Actions
The decree was in vain. The man on whom fell the responsibility for carrying it out was Albert Speer, Hitler's Minister of Armaments and War Production. Speer was appalled by the order and lost faith in the dictator. Just as von Cholitz had several months earlier, Speer deliberately failed to carry out the order. Upon receiving it, he requested to be given exclusive power to implement the plan, instead using his power to convince the generals and Gauleiters to ignore the order. Hitler remained unaware of this until the very end of the war, when Speer admitted to him that he deliberately disobeyed. Hitler, then confined to his bunker in Berlin, was angry with his minister, but there was little he could do at that point. Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, 42 days after issuing the order. Shortly afterwards, on May 7, 1945, General Alfred Jodl signed the German military surrender, and on May 23 Speer was arrested on the orders of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, together with the rest of the provisional German government led by Admiral Karl Dönitz, Hitler's successor as head of state.
Read more about this topic: Nero Decree
Famous quotes containing the word actions:
“History by apprising them [students] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The higher the state of civilization, the more completely do the actions of one member of the social body influence all the rest, and the less possible is it for any one man to do a wrong thing without interfering, more or less, with the freedom of all his fellow-citizens.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“I also believe that few people remain completely untouched by the thought that instead of the life they lead there might also be another, where all actions proceed from a very personal state of excitement. Where actions have meanings, not just causes. And where a person, to use a trivial word, is happy, and not just nervously tormenting himself.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)