Inside the Third Reich begins with an account of Speer's childhood, followed by a description of his role as
Heinrich Tessenow's assistant at the
Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now
Technische Universität Berlin). Speer first heard
Adolf Hitler speak during an address to the combined students and faculty of
Berlin University and his institute. Speer states he became hopeful when Hitler explained how communism could be checked and Germany could recover economically. Speer joined the
National Socialist Party in January 1931; he wrote "I was not choosing the NSDAP, but becoming a follower of Hitler, whose magnetic force had reached out to me the first time I saw him and had not, thereafter, released me." Speer described the personalities of many Nazi officials, including
Joseph Goebbels,
Hermann Göring,
Heinrich Himmler,
Rudolf Hess,
Martin Bormann, and, of course, Hitler himself. Speer went on to quote Hitler as telling him privately after the
remilitarization of the Rhineland, "We will create a great empire. All of the Germanic peoples will be included in it. It will begin in Norway and extend to northern Italy. I myself must carry this out." The main body of the book effectively ends when Speer, by this point having joined
Karl Dönitz's
government seated in Schleswig-Holstein, receives news of Hitler's death. This is followed by an epilogue dealing with the end of the war in Europe and the resulting
Nuremberg trials, in which Speer was sentenced to a 20-year prison term for his actions during the war.
Special weapons Starting in April 1942, Speer became aware of the potential of
German nuclear research in developing, in his words, "a weapon which could annihilate whole cities."
Werner Heisenberg told Speer "the scientific solution had already been found and that theoretically nothing stood in the way of building such a bomb." Yet development and production would take at least two years. This led to the development of Germany's first
cyclotron. By the autumn of 1942 however, the estimated period for developing a weapon had increased to three to four years, much too long to affect the war. Instead, development turned to a "uranium motor", for use in the navy's submarines. Finally, in the summer of 1943, Speer released the 1200
tonnes of uranium stock for use in solid-core ammunition. Speer states that even if Germany concentrated all of its resources, it would have been 1947 before they could have had an atom bomb. Speer describes
Wunderwaffen such as the
Me 262 project,
flying wing jet planes, a
remote-controlled flying bomb, a
rocket plane, a rocket missile based on
infrared homing, designs for a four engined jet bomber with the range to strike New York, and a
torpedo based on
sonar. He also cites the use of the
V-2 as a terror weapon, rather than continued development of the
ground-to-air defensive Waterfall rocket.
Holocaust and slave labor Speer's involvement with
concentration camp prisoners as a work force came about when Hitler agreed to Himmler's proposal they be used for the secret V-2 project. Speer's joint undertaking with the
SS leadership resulted in the creation of
Mittelwerk (Central Works) for underground production of the V-2. He goes on to say that at the Nuremberg Trial he stated he "had to share the total responsibility for all that had happened", and that he "was inescapably contaminated morally". Finally, Speer states, "Because I failed at the time, I still feel, to this day, responsible for Auschwitz in a wholly personal sense." ==Reception==