The foremost question is: What did Schirach really do? The reply to this, emerging from the revelations of this Trial, can only be: Apart from the fact that he made this isolated anti-Semitic remark in his speech in Vienna in September 1942, he has not committed any crime against the Jews. He had no competence in the question of the deportation of the Vienna Jews, he did not participate in it at all, and having too little power he could not have prevented it in any case. It is just as the Prosecution incidentally stated: He boastfully attributed to himself an action which in reality he had never committed and, in view of his entire attitude, he never could have committed.
What, however prompted Schirach to make this remark in his Vienna speech? How did he come to attribute to himself a deed and charge himself with an action which he had obviously never committed? Here too the answer is given by the results of the evidence in the Trial: It demonstrates what a very difficult position Schirach had in Vienna. Without giving any reason, Hitler dismissed him as Reich Youth Leader, presumably because he no longer trusted him. From year to year Hitler’s fear was growing lest the young people might stand behind Schirach and become alienated from him, Hitler, to the same degree that the black wall of his SS was isolating him from the people. Hitler possibly saw in his Youth Leader the personification of the coming generation which thought in world-wide terms, whose feelings were human and who felt themselves more and more bound to those precepts of true morality which Hitler had long ago jettisoned for himself and his national leadership, because they had long since ceased to be concepts of true morality for him but mere slogans of a meaningless propaganda. This feeling of Hitler’s may have been the deeper reason why he dismissed Schirach as Youth Leader suddenly in the summer of 1940, without word of explanation, and put him in the especially difficult position of Gauleiter in Vienna, the city which he, Hitler, hated from the bottom of his heart, even while he spoke of his “Austrian fatherland.”
In Vienna Schirach’s position was extremely complicated. Wherever he went he was shadowed and spied upon, his administrative activity there was sharply criticized, he was reproached for neglecting the interests of the Party in Vienna, for almost never being seen at Party meetings, and for not making any political speeches. I refer in this connection to the affidavit of Maria Hoepken, Schirach Document Book Number 3. The Berlin Party Chancellery accepted any complaints the Vienna Party members made about their new Gauleiter with satisfaction, and this fact alone can explain the unfortunate speech Schirach made in September 1942, which was diametrically opposed to the attitude he had always maintained concerning the Jewish question. After the interrogation of the witness Gustav Hoepken here in this courtroom there can be no doubt as to how the Vienna speech came about, for it reveals that Schirach had expressly charged his press officer Günther Kaufmann to emphasize this particular point when telephoning his report of the Vienna speech to the German News Agency in Berlin, because he, Schirach—I quote—“had to make a concession to Bormann in this respect.” Schirach himself stressed this point in the course of his interrogation with the statement that out of false loyalty he had morally identified himself with these acts of Hitler and Himmler. This ugly speech which Schirach made in September 1942 is, however, in another sense a very valuable point in favor of Schirach: He speaks of a “transfer of the Jews to the ghettos of the East.” Had Schirach known at that time that the Viennese Jews were to be sent away in order to be murdered in an extermination camp, he would in view of the purpose of this speech doubtless not have spoken of an Eastern ghetto to which the Jews had been sent, and would have reported the extermination of the Viennese Jews; but even at this time, in the autumn of 1942, he never had the slightest suspicion that Hitler proposed to murder the Jews. That he would never have approved and never accepted; his anti-Semitism at no time went so far.
Schirach also frankly stated here that at that time he approved of Hitler’s plan to settle the Jews in Poland, not because he was inspired by anti-Semitism or hatred of the Jews, but by the reasonable consideration that in view of existing conditions it was in the Jews’ own interest to leave Vienna and be taken to Poland, because the Jews would not in the long run have been able to stay in Vienna under the Hitler regime without being exposed to increasingly serious persecution. As Schirach declared on 24 May 1946, considering Goebbels’ temperament it always seemed possible that incidents like those of November 1938 might be repeated from one day to the other, and under such conditions of legal insecurity he could not visualize the existence of the Jewish population in Germany. He thought that the Jews would be safer in a restricted settlement area of the Government General than in Germany and Austria, where they were exposed to the whims of the Propaganda Minister who, indeed, had been the main supporter of radical anti-Semitism in Germany. Schirach was well aware of this fact. He could not shut his eyes to the realization that the drive against the Jews in Germany obviously became more drastic, more fanatic, and more violent every day. This conception of the Vienna speech of September 1942 and the true cause of its genesis coincide with the statements of the Defendant Schirach at the meeting of the city councillors of Vienna on 6 June 1942 (Document Number 3886-PS), to the effect that in the late summer and autumn of that year all Jews would be expelled from the city, and likewise with the file note of Reichsleiter Bormann of 2 October 1940 (USSR-142), according to which, at a social meeting at Hitler’s home, Schirach had remarked that he still had more than 50,000 Jews left in Vienna which the Governor General of Poland must take over from him. This remark was caused by Schirach’s embarrassing situation at that time. Hitler, on the one hand, kept insisting on the expulsion of the Jews from Vienna, while on the other hand Governor General Frank was reluctant to receive them in the Government General. This disagreement was evidently the reason for Schirach’s discussing this fact at the above-mentioned meeting on 2 October 1940, in order to avoid renewed reproaches by Hitler. Personally he was in no way interested in the removal of the Viennese Jews, as was proved by the testimony of the witness Gustav Hoepken regarding the conference between Schirach and Himmler in November 1943.
I should like to add a word here concerning that discussion. During that conference with Himmler, Schirach presented the point of view that the Jews might be left in Vienna, especially since they were wearing the Star of David anyway. That has been testified to by the witness Hoepken as being a statement made by Schirach during the conversation. However, Hitler demanded the expulsion of the Jews from Vienna and Himmler insisted on having it carried out.
The Prosecution thought it possible to charge Schirach with having made another malicious anti-Semitic remark in connection with a speech which he supposedly made in late December 1938, certainly before the spring of 1939, at a students’ meeting at Heidelberg. Across the Neckar River he pointed to the old university town of Heidelberg where several burned-out synagogues were the silent witnesses to the anti-Semitic activities of the students of Heidelberg. I refer to the affidavit of Ziemer, in which “the stout little Reich Student Leader”—as it is stated literally—is said to have approved and commended the pogroms of 9 November 1938 as a heroic act. This charge, as already mentioned, is supported by the declaration under oath of a certain Gregor Ziemer. However, there can be no doubt that this statement of Ziemer’s is false. Ziemer never belonged to the German student movement or the Hitler Youth, and obviously was not personally present at the student assembly in question. The affidavit does not state from what source he is supposed to have obtained his knowledge. However, that his claim is false is already proved by his description of physical appearance when he speaks of a “stout little student leader”; for this does not at all resemble Schirach. Perhaps it would to some extent apply to his successor, who was Reich Student Leader at the end of 1938, but it certainly was not Schirach. As is known, he had already in 1934 given the office of Reich Student Leader back into the hands of the Führer’s deputy, after he himself had in the meantime been appointed Reich Youth Leader. Schirach did not make a speech at the end of 1938 or at any other time before Heidelberg students, and by the affidavit of the witness Maria Hoepken (Schirach Document Book Number 3) it has been clearly proved that at the time stated Schirach was not in Heidelberg at all. Schirach has also confirmed this under oath and his own statement can lay claim to credibility because he has not whitewashed anything for which he was responsible, and he has not falsely denied anything, but on the contrary has accounted for all his actions with courage and truthfulness during his entire examination.
Still another fact decisively confirms the claim that the Ziemer affidavit is untrue, at any rate in regard to the person of Schirach. In the presentation of evidence it happened to be stated by chance how Schirach reacted to the November pogroms of the year 1938. The witness Lauterbacher has informed us here, as already mentioned at another point, that Schirach on 10 November 1938 condemned most vehemently the events of 9 November 1938 in the presence of his co-workers, and declared that he felt ashamed for the others and for the whole Party. The 9th of November 1938, Schirach said, would go down in Germany history as a unique disgrace of German culture of which we would never be able to cleanse ourselves. Such a thing might have happened among an uncivilized people, but it should never have occurred among us Germans who consider ourselves to be a highly civilized people. The youth leaders, Schirach explained at that time, had to prevent such excesses under all circumstances. He did not wish to hear anything like this about his own organization, either now or in the future. The Hitler Youth must be kept outside such things under all circumstances. These are sworn statements by the witness Hoepken. By a telephone message from Berlin, Schirach had all the offices of the Hitler Youth informed in the same terms. If Schirach in November 1938 condemned and criticized in such an extremely sharp manner the events of 9 November 1938, it is impossible for him to have praised at about the same time the bloody acts which had been committed and thus to have incited the Heidelberg students, and the question therefore arises as to why not a single participant at that student meeting in Heidelberg was brought here as a witness instead of one who could only testify from hearsay. Incidentally, the Prosecution did not revert to this alleged Heidelberg speech during cross-examination, thereby acknowledging Schirach’s own presentation of the facts to be correct.
It is also a very significant fact that the Hitler Youth did not participate in the excesses of 9 November 1938, nor did they commit any excesses of this sort either before or afterward. The Hitler Youth at that time was the strongest Party organization. It comprised some seven or eight million members, and in spite of that not one single case has been proved where the Hitler Youth participated in such crimes against humanity, although its members were mainly of an age which, according to experience, is only too easily tempted to participate in excesses and acts of brutality. The only exception which has been claimed so far concerns the testimony of the French woman Ida Vasseau, who is said to be the manager of an Old People’s Home in Lemberg and is supposed to have claimed, according to the report of the Commission, Document Number USSR-6, that the Hitler Youth had been given children from the ghetto in Lemberg whom they used as living targets for their shooting practice. This single exception, however, which so far has been claimed but not proved, could not be cleared up in any way, particularly not in respect of whether members of the Hitler Youth had really been involved. But even if there had been such a single case among the eight million members during 10 or 15 long years, this could not in any way prove that Baldur von Schirach had exercised an inciting influence, and that, if I may add this here, at a time when he was no longer Reich Youth Leader.
THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now.