The Slave State: Heinrich Himmler's Masterplan for SS Supremacy
by: Albert Speer

Hardcover. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 384 pages. Albert Speer served two decades imprisonment for war crimes committed while he served in the German Nazi government, most prominently as Minister for Armaments and War Production. His memoir of that, emphasizing his relationship with Hitler, was published as Inside the Third Reich. Unlike others on the dock in Nuremburg, Speer accepted some responsibility and expressed remorse for his use of slave labor during the war. This book continues the critical self-examination of his memoir and subsequent Prison Diaries, but it is more than that. Its focus is on the conflicts between his ministry, given the exigencies of war and retreat, and the offices of the SS, seen as incompetent competitors intent on establishing a state within the state. As such, it's a technocratic defense of his own actions as a minister of state and an attack on Heinrich Himmler, his apparatus and the irrationalities of the Nazi regime. Clean copy.