Full name: Speer: The Final Verdict

Author: Joachim Fest Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Amazon Goodreads ISBNs: 9780151005567 0151005567

Albert Speer is a great enigma. An unemployed architect when Hitler came to power in 1933, he was soon designing the Third Reich's most important buildings. In 1942 Hitler appointed him Armaments Minister and he quadrupled production, an astonishing achievement that kept the German Army in the field and prolonged the war. Yet Speer's life was full of contradictions. The only member of the Nazi elite with whom Hitler developed more than a purely functional relationship (he has even been called "Hitler's unrequited love"), Speer was always an outsider in Hitler's inner circle. He saw himself as an artist, above the crass power struggles of the roughnecks around him, but his enormous ambition blinded him to the crimes in which he played a leading role. Brilliantly illustrated, this gripping account of one man's rise and fall helps explain how Germany descended so far into crime and barbarism. Similar books: Goebbels by Peter Longerich Albert Speer by Gitta Sereny Himmler by Peter Padfield Hitler's Hangman by Robert Gerwarth Hitler: 1936-1945: Nemesis by Ian Kershaw Hitler by Joachim Fest Adolf Hitler by John Toland The Perfect Nazi by Martin Davidson My Father's Country by Wibke Bruhns Hitler: 1889-1936: Hubris by Ian Kershaw Heinrich Himmler by Peter Longerich Hitler by Alan Bullock Until the Final Hour by Traudl Junge The Mystery of Olga Chekhova by Antony Beevor Spandau by Albert Speer