Editing Inside the Third Reich (section)

==Reception==
Initially, public reaction to the book was positive. In a 23 August 1970 review published in ''[[The New York Times]]'', [[John Toland (historian)|John Toland]] wrote that the book "is not only the most significant personal German account to come out of the war but the most revealing document on the Hitler phenomenon yet written. It takes the reader inside Nazi Germany on four different levels: Hitler's inner circle, National Socialism as a whole, the area of wartime production and the inner struggle of Albert Speer.  I recommend this book without reservations. Speer's full length portrait of Hitler has unnerving reality. The Führer emerges as neither an incompetent nor a carpet‐gnawing madman but as an evil genius of warped concepts endowed with an ineffable personal magic."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Toland |first1=John |title=Inside the Third Reich |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/08/23/archives/inside-the-third-reich-third-reich.html |work=The New York Times |date=23 August 1970 |access-date=24 August 2019}}</ref> A review by ''[[Kirkus Reviews]]'' on 27 August 1970 stated, "Speer's portrayals of the Nazi leadership, of the constant intrigues and rivalries among Hitler's entourage, and of Hitler himself, his histrionic virulence, his banality, and his peculiar magic, are engrossing and revealing."<ref>{{cite web |title=Inside the Third Reich |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/albert-speer/inside-the-third-reich/ |website=Kirkus Reviews |access-date=24 August 2019}}</ref>

Historians, however, have questioned the truthfulness of Speer's account from the beginning; as early as 1973, Barbara Miller Lane summarized in a [[Bryn Mawr College]] review: "Scholars have observed so many gaps in his account of the operation of his ministry as to shed considerable doubt on the whole."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lane |first1=Barbara |title=Review of ''Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs'', by Albert Speer |url=http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c5b4/1f25df8ce584c187bb7d4b585727b9b013ee.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190303082005/http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c5b4/1f25df8ce584c187bb7d4b585727b9b013ee.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-date=3 March 2019 |website=Semantic Scholar |publisher=Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians |s2cid=56399040 |access-date=24 August 2019}}</ref> [[Matthias Schmidt]]'s 1982 book ''Albert Speer: The End of a Myth'' (English edition 1984<ref>{{cite book |last=Schmidt |first=Matthias |date=1984 |title=Albert Speer: The End of a Myth |url= |location= |publisher= |page= |isbn=031201709X |access-date=}}</ref>), [[Martin Kitchen]]'s 2015 biography<ref>Martin Kitchen (2015). ''Speer, Hitler's Architect''. Yale Books.</ref> and [[Magnus Brechtken]]'s 2017 work ''Albert Speer - Eine deutsche Karriere''<ref>{{cite book |last=Brechtken |first=Magnus |date=2017 |title=Albert Speer - Eine deutsche Karriere |url= |location= |publisher= |page= |isbn=978-3-8275-0040-3 |access-date=}}</ref> come to a similar conclusion.

A particular point of criticism is the claim that Speer pretended that he was unaware of the [[extermination camp]]s and presented the figure of a "good Nazi". This criticism is mainly presented in the [[documentary film]] ''[[Speer Goes to Hollywood]]'', by the director Vanessa Lapa. The film presents original videos from the [[Nazi Germany]] period and conversations with Speer, in which the great deception he tried to present at the Nuremberg trials and in his book is revealed.<ref>Sarah Word from the British film magazine "[[Screen International]]" through its website "[[Screendaily|ScreenDaily]]" reported after the world premiere at the [[Berlin International Film Festival]] (2020), that this is a fascinating documentary. She adds that almost four decades after his death, Speer's false position is no longer unshakable, nor is his command of the war on 12 million slave laborers [rewrite needed] questionable. She claimed that Lapa's documentary exposes the lies in a "dense, sober and convincing way" - see: Sarah Ward, [https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/speer-goes-to-hollywood-berlin-review/5147755.article Speer Goes To Hollywood]’: Berlin Review, '''Screen'''Daily, March 2, 2020.</ref>