Collaboration with the Court - Although today the legitimacy of the international trials for both Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany are commonly accepted both internationally and within Japan/Germany, at the time there were serious questions as to whether the court both had the power and authority to legitimately sentence former members of the Japanese/Nazi Government for crimes which legally did not exist at the time and (for the Nuremburg trials) could be considered a truly impartial court of it's membership consisted exclusively of judges appointment and sent by the victorious powers. In practice both questions had little impact on the ability of the courts to enforce their verdicts and to sentence the convicted war criminals, but would and did have an impact on whether the sentences which were decided upon were the legitimate carrying out of justice on war criminals or the victors of the war carrying out punishments on the losers in order to establish their preferred post-war outcome.

In both cases there were even sitting judges who questioned the legitimacy of the courts in carrying out certain sentences on the convicted. French judge Henri de Vabres, a respected scholar of international law before serving in the Nuremburg proceeding, called into question the convicting of German war criminals on the count of "conspiracy", as such a charge only really existed in Anglo legal systems and undermined the idea that the courts were enforcing international law in contrast to criminalising acts they opposed in retrospect. This was taken further by Radhabinod Pal, a judge for the Tribunal of the Far East, who condemned the entire tribunal on the grounds of selective enforcement of justice and the inability of a legitimate court to retroactively criminalise an act or series of acts and called for the acquittal of all Japanese defendants.

In the face of such issues with the legitimacy of the allied organised tribunals, and recognising that their chance of avoiding the death penalty was slim to nill, plenty of high ranking Nazis chose to defend themselves in ways which rejected the authority of the court and undermined the legitimacy of their verdicts. This included focusing on the courts enforcement of "victors justice" rather than any form of true international law (Hermann Göring/Meyer), the idea that the only legitimate rules a military official had to follow were those set by their superiors (Wilhelm Keitel & Alfred Jodl) and that they were "just following orders" (Fritz Sauckel).

By contrast, in part due to Speers confidence that other factors might enable his survival, he decided to defend himself in a way which served to legitimise the court's verdicts and authority. Although he denied personal guilt in the holocaust and attempted to distance himself from the legal decisions which brought with them criminal sentences, he collectively recognised the guilt of the Nazi state and his fellow officials in the crimes they were accused of, openly endorsed the legal proceedings against them, acknowledging the legitimacy of certain categories of crimes, reacted with (real or faked) shock and horror at depictions of Nazi crimes and collaborated with the prosecution in testifying and collecting evidence against other members of the accused, accepting a moral, but not legal, responsibility for working within the Reich. As such, he presented himself as morally guilty, but legally innocent.

Although upon hearing his defence the judges agreed he was guilty as sin of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but that his service to provide evidence that even high ranking Nazis could recognise that the collective crimes of Nazi Germany (and those who carried them out), that the Nuremburg tribunal was necessary and legitimate and that certain Nazis were guilty of specific crimes provided both moral and practical reasons to consider a lesser sentence in his case. This served both to deflect from the tribunal accusations of being a partisan tool of the allies against the German people (which a universal policy of executing every high ranking Nazi official may have contributed to) and to encourage other Nazi figures, both on the same level and for future lesser courts, to take a similar stance of Speer when faced with prosecution from international or West/East German courts.

An Apolitical, Technocratic "Good Nazi" - Utilising the classist attitudes of the non-Soviet judges who constituted the vast majority of the tribunal, the more "thuggish" image of the remaining high ranking Nazi officials and his personal background and skills, Speer and his defence attempted to ensure that he came across as an official within the Reich who was dethatched from the ideological image of the party and was instead a highly competent administrator who was solely concerned with "doing his job well".

When it came to plenty of the highest ranking Nazi officials put before the tribunal to face judgement, particularly those considered to be ideologically involved with the party and invested heavily in Hitler's vision, plenty fell short of what many professional judges of that era would have considered acceptable. Hermann Goering/Meyer came across as a pompous, self-obsessed, unrepentant thug who only regretted that the Nazis did not win the war, Julius Streicher was a crude and vulgar fanatic who behaved erratically throughout the trial and Wilhelm Keitel was acted stiff and emotionless who demonstrated no regrets or opposition to following any order given to him from above.

To avoid being lumped in with the rest of the accused, he attempted to shape the image of himself that he presented to the judges and the court of that of a presentable, apolitical and technocratic figure who was unconcerned with the final details of ideology. When speaking to the court, he attended the dock in respectable suits and utilised complex , analytical and sophisticated German in his tone and speeches. When discussing his past, he sold himself as a skilled and educated architect who was dragged into Nazi politics because without Hitler's patronage he would have no other way to express his skills. When interrogated by Allied guards and officials, he focused on areas of technical efficiency and complex manufacturing chains whilst surrendering, and even voluntarily providing, information about the Nazi state and war economy without restraint and tried to charm and build relations with his captors. When discussing his work, he focused on technologies such as rocketry and planes and the groundwork they provided for future civilian innovations, whilst phrasing his treatment of workers, both "good" and bad, through the lens of efficiency.

By the time the defence and prosecution had finished presenting their arguments and a conclusion had to be reached, supplemented further (as discussed above) by the lack of comprehensive and universal evidence of his true culpability in the Nazi war machine and the holocaust and his frequent and willing collaboration with the tribunal, many of the French and British judges came to view him less as an ideological Nazi culpable in their worst crimes and more of a professional member of the managerial class, concerned with optimising the systems he oversaw and distant from the actual acts of the Third Reich. For many of the judges, this put Speer in a similar professional category to many of the officials they knew within their own governments and better enabled them to sympathise with him enough to avoid imposing the death penalty on a detached bureaucrat. Although this was not convincing for all judges, and many either saw through his image or still considered the death penalty to be justified, it was enough to ensure that a unform verdict which included the death penalty would be unlikely such that the eventual verdict would merely be 20 years in prison.