Some Thoughts on Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer

"I would have sold my soul like Faust"

"in the final analysis I myself determined the degree of my isolation, the extremity of my evasions, and the extent of my ignorance."

The preponderance of historians agree that Albert Speer was a calculatingly selfish intellectual and a technocrat devoid of morality. But he was no empty suit: he was capable of remarkable feats of strategic and perhaps dubious cultural importance. On the one hand he was driven by a genuine lust for power and was certainly at one time Hitler's heir apparent, while on the other, a cool thinking intellectual who realized in late 1944 he had better start trying to save at least part of the economy for a post-war Germany, with any eye toward whitewashing some of his earlier actions.

Of a certainty this book is a carefully calculated apologist tome. But then what biography is not a self-serving device for insuring the best possible face for posterity? Speer saved himself at the Nuremberg Trials by admitting guilt, but he never admitted responsibility either - that was for others. For all of that, Inside the Third Reich is a vital piece of the historical tapestry of the Third Reich, particularly if one enjoys reading between the lines.

The book encompasses three distinct parts. First a series of important vignettes of major Nazi leaders and their roles, most importantly a first-hand account of Hitler's "work ethic", charisma and megalomaniac tendencies from the man closest to him as well as a look at some of the inner workings of the NSDAP and the Nazi government. Secondly, a loose biography aimed at personal rehabilitation while dancing around the issue of the Final Solution. And third, an interesting overview of monolithic architecture used as a social tool and its important place in the Nazi ethos.

Hitler, Nazi Infighting and Government