Baldur von Schirach
Encyclopedia
Baldur Benedikt von Schirach (9 May 1907 – 8 August 1974) was a Nazi
youth leader later convicted of being a war criminal. Schirach was the head of the Hitler-Jugend
(HJ, Hitler Youth) and Gauleiter
and Reichsstatthalter ("Reich Governor") of Vienna.
, the youngest of four children of theatre director Rittmeister Carl Baily Norris von Schirach (1873–1948) and his American
wife Emma Middleton Lynah Tillou (1872–1944). Through his mother, Schirach descended from two signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence
. English was in fact the first language which he learned at home and he was not able to speak German until the age of five. He had two sisters, Viktoria and Rosalind von Schirach, and a brother, Karl Benedict von Schirach, who committed suicide in 1919 at the age of 19.
On 31 March 1932 von Schirach married 19-year-old Henriette Hoffmann
, the daughter of Heinrich Hoffmann
, Adolf Hitler
's personal photographer and close friend. Von Schirach's family was vehemently opposed to the marriage to Henriette but Hitler insisted. Von Schirach, says Gregor Strasser
, was "a young effeminate aristocrat" upon whom Hitler bestowed Henriette and the HJ position. Through this relationship, von Schirach became part of Hitler's inner circle. The young couple were appreciated guests at Hitler's "Berghof". Henriette von Schirach gave birth to four children: Angelika Benedikta von Schirach (born 1933), Klaus von Schirach (born 1935), Robert von Schirach (1938) and Richard von Schirach (born 1942). The lawyer and bestselling German crime writer Ferdinand von Schirach is his grandson.
He was a published author, contributing to literature journals, and an influential patron of the arts.
(NSDStB, National Socialist German Students' League). In 1931 he was a Reichsjugendführer
(youth leader) in the NSDAP and in 1933 he was made head of the Hitler Youth
(Hitler-Jugend) and given an SA
rank of Gruppenführer. He was made a state secretary in 1936.
In 1940 he organized the evacuation of 5 million children from cities threatened by Allied
bombing. Later that year, he joined the army and volunteered for service in France, where he was awarded the Iron Cross
before being recalled. Schirach lost control of the Hitler Youth to Artur Axmann
, and was appointed Governor ("Gauleiter" or "Reichsstatthalter") of the Reichsgau
Vienna, a post in which he remained until the end of the war. He was both an anti-Semite and anti Christian. Over the next few years Schirach was responsible for sending Jews
from Vienna to Nazi concentration camps
in occupied Poland. During his tenure 65,000 Jews were deported from Vienna to Poland, and in a speech on 15 September 1942 he mentioned their deportation as a "contribution to European culture." Later during the war von Schirach pleaded for a moderate treatment of the eastern European peoples and criticized the conditions in which Jews were being deported. He fell into disfavour in 1943, but remained at his post.
Schirach was notoriously anxious about air raids. He had the cellars of the Hofburg Palace in the Vienna city centre refurbished and adapted as a bomb shelter, and the lower level of the extensive subterranean Vienna air defence coordination centre
in the forests to the West of Vienna held personal facilities for him as well. The Viennese promptly dubbed this C&C centre Schirach-Bunker.
. At the trial Schirach was one of only two men to denounce Hitler (the other was Albert Speer
). He said that he did not know about the extermination camps. He also provided evidence that he had protested to Martin Bormann
about the inhumane treatment of the Jews. Also, it was revealed by Schirach at Nuremberg that the roots of his antisemitism could be found in the readings of Henry Ford
's The International Jew
. He was found guilty, on 1 October 1946, of crimes against humanity for his deportation of the Viennese Jews. He was sentenced and served 20 years as a prisoner in Spandau Prison
.
On 20 July 1949 his wife Henriette von Schirach (3 February 1913 – 27 January 1992) divorced him while he was in prison.
According to Lothar Machtan's
The Hidden Hitler
, page 229, von Schirach was bisexual
. In the book, The Mind of Adolf Hitler
, Baldur von Schirach is reputed to be a homosexual
.
He was released on 30 September 1966, and retired quietly to southern Germany. He published his memoirs, Ich glaubte an Hitler ("I believed in Hitler") and died on 8 August 1974 in Kröv
.
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
youth leader later convicted of being a war criminal. Schirach was the head of the Hitler-Jugend
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
(HJ, Hitler Youth) and Gauleiter
Gauleiter
A Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau.-Creation and Early Usage:...
and Reichsstatthalter ("Reich Governor") of Vienna.
Early life
Schirach was born in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, the youngest of four children of theatre director Rittmeister Carl Baily Norris von Schirach (1873–1948) and his American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
wife Emma Middleton Lynah Tillou (1872–1944). Through his mother, Schirach descended from two signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence
United States Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a...
. English was in fact the first language which he learned at home and he was not able to speak German until the age of five. He had two sisters, Viktoria and Rosalind von Schirach, and a brother, Karl Benedict von Schirach, who committed suicide in 1919 at the age of 19.
On 31 March 1932 von Schirach married 19-year-old Henriette Hoffmann
Henriette von Schirach
Henriette "Henny" von Schirach was the wife of Baldur von Schirach and a close childhood friend of Adolf Hitler. She is the only person known to have challenged the persecution of Jews to Hitler personally.Henriette was the daughter of Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's personal photographer....
, the daughter of Heinrich Hoffmann
Heinrich Hoffmann
Heinrich Hoffmann was a German photographer best known for his many published photographs of Adolf Hitler.-Early life and career:...
, Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's personal photographer and close friend. Von Schirach's family was vehemently opposed to the marriage to Henriette but Hitler insisted. Von Schirach, says Gregor Strasser
Gregor Strasser
Gregor Strasser was a politician of the National Socialist German Workers Party...
, was "a young effeminate aristocrat" upon whom Hitler bestowed Henriette and the HJ position. Through this relationship, von Schirach became part of Hitler's inner circle. The young couple were appreciated guests at Hitler's "Berghof". Henriette von Schirach gave birth to four children: Angelika Benedikta von Schirach (born 1933), Klaus von Schirach (born 1935), Robert von Schirach (1938) and Richard von Schirach (born 1942). The lawyer and bestselling German crime writer Ferdinand von Schirach is his grandson.
He was a published author, contributing to literature journals, and an influential patron of the arts.
Military career
Schirach joined a Wehrjugendgruppe (military cadet group) at the age of 10 and became a member of the NSDAP in 1925. He was soon transferred to Munich and in 1929 became leader of the Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen StudentenbundNational Socialist German Students' League
The National Socialist German Students' League was founded in 1926 as a division of the NSDAP with the mission of integrating University-level education and academic life within the framework of the National Socialist worldview...
(NSDStB, National Socialist German Students' League). In 1931 he was a Reichsjugendführer
Reichsjugendführer
Reichsjugendführer was the highest paramilitary rank of the Hitler Youth. It was held first by Baldur von Schirach and later Artur Axmann. Originally, there was no insignia for the rank, and von Schirach can be seen in documentary evidence as wearing a Nazi Party brown jacket with Hitler Youth...
(youth leader) in the NSDAP and in 1933 he was made head of the Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
(Hitler-Jugend) and given an SA
Sturmabteilung
The Sturmabteilung functioned as a paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party . It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s...
rank of Gruppenführer. He was made a state secretary in 1936.
In 1940 he organized the evacuation of 5 million children from cities threatened by Allied
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
bombing. Later that year, he joined the army and volunteered for service in France, where he was awarded the Iron Cross
Iron Cross
The Iron Cross is a cross symbol typically in black with a white or silver outline that originated after 1219 when the Kingdom of Jerusalem granted the Teutonic Order the right to combine the Teutonic Black Cross placed above a silver Cross of Jerusalem....
before being recalled. Schirach lost control of the Hitler Youth to Artur Axmann
Artur Axmann
Artur Axmann was the German Nazi leader of the Hitler Youth from 1940 through war's end in 1945.-Early life:Axmann was born in Hagen on 18 February 1913...
, and was appointed Governor ("Gauleiter" or "Reichsstatthalter") of the Reichsgau
Reichsgau
A Reichsgau was an administrative subdivision created in a number of the areas annexed to Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1945...
Vienna, a post in which he remained until the end of the war. He was both an anti-Semite and anti Christian. Over the next few years Schirach was responsible for sending Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
from Vienna to Nazi concentration camps
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
in occupied Poland. During his tenure 65,000 Jews were deported from Vienna to Poland, and in a speech on 15 September 1942 he mentioned their deportation as a "contribution to European culture." Later during the war von Schirach pleaded for a moderate treatment of the eastern European peoples and criticized the conditions in which Jews were being deported. He fell into disfavour in 1943, but remained at his post.
Schirach was notoriously anxious about air raids. He had the cellars of the Hofburg Palace in the Vienna city centre refurbished and adapted as a bomb shelter, and the lower level of the extensive subterranean Vienna air defence coordination centre
Gaugefechtsstand Wien
The Gaugefechtsstand Wien was a World War II subterranean command bunker situated in the densely forested Wienerwald western parts of Ottakring, the 16th district of Vienna...
in the forests to the West of Vienna held personal facilities for him as well. The Viennese promptly dubbed this C&C centre Schirach-Bunker.
Trial and conviction
Schirach surrendered in 1945 and was one of the officials put on trial at NurembergNuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
. At the trial Schirach was one of only two men to denounce Hitler (the other was Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
). He said that he did not know about the extermination camps. He also provided evidence that he had protested to Martin Bormann
Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann was a prominent Nazi official. He became head of the Party Chancellery and private secretary to Adolf Hitler...
about the inhumane treatment of the Jews. Also, it was revealed by Schirach at Nuremberg that the roots of his antisemitism could be found in the readings of Henry Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
's The International Jew
The International Jew
The International Jew is a four volume set of booklets or pamphlets originally published and distributed in the early 1920s by Henry Ford, an American industrialist and automobile manufacturer....
. He was found guilty, on 1 October 1946, of crimes against humanity for his deportation of the Viennese Jews. He was sentenced and served 20 years as a prisoner in Spandau Prison
Spandau Prison
Spandau Prison was a prison situated in the borough of Spandau in western Berlin, constructed in 1876 and demolished in 1987 after the death of its last prisoner, Rudolf Hess, to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine. The prison was near, though not part of, the Renaissance-era Spandau Citadel...
.
On 20 July 1949 his wife Henriette von Schirach (3 February 1913 – 27 January 1992) divorced him while he was in prison.
According to Lothar Machtan's
Lothar Machtan
Lothar Machtan, Ph.D is a German historian, writer, as well as Professor of Modern and Current History at the University of Bremen.-Early life:...
The Hidden Hitler
The Hidden Hitler
The Hidden Hitler is the English-language version of the 2001 book Hitlers Geheimnis. Das Doppelleben eines Diktators by German-Jewish professor and historian Dr. Lothar Machtan. The original book was published in Germany by Alexander Fest Verlag, while the English-translated version was published...
, page 229, von Schirach was bisexual
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
. In the book, The Mind of Adolf Hitler
The Mind of Adolf Hitler
The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report, published in 1972 by Basic Books, is based on, and contains as its core, a World War II report by psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer which probed the psychology of Adolf Hitler from the available information...
, Baldur von Schirach is reputed to be a homosexual
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
.
He was released on 30 September 1966, and retired quietly to southern Germany. He published his memoirs, Ich glaubte an Hitler ("I believed in Hitler") and died on 8 August 1974 in Kröv
Kröv
Kröv is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Bernkastel-Wittlich district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.- Location :...
.
Portrayals
Baldur von Schirach has been portrayed in film, television and theater productions.- Douglas O'Keeffe in the 2000 Canadian/U.S. T.V. production NurembergNuremberg (2000 film)Nuremberg is a 2000 Canadian/United States television docudrama, based on the book Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial by Joseph E. Persico, that tells the story of the Nuremberg Trials.-Part one:...
- Timothy WalkerTimothy WalkerTimothy Walker is a British film and television actor. His most famous role was perhaps as Angus the groom in the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral, but he has also appeared in Nuremberg: Nazis on Trial, Looking for Victoria, Peak Practice, Monsignor Renard, Pie in the Sky and Doctor...
in the 2006 British television docudrama Nuremberg: Nazis on TrialNuremberg: Nazis on TrialNuremberg: Nazis on Trial, is a BBC documentary film series consisting of three one-hour films that re-enact the Nuremberg War Trials of Albert Speer, Hermann Göring and Rudolf Hess...
External links
- Timeline of Schirach's life
- Short biography of Baldur von Schirach
- Revolution der Erziehung (Revolution of Education) by Baldur von Schirach
- Die Hitler-Jugend – Idee und Gestalt (The Hitler Youth – Idea and Character) by Baldur von Schirach
- Die Fahne der Verfolgten (The Flag of the Persecuted), collection of poetry
- Goethe an uns (Goethe to Us) by Baldur von Schirach
- Das Lied der Getreuen (The Lay of the Faithful); more poetry
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Baldur von Schirach
- Biography: Baldur von Schirach