The question poses a whole moral dilemma: “Can a war criminal be a great artist?” Léon Krier says yes: that Albert Speer was guilty of the Nazi horror, and was also a magnificent architect.

To demonstrate that he was a magnificent architect, Krier put together a monograph on Hitler’s architect and minister. It was printed back in 1985 by the publishing house of his colleague Maurice Culot (Archives d’Architecture Moderne, Brussels), and now reappears through The Monacelli Press (New York) as a facsimile, with the sole addition of a foreword written by Robert A.M. Stern and an updated version of Krier’s main text, entitled ‘An Architecture of Desire’...