http://www.german-cinema.de/archive/film_view.php?film_id=1141

A quarter of a century ago, director Heinrich Breloer had been planning
to film the diaries of Hitler's architect Albert Speer - he had
interviewed him in 1980 - but the project was abandoned after Speer's
death in 1981.

Following the success of their mini-series The Manns (Die Manns - Ein
Jahrhundertroman, 2001), which picked up, among others, an Emmy, nine
Adolf Grimme Awards, the Bavarian Television Award and the Golden
Camera, the director-writer duo of Breloer and Horst Koenigstein have
now returned to the story of Speer's life for a TV three-parter, Speer
und er, which is expected to be one of the TV events of 2005.

As on their previous projects, Breloer and Koenigstein are meticulous in
the preparation for the mixture of staged scenes and documentary
material. Work on the documentary part began in mid-2002 with almost 125
hours of interviews with 23 people, including two of Albert Speer's
sons, a daughter and one of his nephews; private collections and
archives were combed for 680 photos and a team of researchers gathered
material from Germany, Austria, England, the USA and Russia about
Speer's life.

In addition, award-winning production designer Goetz Weidner and his
team have been busy reconstructing key locations for the staged
sequences: for example, Hitler's study in the Neue Reichskanzlei in
Berlin has been built at the WDR studios in Bocklemuend, while Sound
Stage 12 at the Bavaria Film Studios is playing host to the prison wing
in Spandau where "prisoner No. 5" - as Speer was known by his prison
guards - was incarcerated for 20 years, the prison garden and to the
courtroom in Nuremberg for the trial against the Nazi war criminals.

As the makers explain, the viewers will have no problems getting into
the story since the narrative of the three episodes "were structured
according to classic thematic focuses and genre rules." Thus, the first
part is a ‘war movie’ showing Speer as Hitler's minister who goes from
wielding immeasurable power to his downfall in a Nuremberg cell, a man
who betrays his friend Hitler and then reinvents himself as a way of
personal survival.

In the second part, the focus is on the war crimes trials in Nuremberg
as a classic ‘courtroom drama’ with a fascinating mix of authentic
newsreel footage and staged scenes. Accused of being one of the leading
war criminals, Speer successfully distances himself from the Fuehrer's
inner circle and presents himself as a kind of ‘gentleman Nazi’ who was
apparently oblivious to the Nazis' campaign of genocide.

Meanwhile, the third episode - a ‘prison drama’ - concentrates on
Speer's 20 years in prison in Spandau and a further metamorphosis by
Speer into the writer of bestsellers where the line between fact and
fiction becomes blurred once more.

The casting for the €12 million is no less impressive with Sebastian
Koch as Speer, Tobias Moretti as Adolf Hitler, Dagmar Manzel as Gretel
Speer, Axel Milberg as his close colleague and friend Rudolf Wolters,
André Hennicke as Rudolf Hess, and Michael Gwisdek and Peter Ruehring as
Generals Raeder and Doenitz.