dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
VON SCHIRACH: In this book of mine, Die Hitlerjugend-Idee und Gestalt , the word "Lebensraum" (living space) is not used at all to my knowledge. Only the word "Ostraum" (eastern space) is used, and I think it is in connection with a press service in the East. In a footnote, in connection with a description of the tasks of the Colonial Advisory Board in the Reich Youth Leadership, there is a statement to the effect that, as a result of the activities of this Colonial Advisory Board the necessity of drawing the attention of youth to the exploitation of the eastern territory-and by that is meant the thinly populated eastern area of Germany-should not be overlooked. That was at a time when we in the youth organizations were particularly concerned with the problem of the "flight from the land," that is to say, the migration of the second or third sons of farmers to the cities. I formed a special movement of youth to combat that trend, the Rural Service, which had the task of stopping this flow of youth from the country to the towns and also of bringing home to youth in towns the challenge of the country. Of course I never thought of a conquest of Russian territory because ever since I occupied myself with history it was always my point of view politically that the policy regarding mutual security with Russia, which broke off with Bismarck's dismissal, should be resumed. I considered the attack against the Soviet Union as the suicide of the German nation.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, did you, as the Youth Leader of the German Reich, have the right to report to Hitler directly?
VON SCHIRACH: Yes, that is true; but this right to make reports was more or less only on paper. To picture that precisely) before the seizure of power I frequently reported to Hitler in person. In 1932 he quite often announced his intention to dine with me in the evening, but it is clear that in the presence of my wife and other guests political questions were not discussed, particularly not the questions which fell into my special sphere. Only now and then, perhaps, could I touch upon a subject which interested me in connection with education. In 1933, as far as I can remember, I reported twice to him personally, once regarding the financing of the youth movement, and the second time in connection with the Party Rally of 1933. During the following years my reports averaged one or two a year whereby I was treated in the same way as most people who reported to Hitler. Of the 15 odd points on which I wanted to report to him. I managed to deal with 3 or 4, and the others had to be dropped because he interrupted me and very explicitly elaborated on the things which interested him most. I then tried to help myself by taking along models of youth buildings, views of the big stadiums and of youth hostels, which I had set up in a hall in the Reich Chancellery, and when he looked at them I used the opportunity to put two or three questions to him. I must state here-I think I owe it to German youth-that Hitler took very little interest in educational questions. As far as education was concerned, I received next to no suggestions from him. The only time when he did make a real suggestion as far as athletic training was concerned was in 1935, I believe, when he told me that I should see to it that boxing should become more widespread among youth. I did so, but he never attended a youth boxing match. My friend Von Tschammer-Osten, the Reich Sports Leader, and I tried very often to persuade him to go-to other sporting events, particularly to skiing contests and ice hockey championships in Garmisch, but apart from the Olympic Games, it was impossible to get him to attend.
DR. SAUTER: You have told us a little earlier about this so-called military or premilitary education, stating that, as far as one could talk about such education at all, it played only a minor part in the training of the Hitler Youth. May I ask you to tell us, though not at length but only in condensed phrases, what, in your mind, were the chief aims of your youth education program. Be very brief.
VON SCHIRACH: Tent encampments.
DR. SAUTER: Tent encampments?
VON SCHIRACH: Trips, construction of youth hostels and youth homes.
DR SAUTER: What do you mean by "trips"?
VON SCHIRACH: Youth hikes, individually and in groups; also the construction of more and more youth hostels. In one year alone, more than 1,000 homes and youth hostels were built blame in Germany. Then there was additional professional training, and then what I called the "Labor Olympics," namely, the annual Reich trade contests, voluntary competition between all youth of both sexes who wanted to participate. In fact millions participated. Then our great Reich sports contests, championships in every type of sport, our cultural work, and the development of our singing groups, our acting groups, youth concert choirs, and the development of our youth libraries, and then something which I mentioned in connection with combating the migration from the country, the Rural Service with its rural help groups, those youths, who for idealistic reasons were working in the country, even town boys-to show the farmer boys that the country was really more beautiful than the city, that even a city boy will give up his life in the city temporarily to devote himself to the land and to tilling the soil. Then, as a great communal accomplishment of youth, I must mention the dental improvement and the regular medical examinations. These, in a few summary words, were the main tasks which our youth organizations had, but they are by no means all.
DR. SAUCER: Mr. President, these ideas, these thoughts, and these aims of the Defendant Von Schirach are contained in a number of documents which are found in the Schirach document book, and which are extracts from his works, speeches, and orders. I am referring to Schirach document book, Numbers Schirach-32 through 39, 44 through 50, 66 through 74(a), 76 through 79, and, finally, 80 through 83. All these documents deal with the tasks which the Defendant Schirach has just described to you, and I am asking the Tribunal to take judicial notice of the details in these documents. [Turning to the defendant.] There is only one point of that Hitler Youth program, if I may call it that, with which I would like to deal, because it has been particularly stressed against you in the Indictment. That is your collaboration with the Lawyers' League, that is to say, your occupation with law. In that connection I would like to know why you, the Reich Youth Leader, were interested in legal problems at all. What were you striving for, and what did you achieve? Please, will you tell us that briefly, because it has been emphasized in the Indictment.
VON SCHIRACH: May I remind you that the youth of the state was regarded by me as being a Youth State. In that Youth State all professions and all tasks were represented. My collaboration with the Lawyers' League was due to the necessity of training legal advisers for our working youth whom they could over the necessary legal protection. I was anxious that those Hitler Youth leaders who were studying law should return to the organization to deal with just such tasks within the organization. From this type of training a large organization developed within the ranks of youth which was equivalent to the organization of doctors within the youth organization; our medical organization comprised approximately 1,000 doctors, men and women. These legal men assisted the staff, in the districts and other units of our youth organization, putting into practice those demands which I had first enunciated early in our fighting days, before the seizure of power, and which I had championed in the State later on, namely, the demand for free time and paid vacations for the young worker. This legal work of our youth led to the founding of seminars for Youth Law and Working Youth Law, et cetera , attached to the universities at Kiel and Bonn. In particular it had the result that those demands which I voiced in a speech in 1936, before the Committee for Juvenile Law of the Academy for German Law, could be carried through.
DR. SAUTER: Just one moment. [Turning to the Tribunal.] This is the speech of which excerpts are reproduced, in Schirach document book, Number Schirach-63. It is copied from Das Archiv of October 1936. Herr Von Schirach, perhaps you can tell us very briefly which social demands you, as Reich Youth Leader, made regarding youth. You said earlier, "free time." What did you mean by that?
VON SCHIRACH: In the first place, a shortening of working hours for young people, the abolition of night work for young people, a fundamental prohibition of child labor, extended weekends, and 3 weeks' paid vacation every year. In 1937 at Liegnitz I noticed that at that time 50 percent of the young workers had no holidays at all and that only 1 percent had 15 to 18 days per annum. In 1938, on the other hand, I had put through the Youth Protection Law which prohibited child labor, raised the age of protection for juveniles from 16 to 18 years, prohibited night work, and realized my demand regarding the extended weekend, at the same time stipulating at least 15 days' vacation annually for youngsters. That was all I could achieve. It was only part of what I wanted to achieve.
DR. SAUTER: These are the demands which are contained in the following documents in the document book: Schirach-40 to 41 and 60 to 64. I ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of these. Witness, I now come to another problem, and that is your position within the Party. Some time ago we were shown a chart here giving a clear picture of the organization of the Party. Was that plan correct, or what was your position within the Party?
VON SCHIRACH: My position in the Party was not correctly depicted in that chart, at least not as far as the channels of command are concerned. According to the chart which was exhibited here, the channel of command would have been from the Reich Leader for Youth Education to the Chief of the Party Chancellery, and from there to Hitler and from Hitler to the Reich Youth Leadership Office of the Party. That, of course, is an erroneous picture. I was not in the Party Directorate to give my orders via the Gauleiter to the district leaders but as the representative and head of the youth movement, so that if you want to describe my position and the position of my organization in the framework of the NSDAP correctly, you would actually have to draw a pyramid, the apex of which, that is to say my position in the Party Directorate, would be above the Reichsleiter. I was the only person in the youth movement who was connected with the Party.
DR. SAUTER: And the other leaders and subleaders of the youth movement?
VON SCHIRACH: Some of them may have been Party members, but not all. At any rate, they were not members of the Gauleitung or Kreisleitung. The entire staff of the youth movement, the entire youth organization, stood alongside the Party as a unit.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, as the Youth Leader of the German Reich, were you a civil servant?
VON SCHIRACH: Yes.
DR. SAUTER: And from 1 December 1936, I believe, you were the chief of a high Reich office?
VON SCHIRACH: I was a civil servant only from 1 December 1936.
DR. SAUTER: With the title?
VON SCHIRACH: Youth Leader of the German Reich.
DR. SAUTER: As the chief of a high Reich office, were you actually independent of the Minister of the Interior and the Minister for Education?
VON SCHIRACH: Yes, that was, after all, the purpose of creating an independent Reich office.
DR. SAUTER: Did you thereby become a member of the Reich Cabinet, as has been claimed?
VON SCHIRACH: I am sure I did not. I heard here for the first time that I was supposed to have been a member of the Cabinet. I never participated in a Cabinet meeting. I never received a decree or anything of the sort which would have made me a member of the Cabinet. I never received invitations to attend Cabinet meetings. I never considered myself a member of the Cabinet, and I believe that the Ministers did not consider me a member either.
DR. SAUTER: Were you in any way informed of the resolutions passed by. the Reich Cabinet, for instance, by having the minutes of the meetings sent to you?
VON SCHIRACH: No. Resolutions passed by the Reich Cabinet, insofar as any were passed after 1 December 1936, only came to my attention in the same way as they reached any other higher official or employee of the Reich who read the Reichsgesetzblatt or the Reichsministerialblatt . Records and minutes were never sent to me.
DR. SAUTER: When you became a high Reich authority, did you receive the staff which you needed through a ministry, or how did you obtain that staff for yourself?
VON SCHIRACH: A few youth leaders who had worked on my staff for a number of years were made civil servants through me. I did not receive a single official from any ministry to deal with matters relating to the youth organization. The entire high Reich office, if I remember correctly, consisted of no more than five officials. It was the smallest of the high Reich offices, something I was particularly proud of. We carried out a very large task with a minimum of personnel.
DR. SAUTER: And now, Witness, I want to come to a subject which is going to be rather extensive and that is the affidavit by Gregor Ziemer, which you have already mentioned. It is a very lengthy affidavit which has been presented by the Prosecution under Document Number 2441-PS. Witness, what do you have to say in detail with regard to that affidavit? Do you know it? Do you know this man Gregor Ziemer?
VON SCHIRACH: No.
DR. SAUTER: Have you found out who he is and from where he gathered his alleged knowledge?
VON SCHIRACH: I gather from the affidavit that Herr Ziemer before the war was headmaster of the American school in Berlin and that he has written a book which apparently deals with youth and school education in Germany. This affidavit is an extract from that book. The affidavit as such, if you regard it in its entirety, has, I believe, more importance as propaganda than as an impartial judgment. I want to start by quoting something from the very first page, which is the page containing Ziemer's affidavit, and in the last paragraph it says that street fights took place outside the American school between the Jewish children going to this school and the local youngsters. I need not deal with the difficulties which the school itself had, because that was not part of my department. But these street fights took place outside the school, and I think I ought to say something about them. I never heard anything about these clashes, but I should have heard about them under all circumstances, because during most of 1938 I was in Berlin. I should have heard of them first through the youth organization itself, because the senior youth leaders would have been obliged to report to me if such incidents had taken place. Furthermore, I would have had to hear about it through the Foreign Office, because if youngsters from the American colony had been molested, protests would certainly have gone through the Embassy to the Foreign Office, and these protests would without fail have been passed on to me at once or reported to me by telephone. I can only imagine that the whole affair is a very gross exaggeration. The American Ambassador Wilson even had breakfast with me-I think in the spring of 1939, and I do not think I am wrong about the date-in Gatow.
DR. SAUTER: In the Foreign House?
VON SCHIRACH: In the Foreign House. And we discussed a number of subjects privately. I believe that on that occasion or afterwards he would most certainly have mentioned such incidents if they had in reality occurred in the way Herr Ziemer describes them.
DR. SAUTER: I believe I can go over to Page 2, where . . .
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Sauter, how much of this document has been read by the Prosecution? As far as I know, very little.
DR. SAUTER: I beg your pardon?
THE PRESIDENT: How much of this affidavit has been read and put in evidence by the Prosecution?
DR. SAUTER: I cannot tell you that offhand, Mr. President. But judging by practice, I must assume that if a document is submitted to the Tribunal, judicial notice of the entire document is taken by the Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: That is not so. We have stated over and over again that we take only judicial notice on documents which have been read to the Tribunal, unless they are documents of which full translations have been given. This document was, I suppose, presented in the course of the Prosecution's case, and probably one sentence out of it was read at the time. I do not know how much was read; but you and the defendant ought to know.
MR. DODD: There was only one paragraph read, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: One paragraph?
MR. DODD: One full paragraph and perhaps one short one on Page 21.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I have it here.
MR. DODD: I think the Prosecution covered the part having to do with the speech at Heidelberg.
THE PRESIDENT: And that is the only part of it that has been read, and that is, therefore, the only part of it that is in evidence.
VON SCHIRACH: Perhaps for the sake of credibility-and I shall not deal in detail with the accusations contained in that affidavit-I might be allowed to say, with one sole exception, all the annual slogans of the Hitler Youth are reproduced falsely in this affidavit and that Gregor Ziemer nevertheless swears to the correctness of his statement.
THE PRESIDENT: Wouldn't it be the best, if you want to reply to his affidavit, that you should direct the defendant's attention to the part which has been read? Then he can make an answer to that.
DR. SAUTER: Mr. President, in Ziemer's affidavit, which the defendant has told me he regards as a clearly inflammatory piece of writing, the annual slogans are mentioned which are supposed to have been issued by the defendant, that is, the slogans for the work for the following year.
THE PRESIDENT: One passage of this document has been put in. If you want to put in the rest, you are entitled to do so. But I should have thought that it would have been the best way for you to answer the passage which has been put in. The rest of the affidavit is not in evidence.
DR. SAUTER: Mr. President, in that case my client would get the worst end of the bargain, because in other passages which have not been used by the Prosecution...
THE PRESIDENT: I said you could use the other passages if you want to.
DR. SAUTER: Certainly, but I want to prove that Herr Ziemer's statements are not correct; that is why I have just been discussing the question of annual slogans with the defendant. This is only one example.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Sauter, the defendant is apparently saying that the affidavit is unreliable because of the slogans which are referred to in it. Is that not sufficient for your purpose?
DR. SAUTER: Yes; but I intend to prove that Herr Ziemer's statements are untrue. The defendant maintains that the statements contained in that affidavit are not true. But I am trying to prove to you that, in fact, Herr Ziemer has deliberately stated and sworn to untruths.
THE PRESIDENT: Surely, Dr. Sauter, there being one passage in this affidavit which is in evidence, you can deal very shortly with the question of the credit of the person who made the affidavit.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, this Herr Ziemer, in his affidavit, has made statements regarding the annual slogans...
VON SCHIRACH: Yes.
DR. SAUTER: . . . which you issued for the Hitler Youth. How these annual slogans were worded can be easily seen by the Tribunal from the affidavit. I now ask you to tell us how the annual slogans of the Hitler Youth were worded during your time; that is, 1933 to 1940.
VON SCHIRACH: Herr Ziemer mentions the slogan on Page 15 of the English document. Herr Ziemer says that in 1933 the motto for German Youth had been "One Reich, One Nation, One Fuehrer." He probably means "One People, One Reich, One Fuehrer." Actually, the year 1933 was the year of "Unity."
DR. SAUTER: What do you mean by "Unity"?
VON SCHIRACH: The year in which German youth joined ranks in one organization.
DR. SAUTER: I want to skip a few years now and come to the year 1938. What was your slogan for the Hitler Youth in 1938?
VON SCHIRACH: 1938 was the year of "Understanding."
DR. SAUTER: The year of "Understanding"?
VON SCHIRACH: Herr Ziemer says the slogan was "Every Youth a Flyer."
DR. SAUTER: And then in 1939 what was your slogan?
VON SCHIRACH: That was the year of "Duty Towards Health."
DR. SAUTER: The year of "Duty Towards Health"?
VON SCHIRACH: According to Herr Ziemer, it was "Hitler Youth on the March."
DR. SAUTER: And finally 1940, your last year?
VON SCHIRACH: It was the year of "Instruction." But he called it "We March Against England." But I want to add that the first slogan, "One People, One Reich, One Fuehrer," which Ziemer says was the official slogan of the year 1P33 for German youth, arose first in 1938 when Hitler went into Austria. Before that, that slogan did not exist at all. It was never the annual slogan of German youth.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, we must comply with the wish of the Tribunal and not go into the affidavit of Ziemer any further, with the exception of the one point which has been used by the Prosecution in the Indictment against you in connection with the accusation of anti-Semitism. I skip Herr Ziemer's further statements and come to this speech at Heidelberg. Will you tell me first of all, what Ziemer said, and then make your own comments on that.
VON SCHIRACH: Ziemer said that during a meeting of students in Heidelberg-I think either at the end of 1938 or the beginning of 1939-I had made a speech against the Jews in connection with a rally of the National Socialist Student Union. He says that on that occasion I praised the students for the destruction of the Heidelberg Synagogue, and that following that I had the students file past me and gave them decorations and certificates of promotion. First of all, I have already referred to my activity in the student movement. Upon the request of the Deputy of the Fuehrer, Rudolf Hess, I handed the leadership of the student movement over to him in 1934. He then appointed a Reich student leader; and after that I did not speak at any student meetings. As far as I can remember, I visited Heidelberg during the summer of 1937; and there I spoke to the youth group. This was 1 or 1 1/2, years before Ziemer's date. And on one occasion I attended a festival play at Heidelberg.
DR. SAUTER: All of this is irrelevant.
VON SCHIRACH: I have no recollection of any meeting of this sort with students, and I have no recollection of ever having publicly stated my views about the Jewish pogrom of 1938. I will state at another point what I said in my capacity as Youth Leader regarding this. Ziemer says-I am translating from the English text-he says that "the day will come when the students of Heidelberg will take up their place side by side with the legions of other students to win the world over to the National Socialist ideology." I have never spoken like that before youth, in public, or even in a small circle. These are not my words; I did not say that. I had no authority whatsoever to confer decorations or certificates, et cetera , upon students. Medals of distinction for students did not exist. All decorations were conferred by the head of the State. I personally had the right to confer the golden youth decoration, and I think it was conferred by me about 230 times in all, almost entirely upon people who earned distinction in the field of education, but not upon unknown students.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, the important point in your testimony is to tell us whether it is correct that the speech made at the end of 1938 before the students at Heidelberg, in which the speaker referred to the wreckage of the synagogues, was not made by you, because at that time you had not had anything to do with the student movement for years. Is that correct?