Baldur von Schirach

Reich Youth Leader

Reichsjugendführer

Baldur von Schirach was born in Berlin on the 9 March 1907, the son of an aristocratic German father and an American mother whose ancestors included two signatories of the Declaration of Independence. On his father’s side descended from an officers’ family with artistic tendencies and a cosmopolitan background, Baldur grew up in a pampered, well-to-do environment.

One of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, he entered the party in 1924 while attending the University of Munich, where he briefly studied German folklore and art history, he was soon a member of its innermost circle, despite his youth.

Von Schirach became a convinced anti-Semite after reading Henry Ford’s The International Jew and writings by Houston S. Chamberlain and Adolf Bartels. The aristocratic von Schirach was also a militant opponent of Christianity and of his own caste.

Throwing himself body and soul into organising high school and university students for the Nazi Party, von Schirach proved himself an outstanding organiser and propagandist of National Socialism.

With his infectious enthusiasm and power to inspire youth with the ideals of comradeship, sacrifice, courage and honour, von Schirach was highly regarded by Hitler who also appreciated his blind devotion as expressed in hero-worshipping verses and sycophantic sayings.

In 1929 von Schirach was put in charge of the National Socialist German Students League and two years later he was appointed Reich Youth Leader of the NSDAP, a post he held until 1940.

In 1933 he organised the gigantic youth march in Potsdam, in which wave upon wave of youngsters greeted Hitler. Already before the Nazi seizure of power, von Schirach ceaseless propaganda, his idealism and organisational flair for mobilising youth had succeeded in winning over hundreds of thousands of young Germans to Hitler’s cause.

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The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

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