BALDUR VON SHIRACH

9 MARCH 1907- 8 AUGUST 1974

Baldur von Shirach was born in Berlin on 9 March 1907, the son of an aristocratic German father and an American mother, whose ancestors included two signatories of the Declaration of Independence. On his father's side descended from an officers' family with artistic tendencies and a cosmopolitan background (Carl von Shirach had resigned from the army in 1908 to become a theatre director in Weimar), Baldur grew up in a pampered, well - to - do environment. One of the earliest members of the NSDAP (he entered the Party in 1924 while attending the University of Munich where he briefly studied Germanic folklore and art history), von Shirach was soon a member of its innermost circle, in spite of his youth. A convinced anti - semite, after reading Henry Ford's The International Jew and writings by Houston S. Chamberlain and Adolf Bartels, the aristocratic von Shirach was also a militant opponent of Christianity and of his own caste. Throwing himself body and soul into organizing high school and university students for the NSDAP, von Shirach proved himself an outstanding organizer and propagandist of National Socialism Party. With his infectious enthusiasm and power to inspire youth with the ideals of comradeship, sacrifice, courage and honor, Baldur was highly regarded by Hitler who also appreciated his blind devotion as expressed in hero - worshipping verses and such sycophantic sayings as 'loyalty in everything and everything is the love of Hitler. In 1929, Baldur von Shirach was put in charge of the National Socialist German Students' League and two years later, he was appointed Reich Youth Leader of the NSADP, a post which he held until 1940.

In 1933 he organized the gigantic youth march in Potsdam, in which wave upon wave of youngsters greeted Adolf Hitler. Already before the Nazi seizure, Baldur von Shirach's ceaseless propaganda, his idealism and organizational flair for mobilizing youth, had succeeded in winning over hundreds of thousands of young Germans to Adolf Hitler's cause. In May 1933 he was made Leader of the Youth of the German Reich at the age of twenty - six, and in the next few years, his cult seemed second only to that of Adolf Hitler himself. Placed in control of the HJ, Hitler Youth which by 1936 already comprised six million members, Baldur von Shirach's used a powerful mixture of pagan romanticism, militarism and naive patriotism to build up recruits for Adolf Hitlers war machine. Young Germans were to be drilled into acceptance of Nazi concepts of character, discipline, obedience and leadership as set out in von Shirach's book, Die Hilter - Jugend (1934): they were to be moulded into a new race of 'supermen', the Arien race or Ubermensch. Baldur von Shirach, who fancied himself as a writer and poet, published two books which were best - sellers in 1932, Hitler wie ihn Keiner Kennt (with photographs by his father - in - law, the court photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann), and Triumph des Willens. The following year, his collection of poems, Die Fahne der Verfolgten, and the short biographies of Nazi leaders, Die Pionere des Dritten Reiches, were published. Baldur von Shirach taught German youth that their blood was better than that of any nation and devoted his lyricism to hollow worship of the Fuhrer's genius.

Towards the outbreak of World War II, his position, however, was being undermined by the intrigues of Martin Borman and other enemies. Jokes about his effeminate behaviour and his allegedly white bedroom furnished in a girlish manner, were legion, and he was never quite able to live up to his own ideal type of the hard, tough, quick Hitler Youth. At the beginning of 1940, Baldur von Shirach enlisted as a volunteer in the Heer, German Army, serving in France for a few months as an infantry officer and receiving the Iron Cross (Second Class). Then, after being relieved of his post as Leader of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Shirach was appointed Gauleiter and Governor of Vienna, Austria in August 1940. His unorthodox cultural policies in Austria soon aroused Hitler distrust (fed assiduously by Martin Bormann) and, after a visit to the Berghof in 1943 where he pleaded for a moderate treatment of the eastern European peoples and criticized the conditions in which Jews were being deported, he lost all real influence. Nevertheless, he was on record (in speech on 15 September 1942) as saying that the 'removal' of Jews to the East would 'contribute to European culture'.

The deportation of 185, 000 Jews from Vienna to Poland during his tenure as Governor was a major item in the indictment against von Baldur von Shirach at the Nuremberg Trials. The war crimes tribunal conceded that he did not originate the policy, but had 'participated in this deportation, though he knew that the best they [the Jews] could hope for was a miserable existence in the ghettoes of the East'. Baldur von Shirach admitted that he had approved the 'resettlement' but denied all knowledge of genocide, denouncing Adolf Hitler from the dock as 'a millionfold murderer' and calling Auschwitz 'the most devilish mass murder in history'. Sentenced on 1 October 1946 to twenty years' imprisonment for crimes against humanity - which he served out in the company of Rudolf Hess and Albert Speer the handsome, fair haired Baldur appeared to undergo a change of heart, recognizing that he had misled German youth and contributed to poisoning a whole generation which had idolized him. In his memoirs, Ich Glaubte an Adolf Hitler (1967), issued one year after his release from Spandau prison in Spandau, Berlin, Baldur von Shirach tried to explain the fatal fascination which Hitler had exerted on him and on the younger generation. He now considered it his duty to destroy any belief in the rebirth of Nazism and blamed himself before history for not having done more to prevent the Concentration Camps. After his release on 30 September 1966, Baldur von Shirach lived a secluded life in South Germany. He died in his sleep at a small hotel in Kroev on 8 August 1974.

Reichsleiter/Reichsjugendführer/Gauleiter und Reichsstatthalter/SA-Obergruppenführer/M.d.R.:
Born: 9. Mar. 1907 in Berlin.
Died: 8. Aug. 1974 in Kröv an der Mosel.
NSDAP-Nr.: 17 251 (Joined 29.01.1925)
SA Promotions:
SA-Ogruf.: 1941; SA-Gruf.: 9.11.37 (and/or 30.10.31; Karl Höffkes in Hitlers Politische Generale gives both dates)
Assignments:
Reichsvereidungskommissar für den Gau Wien: 07.1942 - 8.05.1945.
Senator der "Deutschen Akademie": 29.06.1942-
Präsident der "Großdeutschen Bibliophilen Gesellschaft": 28.09.1941 -
Gauleiter und Reichssttathalter, Wien (Vienna): 7.08.1940 (actually assumed post, 10.08.40) - 8.05.1945.
Volunteered for Wehrmacht service: 12.1939; After training at Berlin-Döberitz, assigned to Inf.Rgt. "Großdeutschland", 04.1940; participated in Western Campaign, 05.-06.1940. Promoted to Leutnant.
Jugendführer des Deutschen Reiches: 17.06.1933 - 7.08.1940.
Reichstagsabgeordneter für den Wahlkreis 7 (Breslau): 1932 -
Reichsjugendführer der NSDAP im Stab der Obersten SA-Führung und SA-Gruppenführer: 30.10.1931 -
Reichsleiter der NSDAP für die Jugenderziehung: 13.05.1932 -
Founding member of "Kampfbundes für deutsche Kultur": 19.12.1928 -
Reichsführer des NS-Studentebundes in die Reichsleitung der NSDAP: 20.07.1928 -
Entered SA: 1927
Joined NSDAP: 29.08.1925
Notes:
Son of Oberleutnant Friedrich Karl von Schirach (later Generalintendant, Weimar Hoftheater) and the American, Emma S.
Memoirs, Ich Glaubte an Hitler (I Believed in Hitler), published in 1967.
Postwar Prosecution:
Tried as a major war criminal by International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg; sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment, 1. Oct. 1946. Released from Spandau Prison, West Berlin, 30. Sep. 1966.
Notes:
Memoirs, Ich Glaubte an Hitler (I Believed in Hitler), published in 1967.
Decorations & Awards:
1939 EK II: ca. 06.40 (for service on Westfront); KVK I ohne Schwerter; KVK II ohne Schwerter;
Infanterie-Sturmabzeichen in Bronze: 8.09.40;
Medaille zur Erinnerung an den 1. Okt. 1938; Medaille zur Erinnerung an den 13. März 1938;
Goldenes Parteiabzeichen;
Goldenes HJ Ehrenzeichen mit Eichenlaub, Sonderstufe (Special Class): 9. 05. 1942;
Dienstauszeichnungen der NSDAP in Silber und Bronze

next