Baldur von Schirach
Baldur Benedikt von Schirach (9 May 1907 – 8 August 1974) was a Nazi German politician who is best known for his role as the Nazi Party national youth leader and head of the Hitler Youth from 1931 to 1940. He later served as Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter ("Reich Governor") of Vienna. After World War II, he was convicted of crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Baldur von Schirach | |
---|---|
Schirach as Reichsstatthalter in 1942 | |
Reichsjugendführer | |
In office 30 October 1931 – 8 August 1940 | |
Deputy | Karl Nabersberg Hartmann Lauterbacher Artur Axmann |
Preceded by | Office established |
Succeeded by | Artur Axmann |
Reichsleiter for Youth Education | |
In office 13 May 1932 – 8 May 1945 | |
Reichsstatthalter of Austria | |
In office 8 August 1940 – 8 May 1945 | |
Leader | Adolf Hitler |
Preceded by | Josef Bürckel |
Succeeded by | Office abolished |
Gauleiter of Reichsgau Vienna | |
In office 8 August 1940 – 8 May 1945 | |
Preceded by | Josef Bürckel |
Succeeded by | Office abolished |
Personal details | |
Born | Baldur Benedikt von Schirach 9 May 1907 Berlin, Brandenburg, Prussia, German Empire |
Died | 8 August 1974 67) Kröv, Rhineland-Palatinate, Federal Republic of Germany | (aged
Political party | National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) |
Spouse(s) | |
Children | 4, including Richard von Schirach |
Signature | |
Awards | Hitler Youth Golden Honour Badge with Diamonds and Rubies |
Early life
Schirach was born in Berlin, the youngest of four children of theatre director, grand ducal chamberlain and retired captain of the cavalry Carl Baily Norris von Schirach (1873–1948) and his American wife Emma Middleton Lynah Tillou (1872–1944). A member of the noble Schirach family, of Sorbian West Slavic origins, three of his four grandparents were from the United States, chiefly from Pennsylvania.[1] Through his mother, Schirach was a descendant of Thomas Heyward Jr. and an indirect descendant of Arthur Middleton, two signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence. English was the first language he learned at home and he did not learn to speak German until the age of five. He had two sisters, Viktoria and the opera singer Rosalind von Schirach, and a brother, Karl Benedict von Schirach. His brother committed suicide in 1919 at the age of 19.
On 31 March 1932 Schirach married the 19-year-old Henriette Hoffmann, the daughter of Heinrich Hoffmann, Adolf Hitler's personal photographer and sometime friend. Schirach's family was vehemently opposed to this marriage, but Hitler insisted.[2] Gregor Strasser dismissively described Schirach as "a young effeminate aristocrat" upon whom Hitler bestowed both Henriette and the Hitler Youth position. Through this relationship, Schirach became part of Hitler's inner circle. The young couple were welcome guests at Hitler's "Berghof". Henriette von Schirach gave birth to four children: Angelika Benedikta von Schirach (born 1933), lawyer Klaus von Schirach (born 1935), businessman Robert von Schirach (born 1938) and sinologist Richard von Schirach (born 1942). The lawyer and best-selling German crime writer Ferdinand von Schirach is the couple's grandson.[3][4] They are also the grandparents of the philosopher and critic Ariadne von Schirach and of the novelist Benedict Wells.[5]
Schirach was a published author, contributing to literature journals, and an influential patron of the arts.[6]
Military career and the Nazi Party
Schirach joined a Wehrjugendgruppe (military cadet group) at the age of ten and became a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1925. He was soon transferred to Munich, and in 1929 became leader of the National Socialist German Students' League (Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund; NSDStB). On 30 October 1931, he was named as Reichsjugendführer (Youth Leader) of the Nazi Party. On 13 May 1932 he was made Reichsleiter for Youth Education. Reichsleiter was the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party. He was also elected to the Reichstag that year. After the Nazi seizure of power, he was made Jugendführer of the German Reich on 17 June 1933 with responsibility for all youth organizations, including the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) and given an SA rank of Gruppenführer.[7] He was made a state secretary in 1936.
Schirach appeared frequently at rallies, such as the Nuremberg rally of 1934, when he appeared with Hitler in rousing the Hitlerjugend audience. The event was filmed for Triumph of the Will, the propaganda film made by Leni Riefenstahl for the Nazi Party. Schirach set the militaristic tone of the youth organisation, which participated in military-style exercises, as well as practising use of military equipment, such as rifles. In July 1939, Schirach paid Passau a formal visit.[8] In July 1940, when a new play by Hans Baumann was staged there, Schirach insisted that 2,000 local Hitler Youth members be part of that performance.[9]
In 1940, Schirach organised the evacuation of five million children from cities threatened by Allied bombing. Later that year, he joined the army and volunteered for service in France, where he was awarded the Iron Cross before being recalled. He served with the 4th (Machine Gun) Company of Infantry Regiment Großdeutschland in the rank of Gefreiter.[10] During the French Campaign, he was promoted to Leutnant and decorated for bravery.[11]
On 8 August 1940, Schirach was appointed Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of the Reichsgau Vienna,[12] powerful posts in which he remained until the end of the war. At that time he was replaced as Reichsjugendführer by Artur Axmann, though he retained his position as Reichsleiter for Youth Education. He attained the rank of SA-Obergruppenführer in 1941.
Schirach was an anti-Semite, responsible for sending most of the Jews from Vienna to Nazi concentration camps. During his tenure, 65,000 Jews were deported. In a speech on 15 September 1942, he said that their deportation was a "contribution to European culture".[12] In 1942, the German composer Richard Strauss moved with his son Franz and his Jewish daughter-in-law Alice and their children to Vienna so they could be afforded the protection of Schirach.[13] However, 25 of her relatives died in Nazi concentration camps.[14] In 1944, Alice and Franz were abducted by the Viennese Gestapo and imprisoned for two nights. Strauss's personal appeal to Schirach saved them, allowing him to take them back to his estate at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where they remained under house arrest until the end of the war.[13]
Later during the war, Schirach pleaded for a moderate treatment of the eastern European peoples and criticised the conditions in which Jews were being deported. He fell into disfavour with Hitler in 1943, but remained at his post in Vienna.[15]
Schirach was notoriously anxious about air raids. He had the cellars of the Hofburg Palace in the Vienna city centre refurbished and adapted as a bomb shelter, and the lower level of the extensive subterranean Vienna air defence coordination centre in the forests to the west of Vienna held personal facilities for him. The Viennese promptly dubbed this command and control centre the "Schirach-Bunker".
Trial and conviction
Schirach surrendered in 1945 and was one of the officials put on trial at Nuremberg. At the trial, Schirach was one of only a few defendants to denounce Hitler (including Albert Speer and Hans Frank).
He claimed that members of the Hitler Youth were innocent of any of the German war crimes:
In this hour, when I can speak for the last time to the Military Tribunal of the four victorious powers, I should like, with a clear conscience, to confirm the following on behalf of our German youth: that it is completely innocent of the abuses and degeneration of the Hitler regime which were established during this Trial, that it never wanted this war, and that neither in peace nor in war did it participate in any crimes.[16]
He said that he had not known about the extermination camps. He provided evidence that he had protested to Martin Bormann about the inhumane treatment of the Jews. Schirach claimed at the trials that the roots of his anti-semitism could be found in the readings of Henry Ford's The International Jew. He was originally indicted for crimes against peace for his role in building up the Hitler Youth, but was acquitted on that charge. He was found guilty on 1 October 1946 of crimes against humanity for his role in the deportation of the Viennese Jews to certain death in German concentration camps located in German-occupied Poland. He was sentenced and served 20 years as a prisoner in Spandau Prison, Berlin.
On 20 July 1949, his wife Henriette von Schirach (3 February 1913 – 27 January 1992) divorced him while he was in prison.
He was released on 30 September 1966 after serving his full sentence, and retired quietly to Southern Germany. He published his memoirs, Ich glaubte an Hitler ("I believed in Hitler") and died on 8 August 1974 in Kröv.
References
Notes
- Michael H. Kater, Hitler Youth, Harvard University Press, 2009, p. 17, ISBN 0674039351
- The Mind of Adolf Hitler, Walter Charles Langer, New York 1972, pp. 99–100
- Ferdinand von Schirach (September 23, 2011). "A Third Reich Past: Why I Cannot Answer Questions about My Grandfather". Spiegel Online.
- "Von Schirach: Der verschrobene Star hinter 'Schuld'", Focus, 21 February 2015
- Interview mit Ariadne von Schirach: Spross einer bekannten Familie, Stuttgarter Zeitung, 2 May 2014
- Gerwin Strobl (2007). The swastika and the stage: German theatre and society, 1933–1945. Cambridge University Press. pp. 9–. ISBN 978-0-521-88076-3. Retrieved 20 September 2010.
- Karl Höffkes: Hitlers Politische Generale, Die Gauleiter des Dritten Reiches; ein biographisches Nachschlagewerk. Grabert-Verlag, Tübingen, (1997) pp. 299-300, ISBN 3-87847-163-7.
- Rosmus, Anna (2015). Hitlers Nibelungen (in German). Grafenau: Samples Verlag. pp. 212f. ISBN 9783938401323.
- Rosmus, p. 255f
- Spaeter, Helmuth, "The History of Panzerkorps Grossdeutschland" p. 70 (English edition)
- Spaeter, Helmuth, p. 137
- Robert S. Wistrich (7 November 2001). Who's who in Nazi Germany. Psychology Press. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-415-26038-1. Retrieved 20 September 2010.
- Gilliam, Bryan; Youmans, Charles (2001). "Richard Strauss". Grove Music Online. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.40117.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) (subscription required) (This article is very different from the one in the 1980 Grove; in particular, the analysis of Strauss's behavior during the Nazi period is more detailed.)
- "Music; Richard Strauss and Hitler's Reich: Jupiter in Hell". The New York Times. 6 January 2002.
- "Baldur von Schirach". Archived from the original on 2010-04-03. Retrieved 2006-03-18.
- "Two Hundred and Sixteenth Day, Saturday, 31 August 1946". Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Volume 22.
Further reading
- Fest, Joachim C. and Bullock, Michael (trans.) "Baldur von Schirach and the 'Mission of the Younger Generation'" in The Face of the Third Reich New York: Penguin, 1979 (orig. published in German in 1963), pp. 332–354. ISBN 978-0201407143.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Baldur von Schirach. |
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Baldur von Schirach |
- Timeline of Schirach's life (in German)
- Baldur von Schirach at Find a Grave
- Short biography of Baldur von Schirach
- Revolution der Erziehung (Revolution of Education) by Baldur von Schirach
- Die Hitler-Jugend – Idee und Gestalt (The Hitler Youth – Idea and Character) by Baldur von Schirach
- Die Fahne der Verfolgten (The Flag of the Persecuted), collection of poetry
- Goethe an uns (Goethe to Us) by Baldur von Schirach
- Das Lied der Getreuen (The Lay of the Faithful); more poetry
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Baldur von Schirach
- Biography: Baldur von Schirach
- Interview with David Frost
- Newspaper clippings about Baldur von Schirach in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW