Docudrama based on memoirs of Hitler’s right-hand man

Press, 4 January 1988, Page 11

Docudrama based on memoirs of Hitler’s right-hand man

“Inside the Third Reich,” a docu-drama described as television’s first, full swastika’s-eye view of Nazism, begins tonight on one at 8.25.

The two-parter (part two airs tomorrow) is based on the best-selling memoirs of Hitler’s right hand man, Albert Speer, and features an all-star international cast, including Rutger Hauer as Speer, Blythe Danner as his devoted wife, and Sir John Gielgud as his father, Albert Speer, sen. Speer, who was Hitler’s Chief Architectural Planner and Minister of Armaments and War Production, wrote his reminiscences while serving a 20-year term in Spandau Prison for war crimes. “Inside the Third Reich” openes with Speer in Nuremberg Prison, awaiting sentence by the International tribunal. He reflects upon his life and how it was transformed by Adolf Hitler. Research The writer E. Jack Neuman put hundreds of

hours of painstaking research into "Inside the Third Reich.” He spent more than 50 hours just interviewing Speer, before his death in September, 1981, aged 76.

“We would meet from nine or 10 in the morning until five in the afternoon,” says Neuman. “He was the most enigmatic person I’d ever run into, and that frustrated me.

One minute I didn’t trust him, the next I believed he was telling me the absolute truth, and I would go back and forth. But I said, ‘Wait a minute. This is the Nazi mind you’re dealing with.’ Remember he was a guy who had been interviewed by experts. This was no hero.” Speer had expected to be executed along with other war criminals ... "and they should have all been hanged,” says Neuman. "But I’m glad he wasn’t, because he told us some things about Nazis that I don’t think anyone else had done with the same truth. “Speer was able to describe the most horrible things to me with detachment. He told me that was no way he could say he was sorry because that would only compound the crimes he was connected with.” Neuman recalls that Speer, during their interviews, warned of the next Hitler — “Watch out for him. Be ever alert.”