Baldur von Schirach
Baldur von Schirach was a prominent figure in Nazi Germany, born on March 9, 1907, in Weimar, Germany, to an aristocratic family. He joined the Nazi Party in 1924 and quickly rose through its ranks, becoming the leader of the National Socialist Students' Union and later the head of the Hitler Youth. Schirach was instrumental in the organization and mobilization of German youth under the Nazi ideology, which combined elements of nationalism, racism, and militarism. In 1940, he was appointed Gauleiter of Vienna, where he oversaw the deportation of the city's Jewish population amidst the ongoing Holocaust.
Despite his active involvement in anti-Semitic policies, Schirach claimed ignorance of the full extent of the atrocities occurring in concentration camps, a defense met with skepticism. After World War II, he was tried at the Nuremberg Trials for crimes against humanity and was sentenced to twenty years in prison, serving his term until 1966. Following his release, Schirach lived a quiet life in southern Germany until his death in 1974. His legacy, marked by both his fervent loyalty to Hitler and his role in the systematic persecution of Jews, remains a complex and controversial aspect of history.
Subject Terms
Baldur von Schirach
Head of the Hitler Youth and military governor of Vienna (1940-1945)
- Born: March 9, 1907
- Birthplace: Weimar, Germany
- Died: August 8, 1974
- Place of death: Kröv-an-der-Mosel, Germany
Major offense: Crimes against humanity, specifically sending some sixty thousand people to labor camps, death camps, and ghettos
Active: December, 1940-May 8, 1945
Locale: Vienna, Austria
Sentence: Twenty years’ imprisonment
Early Life
Baldur von Schirach (BAHL-duhr fahn SHEE-rakh) was born on March 9, 1907, in Weimar, Germany, to the aristocratic Karl von Schirach, director of the Imperial Theater in Weimar, and his American wife, Emma. When he was ten years old, Baldur joined a military cadet group with the intention of joining the army and fighting in World War I. By 1924 he was studying Germanic art and folklore in Munich, and in that year he became an early member of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or Nazi Party. His anti-Semitism had been stoked by reading works defaming Jews by Henry Ford and Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
Political Career
Quickly gaining the confidence of party leader Adolf Hitler, in 1929 Schirach was named leader of the National Socialist Students’ Union, headquartered in Munich. His enthusiasm for Hitler was unbounded, and this zeal, wedded to a natural ability to organize young people, resulted in tremendous success. In 1931 Hitler named Schirach youth leader for the Nazi Party, and in 1933 leader of the youth in the German Reich, or head of the Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend) organization. In these roles Schirach helped eliminate any rival youth groups, consolidating them all under the Nazi banner. By 1936, the Hitler Youth numbered more than six million young men and women who bonded amid a heady mix of militant Nazi racism and anti-Semitism, romanticized German folklore and history, outright paganism, and Hitler worship.
Through Schirach’s leadership of the organization and his propagandistic writings, he played a key role in shaping the new Nazi “superman” in the months leading to World War II. After war broke out, many of the Hitler Youth joined the armed forces, and Schirach was no exception. Under some pressure from members of Hitler’s inner circle, Schirach surrendered leadership of the Hitler Youth and joined the army in December, 1939. He served in the infantry regiment Grossdeutschland, attaining the rank of lieutenant. He won an Iron Cross for his staff service in the French campaign in the spring of 1940.
In August, 1940, Hitler appointed Schirach Gauleiter (governor) of Vienna and the surrounding Austrian vicinity. In this position Schirach ran the city, encouraging a seamless continuity of musical and theatrical performances while overseeing the deportation of the city’s Jews in fetid cattle cars bound for labor camps and the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Though an anti-Semite, Schirach is on record as having sought to mitigate the position of Jews in Vienna and slow down the pace of the deportations. Nevertheless, his claim that he knew nothing of the conditions or activities at the Nazi death camps is only slightly plausible, as he is known to have attended at least one major meeting at which the so-called final solution was discussed openly. Schirach outspokenly and publicly favored a “Jew-free” Western Europe and is said to have offered a Jew-free Vienna to the führer.
As Gauleiter, Schirach was clearly responsible for the rounding up, dispossessing, and deportation of Vienna’s remaining Jews, a number estimated at around sixty thousand by the war’s end. Though he arranged for the military defense of Vienna as Soviet troops approached in the spring of 1945, he simply walked away from the city with other refugees, hiding out and finally surrendering to American troops. Schirach was taken to Nuremberg for trial.
Legal Action and Outcome
Schirach was indicted at the Nuremberg Trials on counts of conspiracy to wage aggressive war and crimes against humanity. The first count was based upon his activity in preparing German youth for offensive armed struggle. He was found not guilty because the court could not connect him directly to the military planning of the offensive campaigns. The second count reflected his duties as Gauleiter, specifically his anti-Jewish activities and role in the deportations. The tribunal recognized that Schirach had not initiated the policy—indeed, much of the Viennese Jewish community had been deported before his arrival—but noted that he had done little to oppose or mitigate its application. Though he denied having known about the extermination of those he sent away, external reports chronicling such activities were found in his office. He was found guilty and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment, which he served in Spandau Prison. He was released in September, 1966. He lived quietly in southern Germany and died in August, 1974.
Impact
Through the international Nuremberg Trials, the victorious Allies, and the rest of the world by extension, sought to make the Nazi leaders accountable for their terrible activities and pay for them, usually with their lives. Baldur von Schirach’s role in the Nazi Holocaust was by no means minor, but the court decided that a fair reading of the evidence warranted a lesser sentence than execution. Denunciations of Hitler, the man they had once adored, may have paved the way for the leniency shown Schirach and also Reichminister Albert Speer.
Bibliography
Gilbert, G. M. Nuremberg Diary. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995. Originally written shortly after the war crime trials, these observations and records of conversations with Schirach (and others) provide a powerful insight into Schirach’s mind.
Kater, Michael. Hitler Youth. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. Detailed study of the organization for indoctrinating German youth with Nazi values that was founded and run by Schirach.
Overy, Richard. Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945. New York: Penguin Books, 2002. Transcripts of formal interrogations with Schirach and others during the course of the Nuremberg Trials.
Schneider, Gertrude. Exile and Destruction: The Fate of Austrian Jews, 1938-1945. New York: Praeger, 1995. Both a personal and historical discussion of the Holocaust in Austria and the roles that Schirach played.