Baldur Von Schirach
Graduation Date
Spring 1965
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Degree Granting Institution
Catholic University of America
Program Name
Humanities
Abstract
“I have educated this generation in faith and loyalty to Hitler. The Youth Organization which I built up bore his name. I believed that I was serving a leader who would make our people and the youth of our country great and happy and free. Millions of young people believed this, together with me, and saw their ultimate ideal in National Socialism. Before Sod, before the German nations and before my German people I alone bear the guilt of having trained our young people for a man whom I for many long years had considered unimpeachable, both as a leader and as the head of the State, of creating for him a generation who saw him as I did. The guilt is mine in that I educated the youth of Germany for a man who murdered by the millions. I believed in this man, that is all I can say for my excuse and for the characterization of my attitude. This is my own--my own personal guilt. I was responsible for the youth of the country. I was placed in authority over the young people, and the guilt is mine alone. The younger generation is guiltless. It grew up in an anti-Semitic state, ruled by anti-Semitic laws. Our youth was bound by these laws and saw nothing criminal in racial politics. But if anti-Semitism and racial laws could lead to an Auschwitz, then Auschwitz must mark the end of racial politics and the death of anti-Semitism.”
This self-Implicating admission was made by Baldur von Schirach, erstwhile Reich Youth Leader and Gauleiter oi Vienna, before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1946. He had been indicted on charges of participating in the Nazi conspiracy and of crimes against humanity. He was one of the few who admitted his guilt, an admission which was far more condemning than all the documents brought against him dv the prosecution
Physically, Schirach matched up to the ideal of the perfect Aryan. Photographs taken during the trial show a tall, blond man, with a thin, aristocratic nose, whose clothes hung loosely on his body. He bore not the slightest resemblance to his fellow-defendants. At thirty-nine, he was younger than they, and at the same time, his American ancestry was reflected in his features. To one observer he looked "like a contrite college boy who had been kicked out of school for some folly.”
Who was this man, that he was being tried with the most notorious criminals of modern times? How did he fit into the hideous pattern of political perversion and social homicide which Hitler had inflicted upon the twentieth century? How did he become an adherent of one of the most evil political philosophies Which has ever misguided mankind? The story of Baldur von Schirach is essentially the story of all young Germany from 1919 to 1945; he fell prey to the same fears, was tortured by the same doubts, and became a part of the same infamous scheme.