'..They were ambitious university-educated men, aged around 30..'

<blockquote>'...In the Observer of 9 April 1944, Sebastian Haffner published a lucid, nigh-prophetic portrait of Albert Speer... '
- Geert Mak, In Europe, page 418</blockquote>

'And they surrounded themselves by men who didn't necessarily fit into today's stereotype of a Nazi war criminal, neither boorish sadists nor bloodless bureaucrats. They were ambitious university-educated men, aged around 30 and more likely to be ideologues than technocrats. ...like young managers at a big company making their way up the career ladder...'

<blockquote>'In 1933 the Gestapo made the former art school at Prinz Albrecht Strasse 8 its headquarters. The adjacent Hotel Prinz Albrecht became the SS headquarters in 1934 and that same year the SS intelligence service, the SD, took over the Prinz Albrecht palace on nearby Wilhelm Strasse. It was from this complex of buildings that Hitler's officials administered the concentration and extermination camps, directed the deadly campaigns by the SS death squads and kept an eye on the regime's opponents.

The "Final Solution" that was discussed at the famed Wannsee Conference on Jan. 20, 1942 was also prepared here. A group of ministerial officials and SS functionaries based here chose the venue for the conference of high-ranking Nazis, where the plan for the murder of Europe's Jews was hatched.

Hitler was rarely at the complex. He preferred to stay away from Berlin, sometimes ruling from his Wolf's Lair military headquarters and sometimes from his Bavarian mountain retreat. But this was where the brains behind the Nazi crimes, such as SS leader Heinrich Himmler and SD chief Reinhard Heydrich, had their offices.

Climbing the Career Ladder

And they surrounded themselves by men who didn't necessarily fit into today's stereotype of a Nazi war criminal, neither boorish sadists nor bloodless bureaucrats. They were ambitious university-educated men, aged around 30 and more likely to be ideologues than technocrats. They alternated between serving at the Berlin headquarters and in foreign posts, like young managers at a big company making their way up the career ladder. And after the rupture of 1945 most of them simply faded away into the background.

Erich Ehrlinger, for example, a lawyer from Giengen in southern Germany, who at the age of 25 was already a staff leader at the SD main office, before becoming a commander in the German security police in Ukraine and leading the 1b Einsatzkommando, or mobile death squad. A case against him in 1969 was dropped because he was deemed incapable of standing trial. Yet Ehrlinger lived for another 35 years.

Then there was the Munich businessman, Josef Spacil, who joined the SS at the age of 27. He was stationed in an occupied area of the Soviet Union as an SS economist, then came back to Prinz Albrecht Strasse to serve as a department head. He appeared as a witness in the Nuremberg Trials but was never prosecuted himself.

Photographs of a group of young lawyers, Werner Best, Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Hans Nockemann, stare down from the walls -- all were born in 1903. "One easily forgets that National Socialism was a young movement," say Andreas Nachama, the director of the new documentation center.

Nachama proudly walks through the building, showing its concrete walls and dark stone floor. "The site is our most important exhibit," he says. "We don't need impressive architecture, it is all there." He points to the views. Across the way is the former Air Ministry of Hermann Göring, now the German Finance Ministry. A few meters away is the Berlin state parliament, once the seat of the Prussian parliament. Adjacent to the site is a 170-meter section the Berlin Wall. No other place contains quite so much German history.
- Jan Friedmann, Revealing the Young Bureaucrats Behind the Nazi Terror, 05/06/2010</blockquote>


'The psyche of my country is already very troubled today ... because of the events of past decades.'

<blockquote>Svanidze: You, as a German, know how an intelligence agency can permeate a society. I'm not just thinking of the Hitler era, but also of the Stasi in the former East Germany. It would be my dream for the archives to be opened, but not all the secret lists of informers. Too many unpleasant surprises would come to light.

SPIEGEL: But perhaps that's the only way to cure the country of its Stalin syndrome?

Svanidze: We couldn't cope with it, because someone in almost every family was part of the system of informers. An opening of the archives would be a heavy blow for many people, because they would discover things about their ancestors and closest relatives that they hadn't expected. The psyche of my country is already very troubled today. Every other person here could use a psychiatrist, because of the events of past decades.
- Interview with Russian Historian, 05/06/2010</blockquote>