Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth

Albert Speer was not only Hitler's architect and armaments minister, but the Fuhrer's closest friend--his "unhappy love." Speer was one of the few defendants at the Nuremberg Trials to take responsibility for Nazi war crimes, even as he denied knowledge of the Holocaust. Now this enigma of a man is unveiled in a monumental biography by a writer who came to know Speer intimately in his final years.Out of hundreds of hours of interviews, Sereny unravels the threads of Speer's personality: the genius that made him indispensable to the German war machine, the conscience that drove him to repent, and the emotional wounds that made him susceptible to Hitler's lethal magnetism. Read as an inside account of the Third Reich, or as a revelatory unsparing yet compassionate study of the human capacity for evil, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth is a triumph."Fascinating...Not only a major addition to our knowledge of the Third Reich, but a stunning attempt to understand the nature of good and evil."--Newsday"More than a biography...It also constitutes a perceptive re-examination of the mysterious appeal of Adolf Hitler."--San Francisco Chronicle B&W photos. Introduction Prologue An Infusion of Stable Stock 'I Felt He Was a Human Being' Dizzy with Excitement A Kind of Love A Shared Devotion 'You've All Gone Completely Insane' A Slight Discomfort Unleashing Murder A Grey Path Indeed A Moral Sore A Fatal Appointment An Irresistable Challenge A Maelstom of Intrigues A Blinkered Commitment The Unbearable Truth 'It Was Not Yet My Time' The 20th of July Scorched Earth 'I Stand Unconditionally Behind You' He Is the Dream The One Interesting Person A Common Responsibility Spandau 1 Spandau 2 A Twilight of Knowing The Great Lie Postscript References Notes Index