Speer received plenipotentiary powers from Hitler to finish the new Reich Chancellery

One of the interesting facts about Albert Speer is that Speer received plenipotentiary powers from Hitler to finish the new Reich Chancellery. Since 1934, plans for a new Reich Chancellery had been in the works. By the end of 1934, the land had been purchased, and beginning in March 1936, the first buildings were demolished to make way for Voßstraße. Speer was involved almost from the start. Following the Night of the Long Knives, he was commissioned to restore the Borsig Palace on the corner of Voßstraße and Wilhelmstraße as the Sturmabteilung's headquarters (SA). By May 1936, he had completed the preliminary work for the new chancellery. In June 1936, he charged a personal honorarium of 30,000 Reichsmarks and predicted that the chancellery would be finished in three to four years. The detailed drawings were finished in July 1937, and the first shell of the new chancellery was finished on January 1, 1938.

Speer got plenipotentiary powers from Hitler on January 27, 1938, with the goal of completing the new chancellery by January 1, 1939. Hitler stated during the topping-out ceremony on August 2, 1938, for propaganda purposes, that he had ordered Speer to construct the new chancellery that year. Due to manpower shortages, construction workers had to work in ten to twelve-hour shifts. In 1938, the Schutzstaffel (SS) erected two concentration camps and exploited convicts to quarry stone for their development. At Speer's request, a brick factory was erected in the Oranienburg concentration camp; when someone objected to the horrible conditions there, Speer responded, "The Yids grew used to making bricks while in Egyptian captivity." In early January 1939, the chancellery was completed. Hitler referred to the structure as the "crowning glory of the greater German political empire".