Given both his personal standing with Hitler and the priority nature of his work, such a personal appeal by Speer would in the past have had a good chance of success. On this occasion, Hitler took the letter from Speer without comment, rang for his adjutant, and had it passed to Bormann who was asked, along with Goebbels who was in the Führer Headquarters at the time, for his views. It was as if, Speer wrote much later, Hitler was too weary to involve himself in such a difficult conflict.125
A few hours later, Speer was asked to Bormann’s office nearby, where he met the head of the Party Chancellery, in shirt-sleeves and braces over his large stomach, and the more formally dressed diminutive Goebbels. Speer was no match for the new alliance, resting on mutual self-interest, controlling the Party, in charge of propaganda, calling on the principles of National Socialism, appealing to the Gauleiter — and with Hitler’s ear. The discussion was heated. But Speer’s references to his ‘historic responsibility’ and threats to resign did not impress. ‘I think we have let this young man become somewhat too big,’ Goebbels coolly noted in his diary. Bormann told Speer he had to accept Goebbels’s decisions, and forbade any further recourse to Hitler. Goebbels informed Speer that he intended to make full use of the powers bestowed on him by Hitler. Discussion ended with Goebbels declaring that he would put the — wholly rhetorical — question to Hitler, as to whether he was prepared to dispense with the 100,000 men.126
Two days later, Hitler signed a proclamation by Speer to directors of armaments factories which, in the eyes of the Armaments Minister, granted most of the demands he had made in his letter. Hitler was typically appearing to grant both sides in a dispute what they wanted. But Speer recognized this was no victory over Bormann and Goebbels. Hitler was unwilling — Speer thought unable — to hold his Party leaders in check.127 At any rate, he could do nothing to bring the conflict between two of his most important ‘feudal’ — and feuding — barons to a halt. The dispute rumbled on for weeks.128 If there was no outright winner, the signs were plain enough that Speer’s once unique influence on Hitler was on the wane. With a reversion to Party activism, on the other hand, the position of Goebbels as well as that of Bormann had been strengthened. And now, as before, all positions of power in the Third Reich still hinged on Hitler’s favour.
Backed by this favour, Goebbels certainly produced a new, extreme austerity drive within Germany in the first weeks in his new office as Total War Plenipoteniary. In the cultural sphere, many theatres and art schools were closed, orchestras run down, the film industry drastically pruned of staff, three-quarters of the Reich Cultural Chamber axed. Big restrictions were imposed on printing, with many newspapers being shut down. Firms producing goods unnecessary for the war effort, such as toys or fashion items, were shut. Employment of domestic servants — most of them non-German — was tightly restricted, freeing up as many as 400,000 women for work (with an increase of registration age from forty-five to fifty-five years of age). Postal and railway services were cut back. Local government offices were forced to simplify administration and weed out their staff. From mid-August, leave was banned. Business and administration were working a minimum sixty-hour week. By October, 451,800 men had been made available for the war effort.129
