Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth - Gitta Sereny

Albert Speer's life story is probably the most unique in 20th Century history. Here was a man who was deeply intelligent and very talented. He was a highly gifted architect who just so happened to Adolph Hitler's closest friend. Albert Speer stumbled into the Third Reich after he was commissioned by Hitler to rebuild Germany in the 1930's. After Fritz Todt died in 1941 Hitler made Albert Speer the Reich Armaments Minister. Albert Speer became obsessed with power and became the second most powerful man in the Third Reich. Albert Speer was not a monster or megalomaniac like Hitler but a complex person who was in part guilty by association but ...  Read the complete review

Wadey to Minor, Minor does a maradonna turn around Ingle, through to Woods, he dummies it past Horgan, but wait Wadey comes in with a flying tackle, amazing. Woods gets up and lands a right hook but Wadey nuts him and he falls down. The ball is then played out wide to Booooothy who controls it well on the chest before smashing a 70 yard shot past Bender in goal. 1-0. But Wadey brushes herself down, does 50 kick ups and scores a great goal. 1-1. Boothy is v mad, but Wadey picks the ball up and throws a computer at her before swinging a long pass out wide to Swaby, back to Gould, what a goal!!!! Thomas stranded on the goaline, it finishes 2-1 ...  Read the complete review

Gitta Sereny has created a masterpiece of great significance in this work and the unique access she had to a man who was at the centre of Hitler's regime. She has a tough and inquistorial style which pushed Speer hard to face questions which quite obviously haunted the man in later life. Sereny is thourough in the examination of the detail of Speer's life and uncompromising in the her appraisal and questioning of his actions. It is fascinating to read Speer's retrospective viewpoints, which leave us with the sense of a man who struggled to comprehend the enormity of the events to which he had been so close. This is a gripping work from begining to ...  Read the complete review

Gitta Sereny certainly likes to pick controversial subjects to write about. Following her books about child murderer Mary Bell and death camp commandant Franz Stagl comes her biography of Albert Speer, the Third Reich’s Minister of Armaments, Hitler’s personal architect and probably his closest friend. The book starts, as it should, at the Nuremberg trials where Speer was the only defendant to admit his guilt and where he was sentenced to 20 years for war crimes. And where Gitta Sereny, then a young Hungararian nurse, was present as an observer and first became aware of Speer. Some time after his release from Spandau she interviewed him ...  Read the complete review