Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs

I read this book, in paperback, many years ago and it 'stayed with me' (i.e. was not forgotten). I am an Engineer (now retired) and it was early-on in my career when I first read the book. Engineers and Architects (Speer's original vocation) can have a lot in common and I think that at least some of the 'draw' that the book has had on me is that it gives me (and I believe any Engineer) the opportunity to see the temptations that Speer was exposed to and ask "What would I have done ?".This particular purchase was due to a desire to have a hard-back copy (larger size than the old paperback of years ago) and I am looking forward to working my way through the book once more (it has been so many years since I last read it that I suspect that at least portions will seem new).

I have read a great deal about Hitler through his own mind (Mein Kampf) and numerous books about the socioeconomic environment that fostered and fed his meteoric rise to power. My curiosity has always been the “how” and the “why”, but one questioned remained....why did very smart men aid him, and who so many of them just kept things going? This book helped me get there. It’s anout an everyday guy like you and me but who was a brilliant architect and saw a way of enabling his talents with the power of free reign. A very sober and interesting account of how people can find themselves sucked into even the maddest ideas when there is desperation and a desire to become great yourself.

Book came in a timely fashion had this book before but lost it had to get it again for a reader who likes reading about the Third Reich I find this book interesting make no bones about it I also find the hypocrisy in Albert Spear's story some people call him a good Nazi Ha he's just a guilty as the rest a complete opportunist

This is one of the all-time great books from an insider on what was transpiring in the Third Reich, as viewed from the very top. Part 1 (256 pages) describes Speer's personal life, political evolution to Nazism, and professional architectural work for Hitler. The final 350 pages or so describes Speer's work as Minister of Armament and Munitions and his direction of the military industrial economy.The reason I gave the book 4-Stars instead of 5-Stars is because it is now known that Speer exaggerated his role in drastically increasing German military industrial output. He also wasn't quite the master organizer of German industry, either. "The Wages of Destruction" by Tooze (2006) describes the real sources of increased output: the coming on-line of investments in factories made months or years before Speer ever took over, the start of the product rationalization program by his predecessor Fritz Todt, and the deliberate reduction in civilian standard of living to devote resources to the war.Another book "Design for Total War" by Carroll (1968) describes the centralized managerial chaos inherent in the Nazi method of running the war and the associated war industry. Not even Speer could overcome the fragmentation of decision making and the proliferation of Plenipotentiaries for this-and -that, all of whom claimed absolute power over some aspect of the military economy.

An absolutely fascinating as well as a frightening account of Hitler's Germany from one who held one of the most powerful positions in that regime.No one can really fully understand the evil workings of the top Nazi officials along with Hitler himself without taking the time to read this.The reader may be shocked and made angry at times but will never be bored.After finishing the book, my own finding was that the author, Albert Speer, should have been sentenced to death at Nuremberg for his crimes...and yet in a sense, I am somewhat glad that he beat the hangman as a means to rewarding us with this incredible historical document.

Speer's memoirs give a lot more detail about the characters of Himmler and Goering, members of the general staff. I never realized before that Hitler was somewhat intimidated by the gauleiters. I gather that they were similar to governors, but more authoritarian. Good reading for a history buff.

This is a book you can read now or read later to find answers why your country ended up not so great. The author, Albert Speer, was a highly talented young architect who, like many others in Germany at the time, was hoping for better days. Unfortunately, he put his faith in a sociopath with no political experience who knew better than the generals.

Very good read, probably the closest you can get to understanding the inner activities of the third reich

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I expect it's the most honest description of life within the the top end of The Third Reich that we're ever likely to get. After all, by the time Herr Speer wrote it, everyone else was dead!I would like to think his criticisms of Hitler and the rest of them were accurate, but I have always had my suspicions of Albert Speer. He was the best looking of the crowd and the one who realised immediately that saying sorry was going to win him 'good conduct' marks. When he came out of prison he made a good living out of his wartime experiences, but he successfully white-washed himself whilst he was doing it. He never actually acknowledged his guilt in and his knowledge of the appalling treatment of the slave labour he HAS TO have seen virtually every day in the last months of the war, and he steered around the Holocaust very professionally.How much of this book is his own writing, who knows, he was after all an architect not a writer, but I enjoyed his insights into those who worshipped at the throne of the Fuhrer, and if ANYONE is going to be accurately honest about this unspeakable era of history, well it's got to be him, because he's the only one who was actually there at the time.

One of the best books I have read on the third reich