The Defendant Von Schirach has already talked about all these affairs in detail himself, and I should therefore like to refer to his own statements, which you will consider in your judgment.
As counsel for the Defendant Von Schirach, I shall discuss only one more problem here, namely Schirach’s opinion and attitude concerning the Jewish question. Schirach has admitted here on the witness stand that he has been a convinced National Socialist, and thus also an anti-Semite from his earliest youth. He has also made clear to us what he understood by anti-Semitism during those years. He thought of the exclusion of the Jews from civil service and of the limitation of Jewish influence in cultural life and perhaps also in economic life, to a certain extent. But that was all which in his opinion should be undertaken against the Jews, and this was in accordance with the suggestion which he had already made as leader of the students’ organization for the introduction of a quota system for students. The defendant’s decree concerning the treatment of Jewish youth is, for example, also important in establishing his attitude (Schirach Document Number 136). This is a decree in which he expressly orders that Jewish youth organizations should have the right and the opportunity to practice freely within the limitations imposed upon them. It says that they were not to be disturbed in their own life.
“In its youth the Jewish community shall already today take up that secluded but internally unrestrained special position which at some future time the entire Jewish community will be given in the German State and in German economy.”
Those are the very words of that decree. Obviously Schirach was not at all thinking about pogroms, bloody persecutions of the Jews, and the like; rather did he believe at that time that the anti-Semitic movement had already achieved its aim by the anti-Jewish legislative measures of the years 1933-34, thereby eliminating Jewish influence as far as it seemed unhealthy to him. He was therefore surprised and very alarmed when the Nuremberg Laws were promulgated in 1935, which formulated a policy of complete exclusion of the Jewish population and carried it out with barbaric severity. Schirach in no way took part in the planning of these laws; he has nothing whatsoever to do with their content and their formulation. That has been proved here.
When on 10 November 1938 he heard about the pogrom against the Jews and about the brutal excesses which were staged by Goebbels and his fanatic clique his indignation became known throughout the entire youth movement. The evidence proved this also. We have heard from the witness Lauterbacher how Schirach reacted to the report of these excesses: He immediately called his assistants together and gave them the strictest orders that the Hitler Youth must be kept out of such actions under all circumstances. He at once had the leaders of the Hitler Youth in all German cities notified by telephone to the same effect and warned every subordinate that he would hold him personally responsible if any excesses should occur in the Hitler Youth.
But even after November 1938 Schirach never considered the possibility that Hitler was contemplating the extermination of the Jews. On the contrary, he only heard it mentioned that the Jews were to be evacuated from Germany into other states, that they should be transported to Poland and settled there, at worst in ghettos, but more probably in a closed settlement area. When Schirach in July 1940 received Hitler’s order to take over the Gau of Vienna, Hitler himself also talked to him along the same lines, namely, that he, Hitler, would have the Jews brought from Vienna into the Government General; and even today Schirach has no doubt that Hitler himself was not thinking about the so-called “final solution” of the Jewish question at that time, 1940, in terms of the extermination of the Jews. We learn from the Hossbach minutes and other evidence of this Trial that Hitler was planning the evacuation of Poland already in 1937, but that he decided on the extermination of the Jewish people only in 1941 or 1942.
Schirach had nothing at all to do with the evacuation of the Jews from Vienna, as is alleged by the Prosecution; the execution of this measure was exclusively in the hands of the Reich Security Main Office and the Vienna branch of that office, and it is known that SS Gruppenführer Brunner of Vienna has in the meantime been sentenced to death for that very reason. The only order which Schirach received and carried out concerning the Viennese Jews was to report to Hitler in 1940 how many Jews there were still left in Vienna, and he made this report in a letter of December 1940 where he gave the figure of the Viennese Jews for 1940 as 60,000. It will be remembered that Minister Lammers answered this letter from the Defendant Schirach by a letter dated 3 December 1940 (1950-PS), which shows with all clarity that it was not Schirach who ordered the evacuation of the Viennese Jews to the Government General but Hitler himself, and that again it was not Schirach who carried out this measure but the Reichsführer SS Himmler, who delegated this task to his Vienna office. It must therefore be stated here categorically that Schirach is in no way responsible for the deportation of the Jews from Vienna; he did not carry out this program and he did not initiate it; when he came to Vienna in the summer of 1940 as Gauleiter, the majority of the Viennese Jews had already voluntarily emigrated or had been forcibly evacuated from Vienna, a fact which was confirmed by the Defendant Seyss-Inquart. The remaining 60,000 Jews who were still there at the beginning of Schirach’s time in Vienna were deported from there by the SS without his participation and without his responsibility.
Schirach did make the well-known speech in Vienna in September 1942, where he stated that every Jew working in Europe was a danger to European culture. Schirach furthermore said in this speech that if it was desired to reproach him with the fact that he had deported tens of thousands of Jews into the Eastern ghetto from this city, which had once been the metropolis of Judaism, he would but answer that he considered this an active contribution to European culture. That is how this passage reads. Schirach has openly and courageously admitted that he actually expressed himself in this manner at that time, and expressed his regret by stating:
“I cannot take back this wicked statement; I must take the responsibility for it. I spoke these words, which I sincerely regret.”
Should the Tribunal see in these words a legally punishable crime against humanity, Schirach will have to make atonement for this single anti-Semitic remark which can be attributed to him, though it was merely a spoken word and did not have any harmful result. Schirach’s attitude in this respect does not exempt the Tribunal from its duty to verify carefully what Schirach actually did; furthermore, under what circumstances he made this isolated remark, and finally whether Schirach also made any other spiteful remarks against the Jews or committed any malicious acts against the Jewish race as a whole.