Albert Speer deserves no forgiveness: My letter-to-the-editor was published at Observer-Reporter today

On Monday (Dec. 7) a headline article reporting the story of a retired California University professor (Dr. Leonard Siegel) who corresponded with Albert Speer for 12 years after he was released from Spandau prison.  Professor Siegel also interviewed Speer for three days at Speer’s residence in Germany.

In my early days of reading WWII, I was of an opinion that Speer was a decent gentleman, among all the Hitler’s thugs, the likes of Goring, Goebbels, Himmler and Ribbentrop.  Many years of reading later, he became a sly, despicable and immoral figure.  He “escaped a death sentence by presenting a subtle and sophisticated mixture of self-exculpating [exonerating] and self-blame.”  (From Richard Evan’s The Third Reich at War.)  He obviously tricked the judge at Nuremberg trial to spare him from the noose.

Professor said Speer was “an avid gardener who turned a vegetable garden at Spandau Prison into an elaborate garden with paths, and a variety of flowers.”  He also showed the professor his garden as he did Hitler 35 years earlier.

Speer would have liked our garden, no wonder I “liked” this guy in my earlier days of reading.  Reading is to find the truth and beauty; the beauty of people, of mind and of language.  Truth is hard to come by especially reading the history.