Julius Streicher Editor-in-chief of the anti-Semitic newspaper "Sturmovik" Date of Birth: 12.02.1885 Country: Germany

Biography of Julius Streicher

Julius Streicher was born on February 12, 1885, as the ninth child in Friedrich Streicher's family. His father was a teacher at a Roman Catholic elementary school. Before the war, he volunteered for the German army after working as a teacher for some time. However, he was dismissed from the army after a year of service due to indiscipline, with a prohibition on further military service. During World War I, Streicher proved himself to be a brave soldier and earned the Iron Cross of both the first and second degree. He also received the rank of lieutenant.

After the war, Streicher continued to teach at a school but soon became involved in the country's political life on the side of far-right forces. In 1919, he founded his own anti-Semitic organization, the German Socialist Party (DSP). In 1921, when Hitler left Munich to establish contacts with leaders of northern German Nazi organizations, members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), including its founder Anton Drexler, accused Hitler of dictatorship and tried to establish contact with the DSP. Hitler swiftly returned to Bavaria and demanded an end to any association with Streicher's group. This caused a serious crisis within the party, but Hitler managed to establish himself as the leader. Soon, Streicher found common ground with the leader of the National Socialists, and on October 8, 1922, he merged the DSP with the NSDAP.

During the Beer Hall Putsch, Streicher joined Hitler and marched alongside him in the front ranks. Some witnesses claim that when the marching crowd was blocked by police, Streicher was the first to fire a shot. He later spoke of how his participation in the coup had earned Hitler's continued support. "Perhaps there are one or two people who do not like Streicher's nose. But on that day, when he lay next to me on the Feldherrnhalle pavement, I swore that I would not abandon him until he abandoned me," Hitler later said of him.

On April 16, 1923, Streicher began publishing his own newspaper, Der Stürmer, which soon gained a reputation as the most radical anti-Semitic publication in Germany. It printed stories about ritual killings of Aryan children by Jews and accused Jews of things like the Hindenburg airship explosion in 1937. The newspaper contained numerous caricatures, sometimes overtly pornographic, as well as complaints about Jews interfering with the lives of Aryans. Streicher used explicit imagery in his articles, giving anti-Semitism a scientific nuance by arguing that an Aryan woman, whose blood is tainted by a Jew, can never give birth to fully Aryan children. Julius was a talented orator and actively gave anti-Semitic speeches throughout Germany.

In 1925, when Streicher was appointed Gauleiter of Nuremberg, he was still teaching at a school, and his students were required to greet him with the exclamation "Heil Hitler!" In 1928, he was dismissed from the school for propagating anti-Semitic ideas, but this did not hinder his career. In 1929, he became the Gauleiter of the unified Franconia and was elected to the Bavarian parliament as a Nazi in 1933, and later to the Reichstag. In 1934, he was granted the rank of SS Gruppenführer. As Gauleiter, Streicher had a notorious reputation. According to Wilhelm S. Shirer, he liked to stroll around Nuremberg with a whip and could do almost anything he pleased within his Gau. Once, he personally beat prisoners in the Nuremberg prison, saying afterwards to his staff, "I had to do it, and now I feel much better." Streicher had a large number of mistresses and constantly blackmailed their husbands. He liked to proudly talk about his sexual escapades and was known for his fondness for pornography. His position within the party was ambiguous. Göring, Hess, Ley, and Schacht openly stated that his obscene articles and moral character (Streicher actively engaged in the acquisition of confiscated Jewish property) did more harm to the movement than good. Legends circulated within the party about his greed. In 1938, Rudolf Hess even temporarily banned the publication of Der Stürmer after Streicher demanded that a Jew who married an Aryan woman be guillotined, and Goebbels repeatedly banned his public appearances. On the other hand, Hitler almost always supported him and said, "I do not believe that the task of a political leader is to try to improve the human material that lies ready to hand in his grasp."

In 1937, Streicher entered into a serious confrontation with Hermann Göring, calling his only daughter in one issue of Der Stürmer a "product of artificial insemination." This attack on Göring was related to the fact that he wanted Milch, whom Streicher considered to be Jewish, as his deputy and had him amend his biography. In response, Göring managed to convince Hitler to conduct a financial investigation into Streicher's activities, which resulted in his removal from all party positions in 1940. After that, he did not engage directly in politics, focusing on editing Der Stürmer. The newspaper continued to be published until 1945. On May 23, 1945, Streicher was arrested by the Americans. At the Nuremberg trials (held in the main city of Franconia, of which Streicher was the Gauleiter), he was charged with incitement to the murder of Jews, falling under Count 4 of the indictment - crimes against humanity. In response, Streicher called the trial a "triumph of world Jewry." According to IQ testing, his IQ was the lowest among all the defendants. During his examination, Streicher was deemed mentally competent and capable of being held accountable for his actions, although he was obsessed with a fixed idea. He stated that the prosecutors and judges were Jews and did not repent. According to the psychiatrists who examined him, his fanatical anti-Semitism was a product of a deranged mind, but overall, he appeared to be a rational person.

His authority among the other defendants was low, and many of them avoided such a controversial and fanatical figure like him. When the defendants' cafeteria was divided into sections for meals, Streicher ended up in the company of the most zealous Nazis, such as Hess, Reder, and Ribbentrop. According to psychologist Gustav Gilbert, who worked with the prisoners, "the last two sat with an offended look - it was clearly distasteful for them to eat in the company of such an odious figure."

His defense attorney, Dr. Hans Marx, tried to build a defense for his client, arguing that his Der Stürmer was not taken seriously by anyone. However, Streicher vehemently opposed this. He argued that he gave orders to destroy synagogues "purely for architectural reasons." According to him, he read about the extermination of Jews in foreign newspapers but did not believe it. He claimed that he called for the extermination of the Jewish people but not in a literal sense. These explanations were met with a negative reaction from Frank.

When he was sentenced to death, he said, "Of course, the death penalty! What else could I expect? And they knew it from the very beginning." During the execution, while standing with the noose around his neck, he shouted loudly, "Purimfest!" (the Jewish holiday of Purim - a celebration of the victory over enemies of the Jews). "I am going to God. One day, the Bolsheviks will hang you!" Then he shouted several times, "Heil Hitler!" According to John Woods, the hangman, the last "Heil Hitler!" was heard coming from the bag. After the sentence was carried out, Streicher's body, along with the bodies of the other executed, was cremated, and the ashes were secretly scattered. He was the only one of the defendants who had been in the Nuremberg courtroom before the trial as a defendant. He was accused of molesting minors but managed to clear his name.

He was the only one among the Nuremberg defendants who was found guilty solely for his print propaganda and not for his direct involvement in making decisions about war and genocide.

He was the only one of the Nuremberg defendants who mentioned Hitler in his final statement. In 1913, in Nuremberg, he married Kunigunde Roth, the daughter of a baker. They had two sons, Lotar (1915) and Elmar (1918). His wife died in 1943 after 30 years of marriage. Shortly after, in May 1945, he married his former secretary, Adel Tappe. She defended him during the Nuremberg trials, claiming that he was a respectable family man and a good person in general. According to Jodl, "she is too kind for such a complete scoundrel as her husband." We know our enemy and have openly called him by name for the past twenty years: it is world Jewry. And we know that it must perish. (1939)
Catholicism is just an obstacle on the way to the final solution of the Jewish question.
I have dedicated 25 years of my life to the study of the Jewish question, and there is no other specialist who understands it better than me. (1946) If we want to tell the truth, we must admit that without Julius Streicher, National Socialism would never have triumphed in Nuremberg.