LAUTERBACHER: It can truthfully be said that the Hitler Youth sought contacts with all the countries of Europe; and I myself, at the direct order of Von Schirach, visited England several times. There I met the leader of the British Boy Scouts and his colleague, but also...
THE PRESIDENT: I do not think those facts are in dispute. It is merely the inference that is to be drawn from the facts that the Prosecution will rely upon. Therefore it is not necessary for you to go into the facts again, as to the connection of the Hitler Youth with the foreign youth.
DR. SAUTER: Yes, Mr. President.
Witness, you have just heard that these facts are not in dispute. We can therefore turn to another topic. You were the Stabsführer of the Hitler Youth in the Reich Youth Leadership. Do you know whether the Leadership of the Hitler Youth maintained spies or agents abroad, or whether it trained people for the so-called Fifth Column—and I take it you know what that is—in other countries, or whether it brought young people over to be trained as parachutists in Germany and then sent them back to their own countries. During your whole period of office as Stabsführer, did you ever learn of anything like that?
LAUTERBACHER: The Hitler Youth did not have spies, agents, or parachutists to operate in any country in Europe. I would have been bound to learn of such a fact or such an arrangement in any circumstances.
DR. SAUTER: Even if Schirach had made such an arrangement behind your back, do you believe that you would have been bound to learn of it in any case through the channels of reports from district leaders and similar channels?
LAUTERBACHER: I would inevitably have learned of this or have observed it in these districts on some of my many official trips.
DR. SAUTER: Then, Witness, I should like to turn to another topic. The other day you told me about a certain discussion. After the Polish campaign—that would be, presumably, at the end of September or beginning of October 1939—and before the actual campaign in France you had a meeting with the Defendant Von Schirach in your residence in Berlin-Dahlem, on which occasion the Defendant Von Schirach voiced his attitude to the war. Will you describe this conversation briefly to the Court?
LAUTERBACHER: Yes. Von Schirach came to see me at the end of September or beginning of October 1939. He visited me in the house which I occupied at the time in Berlin. The conversation very quickly turned to war, and Schirach said that, in his opinion, this war should have been prevented. He held the Foreign Minister of that time responsible for having given Hitler inadequate or false information. He regretted the fact that Hitler and the leading men of the State and the Party knew nothing about Europe and the world generally and had steered Germany into this war without having any idea of the consequences.
At that time he was of the opinion that if the war could not be brought to an end in the shortest possible time, we should lose it. In this connection he referred to the enormous war potential of the United States and England. He said—and I remember the expression very well—that this war was an unholy one and that if the German people were not to be plunged into disaster as a result of it, the Führer must be informed of the danger which would arise for Germany if America were to intervene, either through deliveries of goods or through actual entry into the war.