Inside the Third Reich. Volume 2

Inside the Third Reich is a memoir written by Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister of Armaments from 1942 to 1945, serving as Adolf Hitler's main architect before this period. It is considered to be one of the most detailed descriptions of the inner workings and leadership of Nazi Germany but is controversial because of Speer's lack of discussion of Nazi atrocities and questions regarding his degree of awareness or involvement with them. At the Nuremberg Trials, Speer was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his use of slave labor while Minister of Armaments. From 1946 to 1966, while serving the sentence in Spandau Prison, he penned more than 2,000 manuscript pages of personal memoirs. Because he was not allowed to write such memoirs while in prison, he smuggled these notes out, and returned to them after his release. The manuscript led to two books, the first being Recollections (1969), which was translated into English and published by Macmillan in 1970 as Inside the Third Reich. It is written in a semi-autobiographical style. While Speer begins with his childhood, he spends most of the memoirs describing his work in the Nazi hierarchy. By 1945, Speer was disillusioned with the war, the Nazi Party, and Hitler himself. Despite being one of the few people to stay close to Hitler until the end. This is followed by an epilogue dealing with the end of the war in Europe and the resulting Nuremberg Trials. Speer was one of the highest-ranking Nazi officials to survive both the war and the Nuremberg trials. He was also, even during World War II, described by both sides as one of the most intelligent people in the Nazi hierarchy. Because of these factors, Inside the Third Reich has become the definitive work on the inner workings of Nazi Germany. Due to his position, Speer was able to describe the personalities of many Nazi officials, including Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann and, of course, Adolf Hitler himself.