INSIDE THE THIRD REICH

by Albert Speer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 27, 1970

If Hitler had had any friends, I would certainly have been one of his close friends,"" began Albert Speer's testimony before the Nuremberg war-crimes tribunal, which sentenced him to twenty years in prison, primarily for using conscripted labor in constructing strategic roads and defenses. Speer, official Nazi architect, Minister for Armaments after 1942, and co-planner of the German war economy, was among the few defendants who accepted collective responsibility for all the measures of Hitler, not excluding the crimes, and his memoir reflects the same thoroughgoing penitence. In relating his life story and his experiences in Hitler's inner circle (would-be-artist-architect Hitler valued Speer particularly for their long sessions together poring over grand schemes for reconstructing Berlin), Speer's aim ""has been not to gloss over either what was fascinating or what was horrible about those years."" An upper-middle-class architecture student with ""inadequate political schooling"" who was hypnotically impressed by a Hitler speech, Speer joined the Party without much thought in January 1931. Once several architectural commissions propelled him toward the Party's upper echelons, Speer's ""inclination to be relieved of having to think, particularly about unpleasant facts"" and his ""architectural megalomania"" lulled his conscience, not to be reawakened until the last stages of the war when he helped thwart Hitler's scorched earth policy. Speer's portrayals of the Nazi leadership, of the constant intrigues and rivalries among Hitler's entourage, and of Hitler himself, his histrionic virulence, his banality, and his peculiar magic, are engrossing and revealing. A painstaking and plainspeaking record by a man whose memories of the Hitler years still reflect ""the enthusiasms and the glory of my youth as well as belated horror and guilt,"" this is a major first-hand contribution to the history of the Third Reich.

Pub Date: Aug. 27, 1970

ISBN: 0923891730

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION