Wspomnienia

From 1946 to 1966, while serving a prison sentence handed down from the Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal, Albert Speer penned 1200 manuscript pages of personal memoirs. Titled Erinnerungen (Recollections) upon their 1969 publication in German, his personal history was translated into English and published a year later as Inside the Third Reich. Long after initial publication, his memoir continues to provide one of the most detailed and fascinating portrayals of life within Hitler's inner circles, the rise and fall of the third German empire and of Hitler himself.He chronicles his entire life, but most of the book focuses on 1933-45, when he figured prominently in Hitler's government and the German war effort as Inspector General of Buildings for the Renovation of the Federal Capital and later of Minister of Arms and Munitions. His recollections of both duties foreground the impossibility of reconciling Hitler's idealistic, imperialistic ambitions with architectural and militaristic reality. Throughout, this book remains true to its authors intentions. Insightfully, he reveals many of the "premises which almost inevitably led to the disasters" of the Third Reich as well as "what comes from one man holding unrestricted power in his hands".