Schirach has written various doctrinal books for youth, which were held against him in the trial brief; he has published a quantity of essays on a vast variety of problems of youth education; his innumerable speeches addressed to youth have been printed; his orders and instructions to youth are available to you and the Prosecution in collected form. Yet it must be concluded that among all these, which constitute his views during the whole of the time when he was active as Reich Youth Leader, not a single item is to be found in which he made inflammatory remarks in favor of war or preached attacks against other countries.
The Prosecution has stated in this very connection that he referred to the “Lebensraum” in his book The Hitler Youth, which I have repeatedly mentioned, and by so doing adopted as his own a slogan of Hitlerite aggression policy. This claim is incorrect, for the whole book, The Hitler Youth, does not, any more than every other speech and writing of Schirach, contain this word at all. True, he has referred at two points to “Eastern space” in his book, The Hitler Youth, published in 1936; but he quite obviously did not in any way employ this term with reference to Polish or Soviet-Russian territories but to the eastern provinces of the former German Empire, that is to say, to territories which formerly belonged to. Germany; they were known to be very thinly populated and well suited for the settlement of excess German population.
Nowhere has Schirach, I would like to state in conclusion with regard to this topic, at any time up to the outbreak of the second World War expressed the idea that he might wish Germany to conquer foreign territories; neither has he ever uttered the odious slogans of the German “Master Race” or the “Sub-humanity” of other nations; on the contrary, he was always in favor of preserving peace with the neighboring nations and always advocated the peaceful settlement of any conflicts that cropped up out of inevitable clashes of interests. Gentlemen of the Tribunal, had Hitler possessed but a fraction of the love of peace which his Youth Leader preached time and again, then perhaps this war would have been spared us Germans and the whole world.
PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now.
[The Tribunal adjourned until 18 July at 1000 hours.]
ONE HUNDRED
AND EIGHTY-FIRST DAY
Thursday, 18 July 1946
Morning Session
MARSHAL: May it please the Tribunal, the Defendants Hess, Von Ribbentrop, and Fritzsche are absent.
DR. SAUTER: May it please the Tribunal, yesterday at the end of my statement I dealt with the charge of the Prosecution that the Defendant Von Schirach had trained and educated the youth of the Third Reich in a military sense, that he had prepared them for the waging of aggressive wars and had participated in a conspiracy against peace. Now I turn to a further accusation which has been made by the Prosecution against Defendant Von Schirach.