Document Analyst's Report

In September I completed the defense documents for Admiral Raeder and began the documents for Baldur von Schirach, who was the leader of youth organizations (notably Hitler Youth) before the war and then governor of Vienna during the war. I also completed the transcript work for Raeder, skimming the pages for references to documents, both his own defense documents and the prosecution documents that he responded to and the new documents the prosecution offered during cross-examination. The prosecution charged him, as commander of the navy, with complicity in wars of aggression on all the fronts in the war (most implausibly, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor), so the list of documents tracked ended up being 9 pages along. And having passed the 5,000 documents analyzed mark in August, in September I passed the 10,000 page mark in reviewing the transcript (roughly 6000 pages still ahead).

Less than optimistic: Raeder cooperated in Hitler's campaigns in eastern Europe but hoped and (initially) expected that would be the extent of his military agenda. Raeder did not want a broader war. In a meeting with Hitler in 1939 Raeder told him in the event of a war with Britain, all the German navy would be able to do was to "die gloriously."

A micro-resistance: One of Raeder's friends recalled in 1945 that years earlier Raeder had told her that "I say 'Heil Hitler' only to people whom I do not like." Apparently, using the greeting-or not-could serve as a quiet signal among friends.

The lining of the silver cloud: Almost all of Schirach's defense documents concerned Hitler Youth (HJ) and affiliated organizations such as the League of German Girls (BDM), and they were chosen to portray the organization as completely constructive and innocuous. The group's name, however, was Hitler Youth, not German Youth, and some of the documents reflect its place in the regime and the purposes it served:
The extensive HJ sports programs were not only intended to encourage a "sporting way of life," but in the long run to build "a young Sparta."
As early as January 1935 Schirach distanced HJ from "the hikes of dreaming youth of days past," emphasizing instead "the sober ideal of hard work." By 1938 the goal for an HJ member was "to become a labor service man, a soldier, a SA and SS man and an able German worker."
A welfare program for girls began in 1937, to protect their health for the sake of "the future mother." (Their role would to produce the future soldiers, SS men, and workers.)
HJ introduced units for disabled youths in 1935, including the deaf and the blind. But membership was conditional: they had to be "hereditar[il]y healthy," with the disabilities due to accident or illness, not inherited. As we saw in NMT 1 (Medical Case) and NMT 3 (Justice Case), those with incapacitating disabilities would later be targeted for euthanasia and those with less severe but hereditary disabilities would be targeted for sterilization.
Most important, as Schirach said in 1935, while earlier youth movements had been separate from or opposed to governments, HJ "is itself in the State."

Matt Seccombe, 3 October 2023