Spandau The Secret Diaries Author:Albert Speer (translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston) Albert Speer was unique in the Third Reich. An intellectual architect, he was befriended by Hitler in 1933 and for the next 12 years they maintained one of the most powerful and extraordinary relationships in the Nazi hierarchy. In 1942 Speer was appointed Armaments Minister and became second only to Hitler himself as a power on the home front. ... more »But in 1945, Speer defied Hitler's scorched earth policy and began to plan his assassination. At Nuremberg--after becoming the only defendant to plead guilty--he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He started keeping this secret diary, much of it on toilet paper. At the end of his term, he found 25,000 of the smuggled pages waiting for him, and from those entries he shaped this deeply powerful document.« less