On the night of November 7, Obersturm fuhrer SS-SD Wilhelm Peis, a tall, pale, blond man of twenty-eight, who was the senior Sicherheitsdienst SS Security Service) officer in Marburg an der Lahn, received the following message by Teletype from Berlin, YOU WILL PLEASE TAKE ALL NECESSARY STEPS
To ENSURE THE SECURITY OF REICHSh{INISl2, n
AT. RERT SPEER AND A PERSONAL STAFF OF FOUR WHo WILL MARE
UNPUBLICIZED VISIT To THE FULMeR elekTRISCHES WERK AT
NOVEMBER. THE REICHSMINISTER WILL ARRIVE BY PRIVATE TRAIN
AT 10:1 AND DEPART IN THE SAME MANNER AT APPROXIMATELY 15, 45.
The message from Berlin seemed more or less routine to Peis, and he at first treated it as such until early in the morning of the eighth when Gauleiter Karl-Heinz Schroeder–in a state somewhere between chagrin and panic–burst into Peis’s sleeping quarters (Peis was not in fact asleep) and pointedly reminded him that not only had Speer taken the place of Dr. Fritz Todt as head of the Todt Organization–in charge of all industrial production, military and civilian–which made him one of the most powerful men in Germany, but that he was a personal friend, perhaps the closest personal friend–of the Fuhrer himself.
The intensity of Schroeder’s concern impelled Peis to double his efforts on behalf of welcoming the Reichsminister, and he rounded up half a dozen Mercedes, Horch, and Opel Admiral automobiles to carry Speer from the railroad station to the Fulmar Electric Plant–or wherever else he might wish to go. He canceled all leave for the police and the SD. And he dressed in a new uniform.
