The ritual rarely varied. After an evening of movies in the Reichskanzlei, Adolf Hitler led his guests along a special path to an adjoining building. By flashlight he escorted them into the workroom of his personal architect, Albert Speer. There the Führer, throwing off his customary stiffness, often kept his guests until 3 a.m., describing every detail of the new Berlin that he and Speer were secretly designing.
Here would be the central "Street of Splendor," which would surpass the Champs Elysées in elegance. At the end of the street would be the new railroad station, more magnificent than Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal. There would be the Führer Palace, with a reception hall 500 yards long, and a triumphal arch twice as wide as Napoleon's. Over everything would loom the Kuppelhalle, a domed meeting hall vast enough to enclose St. Peter's Cathedral. "I would never have entered politics," the Führer would sigh, "if I could have been an architect or a master builder."
The Street of Splendor, of course, was never built. Hitler perished in the ruins of old Berlin. But Albert Speer, who was later promoted to Minister in charge of all German war industry, survived to stand trial at Nürnberg and spent 20 years in Spandau prison for using slave labor. He completed his term in 1966 and returned to his home, Castle Wolfsbrunnenweg, on a hill above the Neckar River in Heidelberg. Speer was 28 when he became Hitler's architect, 36 when he was appointed Munitions Minister, 41 when he entered Spandau. Today he is a white-haired 64-year-old whom Heidelbergers refer to —incorrectly, since he never held military rank—as "the general up there."
Smuggled Remembrances. This week Speer's memoirs, after three years of polishing and editing, will be published. British Historian H. R. Trevor-Roper once said that Speer's would be the only Nazi memoirs worth reading, since he was the brightest of the group and the only man at Nurnberg who felt any sense of guilt. "I wrote this book primarily for the younger generation," Speer told TIME Correspondent Peter Range. "I intended it not only to portray the past but to warn about the future." Since his own six children would be affected by his renewed notoriety, he gave them veto rights over its publication. After reading the first draft of the 525-page text, they insisted that it should be published.
Speer decided on the book when he was captured by the Allies. In Spandau, he wrote secretly in tight script on pieces of cardboard, tobacco paper, and even toilet tissue. A friendly jailer smuggled 1,400 pages of remembrances out for him. "I had all day to think in the garden," he recalls. "Then I could write every night until my hand just hurt too much." At Castle Wolfsbrunnenweg today, 36 filing cabinets hold paper scraps, letters, old files and 125 architect's sketches made by Hitler for the grand plan of Berlin.
Speer joined the Nazi party in 1931. After performing odd jobs, he was offered an opportunity to remodel a party headquarters building in Berlin. Then he was hired to work personally for Hitler. "I was 28 years old," he says. "I sold my soul like Faust to be able to build something great. In Hitler I found my Mephistopheles."