Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth

xiv, 757 pp. "A rich and revelatory biography--the product of twelve years' work--of the German architect who became perhaps the most powerful of all Hitler's cohorts, closest to the Fuhrer and, by 1942, in effect over-lord of Hitler's entire war economy. Sereny's reconsideration of this brilliant, paradoxical figure sheds new light on the dark history of Nazi Germany, in which he played a role both crucial and enigmatic. Gitta Sereny first saw Albert Speer on trial at Nuremberg. Over the last years of his life she came to know him--through hundreds of hours of conversations--as no other biographer has known a Nazi leader. She interviewed as well the people around him--the celebrated, the notorious and the ordinary. Speer gave Sereny, for her use, a number of unpublished manuscripts, and after his death she obtained access to many of his papers. Out of her probings a huge, and hugely alive, portrait emerges."