INSIDE THE THIRD REICH Memoirs (edition 1970)

הנגיעה האמיתית הראשונה שלי ברייך השלישי. ספר מרתק ​כתוב על ידי אדם מרתק. הליקוי היחידי של הספר ושל הא​ ( )

This is an essential source of information on Hitler and World War II. Speer began as an architect for Hitler, himself absorbed with architecture from early manhood, who advanced to be head of all German war materials. The photographs - and they are plentiful - are testimony themselves to Speer's access to the German leader. He spent his 20 year in prison writing this memoir. Reviewers properly look for lapses and shading ot the truth, and it may well be there, but it is largely an accurate account. ( )

I want to keep my distance from a work like this because although I feel Speer is mostly an honest narrator, his clear, somewhat banal account of the Third Reich, Hitler, and his own activities read like a generic memoir, somehow perverting the madness of the time—the destruction, inhuman cruelty, and the quest for absolute power. By giving us this account, Speer affirms that for the most part the atrocities of the the Third Reich were carried out by otherwise normal, almost boring men, like himself, who were tasked with a mission and carried it out to the best of their abilities. (Speer affirms this view on page 344, when he talks of an article in The Observer that spoke of him as the leader of a highly efficient, impersonal technocracy.) My fear is that this is not a sufficiently emotional account to teach us anything. It gives us an inside look, yes, but it is so self absorbed that we lose the broader view of the war's effects. We miss the sufferings of millions because we are tangled in Speer's account of day-to-day travels, power struggles within the regime, and the stubborn madness of Hitler.

Could this memoir be anything else? Should it be? Probably not. I just can't help but feel that Speer's last sacrifice should be to accept alienation, where his memoirs, like his architecture, become lost to that time. ( )

Albert Speer was Hitler's architect and Minister of Arms and Munitions. He was close to Hitler and gives us a glimpse of the man through his life in the years 1933 through 1945. The author wrote this memoir while serving his sentence for war crimes in Spandau prison. A sentence he agreed he deserved though he claims he did not know of the final solution. I will leave that to the reader too decide.

Speer shares what he saw as Hitler's likable traits and as a man who was capable and devoted but later or perhaps reflection in prison Speer felt these traits may have been only superficial. The work Speer did during WWII for the Third Reich was essential for the war machine to function. He claims he did not know that his friend was committing genocide but he willing used the slave labor provided for his factories.

It is mainly a book of the daily routine of the man that shared tea with Hitler and the bureaucracy that was the Third Reich. A bureaucracy that Speer knew how to handle quite well and prospered in. What it took to operate in this government is expressed in detail. The insight on how one could operate in such a regime and be successful in the construction and requisition projects that Speer was involved in. Some may fine these parts too detailed but they give us an insight on the inner workings of the regime.

As in all relationships his view of Hitler changed over time as did his view of the man. But a man is what we are shown through the eyes of the author. Though Speer admits that his country committed war crimes and he took responsibility for his part by accepting the sentence of twenty years he never apologized. As you read I feel he felt though he had a part that he was made a to pay the penalty for those who were either dead or escaped. To his credit at the end of WWII Speer did try and block some of Hitlers policy of total destruction of cities and infrastructure as the Third Reich collapsed around them. ( )

Although I am still reading this book, I am finding that it presents me with new information and views of Hitler and Hitler's Germany through the eyes of Albert Speer, a favorite architect of Hitler. Considering that I have been working on this topic for oh, 25 years as a German teacher, that says a lot. It is like a look inside of another world. ( )