Monthly Archives: March 2017

Arts, Books, History

Book Review – ‘Speer: Hitler’s Architect’

Speer

Crony: Speer with Hitler in 1938.

Intro: Albert Speer saved himself at the Nuremburg War Trials from hanging by claiming ignorance of the Holocaust – then made a fortune from his memoirs in prison.

ALBERT SPEER cut a lonely figure, pacing the grounds of West Berlin’s Spandau Prison. Obsessed by numbers, the former Nazi minister calculated that during his 20 years incarcerated there, he clocked up a staggering 31,816 km.

He also said he read 5,000 books in that time; a questionable claim given he spent six hours a day gardening and two hours walking. But then, Speer was always liberal with the truth.

He lied to save his life at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals, he lied to the German people, he even lied to Hitler. And, as Martin Kitchen’s superb and surely definitive biography of the man who ran Germany’s war economy shows, most of all he lied and deceived himself.

Born in 1905, Speer followed his wealthy architect father into the business. His big break came in 1933 while site manager on the renovation of the Chancellery in Berlin.

Adolf Hitler visited the works daily and was immediately impressed by the young man’s polite manner and precise, direct answers to his questions.

Speer was soon a regular at the daily lunches Hitler gave for his closest cronies, and established the nearest thing to a friendship Hitler ever had.

Significantly perhaps, the self-conscious, aloof, narcissistic, ruthlessly ambitious Speer had no intimate friends himself. He even remained distant from his wife and six children.

In January 1938 Hitler appointed Speer as Berlin’s Inspector General of Building, tasked with rebuilding the city (which was to be renamed Germania) as a ‘world capital’.

Speer lacked creativity and originality as an architect, but he had one great asset: he twigged what Hitler liked in his architecture – a kitsch combination of ornate late 19th-century Viennese and the modern ‘cruise liner’ style seen in the Hollywood movies of the time. Above all, everything had to be big.

Take the new Chancellery that Speer built for Hitler. It was ridiculously grandiose. Visitors had to undergo a long walk through several rooms to reach the Fuhrer, the last a 146m-long hall.

Hitler insisted it had a highly polished stone floor, whose slipperiness would unsettle visitors as they approached the huge double doors of his office, a room 27m long, 14.5m wide and 9.75m high.

Hitler was never photographed in it because its inhuman scale would have dwarfed him into insignificance.

Stone for Speer’s projects was quarried by 10,000 concentration camp slaves in unimaginable conditions. When this was mentioned to Speer, he replied: ‘The Yids got used to making bricks while in captivity in Egypt.’

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WHEN dwellings had to be demolished for his projects, Speer seized 23,000 Jewish apartments to rehouse the displaced inhabitants, which meant 75,000 evicted Jews were ‘resettled’, a euphemism for being sent to death camps.

In 1942, three years into World War II, Hitler appointed Speer as Minister for Armaments, recognising both his talents as a brilliant organiser and his utter loyalty to the Fuhrer.

At first Speer produced what he called ‘a miracle’. Production rose as he reshaped the system, but the task became increasingly difficult.

Hitler constantly meddled in details of tank or aircraft design and frequently changed his mind. He had to be fed encouraging production statistics.

Eventually the only way to do this was to churn out vast numbers of obsolete models on existing production lines – like the Messerschmitt Me109 fighter – at the expense of building new factories to make jet aircraft that might have made a difference to the war.

As the Russians advanced and Allied bombing intensified, Speer lost vital factories, raw materials, and oil supplies.

By 1944, the war obviously lost, he was battling vainly to maintain output.

Now Hitler put his faith in ‘miracle weapons’, chiefly the V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets. Their factories were moved underground to protect them from bombs.

Slave labourers worked under appalling conditions, living in tunnels with no latrines, surrounded by their own filth, their clothes infested with lice.

Working 72 hours a week on a daily diet of 1,100 calories, 160 slaves dropped dead every day. But after visiting the factory, Speer wrote to congratulate the manager, seemingly unaffected by the workers’ plight.

Not so some members of his staff, who were so traumatised after witnessing this living hell that they had to take sick leave.

Speer could genuinely claim one thing to his credit. When Hitler issued his infamous Nero Decree, ordering the destruction of Germany’s industry and infrastructure, Speer countermanded it, travelling the country to successfully preserve things for the country’s post-war reconstruction, in which he naively believed he would play a part.

He was shocked to find himself put on trial at Nuremburg, but he mounted a brilliant defence – he accepted full responsibility for his actions but claimed ignorance of the mass murder of Jews. His calm, educated demeanour contrasted with the ranting and fanaticism of other leading Nazis and impressed the judges.

He escaped the hangman’s noose and got 20 years in Spandau.

Ever a loner, he wasn’t too unhappy in jail. His wealthy acquaintances smuggled in luxuries. Always sure of his entitlement, Speer complained if the champagne wasn’t up to scratch or the caviar not the best.

After his release in 1966 he published his memoirs. The book was a phenomenal success. Readers lapped up fascinating details of Hitler’s private life. It earned Speer a fortune.

Its portrait of him as the ‘Good Nazi’ absolved a whole generation of Germans of Nazi war guilt. For if, it was argued, this mover and shaker, a member of Hitler’s innermost circle, didn’t know about the Holocaust, how could an ordinary person be expected to?

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SPEER was deceiving the German people and, in his failure to admit his guilt himself.

Since his death in 1981, the evidence against Speer has mounted. His eviction of Jews from Berlin. His brutal use of slave workers. His presence at a speech given by Heinrich Himmler in which the SS leader said it was not only necessary to exterminate the Jews but their children, too, to prevent future revenge.

Kitchen’s exhaustively researched, detailed book nails, one by one, the lies of the man who ‘provided a thick coat of whitewash to millions of old Nazis’. It’s a fascinating account of how the moral degradation of the chaotic Nazi regime corrupted an entire nation as well as being a timely warning for today.

–     Speer: Hitler’s Architect by Martin Kitchen is published by Yale for £14.99

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Britain, Islamic State, Syria, United States

US have advanced plans for taking back Raqqa

SYRIA

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Raqqa, a city in Syria located on the northeast bank of the Euphrates River, is about 160 kilometres east of Aleppo.

Intro: Pentagon plan to seize Raqqa calls for significant increase in U.S. participation.

A PENTAGON PLAN for the coming assault on Raqqa, the Islamic State capital in Syria, calls for significant U.S. military participation, including increased Special Operations forces, attack helicopters and artillery, and arms supplies to the main Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighting force on the ground, according to U.S. officials.

The military’s favoured option among several variations currently under White House review, the proposal would ease a number of restrictions on U.S. activities imposed during the Obama administration.

Officials involved in the planning have proposed lifting a cap on the size of the U.S. military contingent in Syria, currently numbering about 500 Special Operations trainers and advisers to the combined Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. While the Americans would not be directly involved in ground combat, the proposal would allow them to work closer to the front line and would delegate more decision-making authority down the military line from Washington.

President Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to expand the fight against the militants in Syria, Iraq and beyond, received the plan last Monday after giving the Pentagon 30 days to prepare it.

But in a conflict where nothing has been as simple as anticipated, the Raqqa offensive has already sparked new alliances. In just the past two days, U.S. forces intended for the Raqqa battle have had to detour to a town in northern Syria to head off a confrontation between two American allied forces — Turkish and Syrian Kurdish fighters. There, they have found themselves effectively side by side with Russian and Syrian government forces with the same apparent objective.

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Approval of the Raqqa plan would effectively shut the door on Turkey’s demands that Syrian Kurds, considered terrorists by Ankara, be denied U.S. equipment and kept out of the upcoming offensive. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that arming and including the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, in the operation is unacceptable and has vowed to move his own troops and Turkish-allied Syrian rebel forces toward Raqqa.

U.S. officials, some of whom have spoken on the condition of anonymity about the still-secret planning, believe Erdogan’s tough talk is motivated primarily by domestic politics, specifically a desire to bolster prospects for an April 16 nationwide referendum that would transform Turkey’s governing system to give more power to the presidency.

Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the Baghdad-based U.S. commander of the anti-Islamic State coalition, has said that there was “zero evidence” that the YPG was a threat to Turkey. With some apparent exasperation, Townsend called on all anti-Islamic State forces in northern Syria to stop fighting among themselves and concentrate on the best way to beat the militants.

U.S. talks with Turkey, a NATO ally and coalition member, are ongoing. But events over the past several days in and around the town of Manbij have injected a new element in the conflict that could either help the Americans avoid a direct clash with Ankara, or set the many forces now converging on the town on the path toward a new confrontation.

Manbij, located near the Turkish border about 85 miles northwest of Raqqa, was captured by the Islamic State three years ago and retaken last August by the YPG, backed by U.S. airstrikes and military advisers. The town now forms the western edge of a militant-cleared border strip extending to neighbouring Iraq.

The United States had promised the Turks that Kurdish control would not extend to the west beyond the nearby Euphrates River, and Manbij was turned over to the Manbij Military Council, Arab fighters within the SDF. Kurdish police are in charge of local security, but the Americans have insisted that YPG fighters have largely left the scene.

Turkey disagrees and has long threatened to forcibly eject the Kurds, who it says are affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a designated terrorist organisation in both Turkey and the United States that is waging an insurgency inside Turkey for greater autonomy. After Turkish troops and their Syrian rebel allies took the nearby Syrian town of Al-Bab from the Islamic State on Feb. 23, the Turkish-led force began advancing toward Manbij and has captured at least two villages.

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Last Thursday, as Turkish shells reached the outskirts of the town, the Manbij Military Council announced it had invited the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to take over several nearby villages as part of a deal brokered by Russia to avoid conflict with the Turks.

Then on Friday, Moscow announced that Russian and Syrian “humanitarian” convoys were heading toward Manbij. Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis briefed that the convoys also included “some armoured equipment.”

Davis said that the U.S. government had been “informed” of the movements by Russia but that “it’s nothing that we’re party to.”

Meanwhile, photographs posted on social media showed U.S. military vehicles headed into Manbij from the east.

On Saturday, the U.S. military confirmed that it had “increased force presence in and around Manbij to deter hostile acts, enhance governance and ensure there’s no persistent YPG presence,” effectively inserting U.S. forces to keep two coalition members — Turkey and the Syrian Kurds — from fighting.

In postings on his Twitter account, coalition spokesman Col. John L. Dorrian said the coalition “has taken this deliberate action to reassure Coalition [members] & partner forces, deter aggression and keep focus on defeating ISIS,” an acronym for the Islamic State.

The United States and Russia have managed to avoid confrontation in Syria’s separate civil war, where they are on opposing sides. Trump has said repeatedly that the two powers should cooperate against the Islamic State, and he has indicated that the future of Russia-backed Assad is of less concern to him.

The Pentagon disapproves of possible U.S.-Russia cooperation, although U.S. officials are not unhappy at the buffer Russia and Syria now appear to be creating between Turkey and the Kurds, or the prospect of the Syrian government moving into Manbij. A positive result, officials said, would not only prevent Turkish forces and their Syrian allies — many of whom are on the jihadist side of the anti-Assad rebel coalition — from moving into the town, but it would also potentially push any remaining YPF forces to the eastern side of the Euphrates.

While Turkey has supported rebel forces fighting against Assad, it has never come into direct conflict with the Syrian military, and U.S. officials believe it would far rather have the Syrian government in charge of Manbij than the Kurds. There are hopes that Moscow, which has been simultaneously working to improve relations with Turkey, can help persuade Erdogan to back off.

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What the Americans manifestly do not want to see happen is the creation of a new military front and potential conflagration around Manbij that would drain both attention and resources away from plans for Raqqa. With the city believed to be the centre of Islamic State planning for overseas attacks, the offensive is seen as urgent and has already been delayed from original plans to begin in February.

In his final days in office, former president Barack Obama approved plans to send two or three Apache attack helicopters to the Syrian theatre but deferred approval of arming the Kurds as part of the SDF. Rather than moving immediately on the plan already in place, Trump at the end of January ordered the Pentagon to draw up new options by the end of February.

With the only real alternative being to use U.S. ground troops against Raqqa, Defence Secretary Jim Mattis has stuck with the basic outline of the plan drawn up under Obama, officials said. The combined Syrian Arab-Kurdish force, now numbering more than 50,000, has moved steadily to within less than six miles of the outskirts of Raqqa in an isolation phase that is expected to be completed in the coming weeks.

Even if Turkey does direct its forces south toward Raqqa, the hope is that the difficult terrain they would have to travel would prevent them from reaching there until after the offensive is well underway.

Rather than a wholesale revision, the new proposal calls for increased U.S. participation, with more personnel and equipment and less-restrictive rules. As they have in support of the Iraqi military in Mosul, U.S. fixed-wing aircraft and attack helicopters would actively back the ground force. U.S. owned and operated artillery would be moved into Syria to pound the militants from afar, while more Special Operations troops would move closer to the front lines — requiring more U.S. military assets to protect them.

The SDF — both Kurds and Arabs — would be supplied with weaponry along with vehicles and equipment to travel through and disarm what are expected to be extensive minefields and other improvised explosive devices along the way.

Trump’s executive order also directed the Pentagon to recommend changes to Obama administration restrictions on military rules of engagement that went beyond those required by international law. Principal among them is an Obama executive order, signed last summer, imposing strict rules to avoid civilian casualties. It is not known whether the new military proposal would lift those restrictions.

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Arts, History, Science, Society

Quantum Leaps: ‘Leonardo Da Vinci’

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1452 – 1519

It is something of an indulgence to include Leonardo Da Vinci in any study of scientists who changed the world, not least because most of his work remained unpublished and largely forgotten centuries after his death. His, however, was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant scientific minds of all time; arguably the biggest handicap preventing him from profoundly changing the world was the era in which he lived.

The genius of Leonardo’s designs for his inventions so far outstripped both his contemporaries’ intellectual grasp and contemporary technology that they were rendered literally inconceivable to anyone but him. If Leonardo could have teleported to Edison’s time, with his access to nineteenth century technology, one can only speculate how much more he may or may not have achieved than even Edison himself. But even in his own time, Leonardo’s achievements were notable:

. RENAISSANCE MAN

Leonardo is celebrated as the Renaissance artist who created such masterpieces as the Last Supper (1495 – 97) and the Mona Lisa (1503 – 06), yet much of his time was spent in scientific enquiry, often to the detriment of his art. The range of areas Leonardo examined was breathtaking. It included astronomy, geography, palaeontology, geology, botany, zoology, hydrodynamics, optics, aerodynamics and anatomy. In the later field, in particular, he undertook a number of human dissections, largely on stolen corpses, to make detailed sketches of the body. Irrespective of the breadth of his studies, however, perhaps the most important contribution Leonardo made to science was the method of his enquiry, introducing a rational, systematic approach to the study of nature after a thousand years of superstition. He would begin by setting himself straightforward scientific queries such as ‘How does a bird fly?’ Next, he would observe his subject in its natural environment, make notes on its behaviour, then repeat the observation over and over to ensure accuracy, before making sketches and ultimately drawing conclusions.

. AERODYNAMICS

Moreover, in many instances he could then directly apply the results of his enquiries into nature to designs for inventions for human use. For example, his work in aerodynamics led him to make sketches for several flying machines – which, potentially, could have flown – including a primitive helicopter, some five hundred years before the invention became a reality. He even envisaged the need for his flying machines to have a retractable landing gear to improve their aerodynamics once airborne. In 1485 he designed a parachute, three hundred years before becoming an actuality, and included calculations for the necessary size of material to safely bring to ground an object with the same weight as a human. He also had an excellent understanding of the workings of levers and gears, enabling him to design bicycles and cranes.

. HYDRODYNAMICS

Leonardo’s studies in hydrodynamics led to numerous sketches on designs for waterwheels and water-powered machines centuries before the industrial revolution. In addition, he sketched humidity-measuring equipment as well as a number of primitive diving suits, mostly with long snorkel devices to provide a supply of air.

. MILITARY INVENTIONS

During his work for the Duke of Milan between 1482 and 1499, Leonardo prepared an array of designs for weaponry such as catapults and missiles. Even in this arena, however, he could not help but create sketches of weapons that lay way ahead of their time such as hand-grenades, mortars, machine-type guns, a primitive tank and, most audaciously, a submarine.

Leonardo’s Influence

Any list of scientists ‘who could’ have changed the world, then Leonardo Da Vinci would surely be at the top of the list. But although many of the designs for his potentially world-changing creations were never published, his methodical approach to science marks a significant and symbolic stepping-stone from the Dark Ages into the modern era.

Hoping to secure employment with the Duke of Milan, he wrote to him that his areas of expertise included: the construction of bridges and irrigation canals, the designing of military weapons and architecture, as well as painting and sculpture. To add to the list, Leonardo is also credited with being the first ever person to conceive of a bicycle.

Supplementary appendage:

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Leonardo Da Vinci painting: The Mona Lisa. An oil painting by the Italian Renaissance artist which was created in 1503.

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