Morning Session (continued 2)
Reading edition
“I wish”—he wrote—“that the young men of both nations could live every year side by side by the thousands and in this way learn to know, to understand, and to respect each other.” And further:
“Our two nations know that an understanding between them would be one of the most valuable factors for world peace; therefore it is the duty of all those on either side of the frontier who have a clear view and human feeling to work for the understanding and rapprochement of both nations. But no one could do it more sincerely and more enthusiastically than the leaders of our wonderful youth, of French and German youth. If they could manage to unite this youth, they would hold in their hands the future of European and human culture” (Document Schirach-110).
The mayor of Versailles of that time wrote in the same spirit to Schirach, ending his appeal in the monthly organ of the Hitler Youth with the words:
“The education of youth in this spirit is one of the most important tasks of the politicians of both our countries” (Document Schirach-111).
The French Ambassador, François Poncet, gave credit to Schirach’s efforts no less heartily in the same publication under the title “Youth as a Bridge” and concluded his lengthy article with the words:
“French participation enriches German soil. German influence fertilizes the French spirit.... May this exchange develop further. May also the generations which will at some time benefit from it contribute to bringing the two halves of Charlemagne’s empire closer and to create between them those relations of mutual respect, harmony, and good comradeship for which both nations are deeply longing, because their instinct tells them that the welfare of European culture depends on it and because they know for certain, when they look into themselves, that they have many more reasons to respect and admire than to hate each other” (Document Schirach-112).
And Schirach himself answered in the next issue of his monthly publication, which also appeared in French, with an enthusiastic article under the title, “Salute to France!” In it he writes, for instance:
“The rapprochement of our two peoples is a European task of such urgent necessity that youth has no time to lose in order to work for its achievement.”—He then continues—“Youth is the best ambassador in the world; it is disinterested, frank, and without the eternal distrust of which diplomats can frequently not be cured because, to a certain extent, it is their professional disease. However, there must be no propaganda intentions hidden behind youth exchange.”—And he concludes—“I consider it now my task to bring about an exchange of views between German and French youth, which must not, on the German side, consist of nice statements from me, but of many personal conversations of thousands of young Germans with just as many young Frenchmen. One must believe in youth because they, above all, can achieve a true understanding.”
At the end Schirach calls attention to the fact that all higher youth leaders of the German Hitler Youth movement had a short time previously expressed their respect in the name of the young generation of Germany to the French Unknown Warrior by placing a wreath under the Arc de Triomphe, and he concludes with the words:
“The dead of the Great War died while fulfilling their patriotic duty and nobly devoting themselves to the ideal of liberty, and Germans as well as French were always filled with respect for a gallant foe. If the dead respected each other, then the living should try to shake hands. If the returned combat veterans of both nations could become comrades, why should the sons and grandsons not become friends?” (Document Schirach-113.)
These, Gentlemen of the Tribunal, are the words of the same Baldur von Schirach whom the Prosecution tries to brand as a deliberate partner in a Hitlerian conspiracy for war. The Prosecution wants to make a war criminal out of this untiring prophet for international understanding and peace, who is charged with having militarized youth and prepared it, bodily and psychologically, for wars of aggression and of having worked against peace. So far, the Prosecution has not been able to furnish evidence to this effect.
Schirach has written various doctrinal books for youth, which were held against him in the trial brief; he has published a quantity of essays on a vast variety of problems of youth education; his innumerable speeches addressed to youth have been printed; his orders and instructions to youth are available to you and the Prosecution in collected form. Yet it must be concluded that among all these, which constitute his views during the whole of the time when he was active as Reich Youth Leader, not a single item is to be found in which he made inflammatory remarks in favor of war or preached attacks against other countries.
The Prosecution has stated in this very connection that he referred to the “Lebensraum” in his book The Hitler Youth, which I have repeatedly mentioned, and by so doing adopted as his own a slogan of Hitlerite aggression policy. This claim is incorrect, for the whole book, The Hitler Youth, does not, any more than every other speech and writing of Schirach, contain this word at all. True, he has referred at two points to “Eastern space” in his book, The Hitler Youth, published in 1936; but he quite obviously did not in any way employ this term with reference to Polish or Soviet-Russian territories but to the eastern provinces of the former German Empire, that is to say, to territories which formerly belonged to. Germany; they were known to be very thinly populated and well suited for the settlement of excess German population.
Nowhere has Schirach, I would like to state in conclusion with regard to this topic, at any time up to the outbreak of the second World War expressed the idea that he might wish Germany to conquer foreign territories; neither has he ever uttered the odious slogans of the German “Master Race” or the “Sub-humanity” of other nations; on the contrary, he was always in favor of preserving peace with the neighboring nations and always advocated the peaceful settlement of any conflicts that cropped up out of inevitable clashes of interests. Gentlemen of the Tribunal, had Hitler possessed but a fraction of the love of peace which his Youth Leader preached time and again, then perhaps this war would have been spared us Germans and the whole world.
PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now.