Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief architect, in his memoir Inside the Third Reich, describes what I consider to be some uncanny similarities between Hitler’s architectural megalomania and the current ‘tsunami’ of government sponsored construction. Hitler, he says, “liked to say that the purpose of his building was to transmit his time and its spirit to posterity…[he] also stressed the value of a permanent type of construction.” Or consider the similarities between Speers recollection of a 1939 speech by Hitler to construction workers who, in justifying the huge dimensions of his projects, argued, “Why always the biggest? I do this to restore to each individual German his self-respect. In a hundred areas I want to say to the individual: we are not inferiors; on the contrary, we are the complete equals of every other nation”, and the recent gratuitous (but vacuous) justifications given by Manning, Hunt et al. Speers, the inside man, notes finally that “Hitler’s demand for huge dimensions…involved more than he was willing to admit to the workers. He wanted the biggest of everything to glorify his works and magnify his pride. These monuments were an assertion of his claim to world dominion long before he dared to voice any such intention even to his closest associates.” Read those lines again and draw whatever inferences or implications seem most reasonable.
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