Albert Speer's Inside Third Reich

In his memoirs entitled Inside Third Reich, Albert Speer depicts his time as Adolf Hitler’s head architect and a very close personal friend. Their friendship lasted nearly 12 years, ending when HItler committed suicide in his bunker. After the war Speer was certain that he would be sentenced to death by hanging like many other Nazi leaders. Instead he was sentenced to a 20 year sentence in Spandau prison. He was granted this sentence in lieu of death due to a convincing case made at the Nuremberg trials. Speer claimed that he had been aware of the use of Jews as unpaid slaves, however he was unaware of the Final Solution or the horrendous conditions in the labor camps. Yet the Gauleiter of Thuringia, Ernst Sauckel, reported directly to Speer regarding slave labor. With this evidence against him, Speer’s claim that he was in the dark with regards to the the conditions in the labor camps seems unlikely. Speer’s motivation in writing his memoirs after the war can be summed up with …show more content…
Chapter twentyeight gets into Hitler stripping Speer of his power and position temporarily, which he only regained through Speer pledging his loyalty to Hitler, as the chapter progresses Speer alleges that he conspired with a fellow general to assassinate Hitler by releasing poison gas in his bunker. In chapter twentynine, Speer is attempting to preserve Germany after Hitler is gone. Speer does whatever he can to accomplish this, including deceiving Hitler regularly. As the book comes to an end, Speer talks about Hitler in the time leading up to his suicide, where he resided in the bunker. The Final Chapters in the Epilogue mainly talk about the Nuremberg Trials and Speer’s reaction when he discovers he will be tried. In his conclusion Speer talks about the dangers of dictators in the modern age and again points to his own