By John O'Donnell
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - As the son of one of Hitler's closest aides who
spent much of his childhood at the dictator's mountain retreat, Albert
Speer knows more than most Germans what it is like to live in the shadow
of the country's Nazi past.
Named after his father who was Hitler's chief planner and favorite
architect, Albert Speer Jr. was so traumatized by the war years that he
developed a stutter so strong that he could barely communicate.
"I couldn't string a sentence together," he said in an interview with
Reuters. "The reason was probably my childhood. The stutter is why I
left school. I did a carpentry apprenticeship -- if you build you don't
have to talk much."
Speer later chose to follow in his father's professional footsteps and
become an architect, making his professional break by submitting
anonymous proposals for building projects.