What an extraordinary book! This is a biography of Albert Speer, architect to Hitler and government minister in the Third Reich, but it is a particular sort of biography. You could say it is a psychological or intellectual biography, but even those words don't do justice to its uniqueness. I see it as a moral biography, set within a conversation between Speer and the author, Gitta Sereny, who came to know Speer in the final years of his life. She became friends with him and she liked him. But her portrayal is a constant, unflagging challenge to Speer, and a challenge to which he consents. The topic of this challenge is, as the subtitle states, Speer's battle with truth. Sereny is well equipped for this task, as a person of great empathy and thoughtfulness and as a German who lived through the Nazi years.
Early in the book, and throughout, I marveled at her ability to deal with Speer sympathetically without ever tipping over into rationalizing or excusing his actions, motives, and experience--which was both a counterweight to his rationalizations as well as, I think, what allowed him to stay with their inquiry all the way to the end.

The portrait of Speer is highly personal, even intimate--this in spite of his tendency to evade the personal and intimate at all times. He comes across as a greatly talented man, sophisticated, naive in some ways, with a gaping hole in his soul. Then the stunner is that to a greater and lesser degree at different stages throughout his life, he recognizes this. All individuals are complex and finally ineffable, but what unites Speer and Sereny is their commitment to try to give as full an accounting of him as possible. Necessarily they fail, but not without coming a great distance in that effort. It should also be said, that Sereny never approaches Speer with a pre-set theory based in psychology or anything else, even though she is smart enough to look at all the various aspects that can shed light on a man's life.

Reading this book, I was constantly back and forth with Wikipedia familiarizing myself with the many other characters discussed. When I felt myself feeling too much sympathy with Speer, I watched a holocaust film to remind myself of what was at stake. Because the Holocaust is at the heart of it--Speer's guilt, his excuses, and his courage.

Speer, as a favorite of Hitler, describes "loving" Hitler and being totally committed to him. He was not alone in this. I don't see it as a fault of the book, but Hitler himself remains a cipher, a black hole, in my mind. I never had any experience of seeing something human, humorous, attractive, compelling in him, although many did. So even though I felt I came to know Speer to some extent, that he became an intelligible, flawed human being, I could never get the contour of the spell Hitler cast over others. I wonder why. I wonder if anyone can ever make sense of a Hitler, or a Charles Manson. It's not necessary, perhaps, but I do wonder about it.

After Nuremburg, Speer was sentenced to 20 years in Spandau Prison. He served that entire time, entering at 41, exiting at 61. During that time--and in some ways, I found this the most interesting period of his life--he read 5000 books and dedicated himself to becoming "a new man." I think, again, that he failed at this, but the effort was fascinating as were the people who mentored him (both at Spandau and after). These included Georges Casalis, Father Athanasius, and Robert Raphael Geis, all of whom Sereny was able to meet and speak with. Perhaps this counts as a spoiler, but Sereny ends her book with this sentence: "It seemed to me it was some kind of victory that this man--just this man--weighed down by intolerable and unmanageable guilt, with the help of a Protestant chaplain, a Catholic monk and a Jewish rabbi, tried to become a different man."

Highly recommended.