When he joined the Party in 1931, Speer had never given much thought to politics. How could one of the chief centers of the civilized world have become a torture chamber for millions of people, a country ruled by criminals so effectively that it conquered most of Europe, moving out toward other continents, planting its swastika standards from Norway to the Caucasus and Africa before it was brought down at the cost of some thirty million lives? What had happened to the nation of thinkers and poets, the “good” Germans that the nineteenth century knew? And how did intelligent, well-intentioned, educated, principled people like Albert Speer become so caught up in the movement, so captivated by Hitler’s magnetism that they could accept everything-the secret police, the concentration camps, the nonsensical rhetoric of Aryan heroism and anti-Semitism, the slaughter of the Fuehrers wars-and devote all their resources to keeping this regime in power? In these memoirs of the man who was very likely the most gifted member of the government hierarchy we have some of the answers to these riddles and as complete a view as we are ever likely to get of the inside of the Nazi state. The enormity of the crimes committed, the huge scale of victory and defeat are subjects of continuous exploration and analysis.
The unresolved questions of the period of national socialism remain with us. Hitler’s mistakes Galland against GoeringĬoncentration camp prisoners in war industry The German pavilion at the Paris World’s FairĮvents of 1938: Cabinet changes, Austria, Munich, November 9Ī Reichstag for one hundred forty million peopleĭealing with Goebbels, dealing with Goering
Renovating the party headquarters and the Propaganda MinistryĪt Obersalzberg Mountain walks with Eva Braun National Socialism and the Technical Institute
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