THE son of Hitler’s favourite architect, who was ordered by the Führer to turn Berlin into the greatest city in the world, has designed a key route to the Beijing Olympic site.

Albert Speer Jr, who was born a year after Hitler came to power, was recruited by the Chinese authorities as lead designer on the huge architectural project to redesign the sprawling city ahead of the 2008 Games.

Their choice has stirred ghosts from the past. More than 70 years ago Speer’s father, dubbed the “Devil’s Architect”, was charged with a similar task of rebuilding the Reich capital and turning it into an unrivalled global metropolis.

It was to be called Welthaupt-stadt (World Capital) Germania and designed to be bigger, grander and bolder than any other city to fit Hitler’s obsession with the idea of creating a modern-day Rome as the capital of his empire.

Beijing’s radical reconstruction has been described as totalitarian architecture, similar to Speer the elder’s grandiose but unfulfilled plans.

The most distinctive feature of Speer Jr’s blueprint has been a central five-mile strip, running from a new railway station in the south of the capital past Tianan-men Square and the Forbidden City to the new Olympic Green.

The strip is known as the “central north-south axis” and is still under construction by armies of migrant workers working around the clock.

Critics have suggested an uncanny parallel between Speer’s Beijing axis and the three-mile north-south axis, also flanked by train stations, that was planned by his father for Hitler’s new Berlin.

The Berlin boulevard was never completed because of the outbreak of the second world war, although many of Berlin’s tenements were bulldozed to make way for it.

Speer has been blamed for the forced evictions of thousands of Jewish tenants, although some architectural historians claim he was simply a bureaucrat following orders. Others allege he personally signed the eviction and demolition orders.

A recent study by the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions estimated that about 1.5m Beijing residents will be evicted or displaced by the project to rebuild the city.

The total cost of preparing the Olympics is expected to top £10 billion. The rapid construction of shopping arcades, a new central financial centre, expressways and an improved public transport system have evoked the remaking of Paris by Baron Haussmann between 1865 and 1887.

Speer Jr’s plans have not been without controversy. When he first submitted his proposal in 2003 it was greeted by hostility in the German press.

“His Beijing axis is reawakening old memories,” declared Die Welt. “Wasn’t there a legendary . . . north-south axis, planned by the elder Speer for Hitler’s new Berlin? Is his son to copy him or rather outdo him?”

Father and son also share an Olympic connection: Speer the elder designed the Zeppelintribune - the Nuremberg parade grounds - that Hitler planned to use for the site of the “Aryan Games” that were to replace the Olympics when he won the war.

Speer Jr, the eldest of six children, barely knew his father, who was in prison throughout his childhood.

By choosing a career in architecture he continued a family tradition that goes back at least three generations. Now 73, he is resigned to living in the shadow of his father, who died in 1981. In a recent interview, he recalled how he won an architectural prize at the start of his career.

“When they opened the envelope, everybody was baffled. ‘What?’ said one of the members of the jury. ‘Albert Speer? I thought he’s in jail!’ That’s how I began.”

Although he boasts that his plans are “bigger, much bigger” than his father’s design for Berlin, he rejects any parallels with his work but nonetheless admits, “Comparisons with my father are unfortunately unavoidable.” He added: “What I am trying to do in Beijing is to transport a 2,000-year-old city into the future. Berlin in the 1930s - that was just megalomania.”

His plans have created a stir of excitement within architectural circles in Beijing.

“I think it is fascinating that the son of a Nazi is rebuilding Beijing. Chinese people probably don’t know it, but Hitler was actually a great artist and his architectural vision for Berlin immense,” said Mi You, a 24-year-old architecture student.

The authorities have tried to play down the links with the Speer family’s dark past.

“We know about Mr Speer’s Nazi family but we don’t see its relevance to what is happening in Beijing,” said Shao Zi Qian, an Olympics committee spokesman.

“The axis is actually closely based on the ancient transport routes of the city and has been designed to incorporate the latest in modern design while providing space to preserve traditional parts of the city.”

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