Albert Speer: His Battle with TruthGitta Sereny first saw Albert Speer on trial at Nuremberg. Over the last years of his life she came to know him - through hundreds of hours of conversations - as no other biographer has known a Nazi leader. She interviewed as well the people around him - the celebrated, the notorious and the ordinary. Speer gave Sereny, for her use, a number of unpublished manuscripts, and after his death she obtained access to many of his papers. Out of her probings a huge, and hugely alive, portrait emerges. Sereny takes us through the emotional desert of Speer's childhood and marriage, through his embrace (basically, she demonstrates, for nonideological reasons) of the Nazi Party and his service as Minister of Armaments and Munitions, during which his brutal use of slave labor extended a lost war. She superbly portrays the circles in which Speer functioned: the ambivalent General Staff and the infinitely peculiar and nightmarish upper echelons of Nazism. We see Speer accused of war crimes at Nuremberg, and during his twenty years in Spandau prison, struggling to accept individual responsibility for his actions. Throughout, in person or in memory, Hitler is startlingly present, his friendship with Speer bordering on love. Sereny shows us Speer as inveterate schemer, as spectacular planner and maneuverer. We see him also as unique among Hitler's men in the integrity of his battle with conscience. His progress from moral blindness through moral self-education to a torturous coming-to-terms with his own acts - this is the elemental matter at the heart of a book that stunningly illuminates the man, the war, the Third Reich, the Nazi mind and the complex comingling, in one person or society, of good andevil. |
Contents
Introduction | 3 |
Prologue | 16 |
An Infusion of Stable Stock | 38 |
Copyright | |
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Albert Speer Allies Annemarie Kempf architect Archives armament army asked Auschwitz became Berghof Berlin Bormann Brandt Casalis certainly Chancellery concentration camps course crimes death diary Dönitz Einsatzgruppen Eva Braun father feel felt finally Flächsner Führer Gauleiter Geis German Germany's Goebbels Goebbels's Göring happened heard Heidelberg Hess Hilde Himmler Hitler Hupfauer Inside the Third ITTR Jewish Jews Karl Hanke killed knew labor later letter lived looked March Margret Mein Kampf million mind Minister ministry months moral Munich murder Nazi needed never night Nuremberg Nuremberg trial Obersalzberg party perhaps plans political prison Rastenburg remember Russian Sauckel Soviet Spandau draft Speer told Speer wrote staff talked tell things Third Reich thought thousand tion Todt Todt's took Traudl Junge trial wanted weeks Wehrmacht wife Wolters Wolters's workers writing young