Inside the Third Reich

I've lived with Speer's memoirs now for what? over 30 years. I've read them numerous times. I can never tell when it's time to do it again. A repeat viewing of HBO's "Conspiracy" prompted my latest re-reading. I come away from Speer's memoirs with some odd and complex feelings. Speer seems so utterly detached from everything, and most of all from his own psychology, that reading his memoirs can sometimes inspire a kind of vertigo. Those times when he seems close to revealing something genuinely authentic, he often sounds like a child or adolescent. This was most evident in his description of his illness during the war, when he was almost sidelined for good, and had to engage in some serious intrigue in order to keep his position. The combination of acute political acumen, and childlike frustration he displays is quite peculiar, and it pays to read that part of the book with great care. There is no question that the book is written very clearly and beautifully. Very often Speer captures the dramatic immediacy of his life and times..still, the cameos of various Nazi leaders are just that: snapshots that seldom create a whole being. This aspect of the book is like looking at a scrapbook of photographs with short captions. We seldom get any real insight into these people. Just as Speer has very little insight into himself. Speer's descriptions of his ongoing relationships with various Nazi leaders are enormously informative, no question about that, but you have a sense that Speer, for all his intelligence, had real trouble seeing very deeply. He could get below the surface a bit--his amateur analyses of, say, Goebbles and Goering are entertaining, but strangely shallow. The one exception to this, in certain ways, is Speer's picture of Hitler. Speer gives a deep and textured description of his changing relationship with his Fuehrer, but even here, you have the sense Speer just cannot penetrate down to something essential. Perhaps this is less Speer's fault, than it is due to the plain fact that Hitler was ultimately opaque to everyone who knew him. Or, at least, he was a very different person to different people, the signal quality of a first-rate con-man. And then there's the question of Speer's guilt. He says the right things, and says them often. But there is a strange, forced quality to his numerous mea-culpas that leaves a miasma behind. I don't doubt that, in some way, Speer believes what he says about his guilt. He believes that he did not know about the Holocaust. Except for the evidence of Gitta Sereny's excellent book about Speer, which offers strong proof that Speer, in fact, was very well informed about what was going on in the camps but simply chose not to know. He was informed, but turned away from the information. This implied guilt also runs like smoke through Speer's entire memoirs, as if the memoirs, and the rest of his life were an expiation of that guilt. It's almost as if he never did comprehend the s

This is probably the most famous of all WWII memoirs, and in many ways this is perfectly justified. Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and Minister of Armaments, wrote this book during his 20-year prison term following the Nuremburg trials. Speer's reflections on his own absorbtion into the Nazi regime and the unfolding of the greatest war in history reveal the men who ruled Nazi Germany with general sincerity and enlightening insight. Goering, Goebbles, Himmler, Bormann, and even Eva Braun are each highlighted by Speer's keen evaluations, and for the most part found wanting. Hitler himself emerges from Speer's portrait as a man whose megalomania was always clear to anyone who cared to notice, but whose sheer charisma and force of will swept the German people inexorably into the inferno. Speer takes much of the blame for Germany's war effort, and admits that he and his cohorts, even if personally ignorant of Hitler's concentration camps, were nonetheless accomplices in crime. The book does demand some historical awareness on the reader's part, as Speer focuses mainly on the rather closed-in, often literally subterranean world of the Nazi leadership, so that references to important military events often come with little or no elaboration--Speer apparently assumed his readers would already be well acquainted with the historical record, and this is required for a full appreciation of his text. Though undoubtedly subjective, Speer's memoirs remain the most powerful and educational work on the inner workings of Nazism ever published. Highly recommended to all students of military/political history.

Do you want to see a portait of the man who led Germany and the world into the depths of hell? Speer paints a rarely seen portrait of the man who so many loved and hated, and he also gives the reader a clear portrayal of what the Third Reich looked like from the inside. Goerring, Goebbels, Borman, Eva and a host of others are here as well. I've never read a book on Hitler where I really felt I could see Hitler and the characters of his inner circle so close-up before. Whether you're interested in architecture, armaments production or Hitler's thoughts, and much more, there's something here for you. I do agree with the critics that Speer does a good job of glossing over his responsibilities concerningthe concentrations camps, but the book appears to be written quite accurately for the most part by someone (Speer) whom Hitler was more than a little fond of. A wonderful book regardless of how you personally feel aboutAlbert Speer.

I first read 'Inside the the Third Reich' at age 19 and the message of this book has been with me ever since. Quite simply it is a true fable of evil corrupting good. Throughout Speer's early account one almost feels that this could be anyone, at anytime. Only as world events change at an astouding pace around him, are we reminded that Speer lived in a Germany that was soon to be the home to one of the greatest evils the world had ever known. Speer tells us of the fateful night he first heard Hitler speak, and how he joined the Nazi party bare hours later. The portrait Speer paints of Hitler is not one of the evil demegouge that history would prove him to be, but rather one of an inspired leader who was doing all he could to lift his nation out of economic ruin and national despair. It was this illusion that Hitler projected that allowed good and honorable men, like Speer, to be corrupted. This is an entertaining book for any amatuer historian, and more, a very important one for anyone who wonders how a nation of philosiphers, and Christians, aritists and engineers, could sell it's very soul to evil.