Hitler's Henchmen (10/12) : Schirach - The Corrupter of Youth
For educational purposes
Dubbed the 'Poet Laureate of the Nazi Party' for his fawning poems about Hitler, Baldur von Schirach corrupted a generation of German youth with his twisted Aryan ideals and went on to supervise the 'deportation of minors' during the Nazi's reign of terror.
Like no other, Schirach abused the gullible and trusting nature of young people to support Germany's dictatorship.
As leader of the Nazi Youth League, Baldur von Schirach recruited Hitlerjugend, young people who were systematically transformed into obedient and easily manipulated child soldiers for the Third Reich.
He acted as the High Priest of the National Socialist faith and was worshiped as a national hero.
Dubbed the 'Poet Laureate of the Nazi Party' for his fawning poems about Hitler, Baldur von Schirach corrupted a generation of German youth with his twisted Aryan ideals and went on to supervise the 'deportation of minors' during the Nazi's reign of terror.
Like no other, Schirach abused the gullible and trusting nature of young people to support Germany's dictatorship.
As leader of the Nazi Youth League, Baldur von Schirach recruited Hitlerjugend, young people who were systematically transformed into obedient and easily manipulated child soldiers for the Third Reich.
He acted as the High Priest of the National Socialist faith and was worshiped as a national hero.
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LearningTranscript
00:00This youth, they don't learn anything else than to speak German, to speak German.
00:10And, if you, these young people, come into our organizations in the next ten years,
00:17then you will come from a young people into this youth.
00:20Then we will immediately take you to the party or to the labor front, to the USA or to the USSR.
00:26And, if you don't become a national solidary there yet,
00:32then you will come into the labor service.
00:35And what else should be treated on class, consciousness or status quo,
00:41that will be taken over by the Wehrmacht for further treatment.
00:46And you will not be free your whole life.
00:56According to your orders, my Führer,
01:00there is a youth here, a youth who knows no class and no status quo.
01:26Hitler's Youth Corps
01:52From their childhood on, they've learned to keep pace,
01:59to march in step and to fall into line.
02:04For weeks, these boys have been marching.
02:07They've come from every corner of the country.
02:14They see themselves as the bearers of hope, but bear only flags.
02:19They feel cold and follow a cold that lures them with the prospect of a future.
02:28Their destination, the big party rally in Nuremberg, put on for his Führer by the youth leader.
02:34The young are sworn to loyalty to Hitler,
02:38because Baldur von Schirach believes in him himself.
02:44According to you, the young generation of our people is forming,
02:49because they are taking the highest degree of selflessness of this nation.
02:56Does this youth also want to be selfless?
03:00There was a new slogan in the camp every day.
03:04A boy introduced it. They all came from Schirach.
03:08Let's see if I can put it together.
03:11Young people are strong, silent and loyal.
03:16Young people are comrades.
03:19The highest of young people is honor.
03:23And we thought that was great.
03:33Baldur von Schirach was always oriented towards form,
03:37rather than the form.
03:40He could bend the young material that was available to him as he needed it.
03:55And this is where the new came from, and what Schirach wanted to achieve.
04:00This equality, this expropriation of the German youth,
04:06the destruction of his individuality.
04:10That was Schirach's program, and he achieved it.
04:15A faith finds us, a confession obliges us, a Führer commands.
04:24Through his beloved Führer, he received instructions
04:30on what direction the youth should go.
04:33And then he went his own way.
04:36In our eyes, the German youth of the future must be
04:41strong and brave.
04:44Sharp as a dog, tough as leather and hard as a rock.
04:49That was not the Baldur von Schirach.
04:52Those words did not apply to Baldur von Schirach.
04:56He was not the kind of man you would generally find in our education,
05:00tough, hard, in the field, and fighting.
05:05We were Kerniger.
05:07Schirach was a man who put his words very well.
05:10But he was not the youth leader you could go through thick and thin with,
05:15or with whom you could stand on horseback,
05:18to use this expression.
05:22He was a man who went at a distance,
05:25who walked through the camp,
05:29and who always had a certain distance.
05:32An eloquent and cultured man, who quoted from Goethe,
05:36and elevated Mein Kampf to the status of the Bible.
05:41An athlete who loved the muses and preached asceticism.
05:46A tribune of the people from an aristocratic home.
05:55Brought up in the shadow of the First World War,
05:58too young to fight, yet old enough to become infected with the heady spirit of patriotism.
06:03All his life he bemoaned missing the front line experience.
06:11With the two million dead of the great war,
06:16we know what we do and what we create
06:22is ultimately no other than the fulfillment of your will and your longing.
06:31The end of the war, a time of change.
06:34The new republic bore the name of Weimar, the Schirach's hometown,
06:38but they felt estranged from it.
06:41Baldur's father was dismissed as director of the Weimar Court Theatre,
06:45renamed the National Theatre.
06:47Anyone who condemned the present was welcome at the Schirach's.
06:53This travelling preacher, who proclaimed himself a saviour,
06:57was brought into the house by the young Baldur.
07:00Hitler's militant aura so impressed the insecure boy,
07:03that in his attic room he dedicated a lyrical declaration of love to him.
07:10I was like a leaf that was floating free.
07:13Now you are my home and you are my tree.
07:17In you I believe you are the nation.
07:21In her I believe, for you are her son.
07:26The new father figure, an agitator who knew how to woo people.
07:56Will this Germany ever have a party?
08:01These passions did not come to Schirach with his mother's milk.
08:05She was American, his native tongue English.
08:08On a journey to the new world, he was faced with a choice.
08:13My mother would have liked it very much if I had stayed in America and worked there,
08:19in the bank of my great-uncle or maybe even in politics.
08:25But I did her a favor and came back.
08:30Home to the guiding light of his future career.
08:33You're studying with me, decreed Hitler.
08:36He didn't need an academic with a degree,
08:39but a leader of students who could rally them under the swastika.
08:46The patrician's son joined the party rank and file.
08:50His propaganda skills brought him to prominence.
08:53In 1931, the 24-year-old was made Reich Youth Leader
08:57and put in command of the party's rising generation.
09:02It was his ambition to lick them into shape.
09:07But his mentor was skeptical.
09:10He didn't see the use of adolescence.
09:13They couldn't vote and were hard to keep in line.
09:18Schirach took a different view.
09:21With missionary zeal, the youth leader tackled the task of recruitment.
09:48This political boy scout's club, united only by the name of Hitler,
09:53didn't cut much of a figure yet.
09:56But Schirach believed that the Hitler youth would be his path to power.
10:05Things were looking up in his private life, too.
10:08A first home in the Alps as a wedding present.
10:11Now, the young bridegroom belonged to the intimate circle of his mentor.
10:17The master's courtiers.
10:19Von Schirach's wife, Henrietta,
10:21was the daughter of Hitler's personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann,
10:25who turned the seducer's poses into icons.
10:34Just like his role model, the youth leader practiced the tools of demagogy.
10:38At his desk, he worked on a draft of a speech
10:41to be given before the entire Hitler youth.
10:45Don't steal ideas or Führer.
10:58It was his idea to gather every available member of the Hitler youth
11:02for a mass rally in Potsdam in 1932.
11:05Proudly, the disciple showed off his handiwork to his master.
11:09He wanted to impress him
11:11with a body of 70,000 supporters and a strong speech.
11:28Threats turned to deeds when Hitler's troops ruled the streets.
11:34Anyone who refused to go along was persecuted or coerced into allegiance.
11:40Schirach wanted supremacy for his foot soldiers, too,
11:43with terror, tactics and tricks.
11:59For this, he had his accomplices.
12:02Hitler's loyal Reich Bishop, Müller,
12:04willingly delivered evangelical youth.
12:09I have been guided by the spirit of trust and camaraderie.
12:15I am certain that the evangelical youth and Hitler's youth
12:20will be carried by the same spirit.
12:24Every other youth association also had to yield to Schirach's grab for power.
12:29Their most attractive features were copied by the Hitler youth
12:32for its own repertoire of seductive ploys.
12:39The march
13:02What fascinated me was the march.
13:08With flags and drums and fanfares.
13:11But those were also the home evenings and the song evenings.
13:20The camaraderie was great there.
13:23Everyone was there for the other.
13:25And when I came to school and told them about my service,
13:28they said, man, we have to go there, too.
13:31The uniform
13:37The uniform was a point.
13:40It was a time when uniforms were in high demand.
13:44And when you had a uniform as a young man,
13:47it had a certain charm.
13:50The camp
13:56I think that this camp, singing songs,
14:00hiking and marching together,
14:03and wearing uniforms, above all,
14:05I think that all of this had such a strong power
14:11that even if someone had the feeling,
14:15well, this matter is not very kosher,
14:18he was drawn to it.
14:20Because it was impossible for a young man
14:23to see the dimensions that were actually behind it.
14:44You are Germany's future.
14:47Because you are Germany.
14:50You are our people.
14:53You are not the hope,
14:56but you must be the fulfillment of what we have.
15:00Of course, young people are impressed when they are told
15:03that they are the future, they are decisive.
15:06The old people would disappear one day anyway.
15:18The Versifier enthused about noble, independent youth.
15:23Did he know that this deceptive view disguised another goal?
15:31Chirac's boys were meant to be tough and daring,
15:36and to prove themselves in constant competition.
15:40Whatever they did in their leisure time,
15:43there was no getting away from the Hitler youth.
15:50The same was true for the girls.
15:52In the BDM, the League of German Girls,
15:55they rehearsed their roles and learned what was expected of them.
16:14It was their duty, the youth leader told them,
16:17to match the male ideal of beauty.
16:20They too were supposed to fit in with the harmony of the state.
16:24Chirac had met his target.
16:26In Hitler's Reich, nothing was so much under government control as youth.
16:43The largest youth foundation in the world.
16:47I hereby announce the voluntary admission
16:53of 917,445 young people on the 20th of April this year.
17:06Heil, young people!
17:08Heil, young people!
17:12Chirac always said it was voluntary, nobody was forced.
17:17But there was no such thing as voluntary admission.
17:21A person, a child, who would have to leave school,
17:25would have been excluded.
17:27There would have been disadvantages in choosing a school
17:31and later in choosing a profession.
17:38There was a lot of pressure.
17:42To force people to say,
17:44everything is closed in the Hitler Youth.
17:49In my case, it was based on the fact
17:52that I couldn't do my Abitur if I didn't want to go to the Hitler Youth.
17:59At whose feet he laid this offering of millions,
18:02Hitler's disciple left no doubt.
18:08If I may call myself the leader of all German youth,
18:13I know that I am nothing but the hand of the faithful.
18:19I want to be nothing but the tool
18:23by which the greatest German forms his youth.
18:31The leader was everywhere, Hitler was everywhere,
18:34his pictures were everywhere.
18:36He saved Germany from everything possible.
18:39We were part of it.
18:41We were a young people in the Hitler Youth,
18:44everything in all, religious dissension.
18:47All that was missing was praying.
18:50But there was still a prayer, as I said at the time,
18:55an NS prayer.
18:58There was.
18:59Protector Hermann, strong hand,
19:01our people and fatherland.
19:03Let our leader's father shine a light and grace.
19:08There was this religious moment.
19:12With religion comes ritual.
19:15Not far from Gdańsk, the Marienburg,
19:18holy site of mythical Germanic worship.
19:21Year after year it was the setting for a ritualistic spectacle.
19:26Within the medieval walls,
19:28the novices of the Hitler Youth were ceremoniously sworn in.
19:36Flags, flames and fanfares
19:39produced the spine-tingling atmosphere of an order under oath.
19:45The theatre director's son knew how to stage awe-inspiring ceremonies.
19:50The theatre director's son knew how to stage awe-inspiring ceremonies.
20:20This rule was the cornerstone of Chirac's training programme.
20:31This rule was the cornerstone of Chirac's training programme.
20:36The edifice of National Socialist Youth
20:39is built on the foundations of discipline and obedience.
20:42Therefore, a member of the Hitler Youth
20:45will unquestioningly accept his Führer's orders,
20:49even if they are directed against himself.
21:14The aim was to forge a group that was available,
21:18with whom the Führer could do what he wanted,
21:21and use them in the way he wanted.
21:25In other words, to form an obedient people.
21:44The order is sacred.
21:46You don't have to think about it,
21:49but you have to carry it out.
21:53Sometimes I hear that this or that person
21:56took part in the executions.
22:01Then I ask myself,
22:03you could have been an officer and come to the operation,
22:07and you would have been ordered to do it.
22:11Today, in retrospect,
22:13it would have been cruel if I had done it.
22:16But I would have probably executed him.
22:20That's how you were trained over the years.
22:44He made a pact with Schirach.
22:46The SS death's head formations
22:48could recruit directly from Hitler Youth patrols.
22:57The boys considered promotion into Himmler's elite troop
23:00a great honor.
23:01Yet, in their black uniforms,
23:03they were trained to be willing executioners,
23:06with terrible consequences.
23:13These two boys were assigned to the SS,
23:16and they were part of the concentration camp in Auschwitz.
23:20These two Hitler Youth boys
23:22were the biggest killers on this transport,
23:26which I was on.
23:27They went behind,
23:29had their machine guns,
23:31and the password was,
23:33whoever stayed behind would be shot.
23:35And they shot those who stayed behind.
23:39In large numbers.
23:41Who created this spirit?
23:46Who built up these barriers
23:48to kill Jews?
23:50Because they are so evil,
23:52and because the whole world hates them.
23:55Who was it?
23:57Did Baldur von Schirach prevent this
23:59and say, no, no, no?
24:01Schirach was openly anti-Semitic,
24:03but brute force was repugnant to the cultured man.
24:06I described the events of November 9th and 10th
24:10as a cultural disgrace.
24:13And I also spoke of a criminal action.
24:18But that could not exercise the evil
24:21he had helped conjure up.
24:23Fire!
24:25A word of eternal worth for a race.
24:28For us, there was only one ideal race.
24:32That was the Germanic race.
24:34We all did not look like Germans.
24:37I was not blond either.
24:39But the Germanic race was the leading race.
24:43And the Jew was basically
24:45only presented to us as an ugly,
24:47disgusting subhuman being.
24:52The youth was drawn into the swamp of anti-Semitism.
24:56All these anti-Semitic slogans and tendencies,
25:00from Sau-Jews to I-don't-know-what.
25:03That did not go unnoticed by Hitler's youth.
25:07Schirach could not have protected them
25:10even if he wanted to.
25:16The seeds of his training were ripening
25:18in another field as well.
25:20What began as an adventure in the holiday camps
25:23and training sessions of the Hitler youth
25:25would bear fruit later when the game turned serious.
25:33Then you already had a certain role model.
25:36Like the boy who went to the infantry
25:38could already move around in the terrain.
25:40He already knew how to lift a bullet hole in the liege.
25:43For example.
25:44Lift a bullet hole in the liege
25:46where you can then duck in
25:49when there is grenade fire.
25:51That was practiced by the Hitler youth.
25:53They were taught everything
25:55a future soldier needed to know.
25:59Fitness for military service
26:01was the slogan that their youth leader
26:03impressed upon them.
26:05He watched over their apprenticeship himself.
26:31Just like real soldiers.
27:02Part of the doctrine learnt in the Hitler youth
27:04was the cult of the martyr.
27:06The death of young Herbert Norkus
27:08said to have been killed by communists
27:10took on the aura of legend under Schirach.
27:16The seductive power of the big screen.
27:31Is it also forbidden to go forward when it is closed?
27:37Yes?
27:40Adolf Hitler,
27:42we are ready, as always,
27:46to fight for you
27:48to the end.
27:51There is no Hitler youth
27:55under the sun
27:57who is not ready to die.
28:00But only in a film can you die as heroically as this
28:03with Schirach's hymn on your lips.
28:10Our flag flutters in the wind.
28:17Our flag flutters in the wind.
28:21For the future we are ready.
28:25It was a shining example for us.
28:28Herbert Norkus was finally ready
28:32until the very last moment.
28:35For his beloved Führer, he even died.
28:38And the whole thing had a certain
28:41mystical significance.
28:54The flag is higher than death.
28:56So it was a call for the youth to sacrifice their lives for the flag.
29:00And can there be a bigger crime against a youth like this?
29:04And it was called upon 12, 13 year old boys.
29:10How to practice what a master wants to become.
29:14That's being the purpose of this defense training.
29:18Could all this have escaped Hitler's youth leader?
29:43If you want peace, prepare for war.
29:47I never thought of an attack on other peoples
29:50even in a dream.
30:08With the invasion of Poland, the war games were played in earnest.
30:11Almost all the Hitler youth leaders exchanged their uniforms for field grey.
30:17Schirach's club supplied enthusiastic recruits for the Wehrmacht.
30:27The seeds of military glorification now bore fruit.
30:41Many of them were easily or unconsciously
30:45stormed forward.
30:48And many of them, I would almost say, in a pure way.
30:52It was shocking.
30:55The people who stood very close to us
30:58were out for 4, 6, 8 weeks.
31:01And then the death declaration came.
31:12The whole of Germany believes in you.
31:15Whoever falls out of your ranks
31:18dies only to be immortal.
31:42The gaps created by the war
31:45had to be filled by the boys and girls of the Hitler youth
31:48on the home front too.
31:51He also felt an obligation
31:54and had his photo taken first.
31:57Rather than be left the last Hitler youth leader
32:00out of army uniform,
32:03he volunteered with his own private quarters
32:06and personal training.
32:09He was a member of the Hitler Youth League
32:12and was a member of the Hitler Youth League
32:15and was a member of the Hitler Youth League
32:18He volunteered with his own private quarters
32:21and personal training officer, naturally.
32:24Now he could acquire first hand
32:27the much lauded front line experience.
32:34His baptism of fire came with the war against France.
32:37But after two months,
32:40he'd hardly been promoted to second lieutenant
32:43when Hitler summoned his protégé to his headquarters.
32:48In the dictator's eyes,
32:51Chirac had outgrown the uniform of the Hitler youth.
33:18Hitler's governor in Vienna.
33:21A task which appealed to Chirac's love of art
33:24as much as to his love of power.
33:38Hitler's fellow countrymen still greeted the victor
33:41with enthusiasm.
33:49But the ruthless power politics of his envoys
33:52was causing growing bitterness in Vienna.
33:59Chirac was supposed to calm the troubled waters.
34:19He was a rather drunk, brutal, and coarse man.
34:22He was a rather drunk, brutal, and coarse man.
34:25They didn't like him at all and didn't want him.
34:28So they expected that with Chirac
34:31a new and more reasonable economy would begin in Vienna.
34:34a new and more reasonable economy would begin in Vienna.
34:41Vienna was beginning to shine again.
34:44And all the people who hang on this city, whether they are now born in their walls or not,
34:52they may rightly be filled with a new sense of self.
34:57And displayed magnificently, of course.
35:02At the Führer, one had the feeling that he wanted to sunbathe a little in the city of Vienna.
35:10And that he had a very good care for the intense cultural life in Vienna.
35:16And he always wanted to communicate with artists and the like.
35:21In this sense, he was definitely ahead of many other Nazi leaders and leaders.
35:31The artistic freedom promised by Hitler's governor seemed to promise a political easing as well.
36:02While under Chirac's regency, the cultural life of the city on the Danube blossomed afresh,
36:12from 1941, the deportation trains rolled eastwards with eerie efficiency.
36:2260,000 Viennese Jews were deported to the West,
36:2660,000 Viennese Jews were transported to the death camps during Chirac's time in office.
36:56A friend of mine was deported to Poland with his parents in 1941.
37:06His parents were killed, and he himself went back to Vienna,
37:12black, and told me,
37:16if you are to be brought back, you'd better drown.
37:20They will kill you, they will gas you.
37:23My parents also gassed me, and I didn't believe it.
37:27I just didn't believe it, because it's impossible to believe.
37:31Did the Gauleiter also suspect nothing?
37:34Was he indifferent or powerless as regards the fate of the deported Jews?
37:44Chirac also looked away a little.
37:47He didn't realize the extent of it.
37:50But basically, the art and the artists were more important to him
37:55than any antisemitic thoughts.
38:12There is no task of the Reich
38:16that Vienna will not fulfill.
38:20It was a concern of Mr. Balder of Chirac.
38:24Vienna should become a Jewish Rhine.
38:26He wanted to give this pearl, as Mr. Hitler called it,
38:29he wanted to give it the right shape.
38:31He said this at his speech in Vienna on the 13th of March.
38:34He wanted to offer this pearl to the Führer of the Jewish Rhine
38:39to give it a special pleasure.
38:47Sometimes people say to me,
38:49how can you banish here Israel Loewenstein to the ghetto in the east?
38:53To a man who has bought over a hundred German books
38:57and should be classed as an upholder of German civilization,
39:01it is a dreadful punishment.
39:04To this I must reply, to me it would be no punishment
39:08to be deported from an alien country
39:11to live elsewhere with German compatriots
39:14in a purely German community.
39:16I would do everything in my power to join a transport.
39:26Cynicism or naivety?
39:28Did the influential governor really only watch helplessly
39:31as people were deported en masse from his city?
39:37Did Hitler's confidant not know of the extermination plans
39:40as he always protested?
39:45Recently discovered documents shed a slightly different light on his role.
39:58In October 1940, Schirach complained to Hitler across the table
40:03that he still had over 50,000 Jews in Vienna
40:06who had to be taken off his hands.
40:11In March 1941, the Gauleiter demanded of Himmler
40:15that he immediately recommends the deportations
40:18which had been briefly suspended.
40:21In December 1941, Hitler revealed his plans
40:24to exterminate the Jews of Europe
40:27to all the Gauleiters and Reichsleiters.
40:30His henchmen then knew what Hitler only dared hint at in public.
40:35We are well aware that this war could only end
40:40if either the Germanic peoples are exterminated
40:43or the Jews disappear from Europe.
40:47In June 1942, Schirach announced at a Labour Front parade,
40:52By autumn we shall be celebrating the festival of a Jew-free Vienna.
40:58In the last 50 years of 1933, thousands, no, tens of thousands of Gauleiters came to Vienna.
41:11And they almost managed to bring Vienna down
41:14to the dirtiest and dirtiest capital in the world.
41:18The National Socialist Administration,
41:21led by the Reichsleiter Waldo von Schirach,
41:24managed to turn the Danube into a German city again.
41:29All important jobs and key positions have been cleared,
41:32are clean and flourishing again.
41:35What that meant, only very few of Vienna's 180,000 Jews survived to tell.
41:43There were 2,500 of us.
41:46We had to line up in a row.
41:49There was an SS man standing there.
41:52We had to go up to him and he just did this.
41:54Left, right, left, right.
41:57We didn't even know what left and right meant.
42:01Unfortunately, my brother went left and I went right.
42:04And of the 2,500, 500 survived.
42:09That means over 16 years and under 50 years.
42:14Everything else was dead in half an hour.
42:23When it was too late, the Gauleiter discovered scruples.
42:28The familiar drive to the Berghof of his former idol was robbed of its charm.
42:36Gradually, the suspicion grew in Schirach that he was serving a madman.
42:40He didn't dare speak his mind.
42:45But his wife, who had known Hitler since she was a child,
42:49tried to appeal to the dictator's conscience.
43:14She was terribly shocked.
43:16The German officers told me,
43:19if you go back to Hitler, tell him what he's doing here in Holland.
43:23It's madness.
43:25We turned friendly Dutchmen into enemies.
43:28We lead ourselves here, we lock people up.
43:30I was so horrified. I really didn't know.
43:33I just experienced that we were doing such terrible things
43:37and that the soldiers were ashamed.
43:42It was a terrible fight.
43:47The Fuhrer got up and said something like,
43:52don't get mixed up in things you don't understand.
43:57And he withdrew.
43:59He left in the evening.
44:02Since then, Mrs von Schirach has never been invited to the Berghof.
44:07Her husband, too, lost favour with his former mentor.
44:11Encouraged by Schirach's rivals,
44:13the dictator withdrew his confidence in the vacillating governor,
44:16but didn't dismiss him.
44:23Only the grim condition of the war prevented Schirach's recall.
44:27The youth leader had to remain an idol for a whole generation.
44:31On all fronts, the young had to stick their necks out
44:33for a Reich that was doomed to destruction.
44:48Youths ready for sacrifice, mere stopgaps.
45:04At the end of the war, the Hitler Youth Division was established.
45:08These were boys who were just 16, 17 years old,
45:11who had very little military training.
45:14And the boys actually let themselves be shot dead in their bullet holes.
45:21They weren't even aware that the war had been lost for a long time.
45:25The boys sacrificed themselves for Germany, for nothing.
45:34Illusions. They knew nothing else.
45:53Their enthusiasm was fired by a solemnity that defied reality.
46:04This look now forward and fight with honour to the end.
46:12Schirach's protégé finished what his predecessor had started.
46:19The real freedom of war of this youth
46:22will be alive in the fighting morale on the battlefield.
46:34The youths are free.
46:38And the freedom for us is eternity.
46:42Yes, the freedom is for us.
46:47I feel pain about all that has been destroyed,
46:53which was an ideal.
46:57And anger that we were used in hopeless situations,
47:06actually only to prolong Hitler's life for a few days.
47:11I pledge my special trust to the German youth,
47:15because nothing more can a people do than fight, fight, fight,
47:20and sacrifice all together.
47:24The battle for Berlin. The last reserves were children.
47:29I didn't know what it was like in Berlin,
47:32and how the youth were used there,
47:35and I didn't have a chance to intervene.
47:38But I can't understand, looking back,
47:41that children are sent into battle.
47:44I think it's not justifiable, biologically.
47:49Cheap talk from an educator who had constantly preached to children
47:53the spirit of sacrifice and the readiness to die.
47:59Vienna, the front line.
48:01Here, Chirac still had some influence.
48:29The Soviet advance could not be stopped.
48:32To the last, the Gauleiter did not dare resist Hitler's orders
48:36to hold out to the end.
48:39When Vienna could no longer be held,
48:42he left his last command post in the cellar of the Hofburg
48:46and sought shelter in the idyllic Tyrolean countryside.
48:50In this house, Chirac went underground
48:53as the crime writer Richard Falk,
48:56until the Allies arrested him.
49:00Nuremberg, the destroyed cult town of the Nazis.
49:04Now the victors were sitting here in judgment.
49:11The Germans were coming.
49:14The victors were sitting here in judgment.
49:25Baldur von Chirac shared the dock with the other henchmen
49:28who always relegated him to the second row.
49:35Like them, he rejected the victors' tribunal.
49:45But when in the courtroom,
49:48pictures of the horror silenced every excuse,
49:51Chirac finally brought himself to an admission of guilt.
50:14That is all I can say about my release.
50:21They had believed too.
50:25They had given their youth.
50:35Many gave their lives.
50:38Their innocence.
51:09Twenty years in Spandau.
51:12Atonement for sanctioning the Jewish deportations.
51:16The guilt to which he had admitted remained unatoned.
51:20The abuse of a whole generation.
51:38To be continued...
52:08To be continued...