Books: The Master Builder

SPANDAU: THE SECRET DIARIES by ALBERT SPEER 463 pages. Macmillan. $13.95.

All the good writers of confessions, from Augustine onwards, are still a little in love with their sins.

—Anatole France

If any reader doubts the wisdom of France's aperçu let him examine these stark entries. Albert Speer, author of the bestseller Inside the Third Reich, has unique credentials for speculation on the nature of evil and culpability. The architect was literally the Master Builder of the Third Reich and Hitler's Minister of Armaments and War Production. It was in his ministerial capacity that Speer employed some 5 million slave laborers; it...