Book: Tales from Spandau

Spandau is the Berlin prison in which the seven "top" Nazi war criminals were kept. Tales from Spandau details the history of this somewhat bizarre institution, which for many years existed solely to keep tabs on Rudolf Hess, the one prisoner of the seven given a life sentence at the Nuremberg trials. I found the book quite engaging. I knew a fair amount about Albert Speer - Hitler's architect, among other things - from reading his books in high school, but I knew very little about others such as Doenitz and Hess. Though focused on the prison, the book also gives a sense of the Nuremberg trials, of broader world events such as the Berlin crisis of the early 1960s, and of the heterogeneous domestic responses within Germany to Spandau and its inmates.

Recommended.