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Title: Albert Speer : His Battle with Truth by Gitta Sereny ISBN: 0-679-76812-2 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 October, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.57 (35 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Formidable Man Is Confronted By A Formidable Biographer
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: Masterful unmasking of Albert Speer
Comment: Gitta Sereny is not only a prodigious researcher, she also writes beautifully. This is an amazing book, the product of years of interviews with Speer, who heretofore had been regarded as a sort of "good Nazi." Sereny exposes the truth: that he knew about Nazi genocide and was the mastermind behind German's brutal slave labor between 1941-45.
Sereny beautifully weaves her story, throwing in wonderful ancillary observations about the Nazi hierarchy. She includes Speer's disingenuous criticisms of Hitler (whom he actually worshipped), as well as his opinions on Goering, Goebbels and Hitler's other minions.
Sereny includes details of Speer's love affair late in life with a much-younger blonde woman and the dumping of his long-suffering wife after 50 years of marriage.
Most important was Speer's assiduous and desperate attempt to disguise the fact that he knew about Auschwitz and successfully (until Sereny) hid it from the world.
Sereny deserved the Pulitzer for this book. Read it and you won't be able to put it down.
Rating: 1
Summary: Sereny's still the prosecutor
Comment: Unfortunately, Sereny has failed to enlighten us as to how
Speer finally discovered what was going on in the concentration
camps. It was near the end of the war when a staff officer took Speer aside and asked him if he knew about Auschwitz. Speer said
"Yes, it's a work camp. Why?" "Don't ever go there" the officer
replied. That drove Speer to investigate and find out about the
camp and the human exterminations. Later he showed up at Gen. Henrici's command post and showed him the pistol he planned to use to kill Hitler, having decided that poison gas into the intakes of the bunker wouldn't work - they had repositioned them too high in the air. He finally realized that he wasn't a killer and never carried out the plan. The Nuremberg trials could only convict Speer for using slave labor in the factories that he oversaw, but those laborers fared better under Speer than they would have elsewhere. He should never have been convicted of anything, along with several other defendents who were tried for
the "crime" of disliking Jews. A prosecutor might well try to convince a jury that Speer is not to be believed, but their are plenty of historical facts that contradict Sereny's claims. A history should be investigative in its orientation, not prosecutorial. Let the facts speak for themselves. This was Sereny's greatest blunder and unfortunately it infects all of the text. The author simply isn't an historian here; she remains the prosecutor, but without a defense attorney to check her more outlandish statements.
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Title: INSIDE THE THIRD REICH by Albert Speer ISBN: 0684829495 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 April, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Into That Darkness : An Examination of Conscience by Gitta Sereny ISBN: 0394710355 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 January, 1983 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Speer: The Final Verdict by Joachim Fest, Ewald Osers, Alexandra Dring ISBN: 0151005567 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 09 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Good Nazi : The Life and Lies of Albert Speer by Dan Van Der Vat ISBN: 039565243X Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 21 October, 1997 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Nuremberg Diary by Gustave M. Gilbert ISBN: 0306806614 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: September, 1995 List Price(USD): $18.50 |
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