Ian Beardsell's Reviews > Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth

Over the last several years, I had kept on hearing references to Gitta Sereny's books on WWII, which tend to address in-depth reasons regarding why some very smart German's did some very dumb and despicable things under Hitler's reign. Seeing such high praise on the internet and Goodreads, I am puzzled why my local libraries don't carry her books. This spring I finally purchased a couple of them via Abe.com, and I was not disappointed.

Perhaps in-depth and somewhat personalized journalism is no longer in style, which is a shame when one sees what this author can do! Sereny was a teenage Hungarian transplant in occupied France during the war and later became a journalist, writing her book on Albert Speer after meeting and spending much time with him and his family members in the late 1970s through to the time of his death in 1981. This really came through her writing as an amazing asset! It reminded me of the winter evenings my mom and I would sit and rehash about the family stories that my mother had told me about WWII. With Sereny's meticulous research and such deep, literally psychological knowledge of her subjects, reading her book was like being in a conversation with Speer and his closest friends and family members, much like I was sitting down once again with my mom and discussing the war.

In essence, Sereny's thesis is about how Speer, a well-educated, smart and capable man with no overt hatred of the Jewish people, could NOT have known how his massive industrial works and manpower programs were driving the need for slave labour and thereby exacerbating the demise of so many of these poor people in occupied Europe. The book is essentially a biographical overview of Speer's life: as an architect, as a favorite of Hitler, as armaments minister, as war criminal, as repentant prisoner, and finally as an author, but it returns time and time again to that eternal question, "How could he not have known."

It is a question that we, as later-day armchair quarterbacks living in the 21st century reflect on generally about the German people of the Nazi era. How could they have just let this happen? How could they have been oblivious to genocide?

Sereny points us to the fine line that Speer walked throughout his time of service to the Third Reich, where people (even in government) only were told what was necessary in order to perform their jobs. People seemed to be in a fog as they heard these terrible rumours but simultaneously so swept up in the changing times and persona of their Fuhrer, that their conscious minds beat down their doubts. "How can something so inconceivably awful actually be happening? Especially when Germany is doing so well again?" Essentially the same question that holocaust deniers ask in the past tense. However, unlike the deniers, Speer accepted that these terrible events really did happen, and he took on the responsibility for them--at least to a degree. His defense at Nuremburg was always based on the fact that he had no outright knowledge of the terrible deeds being done for Germany. And in the end he was saved from the noose by the lack of any hard evidence traceable back to him. Along with his active blocking of Hitler's scorched-earth policy for Germany at the end of the war, he was deemed to worthy a role model to be executed.

The book hints here and there that Speer may have known more than he let on during the trials, but he indeed struggled the remainder of his life with the question: "How could I not admit the truth to myself, when it seems so obvious now?" It is indeed an inconceivable question for those of us who never faced it. However, I think it was a somewhat common thought for many Germans after the war.

The crux of the matter, can be felt, somewhat explained perhaps, in the quote at the start of the book by W.A. Visser 't Hooft:

People could find no place in their consciousness for such...unimaginable horror...they did not have the imagination, together with the courage, to face it. It is possible to live in a twilight between knowing and not knowing."

May we never again live in a world where such harsh circumstances press our psyches to the point where the ability to face the truth is driven from our minds and hearts and we fail to act for the good!