It was furthermore stressed that formations of male youth in Germany were also given training in shooting. That is also correct but equally proves very little, in the opinion of Schirach, because the shooting instruction for the Hitler Youth organization took place, without exception, with small-bore rifles, in other words, with a type of short, light target rifle which is nowhere in the world considered as a military weapon and which is not even mentioned in the enumeration of military weapons in the Versailles Treaty. The Hitler Youth movement in Germany did not possess a single military weapon, no infantry rifle or machine gun, no power-driven airplane, no cannon or tank, throughout its whole existence. After all, when speaking of military training, then such training would primarily have had to take place with military weapons such as are used in modern warfare. To be sure, as has been established in the cross-examination of Schirach, in order to give added importance to his office, a certain Dr. Stellrecht, the technical adviser on shooting instruction in the leadership of the Reich Youth movement attempted to ascribe a certain special importance to this particular branch of youth training. Schirach, however, was able to show without being refuted that for this very reason differences of opinion arose between him and this technical adviser and that he therefore finally dismissed Dr. Stellrecht because he, Schirach, opposed any development which might have tended toward military training of youth. In any case, this very Dr. Stellrecht, who was produced by the Prosecution as a witness against Schirach, nevertheless for his part admitted that “not a single boy in Germany was trained in handling weapons of war” and that “not one boy was given a military weapon.” That is, word for word, the testimony of Stellrecht.
Also of importance in considering these questions is the fact that Schirach, as a matter of principle, refused to permit young people to be trained by active officers or former officers because he considered these persons entirely unsuitable to educate young people in that spirit which he envisaged as the goal of his activity. Moreover, neither Schirach nor any of his closer associates were officers before the war; and the same holds true for the overwhelming majority of the high or low ranking HJ leaders subordinate to him.
All these facts are firmly established by the testimony of the Defendant Schirach himself and through depositions made by the witnesses Lauterbacher, Gustav Hoepken, and Maria Hoepken during their examination. For many years these witnesses were Schirach’s closest collaborators; they are thoroughly familiar with his views and principles and they have unanimously confirmed that it is entirely incorrect to speak of a military or even premilitary training of the Hitler Youth.
At this point, Gentlemen, I should like to add one thing. I have just mentioned, as a witness, the name Lauterbacher. The Prosecution, during their cross-examination, made an attempt to impugn the credibility of the witness Lauterbacher by asking him, during his interrogation on 27 April 1946, how many people he had hanged publicly and furthermore by charging that he had ordered four or five hundred prisoners from the penitentiary in Hameln to be poisoned or shot. In this connection the American prosecutor had submitted seven affidavits under Exhibit USA-874, among them one by a certain Josef Krämer, who in fact made the assertion in his affidavit that the witness Lauterbacher, who appeared here for Schirach, in his function as Gauleiter of Hanover had given him orders for the murder of the prisoners.
During the Court’s session of 27 May 1946, I protested against the use of that affidavit by Krämer and produced, Gentlemen, a newspaper article according to which the witness Krämer, on 2 May 1946, had been sentenced to 7 years’ imprisonment by a court of the 5th British Division. Several days ago I submitted as evidence a report from the Rhein-Neckar Zeitung of 6 July 1946 which states that the witness Hartmann Lauterbacher in the meantime had been acquitted by the Supreme British Military Court in Hanover. From that it can be seen that the doubts which the Prosecution cast upon the credibility of the witness Lauterbacher and which they based on the affidavit of this Krämer were unfounded.
May I now continue in my presentation on Page 8.
With reference to the premilitary training of the HJ it has also been repeatedly emphasized in rebuttal that the Hitler Youth wore a uniform. That is correct, but proves nothing, for the youth organizations of other countries, too, are accustomed, as is generally known, to wear a common costume, some sort of uniform, without anybody for this reason terming them military or semimilitary organizations; and Schirach and several of his associates have informed me that in many democratic countries, which certainly do not contemplate war, much less a war of aggression, male youth is trained in handling proper military weapons and that every year contests are held in shooting with military rifles.
Why was it that Schirach introduced a uniform for the Hitler Youth—and indeed not only for the boys but also for the girls? We have heard the answer to this from several witnesses. Schirach, I may quote here, saw in the uniform of the boys and in the uniform costume of the girls the “dress of socialism,” the “dress of comradeship.” Schirach wrote at that time already that the child of the rich industrialist was to wear the same clothes as the child of the miner, the son of the millionaire the same clothes as the son of an unemployed man. The uniform of the Hitler Youth was to be, as Schirach wrote in 1934 in his book The Hitler Youth, the expression of an attitude which did not consider class and property, but only effort and achievement. The uniform of the Hitler Youth was for Schirach, as expressed further in this same book, “not the sign of any militarism, but the symbol of the idea of the Hitler Youth, namely, classless society,” in the spirit of the election slogan which he gave the Hitler Youth in 1933: “Through Socialism to the Nation.” Schirach remained faithful to the principle expressed in these quotations as long as he was Youth Leader. Thus, in the official publication of the Hitler Youth in 1937, he wrote—I quote word for word:
“The uniform is not the expression of a martial attitude but the dress of comradeship; it overcomes class difference and re-establishes social equality for the child of the most insignificant laborer; the young generation in our new Germany must be united in an inseparable community.”
Schirach had this comradeship and this socialism in mind when, in 1934, he describes in his book The Hitler Youth how he conceived this socialism; and I quote again, word for word: