Speerheading the Resistance?

So, who's your favourite Nazi?

Is it Himmler, the sadistic chicken farmer with that silly little hey-fuhrer-look-at-me-I'm-just-like-you moustache, and fanatical hatred of the Jews?

Or Hess, who thought he could fly to Scotland and single-handedly end the war, but who ended up in jail until 1987, when he hung himself, a broken 93-year old man?

Perhaps it is Goering, the obese, drug-addled former flying ace, who had a penchant for silk uniforms and looting.

Or, if you are particularly eccentric, you might be a fan of Ribbentrop, the former wine salesman and Foreign Minister, who was so abysmal at his job, that in 1945 he still thought the Prime Minister of the country they had been fighting for 6 years, was called Vincent Churchill.

Well, I love all of these kooky cats, but at the moment I am quite interested in the fellow who is often referred to as the 'Good Nazi', the intelligent, wily, and multi-talented Albert Speer.

Speer joined the Party relatively late, but quickly worked his way into Hitler's favour, thanks to his formidable skills as an architect. The Fuhrer was a failed artist and architect, so he took a liking to the young man, eventually making him his personal building and city designer.

It was Speer who was responsible for the design of the 'pillars of light' effect at the Nuremberg stadium where the Nazis held their impressive rallies, and also for the new Reich Chancellery (where Hitler met his end in 1945), as well as the city plans for 'Germania', the triumphal new capital city that Hitler may well have built, if World War Two hadn't gotten in the way.

Now, as this global conflict was more about destroying stuff than making it, it would seem that Speer had found his career at something of a dead end. However, the Fuhrer had a soft spot for this spohisticated and charming young chap, so when the Minister for Armament Production carked it in 1942, Speer was rather unexpectedly elevated into this vital position.

He plunged into the role with gusto, promptly lending his organisational skills to the coordination of Germany's war industries. Over the next three years, he did an amazing job - while Hitler's armies were being pushed back on three fronts, Speer actually managed to increase production in some areas, churning out the tanks, planes, rockets and guns which were needed to keep the Third Reich in the war. He did face something of a labour shortage, what with every able-bodied male from about 10 to 60 being forced into the defence of the Fatherland, but he was creative in his solution: he used the millions of Jews, Slavs, communists and others who had been swept into concentration camps by Himmler to make his armaments! Not only did this give the idle souls something to do, they were so grateful for being provided with gainful employment, that they did it for free! A Good Nazi, indeed.

In 1945, it was obvious to all (except the by-now almost completely delusional Hitler) that the war was lost. Hitler ordered Speer to destroy all German industry and infrastructure, so as to deny it to the enemy. Speer pretended to obey, but later admitted to Hitler that he had been unable to put this 'scorched earth' policy into effect. Speer recalls that he told Hitler this during their last meeting, and that his boss was actually quite calm about this act of complete disobedience. One would have expected Hitler to lose his nut, and have Speer executed for this; so one must ask whether Speer simply invented the story of his confession to the Fuhrer. There are no witnesses, and the story does make Speer look both noble, and brave.

Now we approach the myth. Speer, around the time he told this story (soon after his arrest), also said that he had actually planned to assassinate Hitler. He claimed that he had advanced plans to poison everyone in the Chancellery bunker, by throwing a gas canister into the bunker's air intake. His plot was frustrated by a high wall that had been built around the vent.

Just bad luck? As a rival architect sarcastically stated: "the second most powerful man in the state did not have a ladder."

The question is: did Speer actually plan to assassinate his beloved Fuhrer?

I have no idea, and I don't think anyone does, except for Speer himself, and he's been dead for 28 years.

But I will go out on a limb and say: the sneaky bastard was lying.

You see, the evidence all points to Speer making this story up. Let me list my reasons:

1) He was a shameless self-promoter. Look at the way he clambered up the Nazi hierarchy, going from designing a couple of buildings, to running the entire wartime economy; look at the way he saved his skin at the Nuremberg Trials, by pleading guilty, and then admitting to his complete remorse for what he did, and managing to get off with 20 years in jail, while others at his level received death; look at his massive, best-selling memoirs, written in Spandau prison, and which, more than anything, put forward the myth that Speer was a fundamentally good man, propelled by forces beyind his control.

2) It is the obvious lie to construct. If I had been a senior Nazi, arrested after the war, and wished to save my own skin, I would also concoct a story about how I actually hated the Fuhrer, and thought about killing him.

3) The story doesn't stack up. Firstly, Speer designed the Chancellery, and was a seasoned architect. He, more than anyone, should have known the layout of the building, and the obvious ways to bypass the protective features. A high wall wouldn't have stopped him. If he was truly serious, I'm sure he could have gotten some of his slave labourers to whip up a ladder for him.

4) His actions afterwards don't fit in, either. If he had really thought about killing Hitler early in 1945, then why did he make the dangerous and daring dash back to Berlin a week before the Russians took the city, simply to say goodbye to Hitler, and (possibly)to confess his betrayal to him? these are not the actions of a man who has lost all faith in his leader, nor are they the actions of a man who has harboured deeply treasonous plans. Hitler by this stage was paranoid and frantic. Speer, if he had actually come close to assassinating his boss, would have been well-advised to stay away at this juncture. I just don't buy his story here at all.

5) Throwing poison gas into the Fuhrerbunker? Come on, you're just recycling Himmler's Final Solution strategy there. Come up with something original, Albert.

So, there you go: Speer was a great architect, a master organiser, an expert at contrition, a successful writer, and a fantastic bullshitter.

Heil Ranga!

I received my weekly online gossip email today, popbitch, which has recently been revealing some famous redeheads from history. A few we know: Winston Churchill, Alexander the Great, Eisenhower. A few are more surprising: Lenin, for example, who must go down as the most important ranga in the annals of history.

Apart, that is, from popbitch's famous redhead today: Adolf Hitler.

Could it be? Was Adolf really a ginge?

I have nevr encountered this myth before, and I have been scouting the net all evening for some tidbit to support this assertion. but I have found just one comment, on one dodgy blog, that backs it up. This blogger reckons that Hitler was a reddie, and that he died his hair black to cover it up.

This would make sense, considering Hitler's view of redheads. There is a fair bit of evidence that says he thought gingers were unnatural and were not to be tolerated bypeople from good Aryan stock.

However, I have never read or heard anything about the fuhrer's predilection for black hair dye. So I decided to look at the photographic evidence. Surely, if Hitler was ginger, he would have been so as a youngster, and surely, he wouldn't have started dyeing his hair until he was an adult.

Here's the earliest photo of our Adolf:


His toddler's mop does look pretty dark, doesn't it?

How about as a school boy? (I do love his arrogant gaze in this photo, it speaks volumes of the person behind the eyes...):


Again, unless Frau Hitler was colouring his locks, I reckon he was a brunette. I'm definitely calling popbitch on their Adolf Ranga claim.

Now, a very quick one...was Hitler actually a fanatical vegetarian, as we are so often told?

This one is interesting, and pretty easy to dispute. Despite his claim to be a vegetarian from at least the early 1930s to his death, there are ample sources indicating that he (albeit infrequently) partook of animal products over this time. Cooks, secretaries, doctors, and eyewitnesses have mentioned episodes where Hitler ate liver, sausage, squab (young pigeon, if you didn't know), animal fat, pork, caviar, and medicines derived from animal products.

So, even though he delighted in disgusting dinner guests by describing his visit to a slaughterhouse in the Ukraine, it seems that Hitler would occasionally enjoy a morsel of the meaty stuff. True, he didn't eat much (mainly for health reasons, it seems, though there is a crackpot theory that conjures up the philosophy of Richard Wagner), but he was not a true veggo by today's standards.

Alright, that's enough Adolf. Auf wiedersehn.

One lump or two?

Hitler, has only got one ball
The other is in the Albert Hall
Himmler, has something sim'lar
And poor old Goebbels, has no balls, at all



We've all heard that ditty - or a variation on it - at some point, probably in some god-awful World War Two film where the Brits have stiff upper lips and a doughty, pipe-smoking officer, and the Nazis are all...well, a bit shit.

The song is known as the Colonel Bogey March, and most of us - me included - probably think this delightful little piece of poetry has at least some basis in fact. I mean, Hitler did have only one testicle, didn't he? Sure, the other wasn't on display in a large British concert venue, but Hitler was sexually not all there, so to speak. Why else would you invade Poland, and eat vegetarian food, and rant on about the raw deal the Aryans were getting, whilst having untold millions of untermensch slaughtered?

I'm still a big believer in the two Hitler sex myths. As in, these ones:

1) Hitler only had one ball.
2) Hitler was into some WEIRD sexual stuff. Like watching people shit on each other.

God, they're good, aren't they?? They just explain so much. But are they true?

Let's do Myth #1 first. Was Hitler monorchic?

Well, apparently, yes. The evidence suggest he received an injury to his groin (whenever you hear this on Sports Tonight, read: bollocks) during WW1. Also, his commanding officer during this war has stated that a routine VD exam showed Hitler was missing his left testicle. The Soviets released the results of an autopsy during the 1970s also saying as much, but this postmortem has been largely dismissed as a pile of Brezhnev-era bullshit. I mean, whatever was left of the Fuhrer's smoking corpse when the Commies picked it up was probably sans-bollock because of the hasty attempt to cremate it.

Apparently, his doctors during the 1930s and 1940s did not note his missing organ. But, let's be honest, if you had been Hitler's personal medic in 1940, would you have drawn the mad bastard's attention to his loss?

The other theory is that he had syphillis, and had lost his little boy due to the onset of the late stages of the disease. The associated madness could explain his rather erratic behaviour between the years of 1919 and 1945.

Some say the above song was written by the British government as a propaganda tool, designed to send Hitler around the bend by reminding him of his impotence. Myth? Or the most extreme form of bullying ever witnessed in international diplomacy?

Did it even matter? In one online forum, I found this comment:

"Like Miranda said on Sex and the City... "Women don't care. We care about nice arms, great eyes, a big dick... I've never once heard a woman say: 'He had such a big full scrotum.'"

I guess only one person could have ever told us. Eva Braun. And he had the poor bitch poison herself with cyanide.

OK. Myth decidely neither proved nor disproved. What about the second one?

Was Hitler some sort of weird sexual fetishist?

From what I've read, there doesn't seem to be much evidence for this. There are a lot of quasi-Freudian analyses, usually by Jewish guys called Dr. _berg, who assert that Hitler's over-protective mother fuelled his later obsessions with the anal/faecal/buccal regions, and this was why he was such a cad.

Look, he was an arsehole. You don't need to be into amputee-sex or tranny porn to be a headcase. Looking for sexual motivation behind his actions kind of denies the basic inhumanity of his character. And anyway, some of the nicest folks I know like being pooed upon.

I have found it difficult to find any real proof of Hitler's preoccupation with poo, wee or bums. And, as a British citizen, I have to admit that my entire sense of humour is based around these three things, so hey, what's the problem?

My verdict? No watching people shit on each other's chests for sexual gratification.

Also, he fancied his niece. This one is pretty much true. Sounds gross, but Hitler's dad did marry his niece, and together they spawned Adolf. So he wouldn't have found it too weird.

Hitler had two balls. But possibly he had syphillis. He didn't have much sex, but that he did have was with a blond Aryan girl.

Debate over.