Inside the Third Reich

Inside the Third Reich is more than a superlative portrait of Adolf Hitler and a remarkable contribution to the annals of World War II. The eminent historian Golo Mann has said that this book "will be reckoned one of the foremost political memoirs of all time." Albert Speer was a gifted young architect when, in 1930, he first fell under Hitler's satanic spell. The energy with which he completed small commission for the Nazi party drew Hitler's attention to him. A frustrated architect himself, HItler saw in Speer the possibility of fulfilling his youthful dreams and often he treated Speer more than he did any of the party bosses that formed his weird and sinister entourage. Early in their relationship, Hitler made Speer his personal architect and city planner, in charge of designing new state offices, stadiums, super palaces, and supercities for the future Greater Germany. Then came the war, and Speer moved on to still larger tasks as Minister of Armaments and War Production. No longer Germany's dominant architect, butt now the master technocrat, Speer, for a time, was the second most important man in the Reich, virtual dictator of Germany's wartime economy. His production miracles undoubtedly prolonged the war. But the fascinating story of how he achieved them, under Allied bombing and against opposition with ink Germany, dispels once and for all the legend of a monolithic totalitarian state. Speer's account shows the Third Reich as a patchwork of fiefdoms, with the local politicians fiercely defending their private interests and striving for their personal gain, no matter what the cost to the war effort. Although politically detached, and interested in the intramural power struggle of the Nazi leaders only when they threatened to interfere with his work, Speer, from his vantage point within the inner circle, was able to view the Nazi elite at first hand. His assessments of them are incisive and vivid.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.