Gitta Sereny reveals how Albert Speer came to terms with his own acts and failures to act, his progress from moral extinction to moral self-education and the question of his real culpability in the Nazi crimes.

‘A masterpiece . . . a contribution to the effort of recuperation of human dignity at the end of this atrocious century . . . This is the account Joan of Arc would have given if she had been charged with interrogating Faust’ John Banville, Observer

‘A remarkable new biography – arguably the most important and certainly the most fascinating book about the Nazi era published in the last ten years . . . Gitta Sereny has written a masterpiece’ Robert Harris, Sunday Times

‘An essential experience that conveys like no other book the qualities of the Nazi elite . . . restoring emotion to people we would prefer to regard as soulless machines’ David Cesarini, Financial Times

‘A masterpiece of historical and inquisitorial technique, enables us to understand the ablest, most articulate, and most ambiguous of Hitler’s ministers’ Hugh Trevor-Roper, Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year