dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
VON SCHIRACH: After the student meeting at Graz in 1931, the success of which was very surprising to Hitler, I had a conference with him. In the course of that meeting, Hitler mentioned a conversation we had had previously. At that time he had asked me how it came about that the National Socialist University Movement was developing so quickly, whereas the other National Socialist organizations lagged behind in their development. I told him at that time that one cannot lead youth organizations as an appendix of a political party; youth has to be led by youth, and I developed for him the idea of a youth state, that idea which had come to me from experiencing the school community, the school state. And thereupon in 1931 Hitler asked me whether I would like to assume the leadership of the National Socialist Youth Organization. This included youth cells, then the Hitler Youth and the National Socialist Students Organization, which also was in existence at that time. Several men had already tried their hand at the leadership of these organizations: the former Oberstfuehrer SA Leader Pfeffer, the Reichsleiter Buch, actually without much result. I agreed and became then Reich Youth Leader of the NSDAP, temporarily a member of the staff of the Oberst SA Leader Roehm. In that position, as Reich Youth Leader of the NSDAP in the staff of Roehm, I had the rank of an SA GruppenFuehrer and kept that rank also when, half a year later, I became independent in my position. That explains also the fact that I am an SA Obergruppenfuehrer. I got that rank many years later, honoris cause . However, I did not possess an SA uniform-even after 1933.
DR. SAUTER: Then in 1931 you became Reich Youth Leader of the NSDAP?
VON SCHIRACH: Yes.
DR. SAUTER: That, of course, was a Party office?
VON SCHIRACH: Yes
DR. SAUTER: Then in 1932 you became Reichsleiter? At that time you were 25 years old. How did that come about?
VON SCHIRACH: I have already said that I had expressed the opinion to Hitler that youth could not be the appendix of another organization, but youth had to be independent; it had to lead itself; it had to become independent; and it was in fulfillment of a promise which Hitler had already given me that, half a year later, I became an independent Reichsleiter.
DR. SAUTER: Independent Reichsleiter, so that you were subordinate directly to the Party leader Hitler?
VON SCHIRACH: Yes
DR. SAUTER: With what material means was that youth organization created at that time?
VON SCHIRACH: With the means furnished by the young people themselves.
DR. SAUTER: And how were those funds raised? By collections?
VON SCHIRACH: The boys and girls paid membership fees. A part of these membership fees was kept at the so-called district leadership offices, which corresponded to the Gauleitung in the Party or to the SA Gruppenfuehrung in the SA. Another part went to the Reich Youth Leader. The Hitler Youth financed its organization with its own means.
DR. SAUTER: Then, I am interested in the following: Did the Hitler Youth, which you created' and which was given Hitler's name, get its importance only after the seizure of power and by the seizure of power only, or what was the previous size of this youth organization which you created?
VON SCHIRACH: Before the seizure of power, in 1932 the Hitler Youth was already the largest youth movement of Germany. I should like to add here that the individual National Socialist youth organizations which I found when I took over my office as Reich Youth Leader were merged by me into one large unified youth movement. This youth movement was the strongest youth movement of Germany, long before we came to power. On 2 October 1932, the Hitler Youth held a meeting at Potsdam. At that meeting more than 100,000 youth from all over the Reich met without the Party's providing a single pfennig. The means were contributed by the young people themselves. Solely from the number of the participants, it can be seen that that was the largest youth movement.
DR. SAUTER: That was, therefore, several months before the seizure of power, and at that time already more than 100,000 participants were at that rally at Potsdam?
VON SCHIRACH: Yes.
DR. SAUTER: The Prosecution has made the accusation, Witness, that later, after the seizure of power-I believe in February 1933-you took over the Reich Committee of German Youth Organizations. Is that correct, and against whom was that action directed?
VON SCHIRACH: That is correct. The Reich Committee of Youth Organizations was practically no more than a statistical office which was subordinate to the Reich Minister of the Interior. That office was managed by a retired general, General Vogt, who later became one of my ablest assistants. The taking over of that Reich Committee was a revolutionary act, a measure which youth carried out for youth, for from that day on dates the realization of the idea of the Youth State within the State. I cannot say any more about that.
DR. SAUTER: The Prosecution further accuses you, Witness, of having dissolved the so-called "Grossdeutscher Bund" in 1933, that is, after the seizure of power. What was the Grossdeutscher Bund, and why did you dissolve it?
VON SCHIRACH: The Grossdeutscher Bund was a youth organization, or rather a union of youth organizations, with pan-German tendencies. I am surprised, therefore, that the Prosecution has made the dissolution of that organization an accusation at all.
DR. SAUTER: Many members of this Grossdeutscher Bund were National Socialists. There was no very essential difference between some of the youth groups associated in that organization and the Hitler Youth. Is that correct?
VON SCHIRACH: I wanted youth to be united, and the Grossdeutscher Bund wanted to continue a certain separate existence. I objected to that, and there was agitated public controversy between Admiral Von Trotha, the leader of the Grossdeutscher Bund and me, and in the end the Grossdeutscher Bund was incorporated into our youth organization. I do not recall exactly whether I banned the organization formally; I know only that the members came to me, and that between Admiral Von Trotha and me a discussion took place, a reconciliation. Admiral Von Trotha until his death was one of the warmest sponsors of my work.
DR. SAUTER: How did the suppression of the Marxist youth organization come about?
VON SCHIRACH: I believe that the suppression of the Marxist youth organizations, if I remember correctly, came about in connection with the suppression of trade unions. I have no exact documents any more regarding that. But at any rate, from the legal point of view, I was not authorized in 1933 to order a suppression of that kind. The Minister of the Interior would have had to do that. I had the right to ban youth organizations, de jure , only after 1 December 1936. That the Marxist youth organizations had to disappear was a foregone conclusion for me, and in speaking about this suppression order as such, I can only say that the German working youth found the realization of its socialistic ideas, not under the Marxist governments of the Weimar Republic, but in the community of the Hitler Youth.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, at first you were Reich Fuehrer of the NSDAP; that was a Party office. And after the seizure of power, you became Youth Leader of the German Reich; that was a State office. On the basis of this State or national office, did you also have jurisdiction over and responsibility for the school system, for the elementary schools, for instance?
VON SCHIRACH: For the school system in Germany the Reich Minister for Science, Education, and Culture was the only authority. My field was education outside the schools, along with the home and the school, as it says in the law of 1 December 1936. However, I had some schools of my own, the so-called Adolf Hitler Schools, which were not under national supervision. They were creations of a later period. And during the war, through the Child Evacuation Program that is, the organization by which we took care of evacuating the young people from the big cities endangered by bombing-I was in charge of education within the camps where these children were housed. But on the whole I have to answer the question about competence for the school system in Germany in the negative.
DR. SAUTER: This youth which you had to educate outside of the schools was called the Hitler Youth, the HJ. Was membership in the Hitler Youth compulsory or voluntary?
VON SCHIRACH: The membership in the Hitler Youth was voluntary until 1936. In 1936 the law already mentioned concerning the HJ was issued which made all the German youth members of the HJ. The stipulations for the carrying out of that law, however, were issued only in March 1939, and only during the war, in May 1940, was the thought of carrying out a German youth draft considered within the Reich Youth Leadership and discussed publicly. May I point out that my Deputy Lauterbacher, at the time when I was at the front, stated in a public meeting-I believe at Frankfurt in 1940-that now, after 97 percent of the youngest age group of youth had volunteered for the Hitler Youth, it would be necessary to draft the remaining 3 percent by a youth draft.
DR. SAUTER: In this connection, Mr. President, may I refer to two documents of the document book Schirach. That is Number Schirach-51.
THE PRESIDENT: I did not quite understand what the defendant said. He said that the membership was voluntary until 1936, that the HJ Law was then passed, and something to the effect that the execution of the law was not published until 1939. Was that what he said?
DR. SAUTER: Yes, that is correct. Until 1936-if I may explain that, Mr. President-membership in the Hitler Youth was absolutely voluntary. Then in 1936 the HJ Law was issued, which provided that boys and girls had to belong to the Hitler Youth. But the stipulations for its execution were issued by the defendant only in 1939 so that, in practice, until 1939 the membership was nevertheless on a voluntary basis.
THE PRESIDENT: Is that right, Defendant?
VON SCHIRACH: Yes, that is right.
DR SAUTER: And these facts which I have just presented, Mr. President, can also be seen from two documents of the document book Schirach, Number Schirach-51, on Page 91, and Number Schirach-52 on Page 92. In the latter document...
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, Dr. Sauter, I accept it from you and from the defendant. I only wanted to understand it. You can go on.
DR. SAUTER: And in the second document mention is also made of the 97 percent which the defendant has said had voluntarily joined the HJ, so that now there were only 3 percent missing. May I continue: [Turning to the witness.] Witness, what was the attitude of the parents of the children on the question of whether the children should join the HJ or not? What did the parents say?
VON SCHIRACH: There were, of course, parents who did not like to have their children join the HJ. Whenever I made one of my radio speeches to the parents or to the youth' many hundreds of parents sent me letters. Among these letters, there were many in which the parents voiced their objections to the HJ, or expressed their dislike for it. I always considered that a special proof of the confidence which the parents had in me. I should like to say here that never, when parents restrained their children from joining, have I exerted any compulsion or put them under pressure of any kind. In doing that I would have lost all the confidence placed in me by the parents of Germany. That confidence was the basis of my entire educational work. I believe that on this occasion I have to say also that the concept that any youth organization can be established and carried on, and successfully carried on, by coercing youth, is absolutely false.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, did youngsters who did not join the Hitler Youth suffer any disadvantage for that reason?
VON SCHIRACH: Youngsters who did not join the Hitler Youth were at a disadvantage in that they could not take part in our camping, in our trips, in our sporting meets. They were in a certain sense outsiders of the youth life, and there was a danger that they might become hypochondriacs.
DR. SAUTER: But were there not certain professions in which membership in the HJ was a prerequisite for working in those professions?
VON SCHIRACH: Of course.
DR. SAUTER: What were the professions?
VON SCHIRACH: For instance, the profession of teacher. It is quite clear that a teacher cannot educate youth unless he himself knows the life of that youth, and so we demanded that the young teachers, that is those in training to teach, had to go through the HJ. The junior teacher had to be familiar with the ways of life of the pupils who were under his supervision.
DR. SAUTER: But there were only a few such professions, whereas for other professions membership in the HJ was not a prerequisite for admission. Or what was the situation?
VON SCHIRACH: I cannot answer that in detail. I believe that a discussion about that is not even possible, because the entire youth was in the Hitler Youth.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, you know that the Prosecution has also accused the defendants of having advocated the Fuehrer Principle. Therefore, I ask you: Was the Fuehrer Principle also valid in the HJ, and in what form was it carried out in the HJ? I should like to remind you that I mean that kind of Fuehrer Principle of which we have heard in the testimony.
VON SCHIRACH: Of course, the HJ was built up on the Fuehrer Principle; only the entire form of leadership of youth differed basically from that of other National Socialist organizations. For instance, we had the custom in youth leadership of discussing frankly all questions of interest to us. There were lively debates at our district leader meetings. I myself educated my assistants even in a spirit of contradiction. Of course, once we had debated a measure and I had then given an order or a directive, that ended the debate. The youth leaders-that is the young boy and girl leaders-through years of working together and in serving the common purpose, had become a unity of many thousands. They had become friends. It is evident that in a group of that kind the carrying out of orders and directives takes place in ways entirely different from those in a military organization or in any other political organization.
DR. SAUTER: Witness . . .
VON SCHIRACH: May I add something? Leadership based on natural authority such as we had in the youth organization is something which is not alien to youth at all. Such leadership in the youth organization never degenerated into dictatorship.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, you have been accused of training the youth in a military way, and in that connection, the fact has been pointed out that your HJ wore a uniform. Is that correct, and why did the HJ wear a uniform?
VON SCHIRACH: I have stated my opinion about that in many instances. I believe there are also documents to illustrate it. I have always described the uniform of the HJ as the dress of comradeship. The uniform was the symbol of a community without class distinctions. The worker's boy wore the same garb as the son of the university professor. The girl from the wealthy family wore the same garb as the child of the day laborer. Hence the uniform This uniform did not have any military significance whatsoever.
DR. SAUTER: In that connection, Mr. President, may I ask you to take judicial notice of Document Number Schirach-55 of the document book Schirach, then of Numbers Schirach-55a and 117, where the Defendant Von Schirach, many years ago, expressed in writing and repeatedly the same trends of thought which he is expressing today. I should only like to ask, Mr. President, for permission to correct an error in Document 55, on Page 98. Rather far down, under the heading "Page 77," is a quotation from a book by Schirach. There it says: "Even the son of the millionaire has no other power..." I do not know whether you have found the passage. It is on Page 77 of the book quoted, and Page 98 of the document book, Number Schirach-55. There is a quotation near the bottom of the page: "Even the son of the millionaire has no other power..." It should read "dress," not "power." The German word "Macht" is an error, and should be the word "Tracht." So I ask now to have the word "Macht" (power), changed to the word "Tracht" (dress). Witness, I shall then continue with the interrogation. You have been accused of having prepared youth for the war, psychologically and pedagogically. You are alleged to have participated in a conspiracy for that purpose, a conspiracy by which the National Socialist movement acquired total power in Germany, and finally planned and carried out aggressive wars. What can you say about that?
VON SCHIRACH: I did not participate in any conspiracy. I cannot consider it participation in a conspiracy if I joined the National Socialist Party. The program of that party had been approved; it had been published. The Party was authorized to take part in elections. Hitler had not said-neither he nor any of his collaborators- "I want to assume power by a coup d'etat ." Again and again he stated in public, not only once but a hundred times: "I want to overcome this parliamentary system by legal means, because it is leading us, year by year, deeper into misery." And I myself as the youngest deputy of the Reichstag of the Republic told my 60,000 constituents similar things in electoral campaigns. There was nothing there which could prove the fact of a conspiracy, nothing which was discussed behind closed doors. What we wanted we acknowledged frankly before the nation, and so far as printed paper is read around the globe, everyone abroad could have been informed also about our aims and purposes. As far as preparation for war is concerned, I must state that I did not take part in any conferences or issuing of orders which would indicate preparation for an aggressive war. I believe that can be seen from the proceedings in this Court up to now. I can state only that I did not participate in a conspiracy. I do not believe either that there was a conspiracy; the thought of conspiracy is in contradiction to the idea of dictatorship. A dictatorship does not conspire; a dictatorship commands.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, what did the leadership of the Hitler Youth do to prepare the youth for war and to train it for warlike purposes?
VON SCHIRACH: Before I answer that question, I believe I will have to explain briefly the difference between military and premilitary training. Military training, in my opinion, is all training with weapons of war, and all training which is conducted by military personnel, that is, by officers, with and without weapons of war. Premilitary education-premilitary training is, in the widest sense, all training which comes before the time of military service; in particular cases it is a special preparation for military service. We, in the Hitler Youth, were opponents of any military drills for youth We disliked such drills as not youthful. I am not giving my personal opinion here, but the opinion of thousands of my co-workers. It is a fact that I rejected the Wehrjugend (the Youth Defense Groups), which had formerly existed in Germany, and did not allow any continuation of Wehrjugend work within the HJ. I had always been strongly opposed to any soldier-playing in a youth organization. With all my high esteem for the profession of an officer, I still do not consider an officer capable of leading youth because in some way or other, he will always apply the tone of the drill field and the forms of military leadership to youth. That is the reason why I did not have any officers as my assistants in the Hitler Youth. Just on account of my refusal to use officers as youth leaders, I was severely criticized by the Wehrmacht on occasion. I should like to stress that that did not come from the OKW; Field Marshal Keitel, especially, had a great deal of understanding for my ideas. However, in the Wehrmacht, now and again, criticism was heard on account of the general attitude of opposition of the Youth Leadership corps toward having officers used as leaders of a youth organization. The principle of "youth leading youth" was never broken in Germany.
VON SCHIRACH: If I am now to answer definitively the question of whether the youth was prepared for the war and whether it was trained in a military sense, I shall have to say, in conclusion, that the main efforts of all youth work in Germany culminated in trade competition, in the trade schools, in camping, and competition in sports. Physical training, which perhaps in some way could be considered a preparation for military service, took only a very small part of our time. I should like to give as an example here: A Gebiet, or district, of the Hitler Youth, for instance the Gebiet of Hessen-Nassau which is about the same as a Gau in the Party, contributed from its funds in 1939 as follows: For hikes and camping, 9/20; for cultural work, 3/20; for sports and physical training, 3/20; for the Land Service (Landdienst), and other tasks and for the offices, 5/20. The same area spent, in 1944-that is, 1 year before the end of the war-for cultural work, 4/20; for sports and defense training, 5/20; for Landdienst and other tasks, 6/20; and for the evacuation of children to the country, 5/20. In that connection I should like to mention briefly that the same area, in the time from 1936 until 1943, made no expenditures for racial-political education; in 1944 there was an entry of 20 marks under the heading of racial-political education for the acquisition of a picture book about hereditary and venereal diseases. However, in that same district, in one single town, during the same time, 200,000 marks were given to have youth visit the theaters. The question concerning premilitary or military education cannot be answered by me without describing small-caliber shooting practice. Small-caliber firing was a sport among the German youth. It was practiced on the lines laid down in the international rules for sport shooting. Small-caliber shooting, according to Article 177 of the Treaty of Versailles, was not prohibited.
VON SCHIRACH: It states expressly in that article of the treaty that rifle clubs, sporting, and hiking organizations are forbidden to train their members in the handbag and use of war weapons. The small-caliber rifle, however, is not a war weapon. For our sport shooting we used a rifle similar to the American 22-caliber. It was used with the 22-caliber Flobert cartridge for short or long distance. I should like to say here that our entire marksmanship training and other so-called premilitary training have been collected in a manual entitled "HJ Service." That book was printed and sold not only in Germany but was also available abroad. The British Board of Education in 1938 passed judgment on that book, in the educational pamphlet, Number 109. With the permission of the Tribunal, I should like to quote briefly what was said about it in this educational pamphlet. I quote in English: "It cannot fairly be said to be in essence a more militaristic work than any thoroughgoing, exhaustive, and comprehensive manual of Boy Scout training would be. Some forty pages are, to be sure, devoted to the theory and practice of shooting small-bore rifle and air gun, but there is nothing in them to which exception can reasonably be taken, and the worst that one can say of them is that they may be confidently recommended to the notice of any Boy Scout wishing to qualify for his marksmanship badge." As to the mental attitude of the Hitler Youth, I can only say that it was definitely not militaristic.