This is an autobiography of one of the top officials in the Third Reich.He wrote it while imprisoned after the fall of the Nazi regime.
This is more than a writing about events, but a serious self analysis with twenty years of time to think about it.
Finished the other book. The internet is wonderful, but nothing beats a good book for depth. Visit your local library. They are cool!
Thanks Kim for affording me the time to study.
8 comments:
You are so welcome! :-)
How is the book so far? Was he repentant? Did he see from a clearer perspective looking back?
He was terribly sorry... and much of the book is a self-look at how he did what he did... and how it was possible to ignore the atrocities.
At some point he was part of a plan to assassinate Hitler... and there was lots of evidence that within the Third Reich that he tried to make things as easy as was possible on laborers... the reason he only got 20 years instead of the death penalty.
However, the book isn't an effort to redeem himself.
Wow. That is really interesting. There is a genocide going on in Darfur. Will we look back on that like the Holocaust? I don't think we would have stopped Hitler's extermination of the Jews if he was just staying in Germany doing it. It's so incredibly horrible and sad what people will do to each other.
Just as an aside, there are several historians who doubt some of the claims Speer makes in the book (I haven't read it myself- I'm just remembering from class!) and whether he was ever part of an assassination attempt on Hitler. Apparently after the war several mid to high-ranking Nazi officials claimed that they were part of assassination attempts. Speer might have tried to make conditions better for workers, but if I'm not mistaken he was also responsible for the sheer magnitude of slave labor during the Third Reich. And many, many people died on his watch.
FYI!
Connie (I can't remember how to log on and all the instructions are in Dutch!)
Thanks for the insight Connie. I put those couple "facts" down from the forward in the book.
Funny that my natural inclination is to give the guy some slack.
I think one big reason that such "civilized" people could get caught up in such a mess was simply that the "well-intentioned" leaders (like architects) were very easily able to look the other way, produce and see themselves creating monumental works.
On another note, I've read time again how so-and-so "fell under the spell" of Hitler. I think for Speer, this was a driving factor for the book, "How could I have fallen for this guy... and ignored...???" I dunno.
Books are just a crutch for people who need books.
Royal
This is so circular in logic that I was able to find the diameter by dividing by pi.
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