Did some Nazis war criminals express regret for their actions?
A lot of the guys at the top were executed for their actions during the Holocaust, and others committed suicide before they could be convicted. Another problem is that the lower level nazis were often hard to find and locate and were often able to escape. The question of regret is one we can never fully answer. I, for example, speculate that Hitler killed himself without remorse over his actions, yet we can never be sure. The conscience is a hard thing to examine, but I would imagine there were some who indeed were remorseful. There was a case of a former nazi on his deathbed who asked a Holocaust survivor for forgiveness. The survivor, in this case refused to offer his forgiveness, as he did not see it as possible for the countless deaths his race faced. So in this case, the man was regretful, the mercy he sought was denied – and rightly so.
Albert Speer, “Hitler’s Architect” is the only high ranking Nazi who claimed to be sorry at Nuremberg. He was also Minister of Armaments and War Production. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Spee… Just how sorry he was is a moot point. The concentration camps and the use of slave labour in Nazi industry feature only fleetingly in his memoirs. Speer visited many factories during the war, and some were in concentration camp complexes, and part of his job was to okay expenditure for rations for slave workers in factories. Speer was an intelligent man and not as much a blinkered ideologue as some Nazis. The likelihood is that he knew more than admitted at Nuremberg is extremely high. Check out his memoirs for yourself. Also check out the memoirs of one of the French staff at Spandau Prison who came close to Speer. Personally I think that Speer’s expression of regret was self-serving and a means of avoiding the death p
