You admit that they were running interference for a nazi, but also want to give them the benefit of the doubt? Historians have a word for people who didn’t agree fully with, but still defended nazis. Want to know what they were called?
Nazis.
If you’re aligning yourself with them, running interference for them, I’m going to treat you as if it is intentional because the effect is the exact same. If it was an accident, there were plenty of opportunities to change opinions and apologize. That hasn’t happened, so all evidence we have points to the person defending Nazis being disingenuous here.
You have to make assumptions on people’s motivations either way. I’m just more willing to base my assumptions on how genuine someone is being whether or not they are running interference for Nazis.