right to also occupy a portion of czechoslovakia known as the sudetenland and this too was duly allowed as the allies continued to appease hitler's regime germany effectively brought the rest of czechoslovakia and hungary into its sphere of influence in the first half of 1939. this though was as far as london and paris would go when germany invaded poland on the 1st of september 1939 the two western european powers declared war on nazi germany this would gradually expand in the days and weeks ahead into the second world war the early war years were a period in which spear played a more peripheral role in the third reich many of his building projects were sidelined as the war effort expanded and resources were diverted elsewhere yet there are notable elements to his career at this time in particular his continuing persecution of germany's jews is evident even as the nazis policy towards the jewish people of europe was shifting from one of persecution to one of genocide for instance from 1939 onwards speer was using the nuremberg laws a series of anti-jewish laws passed by the nazis in the 1930s to forcibly displace tens of thousands of jews from their homes in berlin to make way for his vast building schemes as the chief architect and engineer of the reich spears departments in berlin were also responsible for repairing buildings and roads which were damaged by bombing missions undertaken by britain and france and throughout these early stages of the war spear oversaw the use of slave labor of jews and political prisoners from throughout nazi occupied europe to conduct his repair work a workforce which was expanding exponentially as the concentration camp system was dramatically escalated across central and eastern europe following the conquest of poland in 1939. spears star was in the continuous ascendant as nazi germany was enjoying enormous levels of success on the battlefield after the outbreak of the war in september 1939 poland had been quickly overrun and brought under german control while some of the country was allocated to russia following the terms of a non-aggression pact signed between the two nations this left hitler free to turn north and west in the spring of 1940 denmark and norway were occupied leaving only sweden in northern europe unaligned just weeks later german tanks and motorized divisions streamed into the low countries and france in a punishing invasion which brought these areas under nazi occupation in approximately six weeks a siege of britain by land and sea followed in an effort to force the country into surrendering but it held out for long enough to allow hitler's attention to wander back eastwards from early 1941 the germans decided to initiate their plans to create lebensraum or living space in eastern europe by invading the soviet union although it was initially delayed by the need to divert german troops to aid hitler's italian ally benito mussolini in the balkans and north africa russia was finally invaded in the summer of 1941. operation barbarossa quickly brought huge tracts of land as far as belarusia eastern ukraine and the baltic states region under german control the war soon began to turn against hitler and the nazis after the initial successes attendant on the invasion of russia in the summer of 1941 the vermont had failed to see saint petersburg moscow and stalingrad before the bitter russian winter set in and the failure to provide proper winter clothing to the german troops on the eastern front proved a tremendous strategic error by the time the spring came around the course of the war was changing and this was concretely the case by the spring of 1943 when the russians defeated the germans at the cataclysmic battle of stalingrad thereafter the result of the war was inevitable the western allies were victorious in north africa by the spring of 1943 and invaded italy that summer a year later a western front was opened in northern france with the d-day landings that summer and france was quickly liberated in the late summer and early autumn and just weeks later plans were underway to progress further into western germany by the end of 1944 it was simply a matter of which force the western allies proceeding from france or the russians advancing through poland would reach berlin first on that would depend much of the specifics of the post-war settlement and how the leaders of the regime such as speer would be treated spears role and complicity in the crimes of the nazi government became more pronounced as the war began to shift against germany as the war effort turned against germany in 1942 a decision was taken to repurpose the entire economy to gear everything towards the war effort and the production of war materials this was a core component of the new ethos of total war which was to be pursued by the regime between 1942 and 1945. speer became absolutely central to this following the death of fritz toad the reich minister of armaments and munitions in a plane crash on the 8th of february 1942. speer had been scheduled to fly with tote that day but it cancelled shortly beforehand as his attention was needed elsewhere not only did he survive but he was quickly chosen to succeed tote not just as head of the ministry of armaments and munitions but also as overseer of the german railways the water and energy departments the office of technology and operation tote a body which had been established all the way back in 1933 and which had responsibility for a wide range of civil engineering projects with these appointments speer was effectively in charge of the german economy during the period of total war as minister of armaments and war production during the total war period of the second world war speer was responsible for overseeing massive increases in the amount of goods being produced either directly or indirectly for the war effort in 1941 the german war economy produced approximately 9500 vehicles and motorized units and 2 900 heavy tanks whereas three years later in 1944 following spears first two years in charge the output had increased fourfold to 35 000 vehicles and motorized units and a staggering 17 300 tanks the latter representing a six-fold increase on what was produced three years earlier all of this was achieved even as the amount of resources available to the regime were dwindling rapidly notably supplies of such core commodities as oil and rubber consequently production was ramped up even in such remote parts of the reich as northern norway he was even placed in command of the production of the v-2 rockets at panamunda in northern germany which the german scientist verna von braun had developed and which were being launched against london even as the western allies were barreling eastwards into germany in late 1944 and early 1945. one of the foremost innovations spear introduced as the war effort became ever more desperate for the nazi regime was transport course beer this was established in the autumn of 1944 following the d-day landings in northern france that summer with the goal of overseeing the continuous repair of german factories and workshops once they were targeted by allied bombing campaigns the transport element was a highly mobile unit used for transporting armaments and other goods out of these factories and also initiating repair work quickly to ensure that production started again as seamlessly as possible this was largely confined to germany at this stage as a decision had been taken by the second half of 1944 to concentrate most of the country's industrial activity in the homeland where it would not be quickly captured an indication of the extent of the transport core spear and its significance to the war economy of germany during the last year of the conflict is indicated in the number of personnel within it at its height the transport corps involved up to 70 000 personnel operating 50 000 motorized vehicles and had units attached to everything from the air force to the wehrmacht overall in his role as minister of armaments speer managed to keep the german army fighting in the field until 1945 but there is also no doubting that much of this was achieved with slave labor from the concentration camps dotted throughout central and eastern europe and the spear was perfectly aware of the fact that slave labor was being used in this manner and actually expanded it as head of organization tote shpeer gave the order for the labor units at auschwitz concentration camp to be expanded in the closing years of the war and at one point speer put in a request for as many as one million labourers presumably fully aware that the only way such numbers could be produced within the confines of the german war economy with more and more german men being conscripted into the army by the day was for hundreds of thousands of labourers to be effectively drafted in as slave labor this is duly what happened working in association with fritz salkel whose specific role was to exploit the rice manpower over one and a half million labourers from amongst pows concentration camp inmates and other peoples under the jurisdiction of the reich paco opted into working in the factories across the continent which were under spears oversight between 1942 and 1945. during the course of 1943 and 1944 a spear was overseeing the rapid mobilization of the german war economy for total war the result of the conflict was becoming increasingly inevitable especially once the western allies had opened up a new western front in france in the summer of 1944. the latter in particular impacted on spear and his work as the allies were increasingly targeting german industrial capacity from the summer of 1944 in bombing raids from the newly liberated parts of france and then the low countries as this occurred there is an ever more concentrated focus on targeting armaments factories in germany and even the roads within the country as a means of halting the movement of arms and army vehicles despite this speer remained confident even in the early weeks of 1945 that as minister of armaments he could continue to supply the army with the necessary weapons and other materials to keep the vermacht in the field until the end of 1945 or even early 1946 it was only with the russian advance into germany in the early weeks of that year and the simultaneous arrival of the americans and british into the rhineland that he concluded that the army could not continue to be supplied long beyond the end of spring nevertheless speer was committed to running the total war economy until very close to the end of the conflict like many other senior ranking members of the regime there has been much deliberation concerning speer's approach to the end of the war many years later speer claimed that he had vehemently argued against its continuation from the summer of 1944 onwards in his memoirs he recollected that he voiced this view in direct contradiction to hitler in view of the hopeless situation i very naturally assumed that we wanted to end this war with the least possible devastation of the kind that would hamper future reconstruction for i was not imbued by that special mood of total doom which was now beginning to spread visibly among hitler's followers hitler himself was more and more ruthlessly determined to bring on total catastrophe but i was able to outwit him with his own arguments and this by a simple trick since in hopeless situations he also always insisted that the lost territories would soon be reconquered i needed only to repeat this premise of his and point out that i would need the industries of these areas to maintain arms production as soon as we had reconquered them yet despite his later assertions there is little indication that spear objected too strenuously against the continuation of the war and he certainly was not involved in any of the clandestine efforts being undertaken by a good many of his colleagues to negotiate a settlement behind hitler's back speer challenged hitler in the final weeks of the war on the 19th of march hitler issued what has become known as the nero decree which instructed the german armed forces to destroy any infrastructure which the allies could use as they penetrated deeply into germany speer who seems to have begun to view the total war economy in much the same way as he would a prized building was appalled at the idea of his work being destroyed in this fashion accordingly he worked with other figures to prevent hitler's directives being implemented in this respect this caused a severe split with the fuhrer and indeed many years later speer recorded his last frosty meeting with hitler on the 22nd of april right before speer left the capital by now it was about three o'clock in the morning hitler was awake again i sent word that i wanted to bid him goodbye trembling the prematurely aged man stood before me for the last time the man to whom i had dedicated my life 12 years before i was both moved and confused for his part he showed no emotion when we confronted one another his words were as cold as his hand so you're leaving good i'll auf wiedersehen no regards to my family no wishes no thanks no farewell for a moment i lost my composure said something about coming back but he could easily see that it was a white lie and turned his attention to something else i was dismissed hitler would commit suicide just over a week later in the bunker his headquarters in the latter stages of the war but by this time speer was gone from berlin having left for hamburg in northern germany where many members of the nazi regime were heading in the final days of the conflict and here an interim regime the so-called flensburg government headed by karl dernitz was formed following both hitler's suicide and then goebbel suicide on the 1st of may the allied advance had not impacted on this region near the danish border and it was consequently to hear that the short-lived regime headed to operate for several weeks in may 1945 it was while he was here that shapiro learned that hitler had dropped him entirely from the successor government in his final political testament composed on the 29th of april disappointed by the move speer offered his services to the flensburg government in which he was given the position of minister of industry and production effectively a continuation of his role as minister of armaments and war production albeit now in a government which was seeking to negotiate a peace settlement that settlement arrived swiftly and an end to the war in europe was declared on the 8th of may victory in europe or ve day as it has become known spear and many other high-ranking nazis were still free near the danish border throughout mid-may as the allies considered their next steps towards the flensburg government throughout these two weeks speer first began his efforts at rehabilitation by making himself available to the allies for questioning on everything from the german war economy to events in berlin in the closing months of the war and elements of the air campaign which had been launched in the final stages of the conflict the western allies were particularly keen to acquire information on the v2 rocket program which speer had been involved in as the technology involved was entirely novel and the americans were anxious to acquire it before the russians the decision was finally taken on the 23rd of may when british troops arrested all of the senior ranking members of the interim government as prisoners of war bringing the last vestiges of the nazi regime to an end then in the weeks that followed speer was transferred between several internment centers and interrogated regularly finally in september 1945 he was arraigned on charges of having been complicit in the committing of war crimes consequently he was to be tried at nuremberg along with other senior surviving members of the nazi regime speer went on trial in nuremberg in the first wave involving the most significant surviving members of the nazi regime it ran from the 19th of november 1945 to the first of october 1946 and during it 24 individuals were put on trial several of them in absentia such as the former nazi party secretary martin bormann who had not been found by november 1945 but who had almost certainly been dead for several months by that time of those who were still alive the most prominent were hermann goering the head of the luftwaffe rudolf hess hitler's deputy until he flew into scotland in 1941 wilhelm keitel the head of the vermacht and the de facto minister for defence for the entire period of the war joakim von ribentrop the foreign minister artur says the figure who effectively ran austria following the unification of the two countries in 1938 and hans frank the head of the general government of poland the nazi occupation government established in 1939 each of them were accused according to the nuremberg principles not just of being senior members of the regime but specifically of having committed crimes against peace contributing to and overseeing a war of aggression and perhaps most significantly committing war crimes and crimes against humanity the trial lasted for 11 months of it speer later recollected for many months the documents and testimonies accumulated these aim to prove that the crimes had been committed without regard to whether any one of the defendants had been personally connected with them it was horrible and could only be born because our nerves became more blunted from session to session to this day photographs documents and orders keep coming back to me they were so monstrous that they seemed unbelievable and yet none of the defendants doubted their genuineness shpeer's personal attorney hans flashner attempted to present shbir as something of a genteel innocent who had been unwittingly thrust into the crimes of hitler's regime but the chief prosecutor robert h jackson presented a counter-argument speer jackson argued had been front and central the key figure in using hundreds of thousands of jews prisoners of war and other minorities as slave labor in order to run the german total war economy between 1942 and 1945 for his part speer clung to the hope that the allies decision not to impose a collective guilt on the german people for the crimes of the regime might be something which would also exonerate him in the eyes of the court at last the decisions of the tribunal at nuremberg came in october 1946 many of shapiro's co-defendants were sentenced to death notably guring frank von ribentrop and seize inkwad each of whom were hanged on the 16th of october though guring committed suicide in his cell the night of the 15th but the architect escaped this fate of the eight judges three were in favor of the death penalty for spear but with the majority opposed a compromise agreement was reached and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison and following the sentence speer claims he was resigned to his fate as a sort of penance for his previous actions a few days later i accepted the sentence i waived the right to an appeal to the four powers any penalty weighed little compared to the misery we had brought upon the world for there are things i noted in my diary a few weeks later for which one is guilty even if one might offer excuses simply because the scale of the crimes is so overwhelming that by comparison any human excuse pales to insignificance it is difficult to know how much speer genuinely felt this or was trying to influence public opinion by saying so many years later speer would spend most of his 20-year jail sentence at spandau prison in western berlin where he was transferred to in july 1947 here his life was heavily restricted he was for instance only allowed to correspond with close family members in order to limit his communication with the outside world his time at spandau was generally spent in exercising and reading he claimed to have read thousands of books while serving his sentence and also was provided with architectural works which allowed him to keep up with prevailing trends in the discipline throughout his time at spandau others in the outside world continued to advocate on his behalf pressing the case that shpeer's sentence had been overly severe for a man who his supporters argued had allegedly been duped into following hitler and the nazis a huge fundraising drive was even undertaken from the late 1940s onwards to raise funds to support his legal case a growing sum of money over which spear had some influence in how it was spent yet it was all futile far too many interest groups were wholly opposed to spear being released early to allow it to happen and he would serve his full 20 years in prison while he was at spandau speer embarked on one of the most significant writing projects ever undertaken by a senior member of the nazi hierarchy he composed a highly extensive memoir a great proportion of which was written in a particular burst of activity in 1953 and 1954 stretching to thousands of manuscript pages this was a major tome yet spear was working under tight restrictions at spandau and had no access to materials with which he could corroborate events and dates from as much as 20 years earlier and for which he had only his own memory to draw on accordingly it was not until after he was released from prison on the 1st of october 1966 that he was in a position to rework the material into a coherent autobiography by consulting other federal archive documents and when this was done he published the memoir in two volumes one as inside the third reich and the other as spandau the secret diaries published respectively in 1969 and 1975 in german both works were subsequently translated and published in english in 1970 and 1976 indicating the level of interest in the personal recollections of one of the leading members of the third reich of the two volumes inside the third reich is all the more significant for its actual narration of events between 1933 and 1945 and subsequently the trials at nuremberg stretching in some modern editions to nearly a thousand pages the memoir presents details on everything from the 1936 summer olympics in berlin to the atmosphere amongst the leaders of the nazi regime in berlin as the war came to an inexorable conclusion in 1944 and 1945. spandau the secret diaries is a recollection of spears time in prison but also provides extensive details on the architect's relationship with hitler and other matters relating to the war and yet as detailed and as valuable as the memoirs have been considered by historians there are considerable problems with the work speer presented not least his lack of engagement with or his toning down of the level of atrocities and war crimes associated with the regime and they have also been deemed to have been written to exonerate speer and his reputation in particular by further suggesting that speer was oblivious to the worst of the regime's atrocities on the eastern front and in the committing of the holocaust thus spears memoirs must be approached with a high degree of skepticism concerning their content albert speer was released from prison on the 1st of october 1966 20 years exactly after his sentence was pronounced at nuremberg beginning with an interview he and a talk with der spiegel magazine just weeks later he began to acquire a minor celebrity status within germany and the wider world one which expanded considerably upon the publication of his memoirs in the years that followed and many individuals were happy to promote speer as being symptomatic of germans in general during the war period as people who were deceived by hitler and the nazis but conversely spear was unable to rectify his relationship with his children who had become adults themselves during his imprisonment there were clearly conflicting values hildeshpier for example would go on to become a prominent advocate of europe's jewish people her and her siblings growing distance from their father developed even as he continued to try to rehabilitate his reputation though speer himself would never again work as an architect he eventually died on the 1st of september 1981 while visiting england in his mid-70s and was buried in heidelberg in his native baden-wurttemberg very little of shpeer's architectural work survives today the chancellery building which he oversaw the construction of in berlin in the mid to late 1930s was largely destroyed just a few short years later during the russian onslaught on the city in 1945. some remnants of the outer walls remain but little else beyond this the most prominent landmarks in the german capital associated with spear are the schwerbelastung's kerpa the huge concrete building which he had erected in the city centre in order to determine if the ground there could bear the weight of the enormous buildings planned as part of the construction of germania outside berlin some parts of his work are still extant notably parts of the zeppelin field nazi party grounds at nuremberg but beyond these the most significant things he produced to have come down to us today are elaborate drawings and schemes for the monumental buildings he had planned and which were never actually realized most notably the plans for germania and the new olympic stadium at nuremberg it is a striking statement about the individual and the weakness of the nazi state that despite having such unlimited resources available to him speer realized hardly any of his elaborate projects and it is still not entirely clear in some instances if they could ever have been built revelations arose after spear's death which served to completely thwart his efforts to rehabilitate his reputation after the war much of this focused on what spear knew or didn't know about the extent of the nazis persecution and mass murder of europe's jews in the holocaust speer regularly stated that while he was fully aware of the extent of the scale of the regime's anti-semitic stance and found himself also uncomfortable in the presence of jewish people he asserted that he had no idea what was occurring throughout the dozens of concentration camps which dotted the countryside of central and eastern europe between 1939 and 1945. notably auschwitz treblinka and sobibor in which millions of jewish people were murdered in line with this shpeer claimed that he was only aware of what was happening insofar as he knew the jewish people were being corralled there and also that many of germany's war armaments were being produced using labour from the camps however spear professed to be completely ignorant of the fact that millions of jews were gassed to death on arrival at these camps between 1942 and 1945. spears professions of innocence during his lifetime have been categorically disproved since his death correspondence has emerged since 1981 which makes it clear that shpeer was present at the so-called posen speeches two addresses which the head of the ss heinrich himmler had made at the town of posen or poznanya in october 1943 in which he had quite clearly outlined what was happening in the concentration camps speer had never denied being present in bosnia at the time but he claimed to have been absent from the auditorium when himmler made his revelations this was comprehensibly disproved by the new correspondence which clearly demonstrated that speer was perfectly aware of what had occurred moreover additional studies by historians such as adam tus and heinrich pleilowa focused on how speer had visited many of the concentration camps in 1943 and 1944 to see whether labor was coming from for the industries he oversaw indeed he had been heavily involved in the construction and administration of several of the camps thus not only was speer aware of what was occurring but he was one of the central architects of the holocaust from an organizational perspective in berlin consequently the myth of spear as the less malevolent nazi has collapsed since his death albert speer is unique amongst the leading figures of the third reich in being an individual who managed to somewhat rehabilitate his reputation in the aftermath of the war there are many reasons for this speer was a more cultivated figure than many of the other senior figures within the regime he was a member of an upper-middle-class german family which had a long history of being prominent architects in the country shpeer also excelled as a young man in his studies and had achieved a lecturing position at a prominent technical institute in berlin while still in his early twenties moreover after he became part of the nazi hierarchy his work was largely focused on architecture and improving the built infrastructure of the country speer unlike figures such as guring hans frank and arthur ces inquired who all stood trial alongside him at nuremberg in 1945 and 1946 superficially did not appear to have played a major role in the mass murder of europe's jews or some of the other major crimes associated with the nazi regime such as the indiscriminate execution of hundreds of thousands of russians and other peoples on the eastern front between 1941 and 1945. accordingly speer was not sentenced to death and after serving a 20-year sentence managed to return to german society the reality though of how speer managed to convince so many people that he was different to individuals such as hitler himmler goering and goebbels is quite different he exploited his slightly more cultivated personality to good effect to convince people that he was simply an innocent architect who was won over by hitler's personality early on before a pauline conversion towards the end of the war in this respect he claimed that he had no knowledge of the worst of the regime's atrocities particularly the genocide of europe's jews but as we have seen information which came to light since his death has proved that this was not the case and speer lied about how much he knew both at nuremberg and after finally his extensive memoirs which he wrote at spandau prison whilst serving his sentence after the war served the purpose of further excusing his conduct and justifying his actions between 1933 and 1945. perhaps historians bear some of the blame here in that in their eagerness to have a very extensive first-hand account of the nazi regime from one of its highest ranking figures they were too willing to accept speer's work at face value and with it some of his justifications of his own behavior there has been widespread debate as to what actually motivated speer perhaps as some such as the german historian joachim fest have argued speer was led along in much the same way as other germans were by the promise of harking back to a lost time when things in germany were more favorable than they were during the crisis of the early 1930s perhaps he was as he later tried to present himself won over by the fact that the nazis seemed to offer a solution to the problems the weimar republic and the rise of the communists or perhaps he was simply enthralled by the prospect of being able to realize his architectural ambitions and the resources which became available to him the higher he rose in the years to come but the reality is perhaps more straightforward speer was committed to the creation of a greater germany a nation which its buildings would be emblematic of and his views of slave labor particularly of imprisoned jews before and after the war appallingly so after he became minister of armaments in 1942 confirms conclusively that he was an anti-semite himself thus despite all his later justifications and excuses it would seem that what motivated speer to commit to the nazi cause was not that he was led astray as many have argued but that he quite simply believed entirely in the nazi's racial ideology accordingly he should be viewed in the same way as any of the other members of the regime what do you think of albert speer was he really a less malevolent individual than figures such as hitler himmler and goebbels as he presented himself at the nuremberg trials or did his seemingly cultured personality simply allow him to deceive others into thinking this please let us know in the comments section and in the meantime thank you very much for watching the man known to history as joseph mengele was born on the 16th of march 1911 in the town of ginzburg in southern germany his father was karl mengele an engineer who around about the time of joseph's birth had become the proprietor of a foundry which manufactured farming equipment for various purposes such as sawing cutting and milling there were seven men on the payroll of the company in the early 1910s which meant that the mengeles were one of the more affluent families in the gunsberg area joseph's mother was walberger hupfar who would subsequently give birth to joseph's two younger brothers carl jr and alois the young joseph grew up in a world which was in the depths of total war it was only in the recent past that germany had become a country at all as recently as the 1860s its territory was divided between over two dozen smaller states however in 1871 these united under prussian leadership to form the german empire this severely disrupted the balance of power in europe and in the decades that followed the continent drifted towards war germany formed an alliance with the austro-hungarian empire while britain france and russia allied to offset the rise of germany at first these powers confined their disputes to proxy conflicts in africa and the balkans but in the summer of 1914 a regional dispute in the balkans led to the outbreak of a general european war it soon expanded to bring in countries such as japan and so the first world war had commenced it lasted for over four years with germany austria-hungary and the ottoman empire fighting britain france russia and italy with the united states later joining on their side the defeat of germany brought the empire to an end and a new german republic was created named after the town of weimar more importantly a series of punitive peace terms were imposed on germany under the terms of the treaty of versailles and these would have lasting repercussions the infant mengele might not have been entirely unaware of these developments as they had impacted substantially on the mengele household carl left a fight in the german army shortly after the conflict began and walberger was left to raise the children and attempt to keep the business ticking over during the war she did this with a steely determination and successfully negotiated a contract with the german government to produce a type of army vehicle for use on the war front known as the furaja bargain as a result the company prospered and when karl mengele returned to gunsburg at the end of the war he was able to keep the company moving forward by the early 1920s it had become the third largest producer of threshing machinery in the whole of germany extended family members were called upon to aid in the building up of the organization and as a result the mengele name is very common in the gunsburg area to this day and carl mengele strasse is one of the main streets in the town a curious contrast between the civic significance of the wider mengele family and the appalling crimes which carl and valberger mengele's eldest son would commit more immediately what this prosperity meant for joseph in the 1920s was that he had the financial backing to engage in extensive studies mengele was a relatively successful student in his teenage years he excelled at art and developed wide interests in music and in physical activity he appears to have favored skiing the town being not too far from the northern end of the german alps in april of 1930 joseph mengele passed his high school exams with a decent but hardly exceptional grade initially he seems to have considered becoming a dentist having noted that there was not one dentist in the local area and that this would be a promising trade to practice however he subsequently decided that this was too specialized and opted for medicine with an emphasis on anthropology and genetics he was clearly ambitious and his correspondence from this time indicates an individual who wanted to impress his family by becoming its first medical scientist and so it was that in october 1930 he left the family home and headed east to the city of munich the capital of bavaria here he enrolled in both the medicine and philosophy departments indicating an interest in both the hard science element of medicine and broader speculation and inquiry it was a mix of interests which would later have terrifying results mengele arrived in bavaria just as a new political party was emerging in the area and was beginning its ascent to power the national socialist german workers party or nazi party had been founded a decade earlier and had quickly come under the control of an austrian firebrand called adolf hitler in november 1923 this collection of disaffected war veterans whose main concern was to prevent the rise of leftist parties such as the communists and to redress the overly punitive terms of the treaty of versailles which had brought the first world war to an end had attempted a coup in munich but it was quickly suppressed thereafter they turned to constitutional politics to achieve their ends but initially floundered at the polls until the autumn of 1929 when after a decade of rampant growth the wall street stock exchange suffered catastrophic losses and the world's economy went into a tailspin as individuals lost their jobs and life savings throughout germany parties such as the nazis and the communists began to experience a surge of support in elections as the great depression which followed the wall street crash dragged on through the early 1930s hitler and his associates would become ever more popular with their message of xenophobia and resentment at germany's position in the world mengele was soon involved in the political torrents which were raging around him although he would not become a member of the nazi party itself for some time yet in march 1931 he joined the style helms an ex-serviceman's organization which was named after the helmets worn by the german army during the first world war the style helms marched regularly and held military-style rallies but the nazis also had an early appeal to the young yosef in his autobiography written years later mengele noted that the students of the university those who had already reached the voting age had contributed to this nazi success i was not then old enough to vote my political leanings then were i think for reasons of family tradition national conservative i had not joined any political organization though indeed i was strongly attracted by the programme and the whole organization of the national socialists but for the time being i remained an unorganized private person but in the long run it was impossible to stand aside in these politically stirring times should our fatherland not succumb to the marxist bolshevik attack this simple political concept finally became the decisive factor in my life from this it appears that it was only a matter of time before mengele joined the nazis mengele's early years in munich witnessed the full rise of the nazis by 1932 hitler and his associates were the largest party in germany and their support translated into 40 percent of the national vote in the reichstag elections which were held that year this was still not enough to form a majority government and germany's politics floundered in the second half of 1932. at stake was whether the country would lean towards the nazis or towards the communists the second largest political group in germany by this time whichever was to seize power would probably spell the end of the weimar republic then late in 1932 and into early 1933 the political and business establishment made a faustian bargain with hitler and the nazis agreeing to bring hitler and several of his senior colleagues into the government in the misguided belief that they would be able to control him and his party it was a fatal underestimation and having allowed hitler in the nazis quickly set about seizing absolute power a political emergency was concocted to warrant the passage of an enabling act which effectively allowed hitler as chancellor to rule by decree thus in the course of just a few short months in the first half of 1933 the nazis seized absolute power throughout germany and established a one-party state one which would hold power for the next 12 years by 1934 mengele was increasingly preoccupied by his studies although many of his contemporaries subsequently recorded that they never regarded him as being a particularly accomplished student many however would note that he made up for his lack of pronounced intellect with ambition and hard work his ambition had driven mengele to simultaneously study for a doctorate and act as a practicing medic during the mid-1930s it was during this time that the style helms which mengele had been a member of for some time were merged with the sturm thailand or brown shirts the nazi party's original paramilitary wing hitler had ordered the merger distrusting the style helm's fundamentally monarchist nature a serious kidney complaint forced mengele to end his association with the organization leaving him more time for his studies overall his studies did result in academic rewards in 1935 mengele was awarded a phd for a thesis entitled racial morphological research on the lower jaw section of four racial groups here mengele argued that it was possible to determine the race of an individual by examining their jaw alone however it should be noted that at this time mengele's findings were based on scientific principles and there was no overt racist or anti-semitic sentiments expressed in the thesis this is significant for it suggests mengele had not been radicalized to the extent he later would be having finished his thesis and acquired his doctorate mengele briefly spent a few months working as a junior resident doctor a compulsory service which was required for him to obtain a full medical license it was during this time while working in a hospital in leipzig that he first met irena schoenbein whom he would subsequently marry in 1939. their only son rolf would be born in 1944 however while his personal life had prospered mengele was not suited to the work of a resident doctor with its long hours and ward rounds and he was eager to resume his studies to that end he sought and obtained a position as a research assistant at the third reich institute for heredity biology and racial purity at the university of frankfurt in january 1937. here he would study under professor ottmar freiherfon for sure an admirer of hitler's and an individual who professed to be an expert on the ominously titled concept of race hygiene it is to this period in his life that mengele's more deplorable views and the corruption of his character can surely be traced until this point while he had exhibited an interest in race and genetics his earlier thesis was not overtly racist in frankfurt he became steeped in nazi racial ideology and in may 1937 he finally applied to join the nazi party and was soon accepted as member hundred 5 million four thousand nine hundred and seventy four in the course of the late nineteen thirties mengele worked closely with font for sure often authoring reports for courts which the nazi state was convening to judge german jewish people who were deemed to have violated the nuremberg laws a series of oppressive measures which had been introduced during the mid-1930s to disenfranchise the jewish population of the country this involved rather perverse medical evidence for instance defendants were often brought before the court to decide whether or not they actually had jewish blood and so would consequently have breached one of the nuremberg laws in some of these instances mengele and fond fashion would conduct physical examinations of the defendant measuring his or her nose and other features in order to determine if the defendant did in fact have jewish ancestry there is a definite shift here from mengele in munich he had used legitimate scientific methods in his research and produced work which historians and other scholars have generally agreed was unproblematic even by modern standards however in frankfurt in the late 1930s there was a descent into unscientific racial theories based around nazi ideology clearly his time at frankfurt had brought on a significant change of character whatever the nuances of his actual work mengele's role in frankfurt was allowing him to progress rapidly in his career mengele was promoted by fun for sure to become one of his assistant physicians after mengele had been awarded his full medical degree from frankfurt in 1938 it is from this time that mengele first began to discuss the concept of individuals and races being improved through appropriate selection a clear indication that he was fully involved in the nazis racial ideology by this time and politically he was becoming more and more mired in the regime several months after becoming a member of the nazi party he applied for membership of the ss or shutz staffer one of the paramilitary wings of the nazi regime headed by hanoi himmler and the one which would soon be placed in charge of a network of concentration camps which proliferated across central and eastern europe he would subsequently join the evaphen ss an elite subgroup of the ss while his professional work and political life were bleeding into each other as well as he joined the third reich institute and the kaiser wilhelm institute both institutions being to the fore of the study of eugenics in germany and as a result effectively mouthpieces for pseudo-scientific nazi racial ideology as mengele's studies were continuing through the 1930s the nazis were pushing europe towards war it had always been the stated aim of hitler and his associates to overturn the terms of the treaty of versailles and reassert germany's place as a european power while the first years after the nazis seizure of power in 1933 did not see an overt effort to do so from 1936 this aggression rapidly escalated in the spring of that year the german army moved into the rhineland re-militarizing a part of the country which had been expressly forbidden under the terms of the treaty of versailles then in 1938 austria was effectively annexed into a greater germany and further annexations quickly followed first the sudetenland in czechoslovakia in the autumn of 1938 and then early in 1939 the conquest of central europe was effectively completed when hungary and the rest of czechoslovakia were turned into puppet regimes at this stage britain and france had signaled that their appeasing of german aggression would not continue any further particularly if hitler tried to occupy poland and so it was that when germany did invade its eastern neighbor on the 1st of september 1939 britain and france declared war on germany on the 3rd of september the second world war had begun on the eve of the titanic struggle which would soon engulf the european continent mengele's career had run into its first and only significant impediment under the nazis in the summer of 1939 he planned to marry irena after several years of courtship but there was controversy in the run-up to the wedding with some querying whether his wife-to-be had some traces of jewish blood mengele enlisted the help of some well-connected colleagues and friends who assured the panel which adjudicated on these matters that irena had very nordic ways and yet a search through records for the extended family as far away as the united states could not entirely resolve the matter consequently while joseph was unable to comprehensively prove that he was not marrying a woman who had a small amount of jewish blood he was nevertheless able to sweep the question aside without having fully answered it there is a dark irony here as the man who would soon be deciding upon people's lives based on racial purity was prohibited from being issued a certificate himself by the nazi regime that would declare his own children to be a pure aryan blood mengele was pleased when the war broke out his son rolfe would state many years later that his father had told him that he viewed the war as a necessary struggle to reassert the german nation after years of being trammelled and downtrodden following the first world war mengele had enlisted straight away however his old kidney ailment returned in late 1939 and made it impossible for him to enter service until the summer of 1940 by which time the german panzer divisions were conquering western europe in a blistering military campaign mengele was originally stationed at a military base in castle in central germany he remained there only for a few weeks before being reassigned to a combat position in his role as a member of the waffen ss as such he was given an officer's title of unterstermfure or a sub lieutenant and the next several months were spent in occupied poland where mengele was attached to the genealogical section of the race and resettlement office the goal of which was to assess the racial purity and thus suitability of individuals who were being chosen to settle as german colonists in eastern europe the idea here was to effectively remove non-germans from the new laban's realm or living space which was being created in eastern europe while mengele was serving in poland the nazi state itself was meeting with success in its war effort the initial invasion of poland in september 1939 had seen that country quickly overrun and occupied thereafter a phony war of sorts followed through the winter and early spring of 1939 and 1940 as britain and france tried belatedly to re-arm themselves in preparation for a german attack on france it was slow in coming and when hitler did make his move in the spring of 1940 it was to occupy denmark and norway but then in the early summer a lightning attack on france saw the north of the country and the low countries completely overrun in just a matter of weeks by the end of the summer of 1940 britain stood alone against nazi germany worse was to follow with benito mussolini's italy now joining hitler's germany and a campaign was commenced in north africa to try to seize egypt and the suez canal from the british in the summer of 1941 that possibility looked imminent and other parts of europe including the balkans had also fallen to the axis powers of germany and italy thus in mid-1941 the war effort looked very bleak indeed for winston churchill and his government in london as the war turned in its favor nazi policy began to take on an even darker hue confident in the fact that they would soon be masters of europe and would not have to answer to international pressure from other states hitler and the leaders of the nazi party began contemplating a more stark approach to their anti-semitic policies in 1940 and early 1941 they were considering the idea of forcibly removing millions of europe's jews to the east african island of madagascar where they would live in a kind of open-air prison however when the north africa campaign stalled and the possibility of seizing the suis canal diminished a much more drastic idea began to develop this was the final solution the idea that europe's jews would be forcibly rounded up and sent to the patchwork of several dozen concentration camps which had been created across central and eastern europe since the inception of the war here a small number of the most able-bodied would be used as slave labor in factories to produce german war materials but most would be killed by exposure to gas within hours of arrival this approach was ratified at the vansay conference north of berlin in january 1942 and mass murder was soon occurring at camps such as treblinka sobibor and auschwitz mengele would soon be posted to the latter mengele was to see some military action in 1941 after a protracted period in poland in mid-1941 he was reassigned to the eastern front flushed with success in 1940 hitler had commanded his generals to begin plans for the invasion of the soviet union operation barbarossa as it became known would be the largest land invasion ever undertaken by an army when it commenced that summer hundreds of thousands of german troops swarmed over the border into the soviet union at first the invasion met with enormous success as the soviet forces melted away and the german wehrmacht advanced towards moscow and leningrad however gradually joseph stalin and his generals mobilized their troops in an effective fashion then the russian winter set in the german army was unprepared for the extreme cold and had not been issued with adequate winter clothing consequently in the course of the winter of 1941 the tide of the war began to shift as the german advance stalled a short distance from moscow mengele served on this front in 1941 specifically in ukraine during which action he was awarded the iron cross second class mengele continued to serve on the eastern front even as the war was turning against germany in january 1942 he was appointed to the medical corps of the waffen-ss's viking division this crack unit would eventually penetrate further into russian territory than any other division of the german armed forces however joseph was kept away from the front lines as a medic attached to the division he was deemed of considerable value and kept back towards the defensive lines where the unit was performing clearing up operations as opposed to leading at the front in july the viking unit was sent into action around the towns of rostov and bataisk in a vicious battle of attrition which lasted for five days during this particular refrain he received the higher version of the iron cross the iron cross first class as a result of rescuing two wounded soldiers from a burning tank while under enemy fire having dragged the pair to cover mengele had performed first aid on them he was also awarded the black badge for the wounded and the medal for the care of the german people thus it was that mengele returned back to poland towards the end of 1942. as a considerably decorated veteran of the eastern front mengele's return to poland was probably not a result of mere chance or a reward for his performance in the field of battle it is more plausible that he owed his recall from the eastern front to his old mentor professor fonfo sure who had been appointed as a director of the kaiser wilhelm institute in berlin in early 1942. this institute was charged with overseeing research in the right into the concept of racial purity and eugenics with the decision to enact the final solution and the expansion of the concentration camp system there was now a limitless supply of individuals who could be studied at the camps as part of this research and with zero consequences for the researchers as to the methods they employed in their so-called research already in the summer of 1942 fond for sure in making his plans for heading to the concentration camps had stated that he planned to take some of his former colleagues and students with him mengele was doubtlessly one of these and it seems probable that fon for sure had secured joseph's recall from the eastern front in mid-1942 for this explicit purpose consequently in january 1943 after a brief hiatus in poland mengele was back in berlin at the institute but he would soon be sent to the place with which he has become synonymous the concentration camp at auschwitz in poland while all of this was proceeding it was becoming increasingly clear to any german who took a somber look at the strategic situation that the war effort was doomed following the german defeat at stalingrad the russians had gradually begun pushing the german armies back out of russia moreover in the spring of 1943 britain which was now joined by the united states following its entry into the war in december 1941 had defeated the combined italian and german forces in north africa in the summer of 1943 a southern front was now opened in europe against the axis powers when the western allies commenced with operation husky and invaded the island of sicily as a preliminary to encroaching onto the italian mainland meanwhile the russians continued to press the germans back into ukraine and poland and in the summer of 1944 a western front was also opened with the d-day landings in normandy and france the defeat of nazi germany by the allies was now inevitable but what was open to question was the speed at which the retreat of germany would occur and which of the allied powers would arrive in berlin first on that might depend much about how high-ranking members of the regime would be prosecuted in the post-war settlement in may 1943 mengele who by now had been promoted to the position of haushtum fura a captain received his posting to auschwitz the auschwitz camp had started in a small way shortly after poland had been conquered however by 1943 it had been expanded into a vast complex under the direction of its commandant rudolf hearse there were three camps auschwitz one was the original camp and contained the administrative centers the guard's quarters and some of the earliest built detention facilities auschwitz ii or auschwitz birkenau was effectively an extermination or death camp here jews and other individuals who were sent here by the nazi regime including roma gypsies and soviet prisoners of war were murdered on mass in shower rooms which were filled with the gas cyclone b the bodies were then quickly burned in crematoria which were built on site this factory of death was where over one million people most of them jewish would be killed between 1942 and 1945. a final camp known as auschwitz iii or auschwitz monavie was used as a slave labor camp increasingly for the purposes of producing a synthetic rubber manufactured by the ige farben chemical company it was to this vast complex that mengele arrived in the early summer of 1943 when he arrived at auschwitz mengele was appointed by eduard wertz the chief medical officer of the entire camp to the position of chief physician of the romani family camp his role in the wider camp was varied and brutal the doctors at auschwitz were central to what was called the selection this was a process which occurred with new arrivals to the complex when the trains of thousands of jews soviet prisoners of war romani and other unfortunates arrived at the camp they were physically examined on the gangway next to the train platforms little did the bewildered newcomers know but the doctors appraising them were handing out death sentences to most of them they selected a small number of those who were deemed physically fittest and these were sent to the labor camps while a few others were selected for reasons relating to experimental research or some other reason but the remainder were all sent to the gas chambers and would be dead within hours mengele's detachment from any emotional response to this was strikingly clear some of the doctors at auschwitz genuinely disliked being put on selection duty a process which involved effectively condemning children and the elderly to death by way of contrast mengele would sometimes show up to do it on his day off mengele was soon engaged in other activities which point towards a total lack of any emotional response to the suffering of others this began almost immediately at the romani family camp to which he was assigned upon first arriving there several weeks after he first reached auschwitz there was an outbreak of noma within the romani camp this is an aggressive gangrenous process in which body tissue dies due to both the initial infection and the lack of blood supply which follows it affects the mouth and lips in particular a normal medical doctor's first concern would have been to treat his or her patients however mengeles was to carry out experiments into a disease about which little was known at the time patients who exhibited symptoms were isolated in separate locations to be studied most appallingly several children who had the condition were killed before their heads and organs were removed to be sent back to the ss medical institute in the austrian city of grads for later study this macabre research was still going on months later when a decision was taken to liquidate the entire romani camp on the night of the 2nd of august 1944 there were other atrocities the camps were riddled with diseases of all kinds the result of poor sanitation generally and the fact that those who arrived at auschwitz were often carrying diseases already a result of the cramped conditions of the trains which transported them to the death camp as a result diseases such as typhus and scarlet fever were often rampant mengele's approach to dealing with such outbreaks was viciously utilitarian on one occasion of a typhus epidemic he simply sent the entire populace of the barracks in which it had been detected some 600 jewish women to the gas chamber this barracks was then sterilized before moving hundreds of new occupants in who were de-loused and given new clothes on arrival the process was repeated with each barracks perversely for his actions in this regard in stamping out outbreaks of disease at auschwitz mengele was awarded the war merit cross and in 1944 was made the senior first physician of auschwitz birkenau and this was not an isolated incident there are many reports of mengele sending hundreds of people at one time to the gas chamber as a precautionary measure against the disease he was particularly ruthless towards the romani population of auschwitz but surely his most brutal action was in ordering the liquidation of thousands of jewish people towards the end of 1944 when the camps russian supplies which were a mere 700 calories a day for prisoners could no longer be sustained while mengele's actions in combating disease and ordering other mass deaths at auschwitz were brutal he has become most notorious for the experiments he carried out at the camp mengele treated auschwitz as a giant laboratory through which he could continue the research he had started back in the mid-1930s on heredity and genetics in this regard he treated the inmates of auschwitz as research material in much the same way as a chemist might treat the chemicals in his lab as something dispensable he was particularly interested in people with dwarfism and heterochromia iridum the latter being the condition whereby the individual has two different colored eyes his methods were often brutal one experiment involved injecting chemicals into the eyes of those with heterochromia iridum to see if he could change the colour of the irises often after studying the subjects to the maximum degree to which he felt it was possible he would have them killed or killed them himself with lethal injections so that their internal organs could be studied and their skeletons preserved for later research perhaps the most shocking experiments involved mengele removing some subjects organs without anesthesia one man who had one of his kidneys removed in this way was quickly sent back to work without painkillers mengele is particularly notorious for his research into identical twins at auschwitz with whom he became obsessed for his study of heredity and other characteristics often when the selection of new arrivals was taking place on the gangway near the train station at the camp mengele was on the lookout for twins for his research these were typically twin children who often arrived together though there is evidence of a pair of twins who were nearly 70 years old being examined by mengele exactly how many sets of twins he examined at auschwitz is unclear but alone during the summer of 1944 when 400 000 of hungary's jews were murdered on mass at auschwitz mengele is said to have identified and examined at least 175 sets of twins in a bizarre twist of circumstances being a twin could actually initially be of benefit to an individual in surviving auschwitz many who were selected in this fashion by mengele would most likely have otherwise been sent straight to the gas chamber while mengele's twin subjects were also fed better than nearly all other inmates at the camps their heads were not shaved and they were often permitted to keep their own clothing rather than wearing the standard issue uniforms which are given to all others at auschwitz mengele's research involved a large amount of taking measurements and other seemingly banal examinations of the twins witnesses later testified that mengele was extremely detailed in this work exact measurement of the twins skulls and other facial features were taken one twin who survived auschwitz later recalled mengele measuring he and his twin brother's eyes for approximately two hours such examinations could occur two or three times a week for periods of months and photographs were also taken all of this seems to have been so that mengele could record where physical variations however minute might have existed between identical and non-identical twins but there was also a much more sinister aspect to all of this often mengele would induce pain in one twin to see if it impacted on the other chemicals were used and subjects were injected with random substances most brutally mengele's work on twins extended to studying their internal organs and as such he routinely murdered sets of twins using injections of chloroform and then dissected them on one occasion he suspected a set of romany twins of having tuberculosis so he simply killed them and performed an autopsy to confirm his suspicion mengele had been wrong in his suspicions the children did not have tb what is most striking about all this was the simple manner in which mengele completely dissociated himself psychologically from the act of killing first-hand witnesses from auschwitz including jewish doctors who were forced into acting as mengele's lab assistants reported afterwards that mengele could be quite kind towards the twins he studied and other subjects of his research he would often bring them sugar or treats and inquired how they were doing yet just minutes later he could murder them as though it were nothing at all mengele was evidently so obsessed by his research that he believed it trumped any concerns of conventional morality while his total indoctrination in nazi ideology and the concept of aryan racial hierarchy inculcated into him the idea that murder of supposedly less evolved races was completely acceptable if it could produce some scientific benefit for the nazi regime the result was terrifying here was a man who hummed italian operas to himself while he dissected people he had murdered just minutes earlier for no reason other than a wish to study their organs consequently it is no surprise to learn that mengele became known in auschwitz as the angel of death in part because of his ubiquitous presence at the selection and because of widespread knowledge of his experiments the experiments would soon come to an end as the russian advance on the eastern front into poland had continued in the course of 1944 the ss had begun dismantling the concentration camps and destroying what evidence could be obliterated by the early winter moves were underway to abandon auschwitz and it would eventually be liberated by the advancing soviet forces on the 27th of january 1945. mengele was relatively late in leaving on the 17th of january he was transferred to the grasshorsen concentration camp in lower silesia he took with him extensive samples from his research and his copious notes but the bulk was left behind his time at colshawson was not extensive and by mid-february he also had to leave there again narrowly missing the advancing soviet armies this was just the beginning of a continuous effort to elude the conquering enemy for the next three months mengele moved even further westwards trying to disguise his identity by early may he was in the sudetenland in czechoslovakia it was here that he would have learned of hitler's suicide in berlin on the 30th of april 1945 and the collapse of the third reich in the days that followed on the 8th of may field marshal wilhelm keitel signed the final surrender of germany in berlin bringing the second world war in europe to an end mengele was a marked man once the war was over the allies had determined that they would not seek excessive retribution on germany itself in the aftermath of the war but it had been agreed that those who were at the top of the government would be prosecuted for war crimes and in particular those who had been in the ss and had run the concentration camps would be charged for their crimes mengele would be among them he knew he needed to stay ahead of those who wanted to apprehend him on the night of the 8th of may just hours after the war had officially ended he crossed back into germany now making efforts to disguise his role as a member of the ss and posing as a rank-and-file german soldier this continued for weeks in mid-june he narrowly avoided apprehension when some ten thousand german soldiers he had been amongst were detained together for questioning but just days later he was finally apprehended when his unit was arrested by an american division what is striking about what happened next is that when mengele was questioned he gave his interviewers his real name and it was even recorded as such by those who were questioning him but for some reason it was not realized at the time exactly who he was that he was a high-ranking member of the ss and that he was the notorious angel of death of auschwitz a fact which had been clearly recorded by this time in april 1945 he had been added to a list of wanted high-profile war criminals this was as close as mengele would ever come to justice for weeks he was transferred between detention centers but eventually in september 1945 he was released what seems to have won him his freedom was that he did not bear one of the blood group tattoos which nearly all members of the ss were tattooed with mengele had refused this in 1938 when he had joined the paramilitary organization that decision now brought about his freedom he was dropped at the town of ingolstadt in late september 1945 and from there he headed to the city of donaldvot this was a time when germans were still being stopped and questioned regularly by the american and other allied troops who were in every town and village in the country so it was that he began to identify himself as fritz ullmann in line with some documentation he had which had previously belonged to a friend of his by that name later he altered these slightly to read fritz holman another close call in donavort led him to head for the russian occupied zone in eastern germany here he finally managed to get word to his wife irena that he was safe and was avoiding detection irena mengele had already been questioned repeatedly as to her husband's whereabouts this was the beginning of a long period in which mengele continuously moved around germany in the post-war period his state of mind was not entirely level during this time bizarrely a couple with whom he stayed for a while late in 1945 remembered him as stating that he intended to turn himself in once he could receive a fair trial asserting that he had done everything he could to improve the situation at auschwitz eventually in the early winter of 1945 he found a job working as a farm hand in the foothills of the alps having returned to southern germany here he worked for the fishers under his alias of fritz holman the fishers soon began to suspect that their new lodger was a fugitive not least as mengele would speak about the allies as the crusaders who had invaded germany and his bitterness about the post-war settlement would often boil over in conversation soon he was back in contact with his wife and in the course of the months that followed she would visit him periodically in secret and this is the life he led for several years as the allies made episodic efforts to locate him these were often half-hearted though without any record of his whereabouts or sightings many assumed mengele was dead already in the same way that many other senior nazi war criminals had simply vanished in the aftermath of the war eventually in 1949 mengele decided to leave europe altogether this was achieved using the so-called ratline a network of individuals who were sympathetic to the nazi cause who used various methods to smuggle former nazis who had remained in hiding out of germany assisted by several individuals in this way mengele made his way over the german italian border in mid-april of 1949 and travelled to the city of genoa in northwest italy here he duplicitously acquired a passport from the red cross under the name of helmut gregor and in the summer he sailed for south america here the argentine government was particularly welcoming of former nazis a result of the acrimony between the regime there and the united states while several other latin american states also viewed aiding german war criminals as an act of defiance against the united states and its neo-imperial policies in central and south america moreover the nazis had shipped massive amounts of money and material goods to argentina in advance of the war ending and it was these which bought many their relative freedom there after 1945. as a result individuals such as adolf eichmann one of the prime architects of the holocaust and mengele were allowed to live in argentina unmolested for a great many years it was here in buenos aires that mengele first settled late in 1949. mengele's life in the years that followed was one of gradually establishing a new life in south america for a time he worked as a traveling salesman selling farm equipment tools which he had grown familiar with on the fish's farm in southern germany after spending some time living with a nazi sympathizer he moved into an apartment of his own in buenos aires some family funds were channeled to him in argentina from germany and it was enough for him to take a stake in a carpentry business and rent a house soon thereafter it is also probable that he practiced medicine during these years without an official medical license there are records which suggest for instance that mengele was involved in organizing illegal abortions his family life changed too mengele's wife irena despite remaining faithful to him through the horrors of auschwitz and the post-war period was unwilling to leave germany for south america they divorced in 1954 and mengele remarried four years later to martyr mengele his widowed sister-in-law who had previously been married to his brother carl and who had joined him in south america such was the laxity of surveillance of mengele that he was even able to briefly return to europe during the mid-1950s to see his son and he began living back in argentina under his real name the joseph mengele was able to escape detection in plain sight during these years was largely owing to the fact that nobody was looking for him the german authorities and the allies had assumed he was dead by the late 1940s this was despite coming to the attention of the authorities in argentina in 1958 he and several other doctors were questioned in relation to a network of medical professionals who had been performing illegal abortions though mengele was not charged the episode produced enough worry though that he decided to change his location again and in the late 1950s and early 1960s he moved around south america on numerous occasions at one time living in paraguay and briefly residing in bolivia as well and this cautious approach led him to avoiding arrest again in the summer of 1960 in mid-may that year the israeli secret service agency mossad raided the house of adolf aichman in buenos aires they had been tipped off as to mengele's possible whereabouts and were preparing to seize him too but mengele was in bolivia at the time eichmann was brought back to israel where he stood trial in the most dramatic prosecution of a nazi war criminal since the nuremberg trials of 1945 and 1946 he was found guilty and executed there in 1962 despite the close call was being captured that mengele had had in 1960 and despite the fact that it was now clear to international nazi hunters such as simon wiesenthal that mengele was in fact alive and living in south america he returned briefly to west germany shortly afterwards then he relocated to brazil where he resided on a farm near sao paulo belonging to a nazi sympathizer by the name of wolfgang gerhart while his second wife marta settled for a time in italy these were the years in which mengele was most actively being pursued as israeli agents and others sought his extradition from latin america and tried to pin down his location as such it is not often possible to be sure where exactly mengele was at any given time at one point in 1962 mossad had gathered intelligence that he was in egypt it is impossible to tell if this is accurate or not though it continued to be south america where mengele largely hit with the aid of nazi sympathizers such as gerhart and a couple of hungarian expatriates by the name of geza and gitastama these helped him acquire further hideouts around sao paulo and brazil throughout the 1960s their aid extended to mengele assuming gerhart's identity when the german headed back to europe to receive medical care for a family member joseph mengele would elude justice for the remainder of his life he eventually died on the 7th of february 1979 after years of poor health he had already had a stroke in 1976 and was affected by other ailments including high blood pressure his death when it came about was owing to a second stroke while he was swimming at the seaside town of bertioga in brazil the cause of his death is given as drowning he had nearly reached his 70th year making him one of the longest lived of the more notorious nazi war criminals and two years earlier his son rolf had visited his father in sao paulo he had not seen his father in over 20 years and it was the first time he met him as an adult his impressions of his father as recorded much later were of a man who over 30 years after the war had ended showed no remorse for anything he had done but rather continued to affirm that he had done what he did at auschwitz as part of his duties as an ss officer ralph mengele concluded that his father was an unrepentant nazi there was one final twist to the story of his flight from justice for many years the world was unaware of mengele's death and nazi hunter such as simon wiesenthal continued to make efforts to locate the angel of auschwitz in the hopes that he would be brought to justice however belatedly it was not until 1985 when intelligence brought a cache of mengele's correspondence to light in his hometown of gunsberg in germany that it was revealed that mengele had died several years earlier an investigation followed in brazil to try to identify the place of his burial these proved successful and it was soon revealed that mengele had been buried at embu des arches near sao paulo in brazil under the name of the man who had sheltered and aided him many years earlier and whose name he had adopted wolfgang gerhart consequently his body was exhumed in the summer of 1985 and an examination proved that it was highly likely that it was mengele skeleton a fact which rolf mengele subsequently confirmed it was never reburied today the skeleton of the man who once killed people at auschwitz simply so he could examine their organs is used as an educational aide at a medical school in the university of sao paulo what should anyone say in evaluating a figure like yosef mengele as we have seen this was a heinous individual seemingly totally lacking in concern or empathy for those whom he experimented on and murdered whether in the course of his experiments or as a cold effort to stop the spread of disease at auschwitz perhaps it is worth assessing how he became the angel of death mengele did not become a member of the nazi party until 1937 and until the mid-1930s he was a promising medical student who combined exploration of anthropology with examinations of human features he was an affable character according to those who knew him and scholars since have noted that his work from these early days is not problematic it is not suffused with racism or violence towards others but rather could have been read as legitimate scientific work of the interwar period in this respect mengele prior to his involvement with the nazis was somewhat akin to albert speer the architect who later became german minister of war production before the rise of the nazis and their involvement with them both were middle-class academics with promising careers ahead of them neither had demonstrated any overt outward signs of anti-semitism or the capacity for mass murder ultimately though after he became involved to the nazis and began his work into racial anthropology under professor atma freiherfon for sure in frankfurt at the beginning of 1937 mengele's character changed quickly by the end of 1938 he was not only a member of the nazi party but also of the waffen ss the most fanatical branch of the various nazi paramilitary organizations it was in this capacity that he enthusiastically joined the war effort following the invasion of poland in september 1939 and from the beginning some of his work involved the concept of supposed racial purity but the worst of it came at auschwitz between the summer of 1943 and when he fled the camp in january 1945 here in a stretch of time spanning just 20 months mengele personally ordered the deaths of thousands of individuals and in a great many instances committed the act himself by lethally injecting the subjects of his experiments these same experiments range from the immoral to the downright perverse such as when mengele sewed two people together in a bizarre test concerning conjoined twins they died days later after their wounds turned gangrenous mengele was certainly a harbinger of death at auschwitz during his time there in the end however joseph mengele escaped retribution he spent over 30 years in hiding across a vast range of places and countries sometimes returning to europe and moving with seeming ease around latin america it is also striking how many people were willing to aid an individual who was guilty of the crimes mengele had committed he was also very lucky in 1945 he was arrested by the allies and let go on the basis that he did not have the standard blood group tattoo that nearly all ss members had then he narrowly escaped arrest on several other occasions in the years and decades that followed most notably in 1960 when adolf eichmann was arrested in buenos aires as a result mengele escaped punishment in his own lifetime but his crimes will never be forgotten what do you think of joseph mengele was he perhaps the most brutal of all the nazis in his own way and what explains his rapid change of character from 1937 onwards please let us know in the comment section and in the meantime thank you very much for watching the man known to history as adolf eichmann was born as otto adolf eichmann on the 19th of march 1906 in the town of solingen in the region of north rhine westphalia in northwestern germany his father was adolf carl eichmann the head of a calvinist protestant household and a bookkeeper as such the young adolf was born into a middle-class fairly typical german family in this region of the country at the height of the second german reich the name given to germany from its foundation in 1871 through to its demise at the end of the first world war his mother was maria eichmann but her maiden name was shuffling she would die in 1916 when adolf was just 10 years of age and as a consequence much of his early life and teenage years were spent with mariette zwartzel as his stepmother when adolf's father remarried shortly after the death of his first wife adolf's early years were marked by a fairly nomadic existence in 1913 seven years after his birth adult's father had taken up a job in austria working for the lint's tramway and electrical company though the family did not move to join him until 1914 in part owing to the outbreak of the first world war across europe that summer and it was following this move that adolf's biological mother died and marie zwadzil became his stepmother marie was a devout protestant and eichmann would henceforth spend his teenage years in a deeply religious household while in austria ichiba attended kaiser franz josef secondary school where along with a traditional education he also learned to play the violin and joined the school's van der vogel group these were similar to modern day scout groups in that they involved hiking and other activities in rural settings but the van der vogel movement which had emerged in germany and austria in the late 19th century were considerably more ideological in that the van der vogel movement was set up as a reaction to what was deemed to be the overt industrialization of central europe and the abandonment of traditional german values this activity might have been instrumental in the development in eichmann of a desire to create an idyllic and allegedly pure german culture in central europe many years later the young eichmann was growing up in a region and wider central europe which had experienced enormous tumult during the 1910s which persisted into the 1920s from the late 19th century onwards the great european powers had been increasingly divided into two armed camps one led by britain france and russia and the other primarily composed of germany and the austro-hungarian empire in 1914 these tensions erupted into outright war although the first world war might also be said to have been driven by a wide range of other issues such as rampant nationalism and economic imbalances throughout the continent this first global conflagration lasted four years its most apocalyptic moments played out on the western front and its trenches in northern france and when it finally ended in 1918 when eichmann was on the cusp of his teenage years germany was the primary loser and as britain and france imposed a very harsh set of peace terms under the treaty of versailles resentment within germany grew in the early 1920s about what had happened this resentment was even leading to the emergence of belligerent groups which were willing to contemplate armed insurrection in countries like germany none more so than the national socialist german workers party or nazi party which was led by adolf hitler and which attempted a coup in bavaria in 1923 this atmosphere of political tension was the one in which eichmann would enter his early adult years having repeatedly proved himself to be a poor student eichmann had not only left kaiser franz josef secondary school early but also several further schools which he then entered including some vocational schools he was in favor of leaving and gladly elected to join the burgeoning family business in the mid-1920s adolf's father had gone into enterprise on his own and had set up the ontersberg mining company the 1920s were a time of remarkable economic growth throughout europe and north america and the eichmanns had entered business in the belief that they too could strike it rich now eichmann joined his father there in 1924 but the association with the family business would prove short-lived and by 1925 young adolf was working as a clerk at the offices of the austrian radio company he later moved on to work with the vacuum oil company in austria a major american oil company which in 1931 while eichmann was still working there would merge with standard oil at one time the largest petroleum producer in the world thus throughout his early twenties there is the facade of eichmann being a fairly banal figure a german emigrate to austria working various office jobs at major companies nevertheless while this is the figure that eichmann's employment history reveals his private life and his political affiliations throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s reveal something quite different while working at the vacuum oil company the young eichmann had joined the youth wing of the front kempha varainegong or front fighters union as it was known a right-wing militia movement which had been established by hermann hilte a former austrian army officer who like the leaders of the nazi movement in germany such as adolf hitler himself a native austrian had become extremely disaffected by the terms of the treaty of versailles which had brought the first world war to an end moreover hilton's movement was closely tied to hitler's nazi movement in germany in that they embraced both fascism and pan-germanism the idea that the german-speaking people of central europe and those that espoused german culture should join together politically the party also espoused the idea of acquiring living room or laban's realm as it was termed in eastern europe for german people by seizing it from the slavic peoples of the region and perhaps most significantly the movement was highly opposed to the presence of europe's jews in central europe this anti-semitic stance would come to profoundly influence eichmann's political views in 1933 the political atmosphere throughout central europe changed considerably in ways which had highly significant implications for the continent early that year adolf hitler was elected chancellor of germany and the nazis rose to power in the country although they had been a negligible political grouping in germany until the late 1920s the wall street crash and the great depression which followed it had profoundly impacted on the german economy paving the way for the ascent of extremist political parties such as that of national socialism eventually hitler and his followers were able to leverage the support of approximately 35 percent of german voters to acquire absolute power throughout germany they would quickly turn the country into one-party dictatorship and the offshoot of this in austria was efforts by the austrian government to crack down on movements within the country which were affiliated with the nazis in germany in 1932 eichmann had joined the austrian branch of the nazi party as well as the ss or schutzstaffel a paramilitary wing of the nazi movement but these would be banned in austria just months later following the ascent of hitler and his party to power in the north the austrian government rightly fearing the implications of a foreign power having political branches in their country the banning of the nazi movement in austria was significant for eichmann's next moves in the weeks that followed the prohibition of the austrian nazis one of the leaders of the movement in the country andreas bolek crossed over the border into germany and began establishing a kind of austrian nazi party in exile with operations being run from munich and passau eichmann now took part in this exodus and was living in pasau by the autumn of 1933. additionally he was quickly in command of a small team of ss members operating from the austrian border much of the work he was undertaking at this early stage involved the distribution of leaflets and other propaganda items the goals of this were multiple one was to rebuild the nazi party in austria but others involved fostering closer ties between germany and austria with the ultimate goal of uniting the two countries and developing a similar political program in both one which would create a powerful pan-german state spanning central europe and free of the vestiges of bolshevism socialism and the jewish people and this is all very telling as later in his life eichmann would claim he was not an ideological nazi but here in 1933 he was willing to abandon his adopted homeland in austria and take up the nazi cause in germany curiously while he was stationed in southern germany at this time eichmann was living near to dhaka concentration camp which had been opened near munich on the 22nd of march 1933 as soon as the nazis attained power for the holding of political prisoners he would become intimately familiar with the working of the concentration camps in the years that followed however he was quickly being moved to different stations in 1934 he was moved to a branch of the ss called the sd or zika heights the security service of the ss the first director of which was reinhard heiderich a figure with whom eichmann would become closely tied in the years that followed heiderich was a brutal individual one whom hitler would later claim had no heart while originally at the sd eichmann was assigned to study certain aspects of movements such as those of the freemasons the masonic fraternity which had spread widely over europe in the late 18th and 19th centuries in this role eichmann was charged with developing exhaustive information on all masonic lodges and members throughout the country work which would highlight his bureaucratic efficiency at locating people and cataloging their movements traits which would be central to his later activities during the war increasingly though in the mid-1930s eichmann was being assigned to positions working on the nazi state's policies towards its jewish communities one of the central tenets of national socialism was its rabid antipathy towards the jewish people and anti-semitism which gave way to palpable hatred in the pages of hitler's mein kampf or my struggle a two-part diatribe which he published in the 1920s as part biography part political manifesto the tangible oppression of germany's jews began as soon as they attained power in 1933 much of this was enshrined as the nuremberg laws of 1935 these essentially removed the citizenship of germany's jews and introduced wide sweeping laws against everything from jews having sexual relations with non-jewish germans de banning german jews from hiring non-jews of certain ages the overall idea was to reduce german jews to a lower social and economic status within nazi germany it would all culminate on the 9th of november 1938 when a huge wave of attacks against jewish people and jewish businesses was carried out all over germany the kushdal nacht or knight of the broken glass as it has become known resulted in the deaths of several hundred people and the imposing of tens of millions of reichsmarks of damage on jewish businesses and properties eichmann was not central to kristallnacht but he was highly critical of the emergence of another branch of the nazi state's jewish policy at this early date in the rule of hitler and his followers the nazis were still reluctant to simply attack or murder jews and there was still a desire to adhere to international law in this respect but from quite early on it was realized that different methods could be used to remove german jews from the country particularly forced to voluntary migration some of this could involve pressurizing german jews through economic measures to leave of their own volition while others revolved around the long-standing idea of european jews finding a new region in the middle east to create their own state where they could avoid the latent anti-semitic sentiment which prevailed not just in germany but virtually everywhere across the continent to varying degrees and in particular ever since the late 19th century many individuals had been viewing palestine and the surrounding regions the traditional biblical homeland of the jewish people as a place where a new state could be established to europe's jews and now the nazi state considered whether they could encourage this movement through a mixture of coercion and incentives eichmann became central to these efforts in 1937 he traveled to the middle east a region which had come under the control of britain and france after the end of the first world war and the collapse of the ottoman turkish empire which had previously ruled there here he found a thriving jewish community in british mandated palestine and the nazi state's efforts to encourage migration to the region increased in the months that followed this was in keeping with the havarra agreement an agreement which had been made with certain jewish groups and the nazi state in 1933 which would allow for the fluid migration of german jews to palestine as a result of this and the more brutal developments within germany such as kristallnacht and the nuremberg laws some 250 000 of germany's 437 000 jews emigrated from the country between the nazis seizure of power in 1933 and mid-1939 meanwhile eichmann had also started a family in the mid-1930s on the 21st of march 1935 he married veronica or vera libel four sons would follow in all three while still in europe klaus in 1936 host adolf in 1940 and dieter in 1942 in addition in 1937 eichmann abandoned the church despite the religious further which his stepmother had brought to their home back in austria in 1938 a further shift occurred for eichmann germany had united with austria in march 1938 the so-called angelus or union of austria and germany into a greater german state and following this eichmann was reposted to the country which had been his adopted home for so much of his youth here he was charged with trying to encourage and facilitate the migration of jews from austria to elsewhere in europe palestine or anywhere else outside of nazi-controlled territory and bizarrely much of his work involved the co-opting of local jewish community groups and other organizations to facilitate this work then in august 1938 the central agency for jewish immigration in vienna was established as a sub-department of the sd in order to oversee the voluntary or semi-forced emigration of austrian jews from the country eichmann was appointed to a senior position within the new agency it would prove extremely effective in its task and so efficient where eichmann and his colleagues in this agency are judged to be in the months that followed but when similar policies were adopted in western and eastern europe in later years nearly identical offices were set up which utilized very similar methods as had been employed in vienna from 1938 onwards while all of this was occurring europe was drifting towards war driven almost entirely by the nazi regime within which eichmann had become a key figure the terms of the treaty of versailles which had brought the first world war to an end had dictated that germany would be restricted to a small military force going forward but no sooner than the nazi regime had come to power in 1933 hitler began rebuilding the german armed forces and air force known as the luftwaffe under hermann goring following which a major breach of the terms of versailles was seen with the re-militarization of the rhineland on the 7th of march 1936 the area of western germany neighboring france and the low countries which was supposed to remain demilitarized worse was to follow as we have seen in march 1938 the nazi state effectively annexed austria into a greater germany while the following autumn hitler's regime began applying pressure on the european powers for the country to be allowed to annex the large part of czech slovakia known as the sudetenland then by mid-1939 the appeasement of germany by britain and france had succeeded only in forming czechoslovakia and hungary into puppet regimes of nazi germany finally when germany invaded poland on the 1st of september 1939 the two western powers declared war in response on the 3rd of september the second world war had commenced no sooner had the war extended eastwards into poland and other occupied regions such as czechoslovakia than the nazi states policy program towards the jews of these areas extended commensurately eastwards indeed the only difference was that owing to the concentration of ashkenazic jews in these areas the scale of such oppressive policies would have to be increased in line with hitler and the nazis policies and eichmann would prove central to these after a brief posting in the czech capital prague he was reassigned to berlin where he was now placed in command of the iraq central for yiddish auswandorong meaning the reich central office for jewish emigration here eichmann was subordinate to only one individual heinrich muller the head of the gestapo the most brutal branch of the german secret services and there is no doubting that eichmann was appointed to this position at this time because his intense anti-semitic fervor was realized his assignments in the weeks and months that followed emphasized this for instance he was placed in charge of specific activities which involved oversight of the deportation of tens of thousands of jews from specific parts of newly conquered eastern europe into either concentration camps or jewish ghettos such as that which was established in warsaw the polish capital shortly after the conquest of the country a sign of his increasing prominence within the nazi state's response to the jewish question was seen in december 1939 when eichmann was appointed as oberst durmban fura to head the reich's security head office referral 4b4 a sub-department of the sd which was responsible for jewish affairs migration and movement within the newly conquered territories in eastern europe and here eichmann was subordinate only to reinhardt heiderich within the sd indicating his ever increasing within the nazi regime when it came to jewish policy then in the two years that followed he was responsible for various anti-semitic programs including the so-called germanization of poland the migration and ghettoization of eastern europe's jews eichmann would later claim that he was appalled by some of the conditions he witnessed in poland for the region's jews but this can be dismissed entirely there is evidence that within weeks of his arrival into office in late 1939 he was planning the deportation and ghettoization of over a half a million jews in poland indeed eichmann appears to have only been limited in his actions by competing attempts by other high-ranking nazis to take credit for severe anti-jewish policies in eastern europe at this stage in the war the nazis primarily intended to resettle europe's jews elsewhere outside of the continent certainly to somewhere which would not form part of the german reich it was not envisaged though at this early time in the war that the nazis would mass murder millions of the continents jewish people there were numerous plans for resettlement and eichmann was soon central to these one of these early plans for resettlement of europe's jews which gained increasing currency in the early months of the war was what is typically known as the madagascar plan this envisaged the relocating of most of europe's jews to madagascar the large island in the indian ocean off the coast of east africa as ludicrous and perverse as the idea sounds to modern ears this was not an entirely new scheme when the nazi high command started giving it sustained consideration in 1940 it had first been proposed as far back as 1878 when the german orientalist paul de la garde first wrote about it and it had resurfaced many times in the decades that followed sometimes with the active involvement of jewish groups who wanted to explore the feasibility of establishing the large island as a new homeland where they could escape the rabid anti-semitism and pogroms of europe as recently as 1937 the idea was under consideration by the polish government in association with the french when the madagascar plan came under discussion by the nazis in 1940 eichmann was central to considerations surrounding it indeed he was in fact probably the single most important figure within the third reich in this respect on the 15th of august 1940 he presented a memorandum to the nazi high command entitled reichseger heights hauptant madagascar project meaning the reich security main office madagascar project the plan seemed feasible to eichmann at this time western europe had just been conquered and with germany and italy making rapid advances in north africa and the middle east it was believed that the suez canal would soon be captured in turn opening the sea routes for german passage to the indian ocean and madagascar accordingly eichmann called for the deportation of one million jews from europe every year for four years following this some debate ensued as to how exactly the island would subsequently be governed eichmann believed that the island should effectively be a prison state which would be run by the ss though others like franz rademacher a senior official in the foreign ministry argued that the jews should be self-governing though the island should be cut off from contact with the wider outside world these dystopian deliberations continued throughout the autumn and winter of 1940 and into 1941 and yet it is important to remember that whatever the debate on the details might have been a consensus was largely reached by 1941 that the madagascar plan would be the method of solving the so-called jewish question and resort to it was only foiled by events within the wider war britain could not be made to surrender in 1941 and then progress in north africa stalled blocking the nazis from acquiring access to the suez canal similarly the battle of the atlantic also entered into a stalemate this was significant as it had been intended to use britain's merchant navy to undertake the transport of europe's jews to the african island once the country was defeated so with these reverses it increasingly became implausible that the madagascar project could actually be implemented this would prove fateful for the jews of europe as eichmann's madagascar plan was effectively shelved the highest officials within the nazi state increasingly began considering more severe ways of addressing the jewish question such debates were underway throughout 1941 as the germans were making rapid advances into soviet russia and in the process conquering lands with hundreds of thousands of jewish residents it is generally understood that these deliberations peaked and reached a conclusion at a conference which was held in the berlin suburb of vansay on the 20th of january 1942 the vansay conference was organized by reinhard heinrich as the director of the ss's security apparatus authorization had been given to heidrich to organize such an event the previous autumn when the nazis were looking like they might possibly win the war with a successful campaign against soviet russia during that same movement german army units had committed widespread atrocities against eastern european jews and other groups then in a hubristic fashion believing the war would end in victory the administration called the conference advance in order to determine on a final solution to the jewish question chillingly there was an added political imperative to do so at the time as the nazis perceived it the administration having determined that there were far too many people in europe for the nazis to feed there were also plans in place at the time to simply starve 30 million of the nazis new subjects in eastern europe to death when the region was brought fully under nazi control this was the context in which the conference that would initiate the holocaust of europe's jewish people emerged eichmann's role in the ivanza conference was very considerable in the weeks leading up to the conference he drafted a series of talking points and points for deliberation for heiderich to use during the conference these included details which can only have been prepared by somebody with a keen awareness of what would follow for instance the memorandum contained lists of the numbers of jews in each european country as well as details of how extensive the level of immigration and resettlement from each of these regions had been in recent years such a memo can only have had one purpose to demonstrate exactly how long any policy of forced or voluntary immigration would take to remove the jewish people from europe moreover while hydra chaired the vansay conference and acted as its visible overseer eichmann essentially ran it from behind the scenes organizing many different aspects as well as overseeing the taking of minutes and preparing documents for it and dealing with its aftermath in so doing he inadvertently provided a record of his own complicity in the development of the final solution advanced in january 1942 though there can be no doubt that hitler and the upper echelons of the nazi administration were ultimately responsible for the holocaust figures such as heiderich and eichmann were absolutely central to it in their own significant ways central role in the final solution and the holocaust of europe's jews which followed continued following the vansay conference the final solution called for the deportation of millions of jews to several dozen concentration camps or death camps throughout central and eastern europe places whose names such as auschwitz birkenau treblinka and sobibor have become bywords for the horrors of 20th century fascism moreover the programme of deportations was known as operation reinhardt after heiderich but his second in command during these proceedings was effectively eichmann who acted as the main liaison between the various offices of the ss the sd and the other departments which were involved in the deportations once they had arrived at these camps the final solution essentially dictated that most of the jewish arrivals would be executed in gas chambers and this usually happened within hours of first reaching a camp the image we have of people being detained for long periods of time at places such as treblinka is a rarefied one and it was only individuals who could be used to slave labor or who were useful in some other capacity who were able to survive long past their arrival at the nazi death camps between 1942 and 1944 eichmann was one of the principal figures in organizing the deportations to the camps he was for instance charged with overseeing the recording of the numbers of jews in each area to be deported as well as seizing whatever remaining property they had which was then confiscated by a nazi administration which was increasingly starved of resources as the war dragged on interminably it was this role as an organizer a bureaucrat who did not control or develop policy but he was mainly dealing with the implementation of it which would later allow eichmann to present himself as nothing more than a bureaucrat one who was just as caught up in the machinery of the nazi state as any other individual for instance during this period one of the tasks he was charged with was organizing the train schedule for the trains which transported europe's jews from regions such as the warsaw ghetto to the death camps on the surface of it the organizing of a train schedule if feud in and of itself is a rather banal activity one which could be viewed as harmless if the individual doing it was unaware of where the trains were going but there is no doubt that eichmann knew precisely what the broader implications of his actions were for those who were being forced onto those same trains a clearer example of his complicity in the third rice crimes can be seen in 1944 early that year in response to secret overtures from the hungarian government to the allies to negotiate a peace hitler ordered an invasion of hungary in march 1944 the country was quickly placed under direct german administration and eichmann was dispatched immediately to the region during its period of self-government hungary's jews had remained largely unharmed by the nazi state but now under full german occupation the country's three-quarters of a million jews were in peril in the six months that followed eichmann was personally responsible for overseeing the holocaust in hungary throughout the summer of 1944 he organized trains carrying as many as 3 000 jews per day to auschwitz to be executed and by the time the deportations were curtailed in the late summer over 400 000 hungarian jews had been killed even when orders were received to cease the deportations eichmann overruled this and continued for some time other crimes included a forced death march of tens of thousands of jews from budapest to vienna in the early winter of 1944 a movement which eichmann oversaw and so there can be no doubting his absolutely central role to the hungarian atrocities there is other damning evidence of eichmann's role in the holocaust and his zealous participation in the same from the final weeks of the conflict in the final months of the engagement as the russians advanced into central europe and the anglophone allies crossed the rhineland orders were received to cease the deportation of hungary's jews to the extermination camps many of the camp commanders and notable figures within the reich fully aware of the repercussions which would now lie ahead for what had been done were attempting to reduce the accusations which could be made against them eichmann though ignored these orders and in the areas under his command the deportation of jews to the camps continued in the final months of the war and then in the very last days of the war when he was in berlin eichmann is believed to have declared before a group of individuals that he considered the murder of five million of europe's jewish community to be a supposed accomplishment of the war and one which he was actually proud to have played a part in given all of this it is difficult to place any credence on his later arguments that he was simply an administrator following out the orders of his senior commanders the end result of the holocaust which eichmann was central to orchestrating was one of the bloodiest crimes ever committed in the space of just over three years between the taking of the decision to implement the final solution in early 1942 to the final weeks of the war in 1945 approximately 6 million of europe's jews were murdered some of them in pogroms and massacres but most by being deported to notorious death camps such as auschwitz-birkenau where they were usually gassed to death within hours of arriving those who survived beyond this were generally used to slave labor often until they were worked to death as a result in history the holocaust of europe's jews holds a singular position while some events such as the man-made famine which occurred from chairman mao's great leap forward in china of the late 1950s and early 1960s resulted in significantly more loss of life perhaps as much as 60 million people in the case of the great leap forward much of this mortality was not premeditated the holocaust is unique for the planned clinical and barbaric manner in which it was decided upon organized and executed adolf eichmann was central to all three aspects the planning the organization and the execution of it however the crimes of eichmann haider hitler himmler and those many others who were responsible for orchestrating the holocaust would not remain hidden for long even as the final solution was being implemented in 1942 the course of the war in europe and further afield was shifting after a series of stunning victories throughout europe between 1939 and 1941 the german war machine finally stalled in the snows of russia in the winter of 1941 and that same winter the united states entered the war directly on the allies side after an unprovoked attack on their pacific fleet at pearl harbor in hawaii then during the course of 1942 the north africa campaign was effectively won by the allies and italian and german forces were pushed out of libya and tunisia opening the way for an allied invasion of southern italy through the island of sicily in the summer of 1943. a last do-or-die struggle on the eastern front was fought at the city of stalingrad in the autumn and winter of 1942 but when the russians were victorious here they began inexorably pushing the germans back westwards and were in poland by late 1944 at the same time the western allies opened a third front in western europe in france in the summer of 1944 from this point the third reich's days were numbered it was now only a matter of time before the full extent of the atrocities committed by the nazi regime across europe became known to the wider world while the british u.s canadians and other allies advanced towards the rhineland and the russians advanced into eastern germany in the winter of 1944 to 1945. the thoughts of many officials and commanders of camps and offices involved in the holocaust inevitably turned to trying to cover up and conceal what they had done consequently in many instances commanders began destroying records or even attempting to disguise what had happened at the death camps particularly some of the small camps eichmann himself fled from budapest to berlin in late december 1944 shortly before the soviets captured the hungarian capital when he arrived at the capital of the doomed reich he immediately began overseeing the destruction of massive amounts of documentation relating to the offices he had overseen in the past years particularly those associated with the final solution along with his role in it however in eichmann's case this was something of a futile endeavor while some nazi commanders might have been able to disguise their role in the holocaust through such destruction of records there could never have been a successful cover-up of eichmann's role the final days of the third reich came in the late spring of 1945 as the russians encircled berlin and the british and u.s came barreling through western and central germany many of the german high command would remain in berlin notably hitler who killed himself on the 30th of april in his reich chancellor ibanka and joseph goebbels his appointed successor who then also committed suicide the following day with the third reich konkit and the leader of the nazi regime dead germany surrendered a week later and the 8th of may officially became known as victory in europe day by this time eichmann had already fled from berlin and was living with his family in the relative safety of vienna the allies generally having ignored austria until after the war however he was subsequently captured in vienna but his real identity was covered up by his use of forged papers which identified him as otto ekman overall this was a chaotic time for the allies as they attempted to sort through tens of thousands of individuals to identify who exactly was responsible for the nazis going to war in the first place and for the atrocities which had occurred in the death camps eichmann was eventually identified but word of this reached him before action was taken and he escaped from a labor detail in germany in 1946 the beginning of a long life of subterfuge his first years in hiding was spent in germany moving regularly between various parts of rural western and southern germany under assumed names and throughout this time he would have been acutely aware of the allied war crimes tribunals which were being held at the city of nuremberg to prosecute the highest ranking surviving members of the nazi regime notably hermann goering rudolph hess hans frank and albert speer central to these proceedings was an evaluation of the complicity of these individuals in the holocaust something which speer essentially an architect and engineer was able to defend himself against however an individual such as hans frank who had overseen the general government of poland during the war and had been responsible not just for the warsaw ghetto but also the subsequent deportations to the camps could never exonerate himself he like many others was found guilty and hanged in late 1946 and a similar fate awaited eichmann if he was ever captured unsurprisingly then we see him flee from germany in the late 1940s first to italy and then from there to buenos aires in argentina where he arrived in the summer of 1950 and began living under the assumed name of ricardo clement he would escape detection for another 10 years yet eichmann would not escape justice forever and his capture eventually came at the hands of mossad mossad which literally means the institute from a wider hebrew term for the institute for intelligence and special operations had been formed on the 13th of december 1949 shortly after the declaration of the israeli state it was established as an umbrella organization to manage a variety of different security and intelligence departments within the nascent state of israel while today its operations have been expanded to cover a very wide range of activities one of its central missions in its early years was to gather intelligence on members of the nazi regime who had managed to escape justice in the mid 1940s in the 1950s and into the early 1960s much of this work focused on south america and in particular argentina a country which had a large community of individuals of german descent and where many members of the nazi regime had eventually fled in the aftermath of the war it was as part of this work that eichmann would finally be hunted down 15 years after the end of the war based to a considerable extent on investigations undertaken by the famed nazi hunter simon wiesenthal mission to capture eichmann involved five mossad agents led by shimon ben aharon they entered argentina undercover in early 1960 where they received information about eichmann's whereabouts and the fact that he was living under the name of ricardo clement they also had information concerning the whereabouts of yosef mengele a german ss doctor who had carried out horrific experiments at auschwitz during the war and who was living himself in argentina in the late 1950s the plan was to capture both eichmann and mengele and bring them to justice information about eichmann's whereabouts had been passed to mossad by wizanthal who had located eichmann's family home in buenos aires on garibaldi street in the city it was near here that mossad captured eichmann on the 11th of may 1960 having observed the house and his actions for several days as he approached his house three of the mossad agents bundled him into a car and took him to a safe house conversely the mission to capture mengele was less successful as he had already received intelligence about his possible apprehension and had fled to brazil despite several extradition requests he would escape justice for the remainder of his life right up to his death in 1979 mossad were acting outside of their jurisdiction in argentina and without permission from the argentine government accordingly they kept a low profile for several days after capturing eichmann during which time they confirmed his identity having done so they proceeded to smuggle eichmann out of the country by drugging him and taking him on board a commercial air flight dressed as a flight attendant they finally arrived in israel on the 22nd of may 11 days after eichmann's initial capture there the prime minister david ben-gurion announced to the world that one of the most notorious surviving nazi war criminals had finally been captured incredibly though this was not met with the universal approval that one might have expected the argentine government which for years had turned a blind eye to its country being used as a refuge for nazi war criminals in hiding objected to a violation of its sovereign territory because of mossad having carried out an illegal operation there while several western countries including the us and the uk were concerned about what eichmann might say in his trial about former members of the nazi regime who had been repurposed after the war to work for the western powers in the burgeoning cold war with soviet russia eichmann's trial commenced on the 11th of april 1961 and would last for nearly eight months eventually terminating on the 15th of december 1961. he was interrogated daily and surviving documentation from the time was cross compared scrupulously with eichmann's own statements in order to be able to determine when he was lying and when he was telling the truth then during his interrogation eichmann adamantly proclaimed that he was not an anti-semite for instance he claimed to have never read hitler's rabidly anti-semitic mein kampf or other key anti-jewish texts such as the protocols of the learned elders of zion while he stated that he disagreed with many of the anti-semitic pieces which appeared in nazi publications and periodicals such as desh derma conversely he claimed to have been a regular reader of jewish works and to have an interest and appreciation for jewish culture itself noting that he had once been a subscriber to the jewish periodical called the encyclopedia judaica as well as having read theodore herzl's the jewish state a work promoting the creation of a jewish state for european jewry thus one bizarre aspect of one of the architects of the entire final solution was to proclaim at his trial that he had actually been a supporter of jewish culture in europe eichmann sought to portray himself as simply an obedient bureaucrat who was following orders which had been handed down to him by his superiors he denied he was responsible for any of the mass killings and oversight of the deportations to the death camps he further stated that he had orders and had to follow them in a totalitarian state where one did not live long if one failed to carry out those very same orders moreover he noted that while he might have been aware of the killings which were occurring at the camps his role concerned the transport of europe's jews in certain areas under his control to other areas and he even claimed to have been personally uncomfortable at how the gas chambers worked when he was made aware of them stating i was horrified my nerves aren't strong enough i can't listen to such things such things without their affecting me then on one occasion when questioned on his presence at a mass killing at one camp he admitted to having been at the camp in question but testified that he had not looked in the chamber that he had heard the screams and that it so horrified him that he could not look at what was occurring thereafter he claimed to have tried to avoid ever having to visit the camps themselves while he admitted to his continuing role in organizing transport to the camps eichmann's baseless arguments and pleading of his innocence earned him short shrift against his own arguments the prosecution was able to cite hundreds of documents which directly implicated eichmann in the development of the final solution and the mass deportation of europe's jews to the extermination camps over a hundred witnesses many of whom had met or seen eichmann during the war were called to testify and the written depositions of several nazis who were in jail in germany were also presented to attest to his central role in the development of the final solution and the organization and implementation of the holocaust but despite all of this eichmann continued to argue his innocence stating that he had simply carried out orders to implement a policy which had been devised by others he steadfastly refused to admit his guilt and any expressions of remorse extended only to him claiming he was troubled by what had happened but did not believe he was ultimately responsible his prosecutors were not convinced on the 12th of december 1961 he was sentenced to death by hanging the first and only time the death penalty has ever been applied in a case within the state of israel eichmann did not accept the verdict without resistance the case was appealed to the israeli supreme court the bait hamish pat elion and the five senior judges who made up the supreme court bench were presented with an argument which sought to avoid re-debating the exact specifics of eichmann's life and crimes but rather attempted to argue that the german officials trial was invalid as israel had no jurisdiction to try him on the charges when and where it did it is a telling indication of how limp eichmann's defense of his past conduct was that his team was forced to rely on such a legal technicality as their only means of being able to dispute the case however the supreme court was roundly unconvinced of the legal basis for this claim and when the appeal was heard in late march 1962 it was quickly dismissed then last ditch efforts by eichmann to avoid his fate included an appeal to be extradited to west germany where he would most likely serve out a life sentence or for a grant of clemency which would commute the death sentence from the israeli president yijak benzvi yet none of these efforts succeeded and it was reaffirmed in late may 1962 that eichmann would be executed eichmann's wife vera was allowed to fly to israel to see him for the last time towards the end of april 1962. his execution was carried out on the 1st of june just hours after he learnt that the last appeals for clemency had been denied eichmann was hanged at ramla prison in the small town of ramla in central israel and only a small group of attendees was allowed to be there including a group of officials and some journalists who could report on the same to an international media which had been gripped by eichmann's case for two years eichmann had re-adopted his christianity in later life and his execution was also attended by a minister by the name of william lovell hull according to his most substantial recent biographer david cesarini eichmann's final words were long live germany long live argentina long live austria these are the three countries with which i have been most connected and which i will not forget i greet my wife my family and my friends i am ready we'll meet again soon as is the fate of all men i die believing in god then the israeli state anxious to ensure that any grave of aichman's would not become a macabre shrine or point of interest decided to have his body cremated shortly afterwards and discreetly scattered his ashes in the mediterranean sea eichmann's trial and death subsequently became the focus of much debate in large part owing to the appearance in 1963 just over a year after the conclusion of the trial of a book by the german-born political theorist and philosopher hannah arendt born to a jewish family herself and only having escaped to the united states in 1941 arendt wrote about the trial for the new yorker this was subsequently published as eichmann in jerusalem a report on the banality of evil aaron's work was highly controversial in large part because she criticized the manner in which the trial was conducted by the israeli state as a show trial but above all because of her depiction of eichmann as a banal demonstration of how evil manifests itself aaron was struck by his ordinariness a small balding and seemingly completely unimaginative bureaucrat what irent wanted to convey most clearly was the idea that great evil can be carried out simply by a disinterested bureaucrat seemingly without much thought at all but this interpretation soon came in for criticism and created a stir in the years that followed most notably the lithuanian-born jurist and writer jacob robinson attempted a point-by-point refutation of aaron's arguments entitled and the crooked shall be made straight the eichmann trial the jewish catastrophe and hannah aaron's narrative in considering nazi germany we cannot ignore adolf eichmann although he is generally deemed to be a less ubiquitous figure within the regime in the historical record than individuals such as adolf hitler joseph kerbels or hermann goering yet eichmann was one of the most central figures in the murder of the jewish people by the nazi regime as one of the highest ranking officials within the security services his role in the gradual development of the nazi regime's barbaric response to the so-called jewish question was as significant as any other individual who was responsible for the holocaust as a highly organized bureaucrat who had proved himself capable of recording vast amounts of data about groups and people across europe eichmann's skills in this respect were noted by the nazi high command and he was involved in organizing plans to deport the jews of central and western europe into ghettos in eastern europe this later gave way to an absolutely central role in the development of the so-called madagascar project the nazi scheme to deport millions of european jews to the african island where they would live in a kind of giant open-air prison eichmann wrote the core memo on this plan and had clearly become central to managing the jewish question by 1940 this soon gave way to even greater complicity in the nazis war crimes he was central to the devising of the final solution and helped organize the vansay conference at which it was adopted as german policy in january 1942. thereafter he played a key organizational role in the transporting of millions of europe's jews to extermination and concentration camps throughout central and eastern europe where they were usually killed by gassing within hours of their arrival there is no doubting eichmann's central role in this and he has been referred to by some historians as a managing director of the most bloody genocide ever to occur in human history and the clearest sign of his centrality to the holocaust occurred in hungary in 1944 where in the space of just six months between the early spring and early autumn of that year he led the nazis program of extermination which saw over half of the country's 750 000 jews executed in the camps and through other instruments like forced death marches eichmann showed little or no remorse for any of these occurrences later on what is quite unusual given eichmann's role in the holocaust is that he was not considered to be a key target when the allies conquered germany in 1945 and as the leaders of the nazi regime were being hunted down as a result while he was originally captured in the immediate aftermath of the war he was not identified properly or guarded well enough and managed to escape indeed when one of the american lawyers received a document about eichmann during the nuremberg trials which followed he made a note querying who eichmann was a peculiar ignorance about one of the most central figures in the atrocities which the regime had committed however this relative anonymity was certainly dispelled in the years that followed after spending years on the run and in hiding in europe and south america eichmann was eventually hunted down by the israeli secret services 15 years after the war and was brought to trial in jerusalem in 1961. his subsequent trial conviction and execution generated widespread international media attention and resulted in eichmann's trial and death being one of the most debated of any member of the nazi regime and of those responsible for the holocaust at his trial he sought to portray himself as a passionless administrator one who simply carried out his orders and was not an actual formulator or director of nazi state policy this self-vindicatory account of himself was the basis of hannah aaron's famous description of eichmann as typifying the banality of evil the manner in which great crimes can be committed by an individual who believes themselves to simply be following orders but while aaron's description has influenced many interpretations of eichmann it is hard to accept it as an accurate one adolf eichmann was involved in the evolution of the final solution at every stage and was one of the most significant figures therein whatever his arguments at his trial adolf eichmann was undoubtedly one of the central architects of the holocaust what do you think of adolf eichmann was he one of the more evil masterminds of the entire third reich or is there any credibility to his argument during his trial that he was simply a bureaucrat who was obeying orders please let us know in the comments section and in the meantime thank you very much for watching you

Channel: The People Profiles

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Length: 238min 46sec (14326 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 15 2022