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Title: The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer by Dan Van Der Vat, Albert Speer ISBN: 0-297-81721-3 Publisher: George Weidenfeld & Nicholson, Ltd. Pub. Date: January, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.62 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Insightful, Shocking Examination of Nazi Albert Speer
Comment: Like many contemporary works of non-fiction, "The Good Nazi" provides support for the axiom that truth is often stranger than fiction. Albert Speer remains in many ways one of the most enigmatic figures of the 20th century, admired for his singular and seemingly forthright admission of guilt and culpability for crimes committed by the Third Reich during the Nuremberg War Trials, but reviled by many later for conducting a campaign of disingenuous prevarication to justify his actions and stances before during and after the war. Speer spent two decades years in the allied prison at Spandau as one of the few members of the Nazi hierarchy to escape the death sentence, and wrote a best-selling book that he secretly smuggled out over the course of the twenty years with the cooperation of his wife and family. With its publication in the early 1970s, he became internationally famous, and he shamelessly used the bully pulpit of his own notoriety to forward his own revisionist notions about what really happened during the 12-year reign of the Third Reich.
The present book revolves around the complex nature of the issues raised during this post-prison campaign. On the one hand, Speer was the only of the accused former Nazis to admit his own guilt and complicity in the crimes and misdeeds of the Third Reich, yet on the other hand he always denied any direct knowledge of the Holocaust. This terrific biography by Dan vander Vat, subtitled 'The Life and Lies of Albert Speer'. represents a well-documented and penetrating investigation into the admittedly contradictory aspects to Speer's explanations, justifications, and rationalizations of his own role and conduct during and after the Second World War. The author lays an exhaustive groundwork for his claims that Speer was in actuality the ultimate opportunist, one who used his charm, position, and influence both to rise shamelessly through the Nazi ranks to become the second in command and who subsequently ployed these obfuscating skills to further ingratiate himself with the world at large.
The essence of the author's argument is that Speer was basically an amoral and extremely ambitious opportunist who did whatever was necessary to further his own life situation, whether it be that of a rising Nazi official or as a prevaricating apologist for a shameless German past. Thus, at one point Speer is depicted as the ultimate company man, a dedicated Nazi zealously and shamelessly pursuing the maximization of forced and slave labor in service to the Reich's war objective, deliberately and systematically exploiting the millions of captive peoples, most usually to the point of physical exhaustion and death. Try though he might, Speer could never adequately explain away his own behavior and actions during the war, and it seem quite evident that he did indeed conduct a campaign of deliberate obfuscation and prevarication regarding his own role in the Nazi murder machine. This is a book that sometimes makes one uneasy because of the nature of the facts it is investigating, yet which also does so with great care and endless levels of scrupulous detail. I heartily recommend it for anyone who cares to peer into what Hannah Arendt so memorably described as being the utter 'banality of evil'. Enjoy!
Rating: 2
Summary: Speer has already taken full blame, so why?
Comment: I do not understand the purpose for this book. Albert Speer had admitted that he knew something was going on in the concentration camps, but could not bring himself to investigate it. For this, he claims, that he should be held responsible for these atrocities. He wanted to be tried and treated as if he knew fully what was happening. So, what does it matter if he really did know or not, when he took full responsibilty for it anyway? He does not claim to be a "good" Nazi nor would he want to be. He did not try to scam anybody. He stood up in front of the judges at Nuremburg and claimed himself to be as guilty as one can be. If the author feels that the punishment was lenient, he should be critical of the judges who decided on the sentence, not on Speer.
Make no doubt about it. Albert Speer was a Nazi and an evil man, if for nothing else than being a part of that regime and for not investigating further into its atrocities which was his duty. I do not think anyone disagrees with this point. He did spend twenty years in jail and was not let out until he was an old man.
I recommend reading Speer's INSIDE THE THIRD REICH which allows alot more insight to how the whole nation of Germany could be seduced by such an evil man as Hitler, and how he was too. I do however give this author credit for taking the other side of the argument and the unpopular view.
Rating: 4
Summary: He inflicted it upon countless people, but he escaped¿.
Comment: One of the great enigmas of The Nuremberg Trials from the reading I had done, was how Albert Speer escaped death, and instead went to prison and spent the better part of 2 decades a free man. Speer is known to many as The Architect Of The Third Reich. Known for his heavy Neo-Classic designs, he made for an ideal kindred spirit with the Corporal, who was a frustrated/failed architect. He became the man that would design, and then oversee construction of some of the largest, and some would say designs of questionable artistic merit, until Berlin began to be reduced to the post war rubble pile it was destined to become. Many of the planned buildings and monuments would dwarf buildings even by today's standards. While the war made redecorating the homes of the Nazi elite, and Hitler's projects increasingly difficult and then impossible, Speer never lacked work.
The net result of Speer's greatest contribution to the Nazi war effort was his remarkable ability as a manager of production, which actually lengthened the War. By any measure Speer was responsible for countless deaths that otherwise would never have happened had he not been one of Hitler's zealots, one of those mesmerized and totally loyal to the Corporal. The production of war material actually increased under the direction of Speer, and did so as the War was winding down. Production of weapons was actually at some of its highest levels at various times later, rather than earlier in the War.
None of the incredible feats of production he was able to conjure despite seemingly hopeless odds, match the odds he beat when his life was at a very high probability of ending at Nuremberg. How this Nazi at the very highest echelons of power, a man who was a close confidant's of the Corporal would survive the fate of his peers is the story that Mr. Dan Van Der Velt shares in his work "The Good Nazi". I don't know if anyone was offering odds of who would beat the hangman, but the odds Speer beat, have to have made him was of the longest shots ever to come in a winner in history.
There are those who say his "attempt" to kill Hitler, and his refusal to follow orders for the destruction of Berlin mitigated the crimes he was guilty of. These people would say that had he carried out all of the final orders to destroy Berlin's infrastructure, it would have lengthened the City's recovery, and brought additional suffering to the survivors. His acts or lack of action in these respects in a purely pragmatic sense may have mitigated some adverse results. But these have to be placed side by side with his conduct for year after year as a very high ranking member of Hitler's Staff, a man that did as he was told, who did not question anything, until the outcome was crystal clear, and it was to his advantage to do so.
Speer ran his factories with slave labor; he personally was responsible for the rounding up and "resettlement" of 75,000 Jews from Berlin at a minimum. He oversaw the factories, the brutal conditions, and vicious punishments that were as much a part of his way of carrying out his orders as any other high-ranking Nazi.
But this criminal's greatest talent was as an actor, who played a role he had one chance at, and anything other than a flawless performance would result in his death. Not only did he cheat death, he spent the better part of 2 decades living as a free man after serving a prison term in Spandau Prison. He was able to convince his judges that "The Final Solution" was something he was ignorant of, and to the extent he knew of any act of cruelty his was Germany's Penitent.
Even after reading this account of Speer I find it incredible that he accomplished the greatest scam of the war. I would like to think he provided some incredible service that is unknown, so as to justify the leniency this man was dealt with, some set of mitigating circumstances that are almost unimaginable in light of the crimes he did commit. I can find none, I cannot find one, and I remain as baffled by his escape, if better informed, than prior to reading this book. The work is extremely well done, and my failure to understand what led to his lack of punishment in no way reflects on the quality of the work.
Speer lived to be an old man who enjoyed his freedom into the 1980's. He may never have built Hitler's "Germania", with monstrosities like a 400,000 seat stadium in the city where he went on trial. But in the end he won, he survived, and to this day must remain an enigma, the consummate escape artist who left Nuremberg alive, and later in 1966 walked out of prison a free man, a man who theoretically paid backed Humanity for a war many felt he lengthened for a year, and a man who convinced his accusers the Holocaust was not something he could in any way be held accountable for.
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Title: Speer: The Final Verdict by Joachim Fest, Ewald Osers, Alexandra Dring ISBN: 0151005567 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 09 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Albert Speer : His Battle with Truth by GITTA SERENY ISBN: 0679768122 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 October, 1996 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Hitler : A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock ISBN: 0060920203 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 05 June, 1991 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Himmler: Reichs Fuhrer-SS by Peter Padfield ISBN: 0304358398 Publisher: Cassell Pub. Date: 31 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945 by Richard Overy ISBN: 0142001589 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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