DR. SAUTER: If the Tribunal please, I shall proceed from Page 36 of my statement. Let us just examine all the speeches and articles which Von Schirach wrote as Reich Youth Leader, and which are in the possession of the Tribunal in the Schirach document book. They extend over a long period of years, yet they do not contain a single word inciting to race hatred, preaching hatred of Jews, exhorting youth to commit acts of violence, or defending such acts. If it has been possible to keep the members of the Hitler Youth, who numbered millions, clear of such excesses, this fact also goes to prove that the leaders endeavored to imbue the younger generation with a spirit of tolerance, love of one’s neighbors, and respect of human dignity.
Just what Von Schirach thought about the treatment of the Jewish question is clearly evident from the scene with occurred in the spring of 1943 at Obersalzberg, which is also described in the affidavit of the witness Maria Hoepken (Document Book Schirach Number 3). In this case I refer to the scene where Schirach had an eyewitness describe to Hitler at his home at Obersalzberg how he had witnessed with his own eyes at night from a hotel window in Amsterdam the manner in which the Gestapo deported hundreds of Dutch Jewesses. Schirach himself could not dare at the time to bring such matters to Hitler’s attention; a decree by Bormann had expressly prohibited the Gauleiter from doing this. Schirach therefore tried through the mediation of a third person, who had been a witness himself, to gain Hitler’s approval of a mitigation in the treatment of the Jewish question. No success was achieved; Hitler dismissed it all bluntly with the remark that this was all sentimentality. Because of this intervention on behalf of the Dutch Jews the situation of the Defendant Von Schirach had become so critical that he preferred to leave Obersalzberg immediately, early in the morning of the following day, and from that time on, Hitler was in principle no longer accessible to Schirach.
This intervention of Schirach for a milder treatment of the Jewish question perhaps also contributed to the fact that Hitler, a few months later, in the summer of 1943, seriously considered having Schirach arrested and brought before the Peoples’ Court, for the sole reason that Schirach had dared, in a letter to Reichsleiter Bormann, to describe the war as a national disaster for Germany.
In any case all this shows that Schirach, as much as he was able, advocated moderation in the Jewish question in a manner which endangered his own position and existence. In spite of the fact that he was an anti-Semite—and just because of this it deserves attention—he withstood all pressure from Berlin and refused to have an anti-Semitic special edition published in the official journal of the Hitler Youth, while he had published his own special editions for an understanding with England and France and for a more humane treatment of the Eastern nations. It is no less worthy of consideration that Schirach, in conjunction with his friend Dr. Colin Ross, endeavored to attain the emigration of the Jews into neutral foreign countries in order to save them from being deported to a Polish ghetto.
The Prosecution has endeavored to substantiate its allegation that the Defendant Von Schirach bears a certain share of the responsibility for the pogroms against Jews which occurred in Poland and Russia, by trying to use against him the so-called “Reports on Experiences and Situation,” which were regularly sent by the SS to the Commissioner for Defense of the Reich in the Military Administrative District XVII. In fact it must be said that if—and I emphasize, if—Schirach had at that time had cognizance of these regular “Reports on Experiences and Situation by the Operational Groups (Einsatzgruppen) of the Security Police and the Security Service in the East,” then this fact would indeed constitute for him a grave moral and political charge. Then he could not be spared the accusation that he must have been aware of the fact that, apart from the military operations in the East, extremely horrible mass murders of Communists and Jews had also taken place. The picture of Von Schirach’s character which we have so far, who was described even by the Prosecution as a “cultured man,” would be tainted very materially if Von Schirach had actually seen and read these reports. For then he would have known that in Latvia and Lithuania, in White Ruthenia and in Kiev, mass murders had taken place, quite obviously without any legal proceedings of any kind and without sentence having been passed.
What has, however, actually been proved by the evidence? The reports referred to were sent, among dozens of other offices, also to that of the “Reich Commissioner for Defense in Military Administrative District XVII” and, moreover, with the specific address “attention of Government Councillor Dr. Hoffmann” or “attention of Government Councillor Dr. Fischer.” From this style of address and from the way in which these reports were initialed at the office of the “Commissioner for Defense of the Reich,” it can be established beyond question that Schirach did not have an opportunity of seeing these reports and that he obtained no knowledge of them in any other way either.
Schirach, it will be remembered, held three extensive offices in Vienna: as Reich Governor (Reichsstatthalter) and Reich Defense Commissioner he was the chief of the whole State administration; as Lord Mayor he was the head of the municipal administration; and as Gauleiter of Vienna he was the head of the local Party machinery. It is only natural that Schirach could not fulfill all these three tasks by himself, especially since in 1940 he had come from a completely different set of tasks, and first had to make himself acquainted with the scope of work in State administration and in municipal administration. He therefore had a permanent deputy for each of his three tasks, and for the affairs of the State administration, which interests us here, this was the Regierungspräsident of Vienna. This official, Dr. Delbrügge, was to handle the current affairs of the State administration completely on his own initiative. Schirach occupied himself only with such matters of State administration as were forwarded to him by his permanent deputy, the Regierungspräsident, in written form, or about which his deputy reported to him orally.
Now, if this had been the case with regard to the afore-mentioned “Experience and Situation Reports,” then this would have somehow been noted on the documents in question. However, on the “Experience and Situation Reports of the SS” submitted here there is not a single note which indicates that these reports were shown to the Defendant Von Schirach or that he was informed about them. This will readily be understood without further explanation because, after all, the experiences which the Police and the SD had accumulated in the partisan struggles in Poland and Russia were completely inconsequential for the Vienna administration; therefore there was not the least cause to inform the Defendant Baldur von Schirach of these reports in any way, since he was very much overburdened anyhow with administrative matters of all kinds.
This conclusion, Gentlemen, rests primarily not only on the testimony under oath of the defendant here in Court, but also on that of the two witnesses Hoepken and Wieshofer, who, one as chief of the Central Office and the other as adjutant of the defendant, were able to give the most exact information about conditions in Vienna. It is certain that these “Experience and Situation Reports” never came into the distribution center of the Central Office in Vienna, but only into the distribution center of the Regierungspräsident, and that Hoepken, as chief of the Central Office, as well as Wieshofer, as adjutant of the defendant, likewise had no previous knowledge of these reports but saw them for the first time here in the courtroom during their questioning. And I would like to insert here that the two officials of the Defendant Von Schirach who were mentioned by name, Dr. Fischer and the other one, were entirely unaware of them. In any case the result, as has been proved by the file notes which are on the documents, is that Schirach did not have any knowledge whatsoever of these reports, and that he is not coresponsible for the atrocities described therein, and therefore cannot be criminally charged on the basis of these activity reports.
May it please the Tribunal, in judging the personality of Schirach, his behavior during the last weeks in Vienna is also not without importance. For Schirach it was a matter of course not to carry out the various insane orders which came from Berlin at that time. He absolutely condemned the lynching of enemy aviators which was ordered by Bormann, and likewise the order to hang defeatists without mercy, regardless of whether they were men or women. His summary court was never even in session, and did not pronounce a single death sentence. No blood is on his hands. On the other hand, for example, he did everything in order to protect from the excited mob enemy aviators who had made an emergency landing and again, as we have heard from the witness Wieshofer, he immediately sent out his own car in order to bring to safety American aviators who had parachuted. Thereby he again placed himself in deliberate opposition to an order of Bormann that such aviators were not to be protected against lynching by the civilian population. Nor did he pay any attention to the order that Vienna was to be defended to the last man, or that in Vienna bridges and churches and residential sections were to be destroyed, and he emphatically refused compliance with the order to form partisan units in civilian clothing or to continue the hopeless struggle in a criminal manner with the aid of the Werewolf organization. He turned down such demands out of his sense of duty, all the more since this would have caused him to violate international law.