‘You Are the Führer’s Unrequited Love’: A masterful take on Nazi memory, myth and moral reckoning

Writing a biographical novel about one of modern European history’s most skilled liars – whose fame rests almost entirely on his own self-crafted stories – is, to say the least, a difficult task.

So it’s not surprising that Jean-Noël Orengo has approached this challenge by making his superb novel about Nazi architect and war criminal Albert Speer, You Are the Führer’s Unrequited Love, a work of metahistory. This means the book, translated from French by David Watson, is not just a historical narrative – it also reflects on the act of storytelling itself. Orengo examines the who, when and especially the why of the stories we tell about history.

For a decade, Speer enjoyed a unique position as courtier and protege to Adolf Hitler. He may in fact have been the closest Hitler ever came to an actual friend – or, as Orengo’s title suggests, even a romantic partner in some strange, asexual way.

Speer flattered the dictator’s self-image as a frustrated artist, indulging Hitler’s fantasies of a thousand-year Reich. Later, as minister for armaments from 1942, Speer was responsible for supplying the military equipment that allowed Germany to carry on fighting its doomed struggle against the Allies to the bitter end.

He became one of the regime’s most powerful...

Read more