Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth [Hardcover]

Gitta Sereny (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 19, 1995

With 24 pages of photographs

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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

From Publishers Weekly

Sereny, a London journalist, "found a great deal to like" in former Nazi Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and minister of armaments and war production, whom she interviewed extensively between 1978 and his death in 1981. This long, strained portrait too often reads like an apologia and too often takes Speer's calculated, self-serving evaluations at face value. Convicted at Nuremberg for his use of slave labor, Speer spent 20 years in Spandau prison and wrote two bestselling memoirs voicing his repentance. Sereny unconvincingly argues that by 1941, Speer knew Jews were being deported but had no idea they were going to their deaths, nor any idea of Hitler's plans to exterminate European Jewry. By late 1943, however, she believes, Speer was aware of the almost-completed genocide even though he continued to work for Hitler, for whom he had an "unspoken love." Interviews with Speer's family and associates and with former Nazi officials, plus eight years of archival research, supplement this overblown account. Photos. 50,000 first printing; History Book Club main selection; BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 757 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (September 19, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394529154
• ISBN-13: 978-0394529158
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.6 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #134,728 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #17 in Books > Law > Specialties > War

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars examination of guilt and repentence, April 29, 2003

By 

Boris Aleksandrovsky (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (Paperback)

Gita Sereny's "Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth" is well-written meticulously researched opus on the colorful life, memorable tribulations and profound ethical conflicts of the formed Minister of Armament and Productions, beloved architect and one of the only real friends Adolf Hitler ever had. "You are Hitler's unrequited love" somebody comments to Speer and the emotional connection between the monster and his servant was profound, complex and infinitely important to both parties. In Speer Hitler found realization of his artistic and romantic dreams, his only sense of real creation outside of the realm of politics and organization, non-threatening acceptance by the men of superior social upbringing based not on fear but on the profound unity of artistic mission. For Speer, Hitler of course brought the position of power, influence and the oracle of truth, possibility of realization of himself for which any architect would've been prepared for a Faustian bargain.

From 1932 to 1944 Speer served Hitler with his heart and his soul. After the crisis in his personal life, illness and realization of the war being lost, came a time for Speer to gradually realize that he was serving and evil man. As always in the relationship, this was colored in profoundly personal terms, and due to his calling and upbringing matched into romantic showdown (I am referring to Speer's famous confession in the bunker on the eve of the demise of the Third Reich, which the author implies might not even had happened.) At Nuremberg, Speer was the only defendant who accepted a principle of collective responsibility unconditionally, versed however in smart and carefully terms which might've saved his neck in the long term. There we see the beginning of the personal struggle with guilt and a difficult road to truth.

Gita Sereny's analysis is touches on all aspects of Speer's life - childhood, love life, upbringing, social conditions for the upper middle class German of his generation, his years in the helm of power, 20 years in prison and 15 years as a writer, researcher and apologist for his own past. A picture of profoundly disturbed man emerges, a man who becomes "morally extinguished" as the horror outside unravels. Speer was serving his sentence for the rest of his life, unable to live anywhere but in his past, partially lamenting, partially horrified by it, unable to relate very well to his family sacrificed perhaps as a part of his bargain. Profound conflict in Speer's life, his inability to admit or even realize that he was aware of the Final Solution and have done nothing, a horrible mistake of omission hunted him for the rest of his life.

This book is a fascinating read, all 750+ pages of it. Some of the material is a didactic repetition of events in Speer's life which can be gotten from his books, but I would not suggest skipping it since Sereny often compares multiple drafts and cross references it with other sources. You have to be committed to this book, but once the commitment is made, you are up for a treat! Enjoy!

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A human story, an unlikely hero, February 2, 2006

By 

Laura G. Carter "Castlebreaker" (Reidsville, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Albert Speer (Paperback)

My husband could tell when I had finished reading "Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth". I was completely silent for a good two-thirds of the lunch we had at Fuddruckers immediately after I had turned the last page. I couldn't speak for a long time, even if I'd wanted to - and I didn't want to. Speaking would have diminished the impact which this book continues to exercise upon me to this day, nearly a year after I finished my first reading (which was, ironically, March 19, 2005, what would have been Herr Speer's 100th birthday).

Besides Speer himself (who wrote two marvelous books, one chronicling Nazi Germany, "Inside The Third Reich", and the other, "Spandau: The Secret Diaries", relating the story of Speer's 20-year prison sentence in Spandau Prison in Nuremburg), only Gitta Sereny could have approached Speer's life story with such objectivity and fairness. Ms. Sereny, a marvelous writer who has recorded the stories of some of the worst aspects of Nazi Germany throughout her career, including a biography of Treblinka commandant Franz Stangl, "Into That Darkness", is an honest and objective biographer of Speer. She never once allows her subject to get away with a half-truth as she interviews him. The reader is on her side; he/she, along with Ms. Sereny, wants Speer to face the truth and admit whatever needs admitting, no matter how difficult it might be for him. And yet, in reading the book, I found myself wanting the truth and rooting for Speer at the same time - his basic humanity overwhelms you and you grieve for the man he could have been, had he not made the fatal choice to throw his lot in with the Nazi party, and with Hitler in particular, thereby abandoning his architectural principles and hardening his heart and conscience to the evil that was being perpetuated all around him. He made a choice NOT to know about the camps or to know only a certain amount about them - compartmentalizing, like so many of us do, when confronted by something with which we cannot live.

Sereny's empathy for Hitler's former architect is palpable and her professionalism as a scholar, researcher and interviewer of Speer's friends, former co-workers and family members is clear in every sentence. She does not make moral pronouncements about her subject; she merely offers a clear view of a flawed man, making Speer's personal courage as he faces his inner demons both admirable and heart-rending.

This book is a study of how absolute power can corrupt absolutely - and it is a study of the human conscience, of what a man does (or does not do) when he confronts, at last, his moral errors and the "what if's" of his past. Could Speer have stopped Hitler? Doubtful - at least, not completely. But he could have done more than he did - and yet, he did more than most, challenging Hitler towards the end of the war and, by doing so, saving Germany from wholesale destruction in order to leave something behind for ordinary Germans who he knew would have to cope with the wreckage that Hitler would soon leave behind by suicide.

What happens at the end of Speer's life - and at the end of Ms. Sereny's book - left me in tears. It rings of absolution granted to a man who had been a part of the greatest evil the world has ever known, someone who fell victim to his own ambitions and desires but who, in the end, attempted to do the right thing, pay for his mistakes and, finally, try to make sense of it all and come to terms with his life.

George Casilis, a priest who counseled Speer during some of his years in Spandau Prison, once said of his friend, "What he needed to do, you see, to become the 'different man' he wanted to be, was to give up everything that was easy." In allowing Ms. Sereny such unprecedented access to the most private parts of his heart and his past, Speer did just that: he abandoned the easy for the difficult and redeemed himself, at least in part, as a result. Gitta Sereny's "Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth", is a magnificent record of one man's courage and humanity.

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Look At Albert Speer!, March 21, 2003

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (Paperback)

The issue raging over the veracity and accuracy of Albert Speer's self-serving recollections of the infamous Third Reich and his participation therein have been going on and on for well over thirty years. yet, as anyone unfortunate enough to have experienced a bitter divorce can testify as to the degree to which two otherwise intelligent and perceptive human beings can violently disagree as to what the truth is regarding matters both witnessed and had been parties to. So it is with our continuing fascination and absolute incredulity regarding Albert Speer, an otherwise intelligent and perceptive soul, who just so happens to have been a willing participant in one of the most horrific administrations in the history of the 20th century, the Nazi Third Reich.

In two quite absorbing but incredibly self-serving books, Speer argued that he never understood the full extent of the Nazi war crimes nor the degree to which his own actions were complicit with those horrific aims. He first argued this at the war trials in Nuremberg, but did so in such a way as to admit his own culpability based on his rank and his actions as Chief Of Armaments Production, during which he employed slave labor in service to the German war effort. By being the only defendant at Nuremberg to show any semblance of remorse, he saved himself by admitting his own guilt, though largely guilt by association.

Careful readings of the trials transcripts show that he was, in fact, fairly forthcoming in his admissions, although he always contended that he lacked specifics regarding the so-called 'Final Solution' or even of the fact that the concentration camps in Poland and elsewhere were being used to systematically annihilate millions of Jews and Gypsies. In fact, he was an incredibly sophisticated human being who was expert in 'toadying up' to whomever he needed to. The fact that he was convincing enough to the Allies to escape the death sentence speaks volumes about his persuasiveness and ability to read into the possibilities any situation offered.

It is the author's contention that Speer must be held accountable for having allowed a tyrant like Hitler to rise. Yet Hitler was well in place before Speer ever met him. Speer is a man of stunning contradictions, someone of education, culture, and breeding who succumbed to the siren call of power, fame, and riches. While he eventually became expert at fashioning a defense both for himself and his actions both during and after the war, the truth of the matter is that most of what he argued in his own defense was (and is) preposterous. No one could have walked in the circles he did, have acted in concert with the aims and goals of the Nazi regime with such success and energy, and yet have been as totally naive and ignorant as he always claimed he was. What he recalls more than anything is the old adage Hitler was said to have coined; 'Tell a man an outrageous lie often enough for long enough and even he will come to believe it' I think Speer proved the accuracy of that adage, believing in his own lie. This is an absorbing and provocative book, and one I can heartily recommend to the student of modern history. Enjoy!