Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-14/tgmwc-14-137.08
Last-Modified: 2000/03/18

Q. The year of "Understanding"?

A. Herr Ziemer says the slogan had been, "Every Youth a
Pilot."

Q. And then in 1939, what was your slogan?

A. That was the year of "Duty Towards Health."

Q. The year of "Duty Towards Health"?

A. According to Herr Ziemer it was, "Hitler Youth
Marches."

Q. And finally 1940, your last year?

A. It was the year of "Instruction." But he calls it,
"We are Marching Against England."

But I want to add that the first slogan, "One People,
One Reich, One Fuehrer." which Ziemer says was the
official slogan of the year 1933 for German youth,
arose first in 1938 when Hitler went into Austria.
Before that, that slogan did not exist at all. It has
never been the annual slogan of German youth.

Q. Witness, we must comply with the wish of the
Tribunal and not go into the affidavit of Ziemer any
further, with the exception of the one point which has
been used by the prosecution in the Indictment against
you in connection with the accusation of anti-Semitism.
I pass over Herr Ziemer's further statements and come
to this speech at Heidelberg. Will you tell me first of
all, what Ziemer said, and then make your own comments.

A. Ziemer said that during a meeting of students in
Heidelberg, I think either at the end of 1938 of the
beginning of 1939, I had made a speech against the
Jews, in connection with a rally of the National
Socialist Student Union. He says that on that occasion
I praised the students for the destruction of the
Heidelberg Synagogue, and that following that I had the
students file past me, and gave them decorations and
certificates of promotion.

First of all, I have already referred to my activity in
the student movement. Upon the request of the Deputy
Fuehrer, Rudolf Hess, I handed the leadership of the
student movement over to him in 1934. He then appointed
a Reich student leader; and after that I did not speak
in any student meetings.

As far as I can remember, I visited Heidelberg during
the summer of 1937, and there I spoke to a youth group.
This was one or one and a half years before Ziemer's
date. And on one occasion I went to a festival play at
Heidelberg.

Q. All of this is irrelevant.

A. I have no recollection of any meeting of this sort
with students, and I have no recollection of ever
having publicly stated my views about the Jewish pogrom
of 1938. I will state later what I said in my capacity
as Youth Leader regarding this.

Ziemer says - I am translating from the English text -
he says that the day will come when the students of
Heidelberg will take up their place side by side with
the legions of other students to win the world over to
the National Socialist ideology.

I have never publicly spoken like that before youth,
nor in public, nor even before small circles. These are
not my words. I did not say that. I had no authority
whatsoever to confer decorations or certificates upon
students. Medals of distinction for students did not
exist. All decorations were conferred by the head of
the State.

                                             [Page 349]

I personally had the right to confer the golden Youth
Decoration, and I think it was conferred by me about
230 times in all, almost entirely upon people who
earned distinction in the field of education, but not
upon unknown students.

Witness, the important point is whether it is correct
that the speech given at the end of 1938 before the
students at Heidelberg, during which the speaker
referred to the wreckage of the synagogues, was not
made by you, because at that time you had not had
anything to do with the student movement for years. Is
that correct?

A. I had nothing to do with the student movement, and I
do not remember having spoken before such a meeting. I
consider it quite out of the question that such a
meeting of students took place at all. I did not make
those statements.

Q. Have you got the affidavit before you?

A. Yes. I cannot find that particular passage at the
moment.

Q. It says something which I have translated into
German, namely, it mentions the "small, fat student
leader." Have you got that passage? Does it not say so?

A. Yes, it says so.

Q. Well then, surely "small, fat student leader" cannot
be applied to you.

DR. SAUTER: May I, Mr. President, in this connection,
draw your attention to an affidavit which appears in
Schirach's Document Book under No. 3, and which I
herewith submit to the Tribunal. It is an affidavit of
a certain Hopken, who, from 1st May, 1938, was the
female secretary of the defendant von Schirach, and
who, in this affidavit, under 16 - which is Page 22 of
the Document Book - mentioning exact details, states
under oath that, during the time with which we are here
concerned, the defendant was not at Heidelberg at all.

I do not suppose it is necessary for me to read that
part of the affidavit. I am asking the Tribunal to take
judicial notice of it.

THE PRESIDENT: I think this would be a good time to
break off.

(A recess was taken.)

BY DR. SAUTER:

Q. Witness, you have spoken, in a different connection,
about the fact that you did not consider officers
suitable as youth leaders. I would be interested to
know how many members of the Leadership Corps of the
Hitler Youth, in 1939 at the outbreak of the war, were
reserve officers in the armed forces.

A. I would judge that the Leadership Corps of the HJ
had about 1,300 leaders. Those were leaders of the
Banne, leaders of the districts or regions, and the
corresponding staff of assistants. Of these 1,300 youth
leaders, five to ten men were reserve officers.

Q. And how many active officers did you have at that
time on your staff or in the Leadership Corps?

A. Active officers were not youth leaders and could not
be youth leaders.

Q. Why not? Was that stipulated in the regulations?

A. Yes. An officer was not permitted to be a member of
the Party or any one of its organs or affiliated
organizations.

Q. Who was your responsible assistant for the physical
education and sports programmes in the Hitler Youth?

A. Obergebietsfuehrer von Tschammer und Osten, who was
also the Reich Sports Leader. In the Olympic year he
co-operated very closely with me and voluntarily
subordinated himself to me in December or November
1936. He was responsible to me for the entire physical
education of the boys and girls.

Q. This Herr von Tschammer und Osten, who was very well
known in the international sports world, was he an
officer by profession?

A. According to my recollection he had been an officer
during the first World War. Then he left the army and
became a farmer. Later on he

                                             [Page 350]

concerned himself only with questions of physical
education and sport. One of his brothers was an active
officer.

Q. Did von Tschammer und Osten become an officer during
the second World War?

A. No, he did not.

Q. You remember that a document has been submitted here
by the Soviet Prosecution, namely a report from Lemberg
- in which it is stated that the Hitler Youth or the
Reich Youth Leadership had conducted courses for young
people from Poland, and these young people were to be
trained as agents, spies and parachutists. You have
stated today that you take the complete responsibility
for the youth leadership. I ask you to tell us
something about that.

A. We had absolutely no prerequisites for espionage
training in our youth organization. Whether Heydrich on
his part, without my knowledge and without the
knowledge of my assistants, drafted youthful agents
into Poland and used them within his intelligence
service, it is not possible for me to say. I myself did
not conduct any espionage training; I had no course for
agents, and courses for training parachutists were out
of the question because after all, I had no air force.
Training of that kind could only have been conducted
through the Air Force.

Q. Then you, as Reich Youth Leader, or, as it was
called later, Reich Leader for Youth Education, never
knew anything about these things before this trial? Can
you state that under oath?

A. That I can state upon my oath, I should like to add
that, shortly before the war, young refugees from
Poland came to us, in large numbers, but they of course
could not return to Poland. The persecution of the
Germans in Poland is a historical fact.

Q. Witness, the prosecution has asserted that in the
Hitler Youth a song was sung, "Heute gehort uns
Deutschland, and morgen die ganze Welt" "Today Germany
belongs to us, tomorrow the whole world" - that is the
alleged title of that song, and that is supposed to
have expressed the will for conquest of the Hitler
Youth; is that correct?

A. The song says, in the original text which was
written by Hans Baumann and is included in a document
here: "Heute da hort uns Deutschland," "Germany hears
us," not "belongs to us," "and tomorrow the whole
world." But it had come to my knowledge also that the
song, from time to time, was being sung in the form
which has been mentioned here. For that reason I
prohibited the singing of the song in a way differing
from the original text. I also prohibited, years ago,
the song, "Siegreich wollen wir Frankreich schlagen"
"Gloriously we will conquer France"; from being sung by
the German Hitler Youth.

Q. You prohibited the last mentioned song entirely?

A. Yes.

Q. Out of consideration for your French guests?

A. Not out of consideration for guests but because it
was contrary to my political conceptions.

DR. SAUTER: So, Mr. President, I submit the correct
text which I got from a song book. It is No. 95 of the
Schirach Document Book. In connection with the question
of whether the Hitler Youth intended a pre-military
training of youth, I should like to put the following
additional questions. Did the physical and sport
training of youth apply only to the boys, Herr von
Schirach?

A. No. Of course all young people received physical
training.

Q. Also the girls?

A. Yes.

Q. Is it correct that your efforts directed toward the
physical training and physical strengthening of youth
also applied to the physically handicapped and to the
blind, and other young people who from the very outset
could not be used for military purposes?

                                             [Page 351]

A. Very early in our work I included the blind and deaf
and the cripples in the Hitler Youth. I had a
periodical especially issued for the blind and had
books made for them in Braille. I believe that the
Hitler Youth was the only organization in Germany which
took care of these people, except for special
organizations of the NSV (National Socialist Welfare
Organization) and so on.

DR. SAUTER: I ask, in connection with that, Mr.
President, that you take notice of Document 27 of the
Schirach Document Book. That is a long article
entitled, "Inclusion of Physically Handicapped Young
People in the Hitler Youth," where the deaf, dumb and
blind are especially mentioned, to the effect that they
should be trained to become fully capable of
professional occupation.

MR. DODD: I have refrained all day from making any
objection, but I think this examination has gone very
far afield. We have made no charge against this
defendant with respect to the blind, the deaf, the lame
and halt.

He keeps going back to the Boy Scouts and we have not
touched upon any of the relevant issues that are
between us and this defendant. At the present rate I
fear we will never get through.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Sauter, we have listened to this
somewhat long account of the training of the Hitler
Youth. Do you not think you can go on to something more
specific now? We have a very fair conception, I think,
of what the training of the Hitler Youth was, and we
have all these documents before us.

DR. SAUTER: I shall try, Mr. President, to proceed
according to your wishes as far as it is at all
possible.

BY DR. SAUTER:

Witness, is it correct that you personally intervened
with Hitler to prevent the re-establishment of cadet
academies as institutions for purely military training?

A. Yes, that is correct. I prevented the
re-establishment of cadet academies.

Q. I come now to a different chapter. The defendant has
been accused of dissolving the Protestant and Catholic
youth organizations. What can you say in answer to
that?

A. First, the following: I wanted, as I have already
explained, the unification of all our youth. I also
wanted to bring the Protestant organizations, which
were not very large numerically, and the numerically
very large Catholic organizations, into the Hitler
Youth, particularly because some of the organizations
did not limit themselves to religious matters but
competed with the Hitler Youth in physical training,
marching, camping and so on. I therein saw a danger to
the idea of unity in German national education, and
above all I felt that among young people themselves
there was a very strong tendency toward the Hitler
Youth. The trend away from the denominational
organizations is a fact. There were also many clergymen
who were of the opinion that the development should
perhaps take the following direction: All youth into
Hitler Youth; the religious care of the youth through
clergymen; sports and political work through youth
leadership.

In 1933 or 1934 - but I think it was in 1933 - Reich
Bishop Muller and the Protestant Bishop Oberheidt
approached me on their own initiative and proposed to
me to incorporate the Protestant youth organizations
into the Hitler Youth. Of course I was very happy about
that proposal and accepted it. At that time I had no
idea that there was opposition to Reich Bishop Muller
within the Protestant Church. I found out about that
only much later. I believed that I was acting with the
authority and in the name of the Evangelical Church,
and the other Bishop who accompanied him further
strengthened this belief of mine. Even today I still
believe that with the voluntary incorporation of the
Protestant youth into the State Youth Muller acted in
accordance with the will of the majority of the
Protestant youth themselves, and in my later activity
as youth leader I frequently met former leaders of the
Protestant youth organizations,

                                             [Page 352]

who held leading positions with me and worked in my
Youth Organization with great enthusiasm and devotion.

Through that incorporation of Protestant youth-I should
like to stress this - spiritual ministration to youth
was not limited or hindered in any way; there never was
a restriction of church services for youth, either then
or later. Since Protestant youth had been incorporated
on the basis of an agreement between the Church and the
Hitler Youth, there was practically only a dispute
about youth education between the Catholic Church and
the Hitler Youth.

In May or June 1934 I asked personally to participate
in the negotiations for the Reich Concordat, because I
wanted to eliminate entirely the differences between
the Catholic Church and the Hitler Youth. I considered
an agreement to be very important and, in fact, I was
allowed to participate in these negotiations which took
place in June 1934, in the Reich Ministry of the
Interior, under the chairmanship of the Reich Minister
for the Interior, Frick. On the Catholic side
Archbishop Erober and Bishop Berning took part in the
negotiations, and at that time I personally proposed a
formula for co-operation, which met with an approach
from the Catholic side, and I believed that I had found
the basis for appeasement in this sphere.

The conferences were unfortunately interrupted on the
evening of 29th June, and on 30th June, 1934 we
experienced the so-called "Roehm Putsch," and the
negotiations were never resumed. That is not my fault
and I bear no responsibility for that. Hitler simply
did not want to carry out the Concordat. I personally
had the desire to achieve that agreement, and I believe
that the representatives of the Church also saw from
these negotiations, and from certain later conferences
with me, that the difficulties did not originate with
me. At any rate Bishop Berning came to me, I believe in
1939. We discussed current tensions between the youth
leadership and the Church. I believe that he also took
with him at that time the impression that it was not I
who wanted to make difficulties.

The difficulties already arose at that time from the
increasingly strong influence of Martin Bormann, who
tried to prevent absolutely any kind of agreement
between the Party offices and the Church, or between
the youth leadership and the Church.

In the course of the dispute about the leadership of
denominational organizations and their incorporation,
animated public discussions sprang up. I myself spoke
at various meetings. Statements were issued by the
Church also, which, according to the state of affairs,
were more or less temperamental. But I did not make
statements inimical to religion in connection with that
subject, nor did I at any time during my life.

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