BOOKS: TWILIGHT ZONE

WAS ALBERT SPEER A REPENTANT NAZI OR A MAN IN DENIAL?

WHAT DID HE KNOW, AND WHEN did he know it? Questions about Albert Speer's awareness of the Holocaust haunted Adolf Hitler's wartime Armaments Minister (and favorite architect) until his death at 76 in 1981. At the 1945-46 war-crimes trial of Nazi leaders in Nuremberg, Speer was sentenced to 20 years in Berlin's Spandau prison for his complicity in Hitler's atrocities. Unlike his codefendants, Speer readily accepted responsibility for crimes committed by a government in which he played a leading role. But he insisted it was not until the trial that he learned about the mass murders at Hitler's death camps. As...

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