Oliver Rathkolb - Baldur von Schirach: Nazi Leader and Head of the Hitler Youth

Nazi Leader and Head of the Hitler Youth

Oliver Rathkolb

Translated by John Heath

Translated and edited with the kind support of the Future Fund of the Republic of Austria, the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism and the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies of the University of Vienna.

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by

Frontline Books

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Oliver Rathkolb 2022

Translation John Heath 2022

ISBN 978 1 39902 095 4

ePub ISBN 978 1 39902 096 1

Mobi ISBN 978 1 39902 096 1

The right of Oliver Rathkolb to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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I n order to combine readability and terminological accuracy, titles and offices of the so-called Reich are given in English followed by the German in parentheses, unless historiography in English tends to use the German, in which case this volume follows suit, followed by an English rendering in the first instance.

Most German terms appear in italics unless they are commonly used in English too or form part of quotations. The reader will also note that some German terms appear in quotations marks, reflecting the authors conscious decision to distance himself from the National Socialist vocabulary, questioning its accuracy or legitimacy.

For German source material that has already appeared in English, the published translations have been used, with the exception of Henriette von Schirachs memoirs, since some cited passages were omitted from the English version. Unless stated otherwise, all other translations of German sources are the translators own.

H itlers Reichsjugendfhrer (Reich Youth Leader) Baldur von Schirach was probably the greatest young hope of the National Socialist terror regime. Fhrer Adolf Hitler had a lot to thank him for, especially the media-savvy staging of German adolescents mass mobilisation in the Hitler Youth ( Hitlerjugend , HJ) and the League of German Girls ( Bund Deutscher Mdel , BDM). It didnt take long for him to bring the entire system of youth organisations in Nazi Germany under the ideological control of the regime. Despite the bloody war of aggression and the persecution of Jews and other victim groups throughout Europe, as Reichsleiter and Gauleiter (Reich leader and regional leader) of Vienna he accelerated the exuberant promotion of high culture from 1940 onwards, quickly winning over the elites and many artists. With their characteristic obedience to authority, the Viennese were soon enamoured with the anti-democratic nationalist traditions he imported from Weimar. While his sometimes controversial contemporary art exhibitions brought him into conflict with the Berlin central departments and Adolf Hitler, plans to replace him could not be pushed through. Schirach had already become one of the central satraps of National Socialism and had at his disposal a skilful propaganda machine. At the same time, however, Baldur von Schirach is also representative of an aristocratic-bourgeois elite that aligned itself with National Socialism. But for a few exceptions in the military resistance, this class promoted the movement and ultimately supported the regime until its total collapse.

Schirachs father, as the director of the Grand Duchy and Court Theatre in Weimar, was a member of a bourgeois German nationalist elite in the town of Goethe and Schiller, a town that had also honoured Nietzsche and Liszt but had already become German nationalist, anti-democratic and in many ways nationalist-anti-Semitic prior to the First World War. This elite saw in the Weimar Republic its arch-enemy. It was in Weimar of all places that the National Assembly spent months discussing and finally determining the new democratic constitution from February 1919 onwards; this only intensified its rejection by the traditional elites and played a large role in shaping Baldur von Schirachs authoritarian and extremely nationalist understanding of politics. Yearning for a return to the monarchy was soon replaced by the search for a new, strong nationalist dictatorship from 192526 onwards, Hitler became a saviour figure for the Schirachs.

While Baldur von Schirach briefly met Hitler twice in 1925, he soon came to project a particular reverence onto the former private, who had not been an officer but had nevertheless received the Iron Cross First Class. This veneration of Hitler as a veteran of the First World War clearly reflects Schirachs formative experiences growing up in a family of officers. He joined various anti-democratic and nationalist youth defence groups before becoming a member of the NSDAP and the SA at the age of eighteen. His father, formerly the cavalry captain ( Rittmeister ) of a prestigious regiment of the imperial Guards Cuirassiers in Berlin, soon followed him in joining the NSDAP and becoming a founding member of the anti-Semitic Militant League for German Culture ( Kampfbund fr Deutsche Kultur ).

After a meteoric rise in the National Socialist German Students League ( Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund ) from 1927 onwards, Baldur von Schirach became a member of Hitlers inner circle. In 1931 he advanced to Reichsjugendfhrer , directly under the highest level of SA leadership. He married Henriette, the daughter of Hitlers wealthy personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, thereby cementing an even closer connection to the Fhrer. He artfully made use of his propaganda skills, landing his first great marketing hit with the pictorial volume Hitler wie ihn keiner kennt ( Hitler as No One Knows Him ), which he edited together with his father-in-law: Schirach made Hitler familiar to both a bourgeois and a more common public. He became the youngest member of the Reichstag in 1931, the NSDAP being the parliamentary group with the highest proportion of aristocrats, and surprised Hitler with a Reich Youth Party Congress in Potsdam attended by 70,000 enthusiastic participants.