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Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth

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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!

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.

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!

I have never seen an author come close to Sereny in her ability to portray and accept the complexity of human nature, which she does with this Albert Speer book to the nth degree; it is a work of art.

This book is never dry and never didactic. Unlike like some historians, Ms. Sereny never forgets that at the root of her story lie human beings, and righfully they should be at the center of any story of human history. She always relates it back to the human being.

I find Publisher's Weekly's assertion that she was his apologist to be laughable; she never, ever lets him off the hook. One feels that she is a very moral human being.

This 700+ page book is never dull. The portrait she etches of Albert Speer and the people of his time is indelible; I doubt you will ever forget it. And if you live with your books the way I do you will find yourself thinking about your own morality when you are through.

I read her "Marybelle" book a few years ago and was bowled over by it; it is as fine a book as the Speer book though much smaller. In this country where we are having a field day charging and sentencing children as adults it is a necessity to read.

Let me end this by saying Gitta Sereny is of the caliber of Hannah Arendt, though the better writer!

In the course of his interviews with Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer remarked that had she been a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, he would have hanged.

How many biographers have had the opportunity to actively challenge their subjects' veracity? Not content to leave even the (seemingly) most minute details to chance, Sereny conducted exhaustive archival research and background interviews with Speer's family, friends, former associates, and enemies. This allows her to face Speer on equal footing -- and thus reveals new insights on the most enigmatic of Hitler's ministers.

While the central theme of the book revolves around the question of what Speer knew about the Final Solution, and when he knew about it, the story of how one man could be almost wholly seduced by evil is also investigated. The reader will learn that Speer, unloved as a child, came under Hitler's influence in the way that many young men with lacunas in their souls will come to misidentify membership in a collective enterprise with their own self-worth.

In fact, if, as William Manchester said, Speer's 'Inside the Third Reich' "takes us through the looking-glass," then Sereny's book represents the adventures in Wonderland itself. The history of Hitler's Germany is seen from the unique context of the Hitler-Speer relationship. Far from relying on one-dimensional oversimplification, though, Sereny explores just how masterfully the Nazi hierarchy came to power and prosecuted a war -- proving once again that evil is not always overt and monstrous, but subtle and palliative.

Was Speer a dissembler? Was he sincere in his attempt to atone for his particpation in an evil regime? I will leave the reader to his own conclusions. However, it is worth noting Sereny's charitable conclusion about this truly historical figure: "It seemed to me it was some kind of victory that this man -- just this man -- weighed down by intolerable and unmanageable guilt, with the help of a Protestant chaplain, a Catholic monk, and a Jewish rabbi, tried to become a different man."

This is perhaps the most fascinating one-volume account of Nazi Germany to appear in recent years, and will enrich our knowledge of that particularly dark time in history. Highly recommended.

While it is intriguing to speculate whether Speer knew or did not know about the extermination of the Jews, that is only the smallest part of this vast work of scholarship. Gitta Sereny came to the conclusion that Speer was neither moral nor immoral, but rather "morally extinguished". That is a somewhat ambiguous term, but from what I read in Speer's books and from what Sereny reveals in this one, I take it to mean something fairly simple: Speer was aware of people being imprisoned and killed, but really didn't pay much attention because he was too busy with his career.

He noticed Jews being lined up at the Berlin train station to be taken somewhere; he didn't have the inclination or the time to find out why or where. He noticed that his boss had started a war; he was too busy to wonder whether the war was justified--he was an architect and any number of projects had to be attended to. His boss ordered him to assume leadership of armaments production for the war; refusing the order was not an option. He discovered that armaments production was accomplished largely by slaves, who died in great numbers at their work. Perhaps he heard of work areas where very little work was done and very, very large numbers of people died, of causes unrelated to work. Perhaps he did not. Sereny's book is largely a probe into whether he knew about the extermination camps or not.

Of his repentance after the war there can be little doubt. He quarrels in Spandau with the other Nazis over whether they did anything wrong. He is mocked by one of his closest former Nazi friends for his "public mea culpas". He speaks with a chaplain in Spandau about his desire to make himself a "different man". He exchanges letters with Rabbi Robert Geis, a tremendously moving encounter--the Jew forgiving the Nazi. Just the fact that he would sit down for numerous interviews with Sereny, an author of books on death camps, speaks of his consciousness of the crimes he was associated with, and his desire to confront them.

What I found most compelling was the glimpse Sereny's interviews afford us into a society that had gone completely over the edge, taking not just soldiers and guards and politicians, but also a great many children. It's easy to forget that many of these murderers had families. Speer had five children. Goebbels had six, all given names beginning with H. There is a photo in the book showing a number of these children arranged around Adolf Hitler on his birthday. Speer himself was a very young man when he first came under the spell of Hitler.

In following the thread of her investigation into Speer, Sereny arrives at Posen Castle, October 6, 1943, where Himmler is addressing an assembly of gauleiters: "...think for a moment how many party comrades have addressed one of those petitions to us in which was written that of course all Jews are pigs, but so-and-so is a decent Jew who should be exempted...I daresay that according to the number of such petitions...there must have been more decent Jews in Germany than there were Jews altogether...each of you, in your own province, knows good respectable National Socialists, each of whom knows one decent Jew..."

The irony is really remarkable if you stop to think about it: the minister in charge of genocide complaining that he is overwhelmed with requests from Nazis to spare Jews. He goes on to say how he made the difficult decision to kill not just the men, but also the women and children, and congratulates himself on his foresight: "I did not think I was justified in exterminating the men, but to leave their children to grow up and take revenge on our sons and grandchildren." The bland and practical tone is that of a civil engineer: I did not think I should put a sidewalk there because that would not leave enough space for the cars to park.

He continues, slipping into the stilted and delusional diction that is more common to Nazi speech: "This order was the most difficult one we were ever given...I think I can say that it has been carried out without damaging the minds or spirits of our men. The danger was great and ever present." (Of what? Of damage to the spirit?) "...the difference between the two possibilities...to become cruel and heartless and no longer to respect human life, or to become soft and succumb to weakness and nervous breakdowns...the way between Scylla and Charybdis is appallingly narrow."

One wonders if that would have been Himmler's defense had he survived to Nuremberg: "I exterminated the Jews in order to keep myself from having a nervous breakdown." Here is what is at the heart of my fascination with Albert Speer: unlike Himmler and Goebbels and the rest, he was not a lunatic. Sereny includes this passage from Posen Castle because there is an unresolved question as to whether Speer was present for Himmler's speech, and hence informed of the policy of genocide. But I don't think it matters. Speer was accessory to so many monstrous crimes that his knowledge or ignorance of the most monstrous one becomes moot.

The more interesting question is how a man with the capacity for technical brilliance and decency and remorse, and a host of the other attributes that are best in mankind, could be a party to, and indeed a powerful engine of, one of the humanity's most ghastly episodes. This book doesn't entirely answer that question--no book could--but it is an absorbing and engrossing effort toward doing so.

I've read a great deal about Albert Speer, including his own works, and this is the best, most thoroughly researched and well-balanced work I've read. The author's abilities to break down the essence of the Third Reich into human, psycho-social concepts is incredible. This is a great book to help understand human behavior, even if one isn't terribly interested in Speer or the Third Reich. Life's journey is rarely black and white, and the author masterfully presents the dynamic and challenging human dimensions with "truth".

I loved this book so much that I find it difficult even to review it. There is little I can add to what previous reviewers have said--Sereny's biography is meticulous, always intriguing, and sometimes breathtaking.

The two most outstanding aspects of the book were Sereny's close contact with the older Speer and the completely fascinating subject, Speer himself. Sereny manages to do the impossible--get close enough to the subject to occasionally shock the reader, while retaining a sort of neutrality. Sereny, who actually lived in Speer's home over a period of several weeks and maintained a friendship with him for the last few years of his life, readily acknowledges that she liked Speer, and her vivid portrayal of Speer's charming, elusive personality and profoud intellect shows why. At the same time, she is utterly honest about confronting the darkest aspects of Speer's life and his involvement in the Holocaust. This is a biography that almost reads like a novel, particularly the scenes of interaction between Sereny and Speer, in which she gradually and tantalizingly brings him closer to admitting the truth.

While it is true that Sereny occasionally goes off on tangents, I did not find this aspect of the book to be a negative, and certainly not enough to warrant anything less than a five star rating. While I primarily read the book to learn about Albert Speer, Sereny's writing and analysis are so good that I didn't mind seeing them applied to other aspects of a very compelling period of history. In many ways, this biography is something of a history of the Third Reich from the perspective of Albert Speer, particularly highlighting his important role.

Sereny ultimately presents a portrait of a man whom the reader cannot help but empathize with; however, she is honest enough that the reader also cannot help but disapprove of him. She maintains a careful balance between these two aspects, and avoids falling into the same unfortunate trap as many Nazi biographers of glorifying the subject matter. At the same time, she avoids the temptation to take the easy way out and present an outright condemnation of one of the highest ranking Nazis in Germany. Sereny's Speer is neither godlike nor demonic; he is profoundly human, and her portrayal of his humanity is a magnificent achievement.

Sereny's insightful look into the life of Albert Speer raises more issues than she puts to rest. Given the subject matter, that might be the ultimate compliment. While when I picked up the book I was hoping for a complete admission of Speer's guilt for the Holucaust and for the other crimes of the Nazis, after finishing the book I realized that such insight was impossible. Moreover, the lack of a complete admission was understandable.

Given Speer's position within Hitler's heirarchy, his contribution to the war effort, his role in the entrenched slavery that was part of the Third Reich and his intelligence he could have hardly not known about the crimes that he atleast enabled. However, for a person to hold himself responsible for these monsterous crimes and to still go on in any ordinary way would be next to impossible. The true are mutually exclusive. This is espically true given the fact that Speer was no monster. That he was not evil man, but only participated in evil acts.

Sereny go along way toward explaining how Speer was able to live with accepting guilt for the Holoucaust but still not acknowleging that he knew about the Holocaust during his tenure with Hitler. While this is a subtle distinction it was one necessary for Speer's survival.

There is no attempt to white wash Speer's role in supporting Hitler. Sereny is no apologist for Speer, but when necessary a harsh critic. The fact that Speer enabled Hitler to continue his campaign against humanity, and for so long shut his eyes to Nazi crimes, cannot be excused. However, since Speer was no Himmler or Gobbels, it can be understood.

What is the center of the book and Speer's motavation is his relationship with Hitler. Sereny presents a Hitler, through Speer, that is kind to his close associates, a gentlement to the women around him, and who enjoyed being around their children. A Hitler that loved art and was able to converse with Speer for hours about architecture. That this doesn't jive with the author of the Final Solution is of course obvious. But this is the Hitler that Speer formed a close bond with.

That Speer was unwilling to equate the Hitler that he knew with the Hitler of history becomes understandable when put into the above context. However, understanding does not equate with lack of responsibility.

The book is well written and researched. Sereny writes nonfiction as if it was a novel and holds your attention throughout most of the book. This is an essential read for anyone who wishes to go beyond the surface of the Third Reich.

Gitta Sereny's monumental work 'Abert Speer: His Battle with Truth,' is a book of major importance about a man and an era that the world must never forget. Albert Speer, first Hitler's architect and later his Minister for Armaments and War Production, will remain forever an enigma. Did he know about the Holocaust? To what extent was his involvment? Should he have been hanged at Nuremburg? Was his apologetic manner in later years sincere? These are the questions that Sereny asks and attempts to answer, often arriving at conclusions that make even the reader uncomfortable, forcing him or her to realize that the Nazi system, at the time, could have held as much appeal for them as it did for Speer and for all of Germany. Sereny's intervews with Speer, her numerous interviews, and her exhaustive research all contribute to this masterful book. Of particular interest are the people whose lives were affected most by the madess of Hitler. Sereny's talks with the son of Martin Bormann are both chilling and incredibly moving. I do feel as though this book, along with Speer's own works, 'Inside the Third Reich,' and 'Spandau: the Secret Diaries,' (his thrid book, 'Infiltrator,' is one to be missed,) are essential reading for any serious student of Nazi Germany.