Baldur von Schirach

Baldur Benedikt von Schirach (May 9, 1907 – August 8, 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.

Quotes

• If today he descended from Heaven, the great warrior who struck the money changers,
  You would once again shout 'crucify!'
  And nail him to the cross that he himself carried.
  But he would gently laugh at your hatred.
  'The truth remains even when your bearers are passed.
  Faith remains, because I give my life...'
  And the fighter of all the world towers on the cross.
  • Christ ("Christus"), from "The Flag of the Persecuted" (Die Fahne der Verfolgten, 1934), pg 51.
  • Quoted in "The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945" by Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003, Cambridge University Press), pg 143.

• A socialist and anti-capitalist attitude is the most salient characteristic of the Young National Socialist Germany.
  • Quoted in The Führer, Konrad Heiden, New York: NY, A Herman Graf Book—Skyhorse Publishing 2012, p. 501 (spoken in 1933)

• The body expresses our very being. The striving for beauty is inborn among the Aryan.
  • To a league of German girls. Quoted in "German Bodies: Race and Representation After Hitler" - Page 47 - by Uli Linke - Social Science - 1999

• To us Germans everything is religion. What we do we do not merely with our hands and brains, but with our hearts and souls. This has often become a tragic fate for us.
  • Quoted in "The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership" - by Joachim C. Fest - History - 1999 - Page 220

• Faust, the Ninth Symphony, and the will of Adolf Hitler are eternal youth and know neither time nor transience.
  • Quoted in "The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership" - Page 221 - by Joachim C. Fest - History - 1999

• He who serves our Führer, Adolf Hitler, serves Germany, and he who serves Germany, serves God.
  • Quoted in "Germany 1918-1945" - by J. A. Cloake - Germany - 1997

• In the presence of this blood banner which represents our Führer, I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the saviour of our country, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God.
  • An oath written by Schirach about Hitler. Quoted in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany" - Page 253 - by William Lawrence Shirer - Germany - 1990

• That is the greatest thing about him. That he is not only our leader and a great hero. But himself, upright, firm and simple. In him the roots of our world. And his soul touches the stars. And yet he remains a man like you and me.
  • A poem written by Schirach about Hitler in 1936. Quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" - Page 287 - by Eugene Davidson - History - 1997

• To the Führer. This is the truth which bound me to thee: I looked for thee and found my Fatherland. I was a leaf floating in limitless space. Now thou art my homeland and my tree. How far would I be carried by the wind, wert thou not the strength that flows up from the roots. I believe in thee, for thou art the nation. I believe in Germany. For thou art Germany's son.
  • A poem written by Schirach about Hitler. Quoted in "Dem Führer: Gedichte für Adolf Hitler" - Page 7 - by Karl Hans Bühner - German poetry - 1939

• Adolf Hitler, you are our great Führer. Thy name makes the enemy tremble. Thy Third Reich comes, thy will alone is law upon the earth. Let us hear daily thy voice and order us by thy leadership, for we will obey to the end and even with our lives. We praise thee! Heil Hitler!
  • A pledge written by Schirach about Hitler. Quoted in "Hitler Youth: The Hitlerjugend in Peace and War, 1933-1945" by Brenda Ralph Lewis - History - 2000 - Page 57

• Führer, my Führer given me by God. Protect and preserve my life for long. You rescued Germany from its deepest need. I thank you for my daily bread. Stay for a long time with me, leave me not. Führer, my Führer, my faith, my light. Hail my Führer.
  • A prayer written by Schirach and repeated by the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) before meals. Quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" - Page 288 - by Eugene Davidson - History - 1997

• They say of us that we are an anti-Christian movement. They even say that I am an outspoken paganist.... I solemnly declare here, before the German public, that I stand on the basis of Christianity, but I declare just as solemnly that I will put down every attempt to introduce confessional matters into our Hitler Youth.
  • Braunschweig speech, December 1933. Quoted in "The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945" by Richard Steigmann-Gall - Religion - 2003

• When I came here in 1940, I told our Führer that I consider my main task to be making this city free of Jews. This evening, I can tell you that in the autumn of this year, 1942, we will experience the celebration of a Vienna purified of Jews [sustained thunderous applause]. Now, as far as the Czechs in this city are concerned... I give my subordinate offices of the state and the party the order after the complete evacuation of the Jews to remove all Czechs [sustained thunderous applause]... just as I will make this city free of Jews, I will also make it free of Czech! [sustained rapturous applause]
  • 6 June 1942 speech, quoted in Oliver Rathkolb and John Heath (trans.) "Baldur von Schirach: Nazi Leader and Head of the Hitler Youth", 2022. ISBN 9781399020961. Chapter 9.

• Jewry attempted with all available means to spoil the healthy youth... Ethos is alien to the Jew... every Jew at large in Europe is a danger to European culture. If one wished to confront me with the accusation that I have deported tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of Jews to the eastern ghetto from this city that was once the metropolis of Jewry, I must answer that I consider it an active contribution to European culture.
  • 15 September 1942 speech, quoted in Oliver Rathkolb and John Heath (trans.) "Baldur von Schirach: Nazi Leader and Head of the Hitler Youth", 2022. ISBN 9781399020961. Chapter 7.

• It is the greatest, the most devilish mass murder known to history... The murder was ordered by Adolf Hitler, as is obvious from his last will and testament... He and Himmler jointly committed that crime which, for all time, will be a stain in the annals of our history. It is a crime which fills every German with shame.
  • Statement at the Nuremberg trials, 24 May 1946

• I have educated this generation in faith and loyalty to Hitler. The Youth Organization which I built up bore his name. I believed that I was serving a leader who would make our people and the youth of our country great and happy and free. Millions of young people believed this, together with me, and saw their ultimate ideal in National Socialism. Many died for it. Before God, before the German nation, and before my German people I alone bear the guilt of having trained our young people for a man whom I for many long years had considered unimpeachable, both as a leader and as the head of the State, of creating for him a generation who saw him as I did. The guilt is mine in that I educated the youth of Germany for a man who murdered by the millions. I believed in this man, that is all I can say for my excuse and for the characterization of my attitude. This is my own—my own personal guilt. I was responsible for the youth of the country. I was placed in authority over the young people, and the guilt is mine alone. The younger generation is guiltless. It grew up in an anti-Semitic state, ruled by anti-Semitic laws. Our youth was bound by these laws and saw nothing criminal in racial politics. But if anti-Semitism and racial laws could lead to an Auschwitz, then Auschwitz must mark the end of racial politics and the death of anti-Semitism. Hitler is dead. I never betrayed him; I never tried to overthrow him; I remained true to my oath as an officer, a youth leader, and an official. I was no blind collaborator of his; neither was I an opportunist. I was a convinced National Socialist from my earliest days—as such, I was also an anti-Semite. Hitler's racial policy was a crime which led to disaster for 5,000,000 Jews and for all the Germans. The younger generation bears no guilt. But he who, after Auschwitz, still clings to racial politics has rendered himself guilty.
  • Statement at the Nuremberg trials, 24 May 1946

• 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.
  • Statement at the Nuremberg trials, 31 August 1946.

• If you outlaw half a million people you make martyrs of them. For example, if you outlaw Robin Hood, it is all very well, but if you outlaw a whole group of people around Robin Hood, then Robin Hood and his merry men become legends.
  • To Leon Goldensohn, March 10, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

• I read world literature and I read French romances in the originals. I had quite a profound knowledge - no, that sounds conceited, but I did have a profound interest in everything spiritual.
  • To Leon Goldensohn, March 10, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

• Power is what spoils people. Yes, it seems to me that the seeking after power is the great danger and the great corruptor of mankind.
  • To Leon Goldensohn, June 16, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004 - Page 245

• Some of the defendants say that dictatorship can be good if there is a good dictator. But I say that a man cannot stay good if he becomes a dictator. Authoritarianism is a system that destroys man's morality. If you take a saint and give him power, he will change into a Hitler or a devil.
  • To Leon Goldensohn, June 16, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

• I lived with people who had varied opinions, some of whom did not accept my Nazi views. I encouraged this. If a man said something that was critical of me or my ideas, I wouldn't consider him an enemy.
  • To Leon Goldensohn, June 16, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

• [Hitler was] a man without measure [i.e. without any sense of measure], a man with great gifts, a man who in some ways could be considered a genius
  • Interview with David Frost, 1968

• We simply believed.
  • Quoted in "The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership" - Page 220 by Joachim C. Fest - History - 1999

About Schirach

• Frau von Schirach in particular behaves like a stupid turkey... The Führer doesn't want to know Schirach anymore. Schirach is a weakling, a windbag and an idiot when it comes to deep political matters. He would rather dismiss him from Vienna sooner than later, if only he had a successor.
  • Joseph Goebbels, June 1943

• Schirach somehow lives in a different world, in a high tower, as it were, pursuing his hobbies. He thinks about foreign policy and wants to sort it out... Without noticing, Schirach lives a life that is not in keeping with the times. He cannot empathize with the life and way of living of the common people.
  • Karl Scharizer, 1943

• Baldur von Schirach was guilty of far more than war crimes. His was the deadly evil of corrupting the young. He poisoned the minds of an entire German generation. He trained and schooled the SS men, the men of the gas vans, the men of Oswiecim and Maidanek.
  • The New Central European Observer, published 1948

• In 1937, Rommel was given the duties of liaison officer with the Hitler Jugend, under the charming but arrogant Baldur von Schirach. The two men did not like each other. Schirach, who was American-educated, disliked the ramrod-stiff Rommel whom he saw as a caricature of the Prussian officer. He was surprised when Rommel opened his mouth and spoke with a broad Swabian accent, and proved far less stiff than he had expected.
  • Christer Jorgensen, "Rommel's Panzers," page 20

• Schirach corrupted millions of German children so that they became what they really are today, the blind instruments of that policy of murder and domination which these men have carried out.
  • Final speech of the British prosecution at Nuremberg against Schirach, August 30, 1946

• Von Schirach, poisoner of a generation, initiated the German youth in Nazi doctrine, trained them in legions for service in the SS and Wehrmacht [armed forces], and delivered them up to the Party as fanatic, unquestioning executors of its will.
  • Robert H. Jackson

• Have you at any time, instead of sitting in your cell studying philosophy, Latin, French, writing poetry, and thinking how to straighten out your position in history, as you call it, actually faced reality and wondered where the next meal was coming for your wife and children?
  You isolated yourself from everything and everyone, your head forever in the clouds as it almost always has been from the day of our marriage. As the years went by, I realized more than ever that your idealistic obsessions and dreams were taking you further from me and the children... I was ready to face death with you. Your answer to me was, "I cannot take my life. First I must make my place and my work clear before history." As always, you would not face facts. Had I taken poison, it would have saved me untold suffering in my fight to live and keep my children alive. I have expressed my feeling so many times before to you, but you have always preferred to ignore them as being distasteful. Reality has always been distasteful to you...
  I intend to divorce you immediately.
  • Henriette von Schirach, his wife

• in no way a criminal, but an idealist, and much too good for politics.
  • Henriette von Schirach, his wife

• I was one of you.
  • Ich war einer von Euch. His epitaph, chosen by Käthe Müllen.