it may be on the other hand that in this critical situation for the Reich he wished to implicate them in the extermination, as it were making them accomplices and subject to retribution if the Reich went down in defeat and the allies fulfilled a promise they had made to hunt down and punish all war criminals. Albert Speer was of this view; long after the war he wrote that he assumed Hitler had asked Himmler to reveal the extermination to the Party leaders to indicate that their bridges had been burned. However that may be, this was, so far as is known, only the second time that he dropped
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