DR. SAUTER: Witness, how did you then meet Hitler and how did you happen to join the Party?
VON SCHIRACH: I must say that I did not become a National Socialist because of anti-Semitism but because of Socialism. I met Hitler as early as 1925. He had just left Landsberg on the Lech, his imprisonment was ended, and he came to Weimar and spoke there. It was on that occasion that I was introduced to him. The program for the national community which he developed appealed to me so enormously because in it I found on a large scale something I had experienced in a small way in the camaraderie of my youth organization. He appeared to me to be the man who would pave the way into the future for our generation. I believed that through him there could be offered to this younger generation the prospect of work, of happiness. And in him I saw the man who would liberate us from the shackles of Versailles. I am convinced that without Versailles the rise to power of Hitler would never have happened. That dictate led to dictatorship.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, when did you then become a member of the Party?
VON SCHIRACH: I became a member of the Party in 1925. I joined the SA at the same time, with all my comrades.
DR. SAUTER: You were 18 at the time?
VON SCHIRACH: Yes.
DR. SAUTER: Why did you join the SA?
VON SCHIRACH: The SA furnished the protection for the meetings, and we simply continued in the SA, as part of the Party, the activities which we had carried out before in our youth organization.
DR. SAUTER: In 1926, Witness, that is when you were 19 years old, there was a Party rally in Weimar?
VON SCHIRACH: Yes.