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Speer

Hitler's Architect

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Speer

By: Martin Kitchen
Narrated by: Michael Page
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About this listen

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
Europe Germany Historical Military Politicians Politics & Activism War Biography Holocaust Socialism Soviet Union Imperialism Crime Russia Interwar Period

Critic Reviews

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

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Speer was a scumbag of the highest order. This reading accentuates the sarcasm and its brilliant.

The sarcasm

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I was in Chapter 4 when I stopped listening. Even then, I'd forced myself to get that far. I'm sure the book is fascinating for architects since it's almost entirely about architects, architectural styles, noteworthy buildings and ground-breaking projects. But I was interested in Speer the man and Speer the man is well and truly secondary. No criticism of Michael Page - he handles the many German names proficiently and he narrates well.

Much architecture, little Speer

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An overly snobbish review of architecture rather than speer himself. Could not make it past the third chapter.

Snobbish architectural review

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