speer albert winston richard clara (37 resultados)

Hardcover. Condición: Good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Very Good. Cloth, xx, 596 pages, [48] pages of plates, illustrations; 24 cm. Translation of: Erinnerungen. Originally published: New York: Macmillan, 1970. Good+. Firm binding, unmarked. Expected browning. Dust jacket with a creased front flap. *** The memoirs of Hitler's architect, part of his inner circle. Spared the noose at Nuremberg. Size: 8vo.

Hard Cover. Condición: vg. Estado de la sobrecubierta: vg. xxiv 596 pages + section of b/w photos; text unmarked, address labels on eps; light shelf wear to edges of dj. Hardcover (dj).

Hardcover. Condición: Very Good. No Jacket. Book Club Edition. Intro. by Eugene Davidson. 8vo. Black cl., gilt lettering to bkstr. Vertical crease to bkstr., o.w. VG. Photo endpapers. Illus. xxvi, 705pp. incl. notes, index, etc.

Hardcover. Condición: Very Good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Very Good. Book Club Edition. Intro. by Eugene Davidson. 8vo. Black cl., gilt lettering to bkstr. VG+. dj VG+ with 2" fading lower bkstr., tiny chip top of bkstr. Photo endpapers. Illus. xxvi, 705pp. incl. notes, index, etc.

Hardcover. Condición: Good. 1st ptg. 596 pp. 6 3/8 x 9 1/2. Black cloth covered boards, stamped in gold on spine. No dj. Cloth a little faded at spine. No interior damage or markings noted.

Hardcover. Condición: Good.

Hard Cover. Condición: vg-. Estado de la sobrecubierta: good. 2nd ptg. xiv 596 pages + 3 sections of glossy b/w photos; contents unmarked; large hole in spine of dj with other smaller chips & tears to edges, in new protective mylar. Hardcover (dj).

Hardcover. Condición: Very Good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Very Good. First Thus. Stated Third Printing, 1970. Includes Index And Chapter Notes. The Book Is Bound In Black Cloth Over Boards With Gilt Lettering And Rules On The Spine. No Ownership Information Present And The Text Appears To Be Free Of Marks Or Writing. Light Tanning Of The Page Edges. The Price Clipped Jacket Has Moderate Edge Wear And A One Half Inch Tear At The Lower Spine.

Hardcover. Condición: Very Good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Good. Book Club Edition. Very good with good dust jacket. Name and year (1970) and glued in newspaper clipping on front fly leaf. Dust jacket is worn and tattered at top of spine and is bumped and rubbed at bottom of spine and corners. 705 pages with index plus 67 illustrations.

Trade paperback. Condición: good. Fourth Printing. 822 pages, wraps, illus., notes, index, some wear to covers, small stain on edge. Speer used his writings from the time of imprisonment as the basis for two autobiographical books, Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries. Speer's books were a success; the public was fascinated by an inside view of the Third Reich. Through his autobiographies and interviews, Speer carefully constructed an image of himself as a man who deeply regretted having failed to discover the crimes of the Third Reich. He continued to deny explicit knowledge of, and responsibility for, the Holocaust. This image dominated his historiography in the decades following the war, giving rise to the "Speer Myth": the perception of him as an apolitical technocrat responsible for revolutionizing the German war machine. The myth began to fall apart in the 1980s, when the armaments miracle was attributed to Nazi propaganda. Adam Tooze wrote in The Wages of Destruction that the idea that Speer was an apolitical technocrat was "absurd". Martin Kitchen, writing in Speer: Hitler's Architect, stated that much of the increase in Germany's arms production was actually due to systems instituted by Speer's predecessor (Fritz Todt) and that Speer was intimately aware of and involved in the "Final Solution", evidence of which has been conclusively shown in the decades following the Nuremberg Trials. Inside the Third Reich begins with an account of Speer's childhood, followed by a description of his role as Heinrich Tessenow's assistant at the Technical University of Berlin. Speer first heard Adolf Hitler speak during an address to the combined students and faculty of Berlin University and his institute. Speer states he became hopeful when Hitler explained how communism could be checked and Germany could recover economically. Speer joined the National Socialist Party in January 1931; he wrote "I was not choosing the NSDAP, but becoming a follower of Hitler, whose magnetic force had reached out to me the first time I saw him and had not, thereafter, released me." Speer described the personalities of many Nazi officials, including Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann, and, of course, Hitler himself. Speer went on to quote Hitler as telling him privately after the remilitarization of the Rhineland, "We will create a great empire. All of the Germanic peoples will be included in it. It will begin in Norway and extend to northern Italy. I myself must carry this out." The main body of the book effectively ends when Speer, by this point having joined Karl Dönitz's government seated in Schleswig-Holstein, receives news of Hitler's death. This is followed by an epilogue dealing with the end of the war in Europe and the resulting Nuremberg trials, in which Speer was sentenced to a 20-year prison term for his actions during the war. In a 23 August 1970 review published in The New York Times, John Toland wrote that the book "is not only the most significant personal German account to come out of the war but the most revealing document on the Hitler phenomenon yet written. It takes the reader inside Nazi Germany on four different levels: Hitler's inner circle, National Socialism as a whole, the area of wartime production and the inner struggle of Albert Speer. I recommend this book without reservations. Speer's full length portrait of Hitler has unnerving reality. The Führer emerges as neither an incompetent nor a carpet gnawing madman but as an evil genius of warped concepts endowed with an ineffable personal magic." A review by Kirkus Reviews on 27 August 1970 stated, "Speer's portrayals of the Nazi leadership, of the constant intrigues and rivalries among Hitler's entourage, and of Hitler himself, his histrionic virulence, his banality, and his peculiar magic, are engrossing and revealing.".

Soft cover. Condición: Good to Very Good. Small pen mark on ffep. Selected pages and page edges may contain some water marks. Some wear along the edges, tips, and along the spine. Some rubbing wear to covers. Minor discoloration to pages. No markings on text and/or images.

Hardcover. Condición: very GOOD. Estado de la sobrecubierta: NONE. Previous owner's name and date at top of title page. Marked hardcover with no dust jacket. Markings also include underlining in black and pink ink, notes in margins. Black cloth on boards with somewhat faded gilt lettering on the spine. Cocked spine. Cloth is wrinkled along spine. Cloth is abraded away at lower rear cover. 8 1/2 x 5 3/4 x 2 1/8 inches.

Hardcover. Condición: Fair. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Fair. Book Club Edition. 705, illus., notes, index, binding cracked after p. 452--one sheet of illustrations is detached. Top edge stained, DJ quite worn: small pieces missing, several tears. Speer used his writings from the time of imprisonment as the basis for two autobiographical books, Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries. Speer's books were a success; the public was fascinated by an inside view of the Third Reich. Through his autobiographies and interviews, Speer carefully constructed an image of himself as a man who deeply regretted having failed to discover the crimes of the Third Reich. He continued to deny explicit knowledge of, and responsibility for, the Holocaust. This image dominated his historiography in the decades following the war, giving rise to the "Speer Myth": the perception of him as an apolitical technocrat responsible for revolutionizing the German war machine. The myth began to fall apart in the 1980s, when the armaments miracle was attributed to Nazi propaganda. Adam Tooze wrote in The Wages of Destruction that the idea that Speer was an apolitical technocrat was "absurd". Martin Kitchen, writing in Speer: Hitler's Architect, stated that much of the increase in Germany's arms production was actually due to systems instituted by Speer's predecessor (Fritz Todt) and that Speer was intimately aware of and involved in the "Final Solution", evidence of which has been conclusively shown in the decades following the Nuremberg Trials. Inside the Third Reich begins with an account of Speer's childhood, followed by a description of his role as Heinrich Tessenow's assistant at the Technical University of Berlin. Speer first heard Adolf Hitler speak during an address to the combined students and faculty of Berlin University and his institute. Speer states he became hopeful when Hitler explained how communism could be checked and Germany could recover economically. Speer joined the National Socialist Party in January 1931; he wrote "I was not choosing the NSDAP, but becoming a follower of Hitler, whose magnetic force had reached out to me the first time I saw him and had not, thereafter, released me." Speer described the personalities of many Nazi officials, including Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann, and, of course, Hitler himself. Speer went on to quote Hitler as telling him privately after the remilitarization of the Rhineland, "We will create a great empire. All of the Germanic peoples will be included in it. It will begin in Norway and extend to northern Italy. I myself must carry this out." The main body of the book effectively ends when Speer, by this point having joined Karl Dönitz's government seated in Schleswig-Holstein, receives news of Hitler's death. This is followed by an epilogue dealing with the end of the war in Europe and the resulting Nuremberg trials, in which Speer was sentenced to a 20-year prison term for his actions during the war. In a 23 August 1970 review published in The New York Times, John Toland wrote that the book "is not only the most significant personal German account to come out of the war but the most revealing document on the Hitler phenomenon yet written. It takes the reader inside Nazi Germany on four different levels: Hitler's inner circle, National Socialism as a whole, the area of wartime production and the inner struggle of Albert Speer. I recommend this book without reservations. Speer's full length portrait of Hitler has unnerving reality. The Führer emerges as neither an incompetent nor a carpet gnawing madman but as an evil genius of warped concepts endowed with an ineffable personal magic." A review by Kirkus Reviews on 27 August 1970 stated, "Speer's portrayals of the Nazi leadership, of the constant intrigues and rivalries among Hitler's entourage, and of Hitler himself, his histrionic virulence, his banality, and his peculiar magic, are engrossing and revealing.".

Hardcover. Condición: Very Good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Good. 1st Edition. Jacket has slight edge wear and slight sunning. Book.

Hardcover. Condición: Good. Light wear to boards. Content is clean with light age tone. DJ with some edge wear, a few tears and fading to spine. Owner name to end paper.

Hard Cover. Condición: Good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: No Dust Jacket. Good hardcover with no dust jacket.

Hardcover. Condición: Very Good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Dust Jacket Missing. Copyright © 1976. 464 pp. Solidly bound copy with moderate external wear, crisp pages and clean text. Dj is missing. Synopsis: Includes several pages of photographs."He served as Hitler's architect, the undisputed master of the German war machine, and the one responsible for conscripted foreign labor in the Third Reich. And, when Albert Speer was captured and sentenced at Nuremberg--after becoming the only defendant to plead guilty--he started keeping this secret diary, much of it on toilet paper. After 20 years of imprisonment, he found 25,000 of the smuggled pages waiting for him, and from those entries he shaped this deeply powerful document. "Albert Speer's book is a deeply moving document. It is also of extraordinary political and psychological interest.a must for anyone interested in psychological motivation of political action and the problem of guilt and repentance. But, beyond this it is so fascinatingly written that I could not put it down before I finished it.".

Hardcover. Condición: Very Good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Good. First Edition. Lightly read if read at all. No markings in book. Binding is tight. Sunning to cover edges. Price clipped DJ, in mylar, with shelf wear to edges.

CONTAINS B&W PLATES. 21.5x14.5 cm. XXVI+705 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Cover bottom edges bumped. Spine slightly faded and loose. Spine upper corners slightly bumped. Inner cover edges slightly worn. Pages rough cut. Pages slightly yellowing. Else in good condition. The book is in : English.

Unknown. Condición: Good. No Jacket. Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 1.95.

Hardcover. Condición: Good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Good. Book Club Edition. The format is approximately 6 inches by 8.5 inches. xxvi, [2], 705, [3] pages. Illustrated endpapers. Illustrations (48 pages of photographs stated on the dust jacket. Notes. Index. Introduction by Eugene Davidson. Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (19 March 1905 - 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, he was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison. An architect by training, Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931. His architectural skills made him increasingly prominent within the Party, and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Hitler commissioned him to design and construct structures including the Reich Chancellery and the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. In 1937, Hitler appointed Speer as General Building Inspector for Berlin. In this capacity he was responsible for the Central Department for Resettlement that evicted Jewish tenants from their homes in Berlin. In February 1942, Speer was appointed as Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. He promoted himself as having performed an armaments miracle that was widely credited with keeping Germany in the war. In 1944, Speer established a task force to increase production of fighter aircraft. It became instrumental in exploiting slave labor for the benefit of the German war effort. Albert Speer was among the 24 "major war criminals" charged with the crimes of the Nazi regime before the International Military Tribunal. He served 20 years in prison, released in 1966. Speer used his writings from the time of imprisonment as the basis for two autobiographical books, Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries. Speer's books were a success; the public was fascinated by an inside view of the Third Reich. Through his autobiographies and interviews, Speer carefully constructed an image of himself as a man who deeply regretted having failed to discover the crimes of the Third Reich. He continued to deny explicit knowledge of, and responsibility for, the Holocaust. This image dominated his historiography in the decades following the war, giving rise to the "Speer Myth": the perception of him as an apolitical technocrat responsible for revolutionizing the German war machine. The myth began to fall apart in the 1980s, when the armaments miracle was attributed to Nazi propaganda. Adam Tooze wrote in The Wages of Destruction that the idea that Speer was an apolitical technocrat was "absurd". Martin Kitchen, writing in Speer: Hitler's Architect, stated that much of the increase in Germany's arms production was actually due to systems instituted by Speer's predecessor (Fritz Todt) and that Speer was intimately aware of and involved in the "Final Solution", evidence of which has been conclusively shown in the decades following the Nuremberg Trials. Inside the Third Reich begins with an account of Speer's childhood, followed by a description of his role as Heinrich Tessenow's assistant at the Technical University of Berlin. Speer first heard Adolf Hitler speak during an address to the combined students and faculty of Berlin University and his institute. Speer states he became hopeful when Hitler explained how communism could be checked and Germany could recover economically. Speer joined the National Socialist Party in January 1931; he wrote "I was not choosing the NSDAP, but becoming a follower of Hitler, whose magnetic force had reached out to me the first time I saw him and had not, thereafter, released me." Speer described the personalities of many Nazi officials, including Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann, and, of course, Hitler himself. Speer went on to quote Hitler as telling him privately after the remilitarization of the Rhineland, "We will create a great empire. All of the Germanic peoples will be included in it. It will begin in Norway and extend to northern Italy. I myself must carry this out." The main body of the book effectively ends when Speer, by this point having joined Karl Dönitz's government seated in Schleswig-Holstein, receives news of Hitler's death. This is followed by an epilogue dealing with the end of the war in Europe and the resulting Nuremberg trials, in which Speer was sentenced to a 20-year prison term for his actions during the war. In a 23 August 1970 review published in The New York Times, John Toland wrote that the book "is not only the most significant personal German account to come out of the war but the most revealing document on the Hitler phenomenon yet written. It takes the reader inside Nazi Germany on four different levels: Hitler's inner circle, National Socialism as a whole, the area of wartime production and the inner struggle of Albert Speer. I recommend this book without reservations. Speer's full length portrait of Hitler has unnerving reality. The Führer emerges as neither an incompetent nor a carpet gnawing madman but as an evil genius of warped concepts endowed with an ineffable personal magic." A review by Kirkus Reviews on 27 August 1970 stated, "Speer's portrayals of the Nazi leadership, of the constant intrigues and rivalries among Hitler's entourage, and of Hitler himself, his histrionic virulence, his banality, and his peculiar magic, are engrossing and revealing.".

Hardcover. Condición: Good - Some Wear. No Jacket. Various Photographers Ilustrador. First English Edition.

Condición: good, good. First American Edition. Second Printing. 463, illus., index, slight wear to top and bottom edges of DJ, glue residue inside front board.

Super 8vo, red heavy card bds, spine lettered in gilt, xii + 463 pp., plates, VG (light to moderate scuffing & soiling to bds, light bruising to spine & board edges & extrems, light tanning/soiling & foxing to pg edges, light tanning & foxing to eps & prelims/terminals), in d/w, VG- (moderate scuffing/soiling & fading, moderate bruising & creasing to edges & extrems with moderate chipping, tape repair to upper edge, moderate to heavy tanning & foxing).

Hardcover. Condición: Good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Fair. xii, 463, [5] pages. Illustrations. Index. Albert Speer (1905-1981), Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming the office of Minister of Armaments and War Production for Germany during World War II. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, he was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931. His architectural skills made him prominent within the Party, and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Hitler commissioned him to design and construct structures including the Reich Chancellery and the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. In 1937, Hitler appointed Speer as General Building Inspector for Berlin. He was responsible for the Central Department for Resettlement that evicted Jewish tenants from their homes. In 1942, Speer was appointed as Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. He promoted himself as having performed an armaments miracle that was credited with keeping Germany in the war. In 1944, Speer established a task force to increase production of fighter aircraft. It became instrumental in exploiting slave labor for the German war effort. Speer was among the 24 "major war criminals" at the Nuremberg trials. He was found guilty of war crimes, principally for the use of slave labor. He used his prison writings for two autobiographical books, Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries. Speer constructed an image of himself as a man who deeply regretted having failed to discover the monstrous crimes of the Third Reich. He continued to deny explicit knowledge of, and responsibility for the Holocaust. He served as Hitler's architect, the undisputed master of the German war machine, and the one responsible for conscripted foreign labor in the Third Reich. And, when Albert Speer was captured and sentenced at Nuremberg--after becoming the only defendant to plead guilty--he started keeping this secret diary, much of it on toilet paper. After 20 years of imprisonment, he found 25,000 of the smuggled pages waiting for him, and from those entries he shaped this deeply powerful document. "Albert Speer's book is a deeply moving document. It is also of extraordinary political and psychological interest.a must for anyone interested in psychological motivation of political action and the problem of guilt and repentance. But, beyond this it is so fascinatingly written that I could not put it down before I finished it." --Erich Fromm. Derived from a Kirkus review: Albert Speer spent 20 years, from 1946 to 1966, as a Nuremberg war criminal in Berlin's Spandau prison. Despite having to write this diary on the sly, he was extremely well treated. In jail Speer quickly lost interest in the outside world: in 1953 he records that he has never wondered what East Germany is like. He maintains his upper-middle-class, faintly ironic character in all its "normality" as Americans and Germans constantly try to get him released. The diaries add to Speer's impressions of Hitler, the Third Reich, and art. He makes it clear that he was never a technocrat, but a romantic reactionary with a knack for organizing wartime needs and an underlying contempt for humanity. Speer is often viewed as the closest thing to a "good Nazi," a dazzled architect who became a patriotic military overseer. He admits that he was the "employer of an army of slaves". He also remarks that Hitler didn't go "beyond the norms of European history" except for the Jews, and Speer himself was no anti-Semite. His self-presentation as an urbane professional betrayed by his emotional confidence in Hitler may lull some readers into forgetting his complicity in genocide. But the book itself is a remarkable document for psychological speculation and attention is inevitable. Presumed First Edition, First printing thus.

Condición: Acceptable. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Fair.

Condición: Good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Good.

Hardcover. Condición: Very good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Good. Fifth Printing. 596, illus., notes, index, DJ spine worn along top and bottom edges and small tears. Speer used his writings from the time of imprisonment as the basis for two autobiographical books, Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries. Speer's books were a success; the public was fascinated by an inside view of the Third Reich. Through his autobiographies and interviews, Speer carefully constructed an image of himself as a man who deeply regretted having failed to discover the crimes of the Third Reich. He continued to deny explicit knowledge of, and responsibility for, the Holocaust. This image dominated his historiography in the decades following the war, giving rise to the "Speer Myth": the perception of him as an apolitical technocrat responsible for revolutionizing the German war machine. The myth began to fall apart in the 1980s, when the armaments miracle was attributed to Nazi propaganda. Adam Tooze wrote in The Wages of Destruction that the idea that Speer was an apolitical technocrat was "absurd". Martin Kitchen, writing in Speer: Hitler's Architect, stated that much of the increase in Germany's arms production was actually due to systems instituted by Speer's predecessor (Fritz Todt) and that Speer was intimately aware of and involved in the "Final Solution", evidence of which has been conclusively shown in the decades following the Nuremberg Trials. Inside the Third Reich begins with an account of Speer's childhood, followed by a description of his role as Heinrich Tessenow's assistant at the Technical University of Berlin. Speer first heard Adolf Hitler speak during an address to the combined students and faculty of Berlin University and his institute. Speer states he became hopeful when Hitler explained how communism could be checked and Germany could recover economically. Speer joined the National Socialist Party in January 1931; he wrote "I was not choosing the NSDAP, but becoming a follower of Hitler, whose magnetic force had reached out to me the first time I saw him and had not, thereafter, released me." Speer described the personalities of many Nazi officials, including Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann, and, of course, Hitler himself. Speer went on to quote Hitler as telling him privately after the remilitarization of the Rhineland, "We will create a great empire. All of the Germanic peoples will be included in it. It will begin in Norway and extend to northern Italy. I myself must carry this out." The main body of the book effectively ends when Speer, by this point having joined Karl Dönitz's government seated in Schleswig-Holstein, receives news of Hitler's death. This is followed by an epilogue dealing with the end of the war in Europe and the resulting Nuremberg trials, in which Speer was sentenced to a 20-year prison term for his actions during the war. In a 23 August 1970 review published in The New York Times, John Toland wrote that the book "is not only the most significant personal German account to come out of the war but the most revealing document on the Hitler phenomenon yet written. It takes the reader inside Nazi Germany on four different levels: Hitler's inner circle, National Socialism as a whole, the area of wartime production and the inner struggle of Albert Speer. I recommend this book without reservations. Speer's full length portrait of Hitler has unnerving reality. The Führer emerges as neither an incompetent nor a carpet gnawing madman but as an evil genius of warped concepts endowed with an ineffable personal magic." A review by Kirkus Reviews on 27 August 1970 stated, "Speer's portrayals of the Nazi leadership, of the constant intrigues and rivalries among Hitler's entourage, and of Hitler himself, his histrionic virulence, his banality, and his peculiar magic, are engrossing and revealing.".

Hardcover. Condición: Good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Good. First U.S. Edition. Second Printing. xii, 463, [5] pages. Illustrations. Index. Small tears and some wear to top and bottom edges of DJ spine, DJ wrinkled. Albert Speer (1905-1981), Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming the office of Minister of Armaments and War Production for Germany during World War II. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, he was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931. His architectural skills made him prominent within the Party, and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Hitler commissioned him to design and construct structures including the Reich Chancellery and the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. In 1937, Hitler appointed Speer as General Building Inspector for Berlin. He was responsible for the Central Department for Resettlement that evicted Jewish tenants from their homes. In 1942, Speer was appointed as Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. In 1944, Speer established a task force to increase production of fighter aircraft. It became instrumental in exploiting slave labor for the German war effort. Speer was among the 24 "major war criminals" at the Nuremberg trials. He was found guilty of war crimes, principally for the use of slave labor. He used his prison writings for two autobiographical books, Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries. Speer constructed an image of himself as a man who deeply regretted having failed to discover the monstrous crimes of the Third Reich. He continued to deny explicit knowledge of, and responsibility for the Holocaust. He served as Hitler's architect, the undisputed master of the German war machine, and the one responsible for conscripted foreign labor in the Third Reich. And, when Albert Speer was captured and sentenced at Nuremberg--after becoming the only defendant to plead guilty--he started keeping this secret diary, much of it on toilet paper. After 20 years of imprisonment, he found 25,000 of the smuggled pages waiting for him, and from those entries he shaped this deeply powerful document. "Albert Speer's book is a deeply moving document. It is also of extraordinary political and psychological interest.a must for anyone interested in psychological motivation of political action and the problem of guilt and repentance. But, beyond this it is so fascinatingly written that I could not put it down before I finished it." --Erich Fromm. Derived from a Kirkus review: Albert Speer spent 20 years, from 1946 to 1966, as a Nuremberg war criminal in Berlin's Spandau prison. Despite having to write this diary on the sly, he was extremely well treated. In jail Speer quickly lost interest in the outside world: in 1953 he records that he has never wondered what East Germany is like. He maintains his upper-middle-class, faintly ironic character in all its "normality" as Americans and Germans constantly try to get him released. The diaries add to Speer's impressions of Hitler, the Third Reich, and art. He makes it clear that he was never a technocrat, but a romantic reactionary with a knack for organizing wartime needs and an underlying contempt for humanity. Speer is often viewed as the closest thing to a "good Nazi," a dazzled architect who became a patriotic military overseer. He admits that he was the "employer of an army of slaves". He also remarks that Hitler didn't go "beyond the norms of European history" except for the Jews, and Speer himself was no anti-Semite. His self-presentation as an urbane professional betrayed by his emotional confidence in Hitler may lull some readers into forgetting his complicity in genocide. But the book itself is a remarkable document for psychological speculation and attention is inevitable.

Hardcover. Condición: Good. Estado de la sobrecubierta: Fair. First Printing. 596, illus., notes, index, DJ worn along edges and small tears. Speer used his writings from the time of imprisonment as the basis for two autobiographical books, Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries. Speer's books were a success; the public was fascinated by an inside view of the Third Reich. Through his autobiographies and interviews, Speer carefully constructed an image of himself as a man who deeply regretted having failed to discover the crimes of the Third Reich. He continued to deny explicit knowledge of, and responsibility for, the Holocaust. This image dominated his historiography in the decades following the war, giving rise to the "Speer Myth": the perception of him as an apolitical technocrat responsible for revolutionizing the German war machine. The myth began to fall apart in the 1980s, when the armaments miracle was attributed to Nazi propaganda. Adam Tooze wrote in The Wages of Destruction that the idea that Speer was an apolitical technocrat was "absurd". Martin Kitchen, writing in Speer: Hitler's Architect, stated that much of the increase in Germany's arms production was actually due to systems instituted by Speer's predecessor (Fritz Todt) and that Speer was intimately aware of and involved in the "Final Solution", evidence of which has been conclusively shown in the decades following the Nuremberg Trials. Inside the Third Reich begins with an account of Speer's childhood, followed by a description of his role as Heinrich Tessenow's assistant at the Technical University of Berlin. Speer first heard Adolf Hitler speak during an address to the combined students and faculty of Berlin University and his institute. Speer states he became hopeful when Hitler explained how communism could be checked and Germany could recover economically. Speer joined the National Socialist Party in January 1931; he wrote "I was not choosing the NSDAP, but becoming a follower of Hitler, whose magnetic force had reached out to me the first time I saw him and had not, thereafter, released me." Speer described the personalities of many Nazi officials, including Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann, and, of course, Hitler himself. Speer went on to quote Hitler as telling him privately after the remilitarization of the Rhineland, "We will create a great empire. All of the Germanic peoples will be included in it. It will begin in Norway and extend to northern Italy. I myself must carry this out." The main body of the book effectively ends when Speer, by this point having joined Karl Dönitz's government seated in Schleswig-Holstein, receives news of Hitler's death. This is followed by an epilogue dealing with the end of the war in Europe and the resulting Nuremberg trials, in which Speer was sentenced to a 20-year prison term for his actions during the war. In a 23 August 1970 review published in The New York Times, John Toland wrote that the book "is not only the most significant personal German account to come out of the war but the most revealing document on the Hitler phenomenon yet written. It takes the reader inside Nazi Germany on four different levels: Hitler's inner circle, National Socialism as a whole, the area of wartime production and the inner struggle of Albert Speer. I recommend this book without reservations. Speer's full length portrait of Hitler has unnerving reality. The Führer emerges as neither an incompetent nor a carpet gnawing madman but as an evil genius of warped concepts endowed with an ineffable personal magic." A review by Kirkus Reviews on 27 August 1970 stated, "Speer's portrayals of the Nazi leadership, of the constant intrigues and rivalries among Hitler's entourage, and of Hitler himself, his histrionic virulence, his banality, and his peculiar magic, are engrossing and revealing.".