Albert Speer: The End of a Myth

by Matthias Schmidt

Did the master builder of the Third Reich, Albert Speer, really not know about the Nazi extermination camps? What did he conceal from Allied interrogators, and from the millions who bought his memoirs, INSIDE THE THIRD REICH?

"Here is the chilling, documented tale about the "hero" of the Nuremberg Trials. In this book, which was an immediate best-seller in Europe, historian Matthias Schmidt interweaves documentary evidence with his own interviews with Speer's former colleagues. He unravels the most carefully crafted falsification in modern history--Albert Speer's memoirs dangerously polluted history. Schmidt's book purifies the record."--David Irving

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Biography, Germany, Holocaust, War

276 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Mark Singer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-researched investigation into how "Hitler's architect" and Nazi war criminal Albert Speer rewrote history to save himself from execution and promote his record for posterity.

[Bernie4444 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Schmidt vs. Speer

Matthias Schmidt, an associate professor at the Friedrich-Meinecke Institute for Historical Research, worked for four years to end the myth of Albert Speer. He acquired quite a lot of information. He has more notes and bibliographies than he has a book.
So read the book. Does he do it?
His next target is Heinrich Himmler

[Olga · Rating 3 out of 5]

Schmidt comes in with a deeply negative opinion about the subject of the book and refuses to budge even one bit. True, feeling antipathy towards a convicted war criminal is not exactly an unreasonable thing to do - one might even say it’s a natural reaction for any person with a well-functioning moral compass. The tone of the book is sharp, ironic; at times you can almost feel the vitriol seeping through the pages. The way Schmidt attacks some of Speer’s self-serving claims and omissions with archival sources is quite masterful - such as for the Lippert and Egger affairs, let alone with Speer’s own office journal - the crown jewel of the book. It’s evident that substantial background research has been done.

However, there is still a difference between criticizing someone’s actions and character, and downright bending the narrative to an extent where the book’s genre starts to transform from history to historical fiction - and boy does it happen often here. It almost feels like Schmidt would do any mental contortions to beat the available evidence at hand into the shape he wishes. The chapter on Speer’s crown-prince ambitions, for example, is quite literally based on Milch’s dubious claims and author’s own speculations. Any instances where the book subject, mendacious and twisted as he was, acted in a not-to-horrible way (sabotage of the Nerobefehl being perhaps one of the most illustrative examples) are brushed off. The author seems to fall into the usual trap - portraying Speer both as an absolute spineless sycophant to Hitler and as an overpowered Machiavellian manipulator who fooled some of the greatest legal minds of 20th century and the entire world to boot. Schmidt’s Speer, as with so many historians’, is very much a 2D figure. Sereny paints a much more compelling picture of a twisted yet tormented man with an impaired sense of empathy who realized that way too late.

On a side note, the book must be a great way for English language learners to practice a perfect modal construction - the number of “Speer must have […]” conjectures made by the author is impressive!

[Xavier Vasco · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s hard to have proper insight into the value of such a book when revisionist history of this kind is so à la mode today that historiography without a defining polemic seems so quaint to be a farce. So in the context of its publication in 1983, this book should be viewed as a new contribution to the narrative and a genuinely revealing autopsy of one of the castaways of Hitler’s regime. Nevertheless, while I kept hoping that the next page was the one Schmidt would finally deliver the knockout blow, in the form of a discovered quote or lost document that would ‘end the myth of Albert Speer’, I was disappointingly left without one. While Schmidt provides a decent explanation of the broad turn of events leading to Speer’s rise and fall, and an interesting account of his interpersonal relationships— the book’s terseness and ultimately unprovocative contention that ‘the Nazis were a bunch of self serving power hungry liars’, makes for a lacklustre revelation today. Even the book’s raison d'etre, being Speer’s unedited office journal felt under-utilised by Schmidt to make its significance feel uneventful.

It’s possible that I benefit from a time when the personal accounts of historical figures are rightfully viewed as suspect thanks to books like these. Yet, ultimately I’m left feeling that this book is a little too mired in its own research to actually prove it to me as a reader. It’s so absurd that I had thought I received a misprint, when in thinking I was only half way through the book I found myself at an its end— with 100 pages of its 300 being its bibliography. In saying that, Albert Speer seems to be a frightfully neglected top brass of the Nazi regime and one that deserves such thoughtful study. This book, in its small part, eludes to the fact that there is so much more to someone that even 40 years since publication is still commonly noted in passing as merely ‘Hitler’s favourite architect’.

[Dylan Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

For better or worse, Albert Speer escaped the rope at Nuremberg and lived long enough to write a memoir that cleaned up his image and made him, briefly, into an apolitical technocrat in the eyes of history.

Of course, this was all lies and he was fully aware and complicit in the Holocaust, as well as not being the wonderkid who built the German war economy.

Problem is that he WAS there and interacted with Hitler and other top Nazis as Third Reich rose and fell, so he does have some unique knowledge to glean.

Schmidt's book is then invaluable as it shows the lies that Speer invented to avoid the hangman at Nuremberg and salvage his image. He completely demolishes all of the lies, leaving the valuable info ready to harvest


Fully recommend this book as a side-by-side companion to Inside the Third Reich

[Hunger Artist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent expose on the architect of the Third Reich and Hitler's favorite intellectual. It was indeed Gobbels and Speer who took the matter into their own hands to send Jews out of Germany while Hitler wanted to wait till the war was over.
As mentioned in this book and also in David Irving's "Hitler's War", Speer's genuine memoirs were altered on his own decision to get benefits from Allies.
One of Hitler's most trusted men betrayed him after his death.