Daily Mail - John Harding
Kitchen’s exhaustively researched, detailed book nails, one by one, the lies of the man who provided a thick coat of whitewash to millions of old Nazis. Its fascinating account of how the moral degradation of the chaotic Nazi regime corrupted an entire nation is a timely warning for today.”—John Harding, “Book of the Month", Daily Mail
London Review of Books - Jonathan Meades
A 200,000 word charge sheet. Kitchen is steely, dogged and attentive to the small print. He shows Speer no mercy, nailing his every exculpatory ruse and demonstrating time and again how provisional the notion of truth was to him.”—Jonathan Meades, London Review of Books
From the Publisher
"A devastating portrait of an empty, narcissistic and compulsively ambitious personality." ---Wall Street Journal
From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY
"A devastating portrait of an empty, narcissistic and compulsively ambitious personality." —Wall Street Journal
National Post - Robert Fulford
"Excellent. . . . Kitchen brings to this book an unrelenting appetite for the truth and a piercing style."—Robert Fulford, National Post
National Review Online - John Fund
"Kitchen, the author of a dozen works on 20th-century Germany, comprehensively disassembles Speer's alibis and excuses in this new book. His mastery of the revisionist evidence against Speer is complete."—John Fund, National Review Online
Wall Street Journal
"A devastating portrait of an empty, narcissistic and compulsively ambitious personality."—Wall Street Journal
Kirkus Reviews
2015-09-03
Kitchen (Emeritus, History/Simon Fraser Univ.; The Third Reich: Charisma and Community, 2014, etc.) sets the record straight on Albert Speer's assertions of ignorance of the Final Solution and claims to being the "good Nazi." Speer came to the attention of Hitler in his capacity as an architect. If Hitler ever had any friends, Speer would have been his closest. At the end of this impressively researched book, the author hints at perhaps a closer relationship than friendship, not supported by fact but a good explanation for Speer's ability to manipulate Hitler. Speer gained power in the Nazi machine by dealing directly with Hitler, bypassing the usual procedures. His peevish whining invariably accomplished his goal, and since Hitler believed his skewed and doctored statistics, he quickly climbed to the top. As minister of armaments, he did increase output, but his base line was a period when Germany thought the war would be short and production had been cut. Colleagues in the Nazi hierarchy detested his self-determination policy and profitable arrangement with industry. The biggest question about Speer has been his knowledge of the use of concentration camp inmates in industry and wartime production. Kitchen shows incontrovertibly that Speer not only knew of the practice, but was the greatest user of prisoners, many of whom were worked to death. Occasionally, the book gets bogged down in statistics and details of production, both real and invented, and the coverage of Speer's trial is tedious. After his 20-year prison term, Speer completely rebuilt his image, carefully subverting the damning wartime chronicle kept by his longtime friend. As at Nuremburg, he admitted overall responsibility, but Kitchen puts it perfectly: "his guilt—like a figure in a Greek tragedy—was guiltless." Kitchen ably portrays a hollow, cold, bourgeois man totally lacking in morals or scruples—exactly the type that made National Socialism possible and could do so again.
