Henriette von Schirach

Henriette Hoffmann was the eldest child of Adolf Hitler's personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann and was born to his first wife, Therese "Lelly" Baumann (1886–1928), a former singer and actress.

Henriette "Henny" von Schirach (née Hoffmann; 2 February 1913 – 18 January 1992) was a German writer and wife of Baldur von Schirach, former Reichsjugendführer (Reich Youth Leader) and Gauleiter in Vienna.

Henriette von Schirach is one of the few people known to have challenged Adolf Hitler personally about the Holocaust.

Along with her brother Heinrich Jr ("Heini" ) (1916–1988), she spent her childhood in Schwabing.

Her house was an early Nazi stronghold, and in 1920 her father, a nationalist and anti-Semitic German Workers' Party (DAP) member joined its successor, the Nazi Party.

Henriette was nine years of age when she first met Hitler, who frequently came to the Hoffmann house for dinner.

Hitler may have made a pass at her when she was 17:

From 1923 onwards, her father became the personal photographer of Hitler and made millions selling images of Hitler.

In 1931, Henriette met Baldur von Schirach, the former leader of the Nazi Student League and the youngest of Hitler's entourage.

The couple married on 31 March 1932 in Munich, with Adolf Hitler and Ernst Röhm as witnesses.

The reception took place in Hitler's private apartment.

Henriette gave birth to four children: Angelika Benedicta (born 1933), Klaus (born 1935), Robert Benedict Wolf (1938–1980), and Richard (1942–2023).

Henriette identified herself with the goals of her husband, who held sole control over the educational system of the German Reich.

He was appointed by Hitler as Gauleiter and Reich Governor of Reichsgau Wien, and moved with his family to Vienna.

In 1943, Henriette saw a group of Jewish women deported from Amsterdam.

An SS soldier had offered to sell her valuables stolen from them.

She thought she could speak openly to Hitler, having known him since she was a child.

When she raised the issue during a visit to the Berghof on 24 June 1943, Hitler was enraged: "That's all I need, you coming to me with this sentimental twaddle. What concern are these Jewish women to you?"

The Schirachs left in disgrace, and were never invited to the Berghof again.

There are several versions of this meeting.

But he soon decided to surrender to the Americans, doing so on 4 June 1945.

He was tried and convicted at Nuremberg, being sentenced on 1 October 1946, for crimes against humanity for his deportation of the Viennese Jews.

Henriette was delighted when he was not sentenced to death.

He served 20 years as a prisoner in Spandau Prison.

Henriette was arrested and interned in a women's camp in Bad Tölz.

She was released in spring 1946.

In her 1975 memoir "The Price of Glory", Henriette described Hitler as saying "You're sentimental... what have the Jews in Holland got to do with you? It's all sentimentality, humanity claptrap. You have to learn to hate..."

Her husband Baldur von Schirach described the incident at the Nuremberg trials (although Henriette had already described the incident in public before then): "The silence was icy, and after a short time Hitler merely said, 'This is pure sentimentality.' That was all. No further conversation took place that evening. Hitler retired earlier than usual."

According to Baldur von Schirach, he and Henriette had planned the confrontation to take place over three evenings, beginning with a discussion of Ukraine, with Henriette's protest on the first or second evening, and a discussion of Vienna on the third evening.

According to Hitler's Luftwaffe adjutant Nicolaus von Below, earlier in the day Baldur von Schirach had argued that the war had to be stopped.

Hitler later said, "He knows as well as I do that there is no way out. I might as well shoot myself in the head as think of negotiating peace."

Hitler made it clear he no longer wanted anything to do with Schirach.

In a 1989 BBC documentary "The Fatal Attraction of Adolf Hitler", Henriette recounted what had happened:

In the ZDF documentary Hitler's Henchmen (episode "Schirach, Corrupter of the Youth"), she recounted, "The German officers there said to me, 'When you see Hitler, tell him that what he's doing in Holland is crazy. We've made enemies of the Dutch. We're behaving badly, locking people up.' I was horrified. I hadn't known. I said, 'I've seen that we're doing terrible things and the soldiers are ashamed, and we're...' Then there was a terrible quarrel."

The incident was also recounted by Traudl Junge, Hitler's last private secretary, in her memoir Until the Final Hour and documentaries such as Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary.

Junge said, "The Führer got up, and said something like 'Stupid sentimentality', or 'Don't interfere in things you don't understand.' Then he withdrew and the evening was over."

Henriette von Schirach's father Heinrich Hoffmann was also present, as was Joseph Goebbels, who recorded the incident in his diary.

In Junge's account, the Jews in question were being deported from Vienna, where Baldur von Schirach was Gauleiter.

Nerin E. Gun suggests that Henriette may have deliberately distorted Vienna to Amsterdam, because her husband was responsible for deporting Jews from Vienna.

At the end of the war, Henriette's husband attempted to avoid capture, posing as a writer ("Dr. Richard Falk").