Kitchen ably portrays a hollow, cold, bourgeois man totally lacking in morals or scruples—exactly the type that made...
Kitchen (Emeritus, History/Simon Fraser Univ.; The Third Reich: Charisma and Community, 2014, etc.) sets the record straight on Albert Speer’s assertions of ignorance of the Final Solution and claims to being the “good Nazi.”
Speer came to the attention of Hitler in his capacity as an architect. If Hitler ever had any friends, Speer would have been his closest. At the end of this impressively researched book, the author hints at perhaps a closer relationship than friendship, not supported by fact but a good explanation for Speer’s ability to manipulate Hitler. Speer gained power in the Nazi machine by dealing directly with Hitler, bypassing the usual procedures. His peevish whining invariably accomplished his goal, and since Hitler believed his skewed and doctored statistics, he quickly climbed to the top. As minister of armaments, he did increase output, but his base line was a period when Germany thought the war would be short and production had been cut. Colleagues in the Nazi hierarchy detested his self-determination policy and profitable arrangement with industry. The biggest question about Speer has been his knowledge of the use of concentration camp inmates in industry and wartime production. Kitchen shows incontrovertibly that Speer not only knew of the practice, but was the greatest user of prisoners, many of whom were worked to death. Occasionally, the book gets bogged down in statistics and details of production, both real and invented, and the coverage of Speer’s trial is tedious. After his 20-year prison term, Speer completely rebuilt his image, carefully subverting the damning wartime chronicle kept by his longtime friend. As at Nuremburg, he admitted overall responsibility, but Kitchen puts it perfectly: “his guilt—like a figure in a Greek tragedy—was guiltless.”
Kitchen ably portrays a hollow, cold, bourgeois man totally lacking in morals or scruples—exactly the type that made National Socialism possible and could do so again.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-300-19044-1
Page Count: 440
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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