A very good book that delves deep into the psyche of one Albert Speer: A brilliantly intelligent though naive man, emotionally unavailable, Nazi architect, Closest confidant and soul mate of Hitler... and a tragically sympathetic figure who semi-undeservedly took the burden of guilt for all Nazi crimes when no others would and bore them on his shoulders until the day he died.

Or at least that's what the author of this book seems to be saying. Or is that really just what Albert Speer wanted her to believe?

Regardless, of the author's seeming sympathies for Speer - this book takes very deep and intriguing looking into how Albert Speer's life and psyche led him to the role he was to play in the deeply criminal Nazi regime, then tries to play detective to see what role he did or didn't play and how much he really knew about the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question."

The conclusion is not surprising, but as per usual, the journey - not the destination - is the interesting part.

Gitta Sereny is up there with Zora Neale Hurston for awesome. Her books are exhaustive but not exhausting. Her insights are pointed and illuminating. Her relationships with the people she interviews are often as interesting as the people themselves.

Fascinating in all sorts of ways, of course, but one aspect of this book that's stayed with me is Sereny's exploration of that grey area between knowing and not knowing. The main question asked is: how much did Speer really know about Nazi atrocities - and how much would he admit he knew? Sereny pursues those questions doggedly, with one eye on the hard reality and another on Speer's willful refusal to face up to that reality.

Only once in the whole book (if I remember rightly) does she expand the implications of the example of Speer to include all of us: recognising that to some extent we all inhabit that grey area much of the time, choosing what knowledge we will allow to shape our view of the world, and which things we will let slip off our minds like water. But by the time I'd finished the book, my understanding of humans' ability to lie to ourselves and each other was vastly enriched.

An extraordinary book.

Brilliant prose and a wonderful way to deal with a very important and an extremely fascinating issue.
Definitely a favorite!

What to say about this book? 24 hours on from completing it and I'm still no closer to a coherent thought process regarding it.

Or rather, that's not true, I know the book was brilliant in both conception and execution; I'm still no closer to knowing what to make of Speer himself. Did he know of the mass murder of the Jews of Europe or didn't he? Was he present during the speech which Himmler made (and in which he addressed Speer, present or not, directly) at the Posen conference in 1943, in which he unequivocally detailed the mechanics of the Final Solution, or had he (as he maintains, with questionable alibis) left for a meeting with Hitler? I'm still not sure. It seems unlikely that he was as ignorant as he always claimed and yet, doubt remains.

Whatever the answer, this is a fascinating deep dive in the shadowy abyss of one man's guilt and attempts at redemption. Sereny does a marvellous job of shining light into the darkest corners, methodically and insightfully peeling back the layers of meaning in a search for Truth.

This is a really great book. It adds to the clear-eyed historicism of 'Into that darkness' a hugely complex psychological picture. It is also a fascinating exploration of memory, and how our less than admirable human qualities allow us to tell contradictory stories about ourselves.