The Good Nazi: Life and Lies of Albert Speer
Van der Vat (Stealth at Sea, LJ 4/1/95) claims that this is the first biography of Albert Speer written without the subject's influence. The author, a former journalist for the Guardian, once interviewed Speer, but his specialty is naval history. He wants to prove that Speer was as implicated in the Holocaust as the first-rank Nazis he served as Hitler's minister of wartime production, despite his repeated denials and Nuremberg's verdict on that subject. Whether he succeeds is open to question. The reader senses van der Vat's annoyance that Speer wouldn't admit his guilt outright, and he fairly concedes that Speer was unlikely to tell the truth at his war crimes trial because the price would have been hanging. A weakly argued epilog about whether history will absolve Speer dilutes the point being made. Information mined from Speer's unedited memoirs will be of interest to some scholars. An optional purchase for libraries with extensive World War II collections. [For another view see Gitta Sereny's Albert Speer, LJ 10/15/95.?Ed.]?Randall L. Schroeder, Wartburg Coll. Lib., Waverly, Iow.-?Randall L. Schroeder, Wartburg Coll. Lib., Waverly, IowaCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.