Sometimes called 'the first architect of the Third Reich', Speer was indeed Hitler's chief architect in Nazi Germany. Speer was directed to make plans to rebuild post-war Berlin, which was to become the capital of a supra-German state -- Germania. Perhaps the most familiar of his designs are the Nuremberg parade grounds seen in Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda masterpiece, Triumph of the Will.
Hitler supposedly had a weakness for the young and handsome Speer, whose designs were considered expressions of National Socialist principles. Hitler made him Minister responsible for Armaments and War Production in 1942. After the Wannsee conference, Speer was ordered to work out the logistics of the "final solution of the Jewish question," making him a key figure in the perpetration of the Holocaust.
Speer confessed guilty in the Nuremberg trials after World War II and was sentenced to 20 years of inprisonment in Spandau -- West Berlin. His release from prison in 1966 was a world-wide media event. He published several semi-authobiographic books until his death in London on September 1, 1981 -- exactly 42 years after World War II began.
His son also became a successful architect and was responsible for the design of [Expo 2000]? - the world exposition that took place in Hannover in the year 2000.
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