what he was doing. Wolters later wrote that he did this to correct mistakes, to leave out extraneous matters, and "above all to delete certain parts on the basis of which Speer and one or another of his colleagues could still have been prosecuted. The Ludwigsburg Central office for 'war crimes' was still at work and an end of the persecution of National Socialists was not in sight." In April 1965, with only eighteen months left of Speer's sentence, Wolters wrote to him of their prospective reunion, "[I]t will have been twenty years since I saw you last. What will there be between us old codgers, aside of course from happy memories of skiing tours in the long distant past[?] ... Will you come to me mainly to take receipt of the promised gift I have held for you in our cellar—that long cured Westphalian ham, and those patiently waiting bottles of your favorite nectar: Johannisberger 1937? Could these things of the senses end up being all that there is between us? I am so happy that the moment approaches, but my heart is heavy ..." According to Riesser, she thought that Wolters "was frightened of the reality of Speer". However, Kempf thought Wolters wished Speer ill. Speer was unaware of the depth of Wolters' feelings, and later told his biographer-to-be Joachim Fest that Wolters was the closest friend he had. Speer added that during the Spandau years, Wolters performed invaluable services for him and that he did not know how he would have survived Spandau without Wolters' assistance. Throughout the latter part of Speer's imprisonment, Wolters was a faithful correspondent, writing lengthy letters to Speer at least once a month, attempting to tell Speer everything that might interest him but nothing that might hurt him. When Speer invented the concept of his "world wide walk", imagining his daily exercise around the prison yard to be segments in a long walk from Europe through Asia to North America, Wolters supplied Speer with details of what he would "see". Speer later stated, "In a manner of speaking, Rudi Wolters accompanied me on these walks." As midnight struck and 1 October 1966 began, Speer was released from Spandau Prison. His last use of the clandestine message system was to have a telegram sent to Wolters, in which Speer jokingly asked Wolters to pick him up thirty-five kilometres south of Guadalajara, Mexico, which