Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth - Softcover

Gitta Sereny

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679768122 ISBN 13: 9780679768128

Publisher: Vintage, 1996

Synopsis

Albert Speer was not only Hitler's architect and armaments minister, but the Fuhrer's closest friend--his "unhappy love." Speer was one of the few defendants at the Nuremberg Trials to take responsibility for Nazi war crimes, even as he denied knowledge of the Holocaust. Now this enigma of a man is unveiled in a monumental biography by a writer who came to know Speer intimately in his final years. Out of hundreds of hours of interviews, Sereny unravels the threads of Speer's personality: the genius that made him indispensable to the German war machine, the conscience that drove him to repent, and the emotional wounds that made him susceptible to Hitler's lethal magnetism. Read as an inside account of the Third Reich, or as a revelatory unsparing yet compassionate study of the human capacity for evil, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth is a triumph.
"Fascinating...Not only a major addition to our knowledge of the Third Reich, but a stunning attempt to understand the nature of good and evil."--Newsday
"More than a biography...It also constitutes a perceptive re-examination of the mysterious appeal of Adolf Hitler."--San Francisco Chronicle

About this title

Review:

Gitta Sereny's biography meticulously re-creates for the reader the professional, emotional, and psychological life of Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and later his Minister of Armaments. Throughout the 12-year history of the Third Reich, Speer remained one of Hitler's most trusted confidants and one of the most powerful political leaders of the Nazi party. Researched and written over an eight year period, Albert Speer weaves together information from innumerable personal interviews with Speer, his family, close friends, and professional colleagues, the author's own solid grasp of German history, and critical readings of Speer's own writings, including various drafts of his memoirs, Inside the Third Reich, first published in 1969.

Throughout, Sereny consciously avoids the pitfall of many Speer biographers, who seek to either blame or exculpate Speer for the Nazi's atrocities. Instead, she succeeds in helping the reader understand a "morally extinguished" man and place into context "all the crimes against humanity which Hitler initiated, which continue to threaten us today, and of which Speer, who was in many ways a man of excellence, sadly enough made himself a part." Well over 700 pages, Albert Speer is not a quick read, but superbly written and meticulously researched, it is a pleasure to read, providing unprecedented insight into one of the most complex figures in modern German history. --Bertina Loeffler

About the Author:

Gitta Sereny was one of Europe's foremost journalists with a special interest and expertise in the Third Reich. She has written extensively for London's Daily Telegraph magazine, the Sunday Times, and the Independent, as well as for Die Zeit and Le Nouvel Observateur. In America, she has written for the New York Times Magazine, the New York Review of Books, and Vanity Fair. Her books include Into Darkness: An Examination of Conscience, The Invisible Children, and Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. She had two children and two grandchildren and lived with her husband, the photographer Don Honeyman, in London. She died in 2012.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0679768122
• ISBN 13: 9780679768128
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 800