Based on 70 hours of interviews with Franz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka (the largest of the extermination camps), this book bares the soul of a man who continually found ways to rationalize his role in Hitler's final soulution.

Albert Speer was Hitler's architect before the Second World War. Through Hitler's great trust in him and Speer's own genius for organisation he became, effectively from 1942 overlord of the entire war economy, making him the second most powerful man in the Third Reich. Sentenced to twenty years imprisonment in Spandau Prison at the Nuremberg Trails, Speer attempted to progress from moral extinction to moral self-education. How he came to terms with his own acts and failures to act and his real culpability in Nazi war crimes are the questions at the centre of this book.

"[A]n astonishing, subtle study of many Holocaust perpetrators and participants."—Publishers Weekly starred review

One of the most vivid explorations ever of the legacy of Nazism in Germany. No person has examined the lingering evil of Nazism more deeply than Gitta Sereny. As much a work of autobiography as a work of journalism, The Healing Wound spans over sixty years of Sereny's investigations into the darker side of history, from her first encounter with the Nazis at a Nuremberg rally in 1934 at age eleven to her chilling interviews with the highest Nazi officials. The Healing Wound combines political statement with the haunting personal memories of one of the twentieth century's most relentless witnesses. 16 pages of b/w photographs.

"Getting things straight is the genius of this book."—Harper's

"[Sereny] ranks among the most accomplished writers of our age...a fearless explorer of one of history's darkest chapters."—Washington Post

Renowned journalist and biographer Gitta Sereny covered the Mary Bell case in the 1960s and wrote about it at the time. Mary, then eleven, was charged and subsequently convicted of the manslaughter of two younger boys. Following Mary's release on licence, and in collaboration with her, Sereny provides a thought-provoking biography of someone who was considered to have committed an evil crime of unparalleled horror. She brilliantly delves into the mind of this complex and damaged human being and reveals how little was done to investigate Mary's own troubled circumstances. A powerfully disturbing book, it will resonate with all who read it.

Only four men commanded Nazi extermination (as opposed to concentration) camps. Franz Stangl was one of the. Gitta Sereny's investigation of this man's mind, and of the influences which shaped him, has become a classic. Stangl commanded Treblinka and was found guilty of co-responsibility for the slaughter there of at least 900,000 people. Sereny, after weeks of talk with him and months of further research, shows us this man as he saw himself, and 'as he was seen by many others, including his wife. She takes us sharply and deeply into hierarchy of the death camps; the experiences of the very few survivors, both inmates and guards.' (Observer)

In December 1968 two girls - Mary Bell, eleven, and Norma Bell, thirteen (neighbours, but not related) - stood before a criminal court in Newcastle, accused of strangling, within a six-week period, Martin Brown, four years old, and Brian Howe, three. Norma was acquitted. Mary Bell, the younger but infinitely more sophisticated and cooler of the two, was found guilty of manslaughter rather than murder because of 'diminished responsibility' and was sentenced to 'detention' for life. Step by step, the extraordinary murders, the events surrounding them, the alternately bizzare and nonchalant behaviour of the two girls, their brazen offers to help the distraught families of the dead boys, the police work that led to their apprehension, and the trial that itself are grippinly re-created in this rare-study of the wanton murder of child by child. What emerges with equal force is the inability of society to anticipate such events and to take adequate steps once disaster has struck.

Gitta Sereny is one of the world's most respected journalists and historians. This book gathers together the best of her writing on Germany from over sixty years. It amounts to an extraordinary portrait of the country and its people, how they have come to terms with their Nazi past, both collectively and in specific instances - and how the burden of their guilt has altered the national identity. She writes about key individuals - Stangl, Speer - and the questions which their lives raise.

Albert Speer was not only Hitler's architect and armaments minister, but the Fuhrer's closest friend--his "unhappy love." Speer was one of the few defendants at the Nuremberg Trials to take responsibility for Nazi war crimes, even as he denied knowledge of the Holocaust. Now this enigma of a man is unveiled in a monumental biography by a writer who came to know Speer intimately in his final years. Out of hundreds of hours of interviews, Sereny unravels the threads of Speer's personality: the genius that made him indispensable to the German war machine, the conscience that drove him to repent, and the emotional wounds that made him susceptible to Hitler's lethal magnetism. Read as an inside account of the Third Reich, or as a revelatory unsparing yet compassionate study of the human capacity for evil, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth is a triumph.



"Fascinating...Not only a major addition to our knowledge of the Third Reich, but a stunning attempt to understand the nature of good and evil."--Newsday


"More than a biography...It also constitutes a perceptive re-examination of the mysterious appeal of Adolf Hitler."--San Francisco Chronicle