Albert Speer: In Retrospect

Abstract

Albert Speer is frequently viewed the most sympathetically of the twenty-two defendants at the 1945-46 Nuremberg trial, where he acknowledged responsibility for Nazi war crimes and was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. Speer's efforts at public rehabilitation are contradicted by his clear distinction between responsibility and guilt. By accepting responsibility, while denying guilt, Speer avoided the hangman's noose, thus rationalizing the salient crime of the century the Holocaust. Speer's example stands as a warning for the future that others may similarly reject moral and legal culpability for their involvement in destroying human beings.