The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer

Rating:
Summary: Speer has already taken full blame, so why?
Review: 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.

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Summary: Insightful, Shocking Examination of Nazi Albert Speer
Review: 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:
Summary: Bad History
Review: This book claims Albert Speer was far worse than he himself confessed, though his confessions were quite full. It builds a case against him of even greater crimes - complicency in the holocaust - on two extremely flimsy and unrelaible pieces of evidence - that he might - or might not! - have been in a room when Himmler mentioned killing Jews, and he knew Jews were being deported by the Nazis from Berlin - though there is no evidence he knew where.

Speer served a little over 21 years in prison, more or less in solitary confinement with a couple of other Nazi leaders, for having used slave-labour in World War II. He committed a major crime, but certainly received a major punishment. He did not attempt to minimise his guilt in this matter, accepted the sentence - the only Nazi to do so - and seems to have been sincerely repentant. This book, lacking evidence that he was even worse than he admitted, bolsters its "case" with emotional overkill - for example saying Speer behaved oddly the day he was released after serving 21 years prison - well, he would, wouldn't he?

I think this is another book trying to exploit the Holocaust and prove again that "There's no business like Shoa business."

The book has a bombastic, sneering tone not only towards Speer but generally. Although the author claims to be a naval writer, one notices mistakes when he touches on naval subjects. He was co-author of a book containing an outstandingly ridiculous conspiracy-theory on the Titanic, which seriously claimed it had been swapped for a different ship and delibertely sunk. Yeah! And the Captain, first officer, engineers and a lot of the crew went down with it to keep the secret - that's company loyalty for you!