Speer's Prison Years (The Secret Diaries, 1976)

 Albert Speer. Spandau: The Secret Diaries (1976) The diaries were secret in that it was forbidden to send out more than one letter a month. But friendly guards helped Speer smuggle his diaries out. He selected and edited his notes, and this book is the result.

It’s surprisingly compulsive reading. The revelation of the man’s character is what kept me turning the pages. I’d recently watched The Rise of the Nazis documentary series. The historian who discussed Speer pointed out that he had carefully doctored the record of his work as war production manager for the Reich. I’m not sure to what extent these diaries continue the attempted deception. In the early years, Speer repeatedly muses about how he was enthralled by Hitler’s architectural ambitions. Later, he castigated himself for admiring what he now sees as grandiose kitsch (a word he does not use), and refers to how his responsibility for war materiel production has burdened him with guilt.

He also discusses architecture, and his hope that he could reestablish an architectural practice on release. He confesses to a taste for traditional styles, and wonders how he might fit into the modern fashions. As the years pass, the hope of early release fades in the face of Soviet intransigence, his musings about a possible professional future fade also.

The most genuine sounding passages are his sorrow that he’s missing the growth and development of his children, and the inevitable failure to establish a close parent-child bond. There aren’t enough visits and letters. It's clear that his family have made the best of their situation, and their father figures less and less in their lives.

An essential book for anyone who wants to understand the 3rd Reich. The desire to build huge monuments seems to be a universal trait of tyrants. ***

Nazi Misrule (Grunberger: The 12-Year Reich)

Richard Grunberger The 12-Year Reich (1971) A carefully assembled and somewhat selective description of daily life under Nazi rule. With every fact property documented, there’s not enough data about ordinary people’s actual feelings. Still, it’s a good overview of how ideological fantasies distort government and everything it touches. The overall impression is how the growth of totalitarian Gleichschaltung (alignment) suppressed common sense and humane values in small increments until the frog was boiled. And of how the near universal desire for a quiet and orderly life can lead people into a ceding control to the tyrants.
    About the only cavil I have is Grunberger’s obvious reluctance to admit the good things that sometimes resulted from bad motives. For example, the concerts arranged for factory workers were prompted by a belief in the superiority of Aryan art, and had the aim of lifting the lower classes to the Aryan heights. The audience comments quoted show that the listeners liked the music and ignored the motivation for presenting it. But Grunberger is I think clearly correct when he suggests that the Germans’ pride in their culture was intricately mixed with a sense of its superiority, which made it easy for the Nazis to spread their cult.
     Recommended. ***

The End of the Reich: Two accounts of the Götterdämmerung

 Anton Joachimsthaler. The Last Days of Hitler (1995, translated 1996). James Lucas. Last Days of the Reich (1986) Bound together in one volume, these are written by amateur historians.
     Joachimsthaler is bent on disproving the apparently wide-spread notion that Hitler didn’t die in the bunker on 30 April 1945, but escaped to South America, and that the corpse burnt in the Reichstag garden was that of a double. He has taken the trouble of chasing down all available documentation, which is more than enough to show that Hitler did in fact shoot himself. He also shows that Stalin, for reasons only partly explained by his desire for favourable propaganda, ordered the record to be obfuscated. It may be Stalin really believed that Hitler escaped. Besides, he had already made plans to annex East Germany and other nations as a buffer between Soviet Russia and Western Europe.
     Lucas, disturbed by what he saw when in action in Carinthia (Austria) in April and May 1945, assembled an account of the military (and some political) events of April and May 1945. He apparently wanted to publicise the fact that in the days leading up to the final capitulations a good deal of very bad stuff happened, including the repatriation of partisans to Yugoslavia, where they were murdered; the desperate last stands of SS units with civilians caught in the cross fire; and the flight of Volksdeutsche from Silesia and elsewhere, many of whom died or were murdered along the way.
     About the only take away for me was confirmation that the western Allies’ willingness to let Stalin take Berlin was a mistake that caused a great deal of misery. Interesting for anyone obsessed with World War 2, and nice examples of the difference between amateur and professional history. Worth reading if you find it. **½