Albert Speer (born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer; ; pronounced [ˈʃpeːɐ̯] ( listen); March 19, 1905 – September 1, 1981) was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office. As "the Nazi who said sorry", he accepted responsibility at the Nuremberg trials and in his memoirs for crimes of the Nazi regime. His level of involvement in the persecution of the Jews and his level of knowledge of the Holocaust remain matters of dispute.
Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931, launching him on a political and governmental career which lasted fourteen years. His architectural skills made him increasingly prominent within the Party and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Hitler commanded him to design and construct a number of structures, including the Reich Chancellery and the Zeppelinfeld stadium in Nuremberg where Party rallies were held. Speer also made plans to reconstruct Berlin on a grand scale, with huge buildings, wide boulevards, and a reorganized transportation system.
Plot
Chancellor Adolf Hitler assists Azad Hind Fauj, led by Subhas Chandra Bose, which include a group of Indians who are frustrated with the Gandhian manner of non-violence to compel the oppressive British to quit their country. Punjab-based Balbir Singh is one such member of the Fauj, who has left his wife, Amrita, and son, Veer, behind. Ironically, Amrita is a follower of Mohandas Gandhi, and patiently awaits her husband's return home. Mohandas writes to Adolf, addressing him as 'dear friend', imploring him to end the violence. The allies, which include America, Russia, Britain and France close in on the Germans, while Adolf, a little perturbed by defectors, but still in company of many loyal supporters, is determined to continue, and even makes preparations to wed his mistress of 12 years, Eva Braun. Meanwhile Balbir and the rest of the Fauj must risk their lives through treacherous territory, allied soldiers, and quite surprisingly - they themselves - when they end up bickering and fighting with each other.
Plot
In Nazi Germany during World War II, as the tide turned in favor of The Allies, a cadre of senior German officers and politicians desperately plot to topple the Nazi regime before the nation is crushed in a near-inevitable defeat. To this end, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, an Army officer convinced he must save Germany from Hitler, is recruited to mastermind a real plan. To do so, he arranges for the internal emergency measure, Operation: Valkyrie, to be changed to enable his fellows to seize control of Berlin after the assassination of the Fuhrer. However, even as the plan is put into action, a combination of bad luck and human failings conspire on their own to create a tragedy that would prolong the greater one gripping Europe.
Keywords: 1940s, adjutant, afrika-corps, air-raid, air-raid-shelter, air-raid-siren, airplane, amputee, armored-vehicle, arrest
Many saw evil. They dared to stop it.
[from trailer]::Henning von Tresckow: We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler's Germany.
[from trailer]::Henning von Tresckow: You scared me half to death.::Col. Claus von Stauffenberg: You'll be closer than that before we're finished.
[from trailer]::Erich Fellgiebel: [to Stauffenberg] When the S.S. catch you, they will pull you apart like warm bread.
[from trailer]::Col. Claus von Stauffenberg: I am involved in high treason with all means available to me. Can I count you in?::Werner von Haeften: For anything, sir. Anything at all.::Col. Claus von Stauffenberg: "Anything" is a *very* dangerous word, Lieutenant.
[from trailer]::Col. Claus von Stauffenberg: Only God can judge us now.
[from trailer]::Col. Claus von Stauffenberg: If I fail, they'll come for you. They'll come for all of you.::Nina Von Stauffenberg: I know.
[from trailer]::Henning von Tresckow: God promised Abraham that he would not destroy Sodom if he could find ten righteous men... I have a feeling that for Germany it may come down to one.
[from trailer]::Col. Claus von Stauffenberg: We have to kill Hitler.
Erich Fellgiebel: What makes you think you're stronger than the very momentum of history?
Colonel Mertz von Quirnheim: Every second we stand here is a second lost!
Plot
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Soviet Armies closing in from the west and south. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his Generals and advisers to fight to the last man. "Downfall" explores these final days of the Reich, where senior German leaders (such as Himmler and Goring) began defecting from their beloved Fuhrer, in an effort to save their own lives, while still others (Joseph Goebbels) pledge to die with Hitler. Hitler, himself, degenerates into a paranoid shell of a man, full of optimism one moment and suicidal depression the next. When the end finally does comes, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.
Keywords: 1940s, 1945, accordion, acropolis, adjutant, air-raid, airplane, allegiance, allied-forces, anti-semitism
April 1945, a nation awaits its...
Adolf Hitler: In a war as such there are no civilians.
Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler: When I meet Eisenhower, should I give the Nazi salute, or shake his hand?
Adolf Hitler: The war is lost... But if you think that I'll leave Berlin for that, you are sadly mistaken. I'd prefer to put a bullet in my head.
[first lines]::Traudl Junge: I've got the feeling that I should be angry with this child, this young and oblivious girl. Or that I'm not allowed to forgive her for not seeing the nature of that monster. That she didn't realise what she was doing. And mostly because I've gone so obliviously. Because I wasn't a fanatic Nazi. I could have said in Berlin, "No, I'm not doing that. I don't want to go the Führer's headquarters." But I didn't do that. I was too curious. I didn't realise that fate would lead me somewhere I didn't want to be. But still, I find it hard to forgive myself.
[last lines]::Traudl Junge: All these horrors I've heard of during the Nurnberg process, these six million Jews, other thinking people or people of another race, who perished. That shocked me deeply. But I hadn't made the connection with my past. I assured myself with the thought of not being personally guilty. And that I didn't know anything about the enormous scale of it. But one day I walked by a memorial plate of Sophie Scholl in the Franz-Joseph-Strasse. I saw that she was about my age and she was executed in the same year I came to Hitler. And at that moment I actually realised that a young age isn't an excuse. And that it might have been possible to get to know things.
Walter Hewel: Why do you want to live on?::Prof. Dr. Ernst-Günter Schenck: And you? Why do you absolutely want to die?::Walter Hewel: You see this? [shows him a cyanide cap] The Führer personally gave it to me!::Prof. Dr. Ernst-Günter Schenck: [bitter] As last honor?::Walter Hewel: ...maybe.
Magda Goebbels: Sleep tight, children.
Adolf Hitler: General Von Greim, I appoint you supreme commander of the Luftwaffe. I hereby promote you to General-Fieldmarshall. A big responsibility rests on your shoulders. You have to rebuild the Luftwaffe from scratch. Many mistakes have been made. Be ruthless. Life doesn't forgive weakness. This so-called humanity is religious drivel. Compassion is an eternal sin. To feel compassion for the weak is a betrayal of nature. The strong can only triumph if the weak are exterminated. Being loyal to this law, I've never had compassion. I've always been ruthless when faced with internal opposition from other races. That's the only way to deal with it.
Albert Speer: You must be on stage when the curtain falls
Adolf Hitler: I always make mistakes when I'm dictating.
Plot
Following the defeat of Germany in WWII, the Allies determine that there must be an accounting of German war crimes. Twenty-four Nazis, representative of all sections of military and civilian life are chosen to stand trial for the crimes of conspiracy to commit aggression, commission of aggression, crimes during war and crimes against humanity. The preparations for the trial, the trial itself and its aftermath are shown through the eyes of Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson and through the eyes of Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering, the ranking Nazi defendant.
Keywords: army, based-on-book, city-name-in-title, courtroom, execution, genocide, guard, holocaust, jail, judge
Lt. Tex Wheelis: Rough day, Reichsmarschall?::Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Göring: On the contrary. We had an excellent lunch, a nice view of the city, and in the courtroom we had the best seats in the house.
Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Göring: I say to you all that I would rather die than say we were wrong!
Albert Speer: Nazi Germany was built on empty platitudes.
Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Göring: One German, a fine man. Two Germans, a party. Three Germans, a war. One Englishman, an idiot. Two Englishmen, a club. Three Englishmen, an Empire.
Justice Robert H. Jackson: Mr. Pachelogg, what ever became of the subjects of Dr. Rascher's experiments?::Anton Pachelogg: Most of them went into convulsions and died.
Sir Geoffrey Lawrence: Defendant Hermann Goering. The Tribunal has found you guilty on all four counts and sentences you to death by hanging.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner: They always feed you well before they hang you.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner: They have very little evidence against us, hmmm?
Ernst Kaltenbrunner: I never set foot in Mauthausen!
Elsie Douglas: The only way they can triumph over you is if their values are stronger than yours.
Plot
A dramatization of the life of Albert Speer, Hitler's young architect and onetime confidant, and his meteoric rise into the Nazi hierarchy. Based upon Speer's own monograph of the same title.
Keywords: 1930s, 1940s, based-on-autobiography, based-on-novel, germany, hitler, nazi, number-in-title, third-reich, world-war-two
Albert Speer: Field Marshall Milch... do you realize who you're talking to?::Field Marshal Milch: Herr Reichminister Speer... do you realize who you're working for?
Prof. Heinrich Tessenow: [to Speer, after Speer has quietly pulled strings to save the Jewish Tessenow from Nazi harrassment] And Speer... I don't owe you a damned thing.
Plot
In 1945, The Third Reich is in its death throes with the Allies relentlessly attacking the capital city of Berlin. Its Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, retreats into his fortified bunker in Berlin with his senior staff. There, gripped with both delusions of grandeur and despair, Hitler commands a hopeless last stand with resources existing largely in his own mind. While resisting the pleas of rational minions like Albert Speer, basic reality finally comes unavoidable. With that, Hitler and his fanatical fellows prepare for their own end even as their grandiose dreams are becoming a smoking ruin above.
Keywords: 1940s, anger, anti-semitism, based-on-book, berlin-germany, betrayal, bunker, cyanide, cyanide-capsule, dead-children
From Heil to Hell!...
We have faced despair
And found a river there
We have faced despair
And found a river there
We have sucked the fruit of disease
And found that it tasted sweet
Like meat gone bad
Sleep warmly under columns of light
Sleep warmly under columns of light
Sleep warmly under columns of light
Sleep with the fishes tonight
All alone in this recluse car
Became afraid of what we are
And what we might not be
In the land of the free
Land of the free
Land of the free
Land of the free
Land of the free
Smell the ripe overripe budding America
A sweetfaced straightlaced pornographic actress
That's her draw
No one can believe she'd appear in this smut
Her face smiling perfect through innocent teeth
Unaware of the debauchery beneath
Smiling innocent through perfect teeth
Unaware of the wolves running
Wild in her streets
In the land of the free
Land of the free
Land of the free
Land of the free
Get 'em up get 'em
Down on their knees
All praise to Allah
Who provides what we need
A Swiss precision suicide machine
Jesus Christ
Soul on ice
Sleep with the mother fuckin'