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:
“We should often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world understood all the motives behind them.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–80)
“From a purely external point of view there is no will; and to find will in any phenomenon requires a certain empathy; we observe a man’s actions and place ourselves partly but not wholly in his position; or we act, and place ourselves partly in the position of an outsider.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“... the loss of belief in future states is politically, though certainly not spiritually, the most significant distinction between our present period and the centuries before. And this loss is definite. For no matter how religious our world may turn again, or how much authentic faith still exists in it, or how deeply our moral values may be rooted in our religious systems, the fear of hell is no longer among the motives which would prevent or stimulate the actions of a majority.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)