Baldur von Schirach | Biography

Baldur von Schirach was the youngest of several defendants tried for war crimes before an International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, after World War II. The former head of Nazi Germany's Hitler Youth organization received a sentence of twenty years' imprisonment for his role as a Gauleiter, or administrative leader, in Vienna after 1940. Born in Berlin in 1907, Schirach was the son of the director of Weimar's court theater who died the year he was born. His mother, Emma, was American by birth. As a young man, Schirach was attracted to anti-Semitism after reading a book by American industrialist Henry Ford titled The International Jew. He met Hitler in 1925, when he was eighteen years old, and moved to Munich the following year to study at its university. There, he became active in the National Socialist (Nazi) German Students' League and headed it after 1929. Impressed by his zeal, Hitler named Schirach Reich Youth Leader in 1931. A few months after the Nazis seized power in 1933, Schirach was made head of the Hitler Jugend ("Hitler Youth") organization as well as three other Nazi groups for even younger children. Their goal was to instill Nazi propaganda into an entire generation through educational indoctrination and outdoor events. Hitler Youth, in particular, took on a quasi-military appearance with uniforms and marksmanship competitions. During the 1930s, as Germany built up its military strength in secret preparation for a war to dominate Europe, such groups helped encourage patriotism and worship of Hitler among a demographic group that would suffer heavy casualties fighting for their country in its war of aggression.

Known to revere Hitler, Schirach was a compelling public speaker. He also wrote books, including Die Hitler-Jugend in 1934 and Revolution der Erziehung ("Revolution in Education"), published in 1939. Married to the daughter of Hitler's official photographer, Schirach penned the introduction to a book of photographs by his father-in-law, The Hitler No One Knows, in 1932. "I wish to emphasize the two traits I think strongest in Adolf Hitler's character: his strength and his goodness," Schirach wrote. "These are the characteristics that this book displays. Whether Hitler is motoring through Germany, surrounded by cheering crowds of construction workers or if he stands beside a murdered comrade, deeply moved and shaken, his nobility and humanity so often render speechless those who meet him for the first time, be they young or old."

Schirach was resented by others in the Nazi leadership circle, partly because of his willful personality. In 1940, he was replaced as Youth Fhrer of the German Reich and named Gauleiter (district leader) of Vienna instead. With that also came the titles Reichs Governor of Vienna and Reichs Defense Commissioner for that territory. Here, Schirach was responsible for carrying out an order to deport 185,000 Jews, 60,000 of them from Vienna alone. After the war, when his case came up in May 1946 before the International Military Tribunal, he was indicted on the counts of belonging to an illegal organization and participating in crimes against humanity. In his defense, Schirach stressed that Hitler Jugend was not a military organization at all, and that he had not known of the concentration camps until 1944. Prosecutors reminded him about a speech he made in Vienna in September 1942, in which he claimed that Jews were deported from Vienna for their own safety. "If I were to be accused of having deported tens of thousands of Jews from this city, once the European metropolis of Jewry, to the Eastern ghetto, I would have to reply, 'I see in that an active contribution to European culture.'" Schirach was sentenced to twenty years in prison, which was served at the Spandau facility in West Berlin. When he and Albert Speer, another Nuremberg defendant, were released on September 30, 1966, they left Rudolf Hess behind as the sole prisoner inside. Hess committed suicide at the age of 93 in 1987. Schirach wrote his memoirs, I Believed in Hitler, and died in 1974.