Baldur von Schirach - Biography

Nazi politician, born in Berlin, Germany. He studied at the University of Munich, became a party member in 1925, a member of the Reichstag (1932), and founded and organized the Hitler Youth (1933), of which he was leader until his appointment as Gauleiter of Vienna in 1940. Captured in Austria in 1945 and tried before the Nuremberg Tribunal, he was found guilty of participating in the mass deportation of Jews, and was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment. He was released from Spandau prison in 1966.

Baldur Benedikt von Schirach (May 9, 1907 – August 8, 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 ("Imperial Governor") of Vienna.

Biography

Schirach was born in Weimar, the final of four children of theatre director Rittmeister Carl Benno von Schirach (1873 - 1948) and his American wife Emma Middleton Lynah Tillou (1872 - 1944). Through his mother, Schirach claimed descent from two signatories of the American Declaration of Independence. He had two sisters, Viktoria and Rosalind von Schirach, and a brother Karl Benedict von Schirach who committed suicide in 1919 aged 19.

On March 31, 1932 von Schirach married 19-year-old Henriette Hoffmann (called Henny). Through this relationship von Schirach was part of Hitler's inner circle. Henriette von Schirach gave birth to four children: Angelika Benedikta von Schirach (born 1933), Klaus von Schirach, Robert von Schirach and Richard von Schirach (born 1942).

Schirach joined a Wehrjugendgruppe (military cadet group) at the age of ten and became a member of the NSDAP in 1925. 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 a SA rank of Gruppenführer. 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 moving Jews from Vienna to concentration camps in Poland. 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.

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).

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