The Fuhrer's Master Builder

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 Fuehrer, 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 Elysees 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 Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer 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 Nuernberg 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."

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 Fuehrer 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 Goetterdaemmerung 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 off without violence.' "

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 functionaries.

After Stalingrad, Hitler stayed up later and later as insomnia overcame him. Meals, which had once been merely lengthy, now became distasteful. Hitler, a vegetarian, insisted on describing the meat soup served to his tablemates as "corpse tea." Along with Eva Braun, Hitler said, his only true friend was his German shepherd Blondi. When the dog acted friendly toward other people, the Fuehrer would angrily order it to heel.

Each setback in the war brought the same reaction from Hitler: "We can only go forward. The bridges behind us are broken." The Fuehrer belabored his generals openly as "notorious liars as well as notorious cowards," and took charge of the war himself. He refused to allow Speer to build jet fighters to defend Germany against Allied aircraft, wanted jet bombers instead to attack the enemy. He persuaded Speer to develop the V-2 rocket. "It was probably one of the greatest errors I made," Speer writes. "We should have concentrated our efforts on the production of the ground-to-air missile."

That was not Speer's only error. One day a friend, confused and stuttering, advised Speer never to accept an invitation to visit a concentration camp in Upper Silesia. He had seen things there, he said, that he dared not describe. "I did not pursue the matter. I did not want to know what was happening there. He must have been talking about Auschwitz. From that moment on, I was inextricably involved in these crimes because, out of fear that I might discover something which would have forced me to certain steps, I shut my eyes. Because I failed then, I still today feel very personally responsible for Auschwitz."

Of all Speer's work, nothing remains except the Zeppelin Stadium in Nuernberg, where Speer created Europe's first light-and-sound spectaculars during prewar party rallies. "I am glad none of my plans were realized," he says today. Speer would like to practice architecture again, but because of his past he is unlikely to get commissions.' He accepts the situation. "In the life of the state, there is responsibility for your own area. Beyond this, there has to be a collective responsibility for the decisive things if you are among the leaders."

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