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Baldur Benedikt von Schirach (9 May 1907 – 8 August 1974) was a Nazi youth leader later convicted of being a war criminal. Schirach was the head of the Hitler-Jugend (HJ, Hitler Youth) and Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter ("Reich Governor") of Vienna.

Early life

Schirach was born in Berlin, the youngest of four children of theatre director Rittmeister Carl Baily Norris von Schirach (1873 - 1948) and his American wife Emma Middleton Lynah Tillou (1872 - 1944). Through his mother, Schirach descended from two signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence. English was in fact the first language which he learned at home and he was not able to speak German until the age of five. He had two sisters, Viktoria and Rosalind von Schirach, and a brother Karl Benedict von Schirach who committed suicide in 1919, aged 19.

On 31 March 1932 von Schirach married 19-year-old Henriette Hoffmann, the daughter of Heinrich Hoffmann, Adolf Hitler's personal photographer and close friend. The conditions of Hoffmann's professional relationship with Hitler has been questioned in various times before, namely by Otto Strasser who claimed that the sole copyrights for Hitler photographs were granted to Hoffmann in order for him to remain acquiescent regarding Hitler's extra-marital involvement with his daughter, something which he initially demanded an explanation for in 1926. Schirach accordingly is being explained as "a young effeminate aristocrat" who Hitler bestowed with the HJ position. Through this relationship von Schirach was part of Hitler's inner circle. The young couple were appreciated guests at Hitler's "Berghof". Henriette von Schirach gave birth to four children: Angelika Benedikta von Schirach (born 1933), Klaus von Schirach (born 1935), Robert von Schirach (1938) and Richard von Schirach (born 1942).

Military career

Schirach joined a Wehrjugendgruppe (military cadet group) at the age of 10 and became a member of the NSDAP in 1925. He was soon transferred to Munich and in 1929 became leader of the Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Studentenbund (NSDStB, National Socialist German Students' League). In 1931 he was a Reichsjugendführer (youth leader) in the NSDAP and in 1933 he was made head of the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) and given an SA rank of Gruppenführer. He was made a state secretary in 1936.

In 1940 he organized the evacuation of 5 million children from cities threatened by Allied bombing. Later that year, he joined the army and volunteered for service in France, where he was awarded the Iron Cross before being recalled. Schirach lost control of the Hitler Youth to Artur Axmann, and was appointed Governor ("Gauleiter" or "Reichsstatthalter") of the Reichsgau Vienna, a post in which he remained until the end of the war. Over the next few years Schirach was responsible for sending Jews from Vienna to Nazi concentration camps in Poland. During his tenure 185,000 Jews were deported from Vienna to Poland, and in a speech on 15 September 1942 he mentioned their deportation as a "contribution to European culture." Later during the war von Schirach pleaded for a moderate treatment of the eastern European peoples and criticized the conditions in which Jews were being deported. He fell into disfavor in 1943, but remained at his post.

Schirach was notoriously anxious about air raids. He had the cellars of the Hofburg Imperial Palace in the Vienna city center refurbished and adapted as a bomb shelter, and the lower level of the extensive subterranean Vienna air defence coordination center in the forests to the West of Vienna held personal facilities for him as well. The Viennese promptly dubbed this C&C center Schirach-Bunker.

Trial and conviction

Schirach surrendered in 1945 and was one of the officials put on trial at Nuremberg. At the trial Schirach was one of only two men to denounce Hitler (the other was Albert Speer). He said that he did not know about the extermination camps. He also provided evidence that he had protested to Martin Bormann about the inhumane treatment of the Jews. Also, it was revealed by Schirach at Nuremberg that the roots of his anti-Semitism could be found in the readings of Henry Ford's The International Jew. He was found guilty, on 1 October 1946, of crimes against humanity for his deportation of the Viennese Jews. He was sentenced and served 20 years as a prisoner in Spandau Prison.

On 20 July 1949 his wife Henriette von Schirach (3 February 1913 - 27 January 1992) divorced him while he was in prison.

He was released on 30 September 1966, and retired quietly to southern Germany. He published his memoirs, Ich glaubte an Hitler ("I believed in Hitler") and died on 8 August 1974 in Kröv.