Speer

Hitler's Architect

By: Martin Kitchen

Narrated by: Michael Page

Length: 19 hrs

Publisher's summary

A new biography of Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler's chief architect and trusted confidant, reveals the subject's deeper involvement in Nazi atrocities.

In his best-selling autobiography, Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and chief architect of Nazi Germany, repeatedly insisted he knew nothing of the genocidal crimes of Hitler's Third Reich. In this revealing new biography, author Martin Kitchen disputes Speer's lifelong assertions of ignorance and innocence, portraying a far darker figure who was deeply implicated in the appalling crimes committed by the regime he served so well.

Kitchen reconstructs Speer's life with what we now know, including information from valuable new sources that have come to light only in recent years, challenging the portrait presented by earlier biographers and by Speer himself of a cultured technocrat devoted to his country while completely uninvolved in Nazi politics and crimes.

The result is the first truly serious accounting of the man, his beliefs, and his actions during one of the darkest epochs in modern history, not only countering Speer's claims of non-culpability but also disputing the commonly held misconception that it was his unique genius alone that kept the German military armed and fighting long after its defeat was inevitable.

©2015 Yale University (P)2018 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A devastating portrait of an empty, narcissistic, and compulsively ambitious personality." (Wall Street Journal)

excellent insight into an evil soul

after listening to this book I am not ambiguos about Speer any longer. he was not the technical genius he liked to portray himself, but a (maybe genius) self-image creator and polisher. the production wonder he is still famous for in Germany was a fiction created by him. The ideological distance to the nazis he is still famous for was fiction. people like him were and are necessary to make the devil accepted by the masses.

A Gem for History Buffs

A well researched biography on Speer who tried to revise history to appease his guilt.

Excellent analysis

I have read numerous books on Albert sphere, including his own memoirs and other biographies, and this by far is the best and definitive work I have come across. The author does his due diligence researching this complex and often contradictory figure from Nazi Germany. If you want to read a book on Albert Speer, don’t waste your time with any of the others, just read this one.

Excellent disposition on the career and disgraceful rehabilitation of a war criminal.

Meticulously researched and documented history of the life and crimes (and the subsequent cover up) of Albert Speer. Brilliant narration and thorough analysis.

End of book missing

I’m confused... there is no ending. Just stops. I was enjoying it. Good story, great details and the author does not glorify a man who should have known better. But it just ends. I wanted the entire book, not 3/4ths of it :(

Well researched, but….

You should probably read Speer’s Memoirs before listening to this book, so that a lot of what Martin Kitchen calls fabrications and lies will make more sense. You might also want to watch the 1981 movie, The Bunker, before reading this book, as well, since it appears to have been scripted by Albert Speer, himself. Makes him a real hero. Albert Speer was a slick dude, who got away with murder and talked his way out of being hanged. A true genius, but Kitchen doesnt let him get away with anything. Narrator is obviously and thankfully fluent in German, but didnt impress me with the overdone pronunciation. It did bother me that a good deal of the book is about pre-war European Architecture, which just takes up space. By the end of the book, I was saying “OK, OK, enough. You proved Speer was a liar and deserved to be hanged.

Rich in detail

Technocratic monster is about all I can say about Speer. He knew what he was doing yet embraced it. Is it possible to be more dangerous than Hitler? I think so…

Interesting, but extremely biased

Ideally when you write a history book you do so without opinion and let the story speak for itself. However the author in this case sets out with an agenda, to destroy the legacy that Speer built in the post war years, which is a shame since had he just told the story without injecting his opinion I think this book would be a lot more useful. Instead it comes off as a 19 hour rant a lot of the time and brings the story to a halt. However there isn't anything else in depth about Speer on Audible, so this will have to do. From that perspective you do learn quite a bit and the story is often interesting when the author isn't ranting. While you learn a lot about Speer the author also leaves out a ton, it's like he's writing a counter history to some other unknown book, and without that other half the book is incomplete. So this is worth checking out so long as you realize you're reading about 50% propaganda (or as I'm sure the author would say it's counter propaganda). Also the authors version of the economy under the National Socialists is pretty laughable, I've read hundreds of books on WW2 and have a pretty good grip on how things run, and his version of events is again very much the propaganda of a modern socalist. The author also feels the need to constantly give his opinion on architecture, which is pure opinion, but presented as facts.

So to sum it up most of the above is negative, and that's the opinion I was eventually left with, but it was still interesting in spots and I still learned quite a bit, even if it's incomplete.

The reader does an OK job, he has kind of an annoying and pompous voice, but listening at 1.25x speed makes things a lot more bearable.

Overall excellent

This is not a book you can read on one sitting. In fact, parts should probably be read more than once.
Definitely, contributed to my overall knowledge of Hitler and the third reich.

Interesting

It's interesting to find people deeply involved in the obscene cause to produce misery, pain and death, absorbed by their misguided self and blinded by loyalty.