Word: speers
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...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...
Final Act. Speer became part of the Nazi inner circle and was invited to join Hitler at his eyrie near Obersalzberg in the Alps above Berchtesgaden. Visits there were a numbing ordeal. Long lunches were followed by short walks to Hitler's Alpine teahouse for tea and cookies. Hitler carefully avoided sweets. "Imagine me with a paunch," he would say. "It would be political suicide." The Führer was prone to fall asleep in the middle of his own monologues...
...Speer evokes one memorable night at Obersalzberg. It was Aug. 23, 1939. Hitler had just received a telegram from Stalin agreeing to the nonaggression pact that set the stage for the invasion of Poland nine days later. An unusual polar light flooded the sky and, Speer writes, "the final act of the Götterdämmerung could not have been staged with greater effect. All our faces and hands cast off an unnatural red glow. Abruptly Hitler turned to one of his military adjutants and said: That looks like much blood. This time it won't come...
Broken Bridges. After Munitions Minister Fritz Todt was killed in a plane crash in February 1942, Speer was selected to succeed him. As Minister, he found himself constantly battling colleagues. Almost at war's end, SS Leader Heinrich Himmler was using scarce materials to build a country house for his mistress. Speer's plea for women workers was vetoed by Hitler, at Martin Bormann's suggestion, on the grounds that it would keep them from producing good Aryan offspring. Half a million Ukrainian girls were brought into Germany instead, to become servants in the homes of Nazi...