Hitler's architect and minister of armaments and war production, Speer survived the war and (after the Nuremberg trials, during which he acknowledged the use of slave labourers) was imprisoned in Berlin for twenty years. some thought his imprisonment was partly an attempt by the Soviet Union to keep him out of the Western hands. during his captivity, he wrote basically an autobiography on scraps of paper. this essay portrays him in a sad light: he seems almost childlike in the way he writes, reads, sketches. the essay ends by noting that his prison sentence was a walk in the park compared to what befell those slave labourers.