477 pages, Macmillan Publishing Company,
ISBN-13: 978-0026128100
I have spent time
with Herr Speer before – read my reviews of Inside
the Third Reich from February 15, 2016 and Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth from February 24, 2016 – and
here I find myself back again, reviewing Spandau:
The Secret Diaries. All-in-all there is little new information in this tome
that wasn’t found somewhere in those earlier works: reminisces about architecture,
anecdotes about Hitler, recounting his daily routine in jail, trying at times
to share his thoughts about the regime and his role in it…hey, I guess prison
is boring, but so much of this book is superficial and repetitive in content.
One great area of disappointment is the deafening silence in regards to Georges
Casalis, the Spandau Prison chaplain. Speer had asked to talk to Casalis, but before
he could speak Casalis told Speer he considered him more blameworthy than any
of the other Nazi prisoners, both because of Speer’s intelligence and because
he had been more responsible for extending the war than perhaps anyone but
Hitler. Speer’s response, according to Casalis, was: “I’ve been sentenced to 20
years, and I consider it just. I want to use this time that has, in a manner of
speaking, been given to me. What I want to ask you is: Would you help me become
a different man?” We get NONE of this in The
Secret Diaries, which I believe speaks a lot to just how closely Speer kept
his cards to its chest.
If this book had an
overarching theme it is “guilt”, but more as an intellectual exercise rather
than as a moral reckoning; Speer’s desire is to look good for the post-war
do-gooders, but I was never really convinced of his sincerity. I, for one,
could find no heartfelt remorse about the way the slaves in the factories or
Jews and others in the death camps were treated, no remorse for having been
party alongside Hitler and his psychopathic gang. Some people have thought that,
after he was released from prison, Speer reinvented himself as the “Good Nazi”,
the only one amongst Hitler’s Inner Circle who showed even a modicum of remorse
about the war and his role in it. I was one of these until I read Gitta
Sereny’s book and determined instead that he tried to clear his name and
attempted to fool people about his actual role in the war. Very cunning, and while
Speer hides his true intentions, we do know certain facts about his actions as Reich
Minister of Armaments and War Production. We do know that Herr Speer used slave
labor in all of the factories he managed, and one has to wonder: where was he
looking when visiting these factories when most of them were worked to death
and died from a lack of food and other necessities of life? This is one thing
he could never dispute. While this practice predated his appointment as Armaments
Minister, he also did nothing to stop it, or to change it.
Was Speer truly as
remorseful as he claims in this book of his? Former coworkers and even family
members did not fall for his pretense. After reading these diaries I did not
have any sense that this guy became “a different man”; I have the sense that he
is as good as Hitler at being a big fake, cunning, with no feeling whatsoever
(none expressed in this book). If you want to get more under Speer’s blanket
then try the above-mentioned Albert
Speer: His Battle with Truth by Gitta Sereny. She managed to catch him with
his pants down, motivations and all.
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