Julius Streicher

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Julius Streicher
Karl Holz
(acting from 1942, permanent from 1944)
Gauleiter of Nuremberg-Fürth
In office
1 October 1928 – 1 March 1929
LeaderAdolf Hitler
Preceded byOffice established
Succeeded byHimself
Gauleiter of Nordbayern
In office
2 April 1925 – 1 October 1928
LeaderAdolf Hitler
Preceded byOffice established
Succeeded byHimself
Publisher of Der Stürmer
In office
20 April 1923 – 1 February 1945
Personal details
Born(1885-02-12)12 February 1885
Execution by hanging
Political partyNazi Party (1921–1945)
Other political
affiliations		DSP (1918–1921)
Spouses
Kunigunde Roth
​
​
(m. 1913; died 1943)​
Adele Tappe
​
(m. 1945)​
ChildrenLothar
Elmar
Parent(s)Friedrich Streicher
Anna Weiss
Known forPublisher of propaganda
Signature
Executed
Conviction(s)Crimes against humanity
TrialNuremberg trials
Criminal penaltyDeath
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Julius Streicher (12 February 1885 – 16 October 1946) was a member of the

antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine. The publishing firm was financially very successful and made Streicher a multi-millionaire.[1]

After the war, Streicher was convicted of

crimes against humanity at the end of the Nuremberg trials. Specifically, he was found to have continued his vitriolic antisemitic propaganda when he was well aware that Jews were being murdered. For this, he was executed by hanging.[2] Streicher was the first member of the Nazi regime held accountable for inciting genocide
by the Nuremberg Tribunal.

Early life

Streicher was born in Fleinhausen, in the Kingdom of Bavaria, one of nine children of the teacher Friedrich Streicher and his wife Anna (née Weiss). He worked as an elementary school teacher, as his father had. In 1913, Streicher married Kunigunde Roth, a baker's daughter, in Nuremberg. They had two sons, Lothar (born 1915) and Elmar (born 1918).[3]

Streicher joined the

German Army in 1914. For his outstanding combat performance during the First World War, he was awarded the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class, as well as earning a battlefield commission as an officer (lieutenant), despite having several reported instances of poor behaviour in his military record,[4] and at a time when officers were primarily from aristocratic families. Following the end of World War I, Streicher was demobilised and returned to Nuremberg.[5] Upon his return, Streicher took up another teaching position there but something unknown happened in 1919, which turned him into a "radical anti-Semite".[6]

Early politics

Streicher was heavily influenced by the endemic

the view that Jews and Bolsheviks were synonymous, and that they were traitors trying to subject Germany to Communist rule.[9][10] In 1920 Streicher turned to the Deutschsozialistische Partei (German Socialist Party, DSP), a group whose platform was close to that of the Nazi Party, or Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (National Socialist German Workers' Party or NSDAP). The DSP had been created in May 1919 as an initiative of Rudolf von Sebottendorf as a child of the Thule Society,[11][12] and its program was based on the ideas of the mechanical engineer Alfred Brunner (1881–1936);[13][a] in 1919, the party was officially inaugurated in Hanover.[12] Its leading members included Hans Georg Müller, Max Sesselmann and Friedrich Wiesel, the first two editors of the Münchner Beobachter. Julius Streicher founded his local branch in 1919 in Nuremberg.[14]

By the end of 1919, the DSP had branches in

Frankfurt am Main, Dresden, Nuremberg and Munich.[13] Streicher sought to move the German Socialists in a more virulently antisemitic direction – an effort which aroused enough opposition that he left the group and brought his now-substantial following to yet another organisation in 1921, the Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft (German Working Community), which hoped to unite the various antisemitic völkisch movements.[15] Meanwhile, Streicher's rhetoric against the Jews continued to intensify to such a degree that the leadership of the Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft thought he was dangerous and criticized him for his obsessive "hatred of the Jews and foreign races."[16]

Nazism

In 1921, Streicher left the German Socialist Party and joined the Nazi Party,

German Jews, he "must therefore have been fated to become later on, a writer and speaker on racial politics".[20][b] He visited Munich in order to hear Adolf Hitler
speak, an experience that he later said left him transformed. When asked about that moment, Streicher stated:

It was on a winter's day in 1922. I sat unknown in the large hall of the Bürgerbräuhaus ... suspense was in the air. Everyone seemed tense with excitement, with anticipation. Then suddenly a shout. "Hitler is coming!" Thousands of men and women jumped to their feet as if propelled by a mysterious power ... they shouted, "Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!" ... And then he stood on the podium ... Then I knew that in this Adolf Hitler was someone extraordinary ... Here was one who could wrest out of the German spirit and the German heart the power to break the chains of slavery. Yes! Yes! This man spoke as a messenger from heaven at a time when the gates of hell were opening to pull down everything. And when he finally finished, and while the crowd raised the roof with the singing of the "Deutschland" song, I rushed to the stage.[22]

Nearly religiously converted by this speech, Streicher believed from this point forward that, "it was his destiny to serve Hitler".[23]

In May 1923 Streicher founded the sensationalist newspaper Der Stürmer (The Stormer, or, loosely, The Attacker).[24] From the outset, the chief aim of the paper was to promulgate antisemitic propaganda; the first issue had an excerpt that stated, "As long as the Jew is in the German household, we will be Jewish slaves. Therefore he must go."[25] Historian Richard J. Evans describes the newspaper:

[Der Stürmer] rapidly established itself as the place where screaming headlines introduced the most rabid attacks on Jews, full of sexual innuendo, racist caricatures, made-up accusations of ritual murder, and titillating, semi-pornographic stories of Jewish men seducing innocent German girls.[17]

In November 1923, Streicher participated in Hitler's first effort to seize power, the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. Streicher marched with Hitler in the front row of the would-be revolutionaries. As a result of his participation in the attempted Putsch, Streicher was suspended from teaching.[26] His loyalty to the cause earned him Hitler's lifelong trust and protection; in the years that followed, Streicher would be one of the dictator's few true intimates. Streicher, Rudolf Hess, Emil Maurice,[27] and Dietrich Eckart[28] were the only Nazis mentioned in Mein Kampf;[19] in the book, Hitler praised him for subordinating the German Socialist Party to the Nazi Party, a move Hitler believed was essential to the success of the National Socialists.[29] When the Nazi Party was banned in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt, Streicher in early 1924 joined the Greater German People's Community (Großdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft, GVG) a Nazi front organization established by Alfred Rosenberg. Streicher challenged Rosenberg's weak leadership and on 9 July 1924 was elected as Chairman of the GVG in his place.[30] When Hitler was released from his prison sentence at Landsberg am Lech on 20 December 1924 for his role in the Putsch, Streicher was one of the few remaining followers waiting for him at his Munich apartment.[31] Hitler – who would value loyalty and faithfulness very highly throughout his life – remained loyal to Streicher even when he landed in trouble with the Nazi hierarchy. Although Hitler would allow suppression of Der Stürmer at times when it was politically important for the Nazis to be seen as respectable, and although he would admit that Streicher was not a very good administrator, he never withdrew his personal loyalty.[7]

In April 1924, Streicher was elected to the Bavarian

Gau Franken.[34] In the early years of the party's rise, Gauleiter were essentially party functionaries without real power; but in the final years of the Weimar Republic, as the Nazi Party grew, so did their power. Gauleiters such as Streicher wielded immense power and authority under the Nazi state.[35]

Rise of Der Stürmer

Beginning in 1924, Streicher used

marks.[c] Der Stürmer's official slogan, Die Juden sind unser Unglück (the Jews are our misfortune), was deemed non-actionable under German statutes, since it was not a direct incitement to violence.[citation needed
]

Public reading of Der Stürmer, Worms, 1933

Streicher's opponents complained to authorities that Der Stürmer violated a statute against religious offense with his constant promulgation of the "

race, not religion, and that his communications were political speech, and therefore protected by the German constitution.[citation needed
]

Streicher orchestrated his early campaigns against Jews to make the most extreme possible claims, short of violating a law that might get the paper shut down. He insisted in the pages of his newspaper that the Jews had caused the worldwide

ritual murder".[36]

One of Streicher's constant themes was the sexual violation of ethnic German women by Jews, a subject which he used to publish semi-

Holocaust.[41][42][d] To protect himself from accountability, Streicher relied on Hitler's protection. Hitler declared that Der Stürmer was his favorite newspaper, and saw to it that each weekly issue was posted for public reading in special glassed-in display cases known as "Stürmerkasten". The newspaper reached a peak circulation of 600,000 in 1935.[44] One of the possible solutions to the Nazi's perceived problem Streicher mentioned in the pages of Der Stürmer was transporting Jews to Madagascar.[45]

Streicher's publishing firm also released three antisemitic books for children, including the 1938

Jews posed by using the metaphor of an attractive yet deadly mushroom. Late in 1936 Streicher also issued Trust No Fox on his Green Heath and No Jew on his Oath, an infamously anti-Semitic children's picture book by 18 year old Elvira Bauer. In the book the Jews are depicted as 'children of the devil' and Streicher as the great educator and a hero of all German children.[citation needed
]

Streicher did not limit his vituperative attacks to Jews themselves but also launched them against those he perceived as insufficiently hostile towards Jews. For example, he dismissed Mussolini as a Jewish lackey for not being anti-Semitic enough.[46] Between 1935 and the end of the Second World War, upwards of 6,500 persons were identified and denounced in Der Stürmer for not being sufficiently anti-Semitic.[47]

Streicher in power

In July 1932, Streicher was elected as a deputy of the

Gau Franken, and boasted that every Jew had been removed from Hersbruck. Among the nicknames provided by his enemies were "King of Nuremberg" and the "Beast of Franconia." Because of his role as Gauleiter of Franconia, he also gained the nickname of Frankenführer.[49][19] Streicher became a member of the SA on 27 January 1934 with the rank of SA-Gruppenführer and was promoted to SA-Obergruppenführer on 9 November 1937.[50] On 6 September 1935, Hitler named him to the Academy for German Law. The New York Times decried this action with the headline: "Reich Honors Streicher. Anti-Semitic Leader is Named to Academy for German Law."[51]

The Grand Synagogue of Nuremberg was built in 1874, and was ordered destroyed in 1938 by Julius Streicher – supposedly because he disapproved of its architecture – as part of what came to be known as Kristallnacht.

Streicher later claimed that he was only "indirectly responsible" for passage of the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws of 1935, and that he felt slighted because he was not directly consulted. Perhaps epitomizing the "profound anti-intellectualism" of the Nazi Party, Streicher once opined that, "If the brains of all university professors were put at one end of the scale, and the brains of the Führer at the other, which end do you think would tip?"[52]

Streicher was ordered to take part in the establishment of the

Reich Ministry of Education and the Reich Ministry of the Churches. A surgical operation prevented Streicher from participating fully in this endeavor.[53] This antisemitic standpoint concerning the Bible can be traced back to the earliest time of the Nazi movement, for instance Dietrich Eckart's (Hitler's early mentor) book Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin: A Dialogue Between Adolf Hitler and Me, where it was claimed that "Jewish forgeries" had been added to the New Testament.[54]

In August 1938, Streicher ordered that the Grand Synagogue of Nuremberg be destroyed as part of his contribution to Kristallnacht. Streicher later claimed that his decision was based on his disapproval of its architectural design, which in his opinion "disfigured the beautiful German townscape."[55]

Fall from power

Author and journalist John Gunther described Streicher as "the worst of the anti-Semites",[56] and his excesses brought condemnation even from other Nazis. Streicher's behaviour was viewed as so irresponsible that he was embarrassing the party leadership;[57] chief among his enemies in Hitler's hierarchy was Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, who loathed him and later claimed that he forbade his own staff to read Der Stürmer.[58]

Despite his special relationship with Hitler, after 1938 Streicher's position began to unravel. He was accused of keeping Jewish property seized after Kristallnacht in November 1938; he was charged with spreading untrue stories about Göring – such as alleging that he was impotent and that his daughter Edda was conceived by

Supreme Party Court and judged to be "unsuitable for leadership."[60] On 16 February 1940, he was stripped of his party offices and withdrew from the public eye, although he was permitted to retain the title of a Gauleiter, and to continue publishing Der Stürmer. Hitler remained committed to Streicher, whom he considered a loyal friend, despite his unsavory reputation.[61][f] Streicher's wife, Kunigunde Streicher, died in 1943 after 30 years of marriage.[62]

When Germany surrendered to the Allied armies in May 1945, Streicher said later, he decided not to commit suicide. Instead, he married his former secretary, Adele Tappe.[63] Days later, on 23 May 1945, Streicher was captured in the town of Waidring, Austria, by a group of American officers led by Major Henry Plitt of the 101st Airborne Division.[64][g]

Trial and execution

8 October 1946 newsreel of
Nuremberg Trials
sentencing

During his trial, Streicher claimed that he had been mistreated by Allied soldiers after his capture.

International Military Tribunal – which sat in Nuremberg, where Streicher had once been an unchallenged authority. He complained throughout the process that all his judges were Jews.[68]

Most of the evidence against Streicher came from his numerous speeches and articles over the years.[69] In essence, prosecutors contended that Streicher's articles and speeches were so incendiary that he was an accessory to murder, and therefore as culpable as those who actually ordered the mass extermination of Jews. They further argued that he kept up his antisemitic propaganda even after he was aware that Jews were being slaughtered.[70]

Streicher was acquitted of

crimes against peace, but found guilty of crimes against humanity, and sentenced to death
on 1 October 1946. The judgment against him read, in part:

For his 25 years of speaking, writing and preaching hatred of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as 'Jew-Baiter Number One.' In his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, he infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism, and incited the German people to active persecution. ... Streicher's incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with war crimes, as defined by the Charter, and constitutes a crime against humanity.[2]

He, along with Hans Fritzsche, were the first persons to be indicted for what would later be classified as incitement to genocide,[71] though Fritzsche was acquitted at trial.

The body of Julius Streicher after being hanged, 16 October 1946

During his trial, Streicher displayed for the last time the flair for courtroom theatrics that had made him famous in the 1920s. He answered questions from his own defence attorney with diatribes against Jews, the Allies, and the court itself, and was frequently silenced by the court officers. Streicher was largely shunned by all of the other Nuremberg defendants. He also peppered his testimony with references to passages of Jewish texts he had so often carefully selected and inserted into the pages of Der Stürmer.[72]

Streicher was

Heil Hitler!". When he mounted the platform, he delivered his last sneering reference to Jewish scripture, snapping "Purimfest!"[73] Streicher's final declaration before the hood went over his head was, "The Bolsheviks will hang you one day!"[74] Joseph Kingsbury-Smith, a journalist for the International News Service who covered the executions,[h] said in his filed report that after the hood descended over Streicher's head, he said "Adele, meine liebe Frau!" ("Adele, my dear wife!").[75]

The consensus among eyewitnesses was that Streicher did not receive a quick death from

Master Sergeant John C. Woods.[76]

Streicher's body, along with those of the other nine executed men and the corpse of Hermann Göring, was cremated at Ostfriedhof (Munich) and the ashes were scattered in the Isar River.[77]

In literature

Streicher is portrayed in detail, as a criminal psychopath in Philip Kerr's detective novel The Pale Criminal (1990).[78]

References

Informational notes

  1. ^ This system included socialist ideas, such as the takeover of the financial sector by the state, and the cutting-back of the "interest-based economy".
  2. ^ According to Streicher, his dislike of Jews stemmed from an incident when he was but five years old, during which he witnessed his mother weeping after claiming to have been cheated by the Jewish owner of a fabric shop.[21]
  3. slanderous
    attacks continued, and lawsuits followed. Like Fleischmann, other outraged German Jews defeated Streicher in court, but his goal was not necessarily legal victory; he wanted the widest possible dissemination of his message, which press coverage often provided. The rules of the court provided Streicher with an arena to humiliate his opponents, and he characterized the inevitable courtroom loss as a badge of honor.
  4. ^ Streicher also combed the pages of the Talmud and the Old Testament in search of passages potentially depicting Judaism as harsh or cruel.[43] In 1929, this close study of Jewish scripture helped convict Streicher in a case known as "The Great Nuremberg Ritual Murder Trial." His familiarity with Jewish text was proof to the court that his attacks were religious in nature; Streicher was found guilty and imprisoned for two months. In Germany, press reaction to the trial was highly critical of Streicher; but the Gauleiter was greeted after his conviction by hundreds of cheering supporters, and within months Nazi Party membership surged to its highest levels yet.[citation needed]
  5. ^ Streicher's characteristic behaviour is portrayed in the 1944 Hollywood film The Hitler Gang.
  6. ^ Streicher was a poet, whose work was described as "quite attractive", and he painted watercolours as a hobby. He had a strong sexual appetite, which occasionally got him into trouble with the Nazi hierarchy.[7]
  7. ^ At first Streicher claimed to be a painter named "Joseph Sailer", but, misunderstanding Plitt's poor German, he came to believe the latter already knew who he was, and quickly admitted his identity.[65]
  8. ^ See the LA Times article commemorating Kingsbury-Smith at: J. Kingsbury-Smith; Honored Journalist

Citations

  1. ^ Zelnhefer, Der Stürmer.
  2. ^ a b c Avalon Project, Judgement: Streicher.
  3. ^ Bytwerk 2001, p. 5.
  4. ^ Snyder 1976, p. 336.
  5. ^ Bytwerk 2001, p. 6.
  6. ^ Bytwerk 2001, p. 8.
  7. ^ a b c Evans 2003, p. 189.
  8. ^ Bracher 1970, pp. 81–82.
  9. ^ Longerich 2010, pp. 12–13.
  10. ^ Kershaw 2000, pp. 137–138.
  11. ^ Kershaw 2000, pp. 138–139.
  12. ^ a b Bracher 1970, p. 93.
  13. ^ a b Kershaw 2000, p. 138.
  14. ^ Franz-Willing 1962, p. 89.
  15. ^ Bytwerk 2001, pp. 12–14.
  16. ^ Rees 2017, p. 22.
  17. ^ a b Evans 2003, p. 188.
  18. ^ Rees 2017, p. 23.
  19. ^ a b c Gunther 1940, p. 76.
  20. ^ Friedman 1998, p. 300.
  21. ^ Rees 2017, p. 21.
  22. ^ Dolibois 2000, p. 114.
  23. ^ Rees 2017, pp. 22–23.
  24. ^ Bytwerk 2001, pp. 51–52.
  25. ^ Bytwerk 2001, p. 52.
  26. ^ Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 921.
  27. ^ Mein Kampf, 1925 – same line as Hess
  28. ^ Mein Kampf volume 2, 1926 – dedication at the end
  29. ^ Bullock 1962, p. 124.
  30. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, p. 353.
  31. ^ Fest 1974, p. 219.
  32. ^ Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 922.
  33. ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 163–164.
  34. ^ Keß 2003, p. 250.
  35. ^ Bartrop & Grimm 2019, p. 270.
  36. ^ Snyder 1989, pp. 47–51.
  37. ^ Bytwerk 2001, pp. 143–150.
  38. ^ Wistrich 2001, p. 42.
  39. ^ Welch 2002, p. 75.
  40. ^ Koonz 2005, pp. 232–233.
  41. ^ Fischer 1995, pp. 135–136.
  42. ^ Welch 2002, p. 76–77.
  43. ^ Bytwerk 2001, pp. 110, 208–214.
  44. ^ Snyder 1989, p. 50.
  45. ^ Kershaw 2001, p. 320.
  46. ^ Bernhard 2019, pp. 97–114.
  47. ^ Bytwerk 2004, p. 141.
  48. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, p. 356.
  49. ^ Nadler 1969, p. 5.
  50. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, p. 343.
  51. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, p. 367.
  52. ^ Wall 1997, p. 98.
  53. ^ Kater, Mommsen & Papen 1999, p. 151.
  54. ^ Steigmann-Gall 2003, pp. 17–24.
  55. ^ Kershaw 2001, p. 132.
  56. ^ Gunther 1940, p. 61.
  57. ^ Snyder 1989, pp. 52–53.
  58. ^ Maser 2000, p. 282.
  59. ^ Snyder 1989, pp. 47, 50–53.
  60. ^ Bayerische Landesbibliothek, Julius Streicher.
  61. ^ Wistrich 1995, pp. 251–252.
  62. ^ Davidson 1997, p. 43.
  63. ^ Davidson 1997, p. 44.
  64. ^ Tofahrn 2008, p. 163.
  65. ^ USHMM, "Henry Plitt Interview".
  66. ^ Bytwerk 2001, p. 42.
  67. ^ Weitz 1992, p. 332.
  68. ^ Snyder 1989, pp. 54–56.
  69. ^ Snyder 1989, pp. 56–57.
  70. ^ Snyder 1989, p. 57.
  71. ^ Timmermann 2006, pp. 827–828.
  72. ^ Conot 2000, pp. 381–389.
  73. ^ Wistrich 1995, p. 252.
  74. ^ Conot 2000, p. 506.
  75. ^ Radlmeier 2001, pp. 345–346.
  76. ^ Duff 1999, p. 130.
  77. ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2011, p. 393.
  78. ^ Kerr 1993, pp. 385–392.

Bibliography

Further reading

External links
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