Julius Streicher(Streicher; German. Julius Streicher; February 12, Fleinhausen near Augsburg, Bavaria - October 16, Nuremberg), Gauleiter of Franconia, editor-in-chief of the anti-Semitic and anti-communist newspaper "Sturmovik" (German. Der Stürmer - Der Stürmer), ideologist of racism. Executed by the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal for anti-Semitic propaganda and calls for genocide.
Before starting a political career
Julius Streicher was born on February 12, 1885. He was the ninth child in the family of Friedrich Streicher, a Roman Catholic primary school teacher. Before the war, he volunteered for the German army, having previously worked for some time as a teacher in an elementary school. However, after a year of service, he was dismissed from the army for indiscipline and was prohibited from further service in the armed forces.
After World War I
After the war, Streicher continued to teach at school, but soon began to participate in the political life of the country on the side of the extreme right forces.
In 1919, Streicher created his own anti-Semitic organization, the Socialist Party of Germany (SPD). Deutschsozialistische Partei). In 1921, when Hitler left Munich for Berlin to establish contacts with the leaders of the Nazi organizations in northern Germany, a number of NSDAP members, including its founder Anton Drexler, accused Hitler of dictatorship and tried to establish contacts with the SPG. Hitler urgently returned to Bavaria and demanded to stop flirting with Streicher's group. This caused a serious crisis in the party, but Hitler was able to establish himself as leader. Soon, Streicher was able to find a common language with the leader of the National Socialists (Hitler decided that he did not care what kind of people surrounded him, as long as they helped his cause) and on October 8, 1922, he joined the ranks of the NSDAP along with the members of the SPG.
In the Third Reich
Streicher had a huge number of mistresses and constantly blackmailed their husbands, loved to proudly talk about his love affairs and was known for his passion for pornography.
The attitude towards Streicher in the party was ambiguous: G. Goering, R. Hess, R. Ley and J. Schacht openly stated that with his obscene articles and moral character (Streicher was actively involved in buying up confiscated Jewish property) he was doing much more harm to the movement than benefits. There were legends about his greed in the party. In 1938, Goebbels repeatedly banned his public appearances. On the other hand, Hitler almost always supported him, saying: “I do not believe that the task of a political leader is to try to improve the human material lying ready in his hands.”
When he was sentenced to death, he said: “Of course, the death penalty! What more could you expect! And they knew it from the very beginning.” During the execution, standing under the noose, he loudly shouted: “Purimfest!” (Jewish holiday Purim - triumph over the enemies of the Jews). “I'm going to God. One day the Bolsheviks will hang you!” He then shouted several times: “Heil Hitler! “Julius Streicher said about the Nuremberg Tribunal: “This trial is a triumph of world Jewry.” According to the executioner John Wood, the last “Heil Hitler!” it came from the bag. After the sentence was carried out, Streicher's body, along with the bodies of other executed people, was cremated, and the ashes were secretly removed and scattered.
Julius Streicher was:
Streicher family
In 1913, in Nuremberg, he married the daughter of a baker, Kunigunde Roth (German). Kunigunde Roth). They had two sons: Lothar (1915) and Elmar (1918). His wife died after 30 years of marriage, in 1943. Soon, in May 1945, he married his former secretary Adele Tappe. At the Nuremberg trials, she spoke in his defense, arguing that he was a decent family man and generally a good person. According to Jodl, “she is too nice for such a complete bastard as her husband is.”
Notes
Literature
- Syanova E. Ten from Hitler's deck. - M.: Time, . - ISBN 5-9691-0010-2
- Gilbert G. Nuremberg diary / trans. with him. A.L. Utkina - Smolensk: Rusich, . - ISBN 5-8138-0567-2
- Efimov B. Contemporary of the century. Memories. - M.: Soviet artist, .
Links
| Portal "Nazi Germany" | |
Julius Streicher was born on February 12, 1885. He was the ninth child in the family of Friedrich Streicher, a Roman Catholic primary school teacher. Before the war, he volunteered for the German army, having previously worked for some time as a teacher in an elementary school. However, after a year of service, he was dismissed from the army for indiscipline and was prohibited from further service in the armed forces.
During the First World War, Streicher proved himself to be a brave soldier and earned the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class, and also received the rank of lieutenant.
After the war
After the war, Streicher continued to teach at school, but soon began to participate in the political life of the country on the side of the extreme right forces.
In 1919, Streicher created his own anti-Semitic organization, the Socialist Party of Germany (SPG) (German: Deutschsozialistische Partei). In 1921, when Hitler left Munich for Berlin to establish contacts with the leaders of the Nazi organizations in northern Germany, a number of NSDAP members, including its founder Anton Drexler, accused Hitler of dictatorship and tried to establish contacts with the SPG. Hitler urgently returned to Bavaria and demanded to stop flirting with Streicher's group. This caused a serious crisis in the party, but Hitler was able to establish himself as leader. Soon, Streicher was able to find a common language with the leader of the National Socialists (Hitler decided that he did not care what kind of people surrounded him, as long as they helped his cause) and on October 8, 1922, he joined the ranks of the NSDAP along with the members of the SPG.
When he heard about the Beer Hall Putsch, he, not wanting to remain on the sidelines, joined Hitler and walked next to him in the front row. Some witnesses claim that when the crowd of marchers was blocked by police, it was Streicher who fired the first shot. He himself later said that it was thanks to his participation in the putsch that the Fuhrer always supported him in the future. “There may be one or two people who don't like the shape of Streicher's nose. But that day, when he lay next to me on the pavement of the Feldherrnhalle, I swore that I would not leave him until he left me,” Hitler later said about him.
On April 16, 1923, he began publishing his own newspaper, Der Stürmer, which soon gained a reputation as the most radical anti-Semitic publication in Germany. He published stories about Jews ritually killing Aryan children, and also blamed Jews for things like the 1937 Hindenburg airship explosion. The newspaper contained a lot of cartoons, sometimes openly pornographic, as well as complaints about Jews interfering with the lives of Aryans: a patient in a psychiatric hospital complained that the Jews had unfairly put him there, a customer wrote that they did not bring him a shirt from a store owned by a Jew, and so on. each room. In his articles, Streicher used the most explicit images. He gave anti-Semitism a scientific nuance, arguing that an Aryan woman whose blood was tainted by a Jew would never be able to give birth to full-fledged Aryan children. Julius was a talented speaker and actively spoke throughout Germany with anti-Semitic speeches.
When Streicher was appointed Gauleiter of Nuremberg in 1925, he was still teaching at the school, and his students were required to greet him with the cry of “Heil Hitler!” In 1928, he was fired from school for promoting anti-Semitic ideas, but this did not hinder his future career: in 1929 he became Gauleiter of the united Franconia and was elected to the Bavarian parliament from the Nazis, and in 1933 to the Reichstag. In 1934 he received the rank of SS Gruppenführer.
Best of the day
In the Third Reich
As a Gauleiter, Streicher had a bad reputation; according to W. Shirer, he loved to walk around Nuremberg with a whip, and could do almost whatever he wanted within the boundaries of his Gau. Once he personally beat the prisoners of the Nuremberg prison, after which he told his staff: “I simply needed this, now I feel much better.” Streicher had a huge number of mistresses and constantly blackmailed their husbands, loved to proudly talk about his love affairs and was known for his passion for pornography.
The attitude towards Streicher in the party was ambiguous: Goering, Hess, Ley and Schacht openly stated that with his obscene articles and moral character (Streicher was actively involved in buying up confiscated Jewish property) he was doing much more harm to the movement than good. There were legends about his greed in the party. In 1938, Rudolf Hess even temporarily banned the publication of Der Stürmer after Streicher demanded that a Jew who married an Aryan 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 lying ready in his hands.”
In 1937, Streicher entered into a serious confrontation with Goering, calling his only daughter “the fruit of artificial insemination” in one of the issues of Der Stürmer. This attack on Goering was due to the fact that he wanted to see Milch, whom Streicher considered a Jew, as his deputy and corrected his biography. In response, Goering obtained from Hitler a financial audit of Streicher's activities, which resulted in his removal from all party posts in 1940. After that, he did not directly engage in politics, concentrating on editing Der Stürmer. The newspaper continued to be published until 1945. On May 23, 1945, he was arrested by the Americans.
In Nuremberg
At the Nuremberg Trials (held in the main city of Franconia, of which Streicher was Gauleiter), he was charged with inciting the murder of Jews, which fell under Charge 4 of the trial - crimes against humanity. In response, Streicher called the trial “a triumph for world Jewry.” According to the test results, his IQ was the lowest of all the defendants. During the examination, Streicher was found sane and capable of responsibility for his actions, although obsessed with an obsession. He said that the accusers and judges were Jews and did not repent. According to the psychiatrists who examined him, his fanatical anti-Semitism was the product of a diseased psyche, but overall he gave the impression of an adequate person.
His authority among the other accused was low, many of them shunned such an odious and fanatical figure as him. When the dining room for the accused was divided into sections for meals, Streicher found himself in the company of the most convinced Nazis, Hess, Raeder and Ribbentrop. According to psychologist Gustav Gilbert, who worked with prisoners, “the last two sat with an offended look - they clearly did not like eating in the company of such an odious figure as him.”
His lawyer, Dr. Hans Marx, tried to build his client’s defense on the fact that no one took his “Der Stürmer” seriously. However, Streicher strongly opposed this. He argued that he gave orders for the destruction of synagogues “for purely 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 the literal sense. These explanations caused a negative reaction from Frank.
When he was sentenced to death, he said: “Of course, the death penalty! What more could you expect! And they knew it from the very beginning.” During the execution, standing under the noose, he loudly shouted: “Purimfest!” (Jewish holiday Purim - triumph over the enemies of the Jews). “I'm going to God. One day the Bolsheviks will hang you! He then shouted several times: “Heil Hitler!” About the Nuremberg Tribunal, Julius Streicher said: “This trial is a triumph of world Jewry.” According to the executioner John Wood, the last “Heil Hitler!” it came from the bag. After the sentence was carried out, Streicher's body, along with the bodies of other executed people, was cremated, and the ashes were secretly removed and scattered.
Julius Streicher was:
the only one of the accused who had already been to the Nuremberg Hall of Justice before the trial as an accused. He was accused of molesting a minor, but he managed to acquit himself.
the only one of the defendants at Nuremberg who was found guilty solely for printed propaganda, and not for real participation in decision-making about war and genocide.
the only one of those executed in Nuremberg who mentioned Hitler in his dying speech.
Streicher family
In 1913, in Nuremberg, he married the daughter of a baker, Kunigunde Roth. They had two sons: Lothar (1915) and Elmar (1918). His wife died after 30 years of marriage, in 1943. Soon, in May 1945, he married his former secretary Adele Tappe. At the Nuremberg trials, she spoke in his defense, arguing that he was a decent family man and generally a good person. According to Jodl, “she is too nice for such a complete bastard as her husband is.”
Quotes
We know our enemy, we have openly called him by name for the last twenty years: this is world Jewry. And we know that it must perish. (1939)
Catholicism is only an obstacle on the path to a final solution to the Jewish question.
I have devoted 25 years of my life to studying the Jewish question, and there is no other specialist who understands it better than me. (1946)
Hitler on Streicher
If we want to tell the truth, we must admit that without Julius Streicher in Nuremberg, National Socialism would never have won.
Gauleiter of Franconia, editor-in-chief of the anti-Semitic newspaper "Stormtrooper" (German: Der Stürmer - Der Stürmer), ideologist of racism. Executed by the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal for anti-Semitic propaganda and calls for genocide.
Julius Streicher was born on February 12, 1885. He was the ninth child in the family of Friedrich Streicher, a Roman Catholic primary school teacher. Before the war, he volunteered for the German army, having previously worked for some time as a teacher in an elementary school. However, after a year of service, he was dismissed from the army for indiscipline and was prohibited from further service in the armed forces.
During the First World War, Streicher proved himself to be a brave soldier and earned the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class, and also received the rank of lieutenant.
After the war
After the war, Streicher continued to teach at school, but soon began to participate in the political life of the country on the side of the extreme right forces.
In 1919, Streicher created his own anti-Semitic organization, the Socialist Party of Germany (SPG) (German: Deutschsozialistische Partei). In 1921, when Hitler left Munich for Berlin to establish contacts with the leaders of the Nazi organizations in northern Germany, a number of NSDAP members, including its founder Anton Drexler, accused Hitler of dictatorship and tried to establish contacts with the SPG. Hitler urgently returned to Bavaria and demanded to stop flirting with Streicher's group. This caused a serious crisis in the party, but Hitler was able to establish himself as leader. Soon, Streicher was able to find a common language with the leader of the National Socialists (Hitler decided that he did not care what kind of people surrounded him, as long as they helped his cause) and on October 8, 1922, he joined the ranks of the NSDAP along with the members of the SPG.
When he heard about the Beer Hall Putsch, he, not wanting to remain on the sidelines, joined Hitler and walked next to him in the front row. Some witnesses claim that when the crowd of marchers was blocked by police, it was Streicher who fired the first shot. He himself later said that it was thanks to his participation in the putsch that the Fuhrer always supported him in the future. “There may be one or two people who don't like the shape of Streicher's nose. But that day, when he lay next to me on the pavement of the Feldherrnhalle, I swore that I would not leave him until he left me,” Hitler later said about him.
On April 16, 1923, he began publishing his own newspaper, Der Stürmer, which soon gained a reputation as the most radical anti-Semitic publication in Germany. He published stories about Jews ritually killing Aryan children, and also blamed Jews for things like the 1937 Hindenburg airship explosion. The newspaper contained a lot of cartoons, sometimes openly pornographic, as well as complaints about Jews interfering with the lives of Aryans: a patient in a psychiatric hospital complained that the Jews had unfairly put him there, a customer wrote that they did not bring him a shirt from a store owned by a Jew, and so on. each room. In his articles, Streicher used the most explicit images. He gave anti-Semitism a scientific nuance, arguing that an Aryan woman whose blood was tainted by a Jew would never be able to give birth to full-fledged Aryan children. Julius was a talented speaker and actively spoke throughout Germany with anti-Semitic speeches.
When Streicher was appointed Gauleiter of Nuremberg in 1925, he was still teaching at the school, and his students were required to greet him with the cry of “Heil Hitler!” In 1928, he was fired from school for promoting anti-Semitic ideas, but this did not hinder his future career: in 1929 he became Gauleiter of the united Franconia and was elected to the Bavarian parliament from the Nazis, and in 1933 to the Reichstag. In 1934 he received the rank of SS Gruppenführer.
In the Third Reich
As a Gauleiter, Streicher had a bad reputation; according to W. Shirer, he loved to walk around Nuremberg with a whip, and could do almost whatever he wanted within the boundaries of his Gau. Once he personally beat the prisoners of the Nuremberg prison, after which he told his staff: “I simply needed this, now I feel much better.” Streicher had a huge number of mistresses and constantly blackmailed their husbands, loved to proudly talk about his love affairs and was known for his passion for pornography.
The attitude towards Streicher in the party was ambiguous: Goering, Hess, Ley and Schacht openly stated that with his obscene articles and moral character (Streicher was actively involved in buying up confiscated Jewish property) he was doing much more harm to the movement than good. There were legends about his greed in the party. In 1938, Rudolf Hess even temporarily banned the publication of Der Stürmer after Streicher demanded that a Jew who married an Aryan 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 lying ready in his hands.”
In 1937, Streicher entered into a serious confrontation with Goering, calling his only daughter “the fruit of artificial insemination” in one of the issues of Der Stürmer. This attack on Goering was due to the fact that he wanted to see Milch, whom Streicher considered a Jew, as his deputy and corrected his biography. In response, Goering obtained from Hitler a financial audit of Streicher's activities, which resulted in his removal from all party posts in 1940. After that, he did not directly engage in politics, concentrating on editing Der Stürmer. The newspaper continued to be published until 1945. On May 23, 1945, he was arrested by the Americans.
In Nuremberg
At the Nuremberg Trials (held in the main city of Franconia, of which Streicher was Gauleiter), he was charged with inciting the murder of Jews, which fell under Charge 4 of the trial - crimes against humanity. In response, Streicher called the trial “a triumph for world Jewry.” According to the test results, his IQ was the lowest of all the defendants. During the examination, Streicher was found sane and capable of responsibility for his actions, although obsessed with an obsession. He said that the accusers and judges were Jews and did not repent. According to the psychiatrists who examined him, his fanatical anti-Semitism was the product of a diseased psyche, but overall he gave the impression of an adequate person.
His authority among the other accused was low, many of them shunned such an odious and fanatical figure as him. When the dining room for the accused was divided into sections for meals, Streicher found himself in the company of the most convinced Nazis, Hess, Raeder and Ribbentrop. According to psychologist Gustav Gilbert, who worked with prisoners, “the last two sat with an offended look - they clearly did not like eating in the company of such an odious figure as him.”
His lawyer, Dr. Hans Marx, tried to build his client’s defense on the fact that no one took his “Der Stürmer” seriously. However, Streicher strongly opposed this. He argued that he gave orders for the destruction of synagogues “for purely 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 the literal sense. These explanations caused a negative reaction from Frank.
When he was sentenced to death, he said: “Of course, the death penalty! What more could you expect! And they knew it from the very beginning.” During the execution, standing under the noose, he loudly shouted: “Purimfest!” (Jewish holiday Purim - triumph over the enemies of the Jews). “I'm going to God. One day the Bolsheviks will hang you! He then shouted several times: “Heil Hitler!” About the Nuremberg Tribunal, Julius Streicher said: “This trial is a triumph of world Jewry.” According to the executioner John Wood, the last “Heil Hitler!” it came from the bag. After the sentence was carried out, Streicher's body, along with the bodies of other executed people, was cremated, and the ashes were secretly removed and scattered.
Julius Streicher was:
the only one of the accused who had already been to the Nuremberg Hall of Justice before the trial as an accused. He was accused of molesting a minor, but he managed to acquit himself.
the only one of the defendants at Nuremberg who was found guilty solely for printed propaganda, and not for real participation in decision-making about war and genocide.
the only one of those executed in Nuremberg who mentioned Hitler in his dying speech.
Streicher family
In 1913, in Nuremberg, he married the daughter of a baker, Kunigunde Roth. They had two sons: Lothar (1915) and Elmar (1918). His wife died after 30 years of marriage, in 1943. Soon, in May 1945, he married his former secretary Adele Tappe. At the Nuremberg trials, she spoke in his defense, arguing that he was a decent family man and generally a good person. According to Jodl, “she is too nice for such a complete bastard as her husband is.”
Quotes
We know our enemy, we have openly called him by name for the last twenty years: this is world Jewry. And we know that it must perish. (1939)
Catholicism is only an obstacle on the path to a final solution to the Jewish question.
I have devoted 25 years of my life to studying the Jewish question, and there is no other specialist who understands it better than me. (1946)
Hitler on Streicher
If we want to tell the truth, we must admit that without Julius Streicher in Nuremberg, National Socialism would never have won.
Meanwhile, the unfortunate Doctor Marx, appointed - against his will! - Streicher's defender, turned out to be the object of vicious attacks from newspapermen. His law office was regularly searched, and he himself was constantly under the “sword of Damocles” of sudden arrest without charge and imprisonment for an indefinite period. For reasons of his own safety, Dr. Marx even had to - as far as a lawyer could do this without violating the rules of decency! - to dissociate himself in every possible way from his client, who was causing him nothing but trouble. The lawyer's fears were not at all unfounded - one of the defenders of another defendant, the former imperial minister and protector of Bohemia and Moravia Constantine Baron von Neurath, was arrested in exactly the same way in broad daylight and imprisoned for six weeks without any charge being brought. In addition, defense lawyers were not allowed to question the jurisdiction of the tribunal or the impartiality of the judges.
Julius Streicher (Julius Streicher), in five parts
Streicher commented on this with the following diary entry: “The right of the accused to challenge the judge due to the latter’s lack of impartiality corresponds to generally accepted judicial practice. And in fact, what kind of trial will it be if, for example, the judge turns out to be a relative of the representative of the opposing party? In this show trial of The defeated victors are both prosecutors and judges, so they simply cannot be impartial, which is both obvious and inevitable. Well aware of this, they established in advance the corresponding rule, which initially deprived the accused of the opportunity to challenge the fairness of the “justice” being administered. Here what is the point of all this farce! - the former Gauleiter continued to express his thoughts more clearly on paper - “This process does not bode well for the accused, since justice in this case is blind and biased; the court was tasked with giving injustice the appearance of legality, hiding the arbitrariness it commits under the guise of administering justice.” .
For example, Streicher petitioned the court to call as a witness the former chief of the Nuremberg police, SA Obergruppenführer Obernitz. He asked the court to allow Obernitz to testify regarding the conflict that occurred between them in November 1938, when Streicher tried to dissociate himself from the destruction of the Nuremberg synagogue in the events that followed the Imperial Kristallnacht (he was later able to justify this by the requirements of the architectural plan for the reconstruction of the city ). But the court rejected the request to call this witness.
It is characteristic that the bloody prosecutor of Stalin’s “show trials”, Andrei “Yaguaryevich” Vyshinsky, who arrived in Nuremberg on November 26, 1945 from Moscow (the same Vyshinsky who, when he was a judicial official of the Provisional Government, signed an order for the arrest of V.I. in July 1917 Ulyanov-Lenin and G.E. Apfelbaum-Radomyslsky-Zinoviev, as a result of which they had to hide in Razliv!) at a gala dinner at the Grand Hotel, given in his honor by the Western allies, raising his glass, he publicly declared: " For the accused! So that their path from court leads straight to the grave! "
To top it all off, the tribunal sought to nip in the bud any attempt by prisoners to raise questions about their prison conditions. When Streicher once tried to speak out against such “measures of influence” practiced during interrogations as beatings of the interrogated, which often led to physical injuries (Streicher himself had, for example, a seriously injured knee) and sent an official protest about this to Judge Jackson, the judge ordered that this paper be destroyed and not even included in the register of passing documents.
According to the recollections of the accused who survived the trial and were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, the widespread mood that reigned in those days could be characterized by one single word - a downright Old Testament thirst for revenge. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, death for death! The atmosphere of those days was clearly characterized by a letter Judge Jackson received from the wealthy New York businessman Ernest Schoenfeld and which contained, in particular, the following lines: “If it were possible, it would be my passionate desire, in the event and after the death sentence of Julius Streicher, not only to be present at his execution, but also to take a personal, direct part in carrying out the sentence." The author of the letter expressed his readiness to take on all transportation costs and even more! - offered Judge Jackson a large sum of money as a sign of “personal gratitude” on his own behalf.
Obsessed with his Judeophobia, Streicher tirelessly repeated from the very beginning that this process personified the “triumph of world Judaism.” He was firmly convinced that he would “die as a martyr” precisely because “he always waged an irreconcilable struggle with the Jews.” But the fact still remained that he had no need to justify his involvement in acts of mass extermination of Jews, because, starting in 1939, he simply no longer held any official positions in the Third Reich. Therefore, the psychoanalyst Dr. Gilbert, who examined the “mental and psychological state” of each of the accused, predicted that Streicher’s defense would be based on “bizarre” references to certain “spiritual insights,” “world Zionism,” “the teachings of the Talmud,” and that these arguments “It’s hardly worth answering with serious counterarguments.”
At the same time, Dr. Gilbert seriously proposed bringing charges against Streicher, for example, of “betrayal of German youth” - not least because one of the accused, the former head of the NSDAP youth organization - “Hitler Youth” (Hitler Youth) and the Gauleiter of Vienna, Baldur von Schirach, stated in court that in the surge of anti-Semitism in Germany, which was primarily blamed for inciting the weekly newspaper Streicher published by Streicher, "Der Stürmer" was in fact much more to blame for the book of the American "car king" Henry Ford the Elder, "The Eternal Jew" "(also known as “Judas through the Ages”, and in Russian translation as “International Jewry”), published in millions of copies all over the world (except for the only “politically correct” countries at the time being described - the USSR and the Mongolian People's Republic). Meanwhile, Henry Ford the Elder was still alive and quite healthy at the time of the Nuremberg trials, and the scandalous trial regarding his anti-Semitic book was still ahead. Judge Parker emphasized that “Streicher has nothing at all to do with the conspiracy” (with the goal of taking over Europe and the world, as one of the main points of the indictment stated - V.A.), “nor with any planning at all.”
Nevertheless, all the judges were united in their desire to hang Julius Streicher at any cost - and it didn’t matter for what. Just to hang it. But, since for this it was still necessary to pass a specific sentence point by point indicating the guilt for which the former Gauleiter of Franconia would be sent to the gallows, serious disagreements constantly arose between representatives of the prosecution. It was proposed, for example, to find the defendants guilty and determine the severity of their guilt and the severity of the sentence in accordance with the position and positions occupied by those in the past. Thus, the Soviet prosecutor Volchkov stated that “Streicher was closely connected with Hitler personally” - this seemed to him a fairly compelling reason for sending the ex-Gauleiter to the gallows. To this Judge Biddle responded that it seemed absurd to him to consider some "petty Jew-hater a conspirator" simply because he was a personal friend of Hitler, or a Gauleiter, or a Nazi. However, in the end, Streicher was found guilty on counts 1 and 4 and sentenced to hang along with Goering, von Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Bormann (sentenced to death in absentia), Rosenberg, Jodl, Frank, Frick, Sauckel and Seyss-Inquart.
Having completely calmly listened to the sentence handed down to him, Julius Streicher firmly and flatly refused to petition the court for clemency. Apparently, as punishment for yet another manifestation of “obstinacy,” this time expressed in a categorical refusal to file an appeal, the jailers treated him the least leniently, compared to all the other convicts. His eldest son, a former officer of the Luftwaffe (Air Force of the Third Reich), and Streicher's wife Adele were allowed to have a final meeting with the condemned man before execution for only forty-five minutes. In one of his last conversations, Streicher, by the way, mentioned his sworn enemy - the chief of the Nuremberg police, Benno Martin, who tried to evade responsibility, claiming that in reality he was a deeply secret member of the anti-Hitler Resistance. “Yes, if I had only opened my mouth about Martin,” Streicher hinted meaningfully, “he, too, would have had to make a “high jump.”
“Frankenführer” emphasized that he initially considered the possibility of suicide, but then abandoned this idea, deciding that it was much more important to state at trial why he had fought so persistently against the Jews. Until the very end, he never changed his opinion about them for the better, and least of all here, during the Nuremberg trials, which from beginning to end he considered the final confirmation of everything that he had always thought and said about the Jews.
When saying goodbye to his son, Streicher assured him that even at the foot of the gallows he would not fail to once again publicly swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler, and finally said with conviction: “Goering, Keitel and Jodl - they will all die with the same dignity as befits men!”
As you know, Imperial Marshal Hermann Goering managed to avoid a shameful death in a noose by taking poison secretly transferred to his cell by an unknown person. Alarmed by the suicide of the main accused, the generals, members of the Quadripartite Commission for Execution, ordered the jailers to wrap all the convicts who were still alive with their hands behind their backs and shackle them in this position with steel handcuffs. The handcuffs were ordered to be unfastened and removed from the convicts only after arriving at the place of execution, after which they were immediately replaced with strong silk laces, which were supposed to be untied only in a matter of seconds before the support was removed from under the feet of the convict standing under the gallows and the rope noose was tightened on his neck.
The ten convicts were taken from death row to the execution chamber one at a time, carried on four sides by their arms and legs, face down. At the same time, the American executioners, according to eyewitnesses, showed much greater nervousness than those whom they were going to execute. Field Marshal Milch (half Jew), who escaped the gallows, wrote in his diary “on fresh tracks”, a few hours after the execution: “Each of them accepted his death very bravely. One “ami” said about them: “They have ice in their veins instead of blood ".
The last words of the condemned Joachim von Ribbentrop were: “May God bless Germany, and may He be merciful to my soul. My last wish is a united Germany, mutual understanding between East and West and world peace.”
Field Marshal Keitel said before his death: “More than two million German soldiers died for their Fatherland. Now I am going after them and my sons, who gave everything for Germany!”
Sauckel said: “I am dying innocent. May God protect Germany and may He return it to its former greatness!”
Yodel was brief: “Greetings, my Germany!”
The condemned Frick and Rosenberg ascended the gallows meekly and met death in complete silence.
Hans Frank found the courage to make subtle mockery, limiting himself to expressing gratitude for the kindness with which the prison guards treated him.
Seyss-Inquart, as a former lawyer, was more voluble: “I hope that this execution will be the final act in the tragedy called the Second World War, and that people will learn from this example the proper lesson in order to restore true understanding between all peoples. I I believe in Germany!"
Frick shouted loudly and clearly: “Long live eternal Germany!”
(Strangely, the same words were spoken before the execution by the leader of the conspiracy of the top military leadership of the German Wehrmacht against Hitler, Colonel Klaus Schenck Count von Stauffenberg, who was executed after the suppression of the general's putsch in Berlin on the evening of July 20, 1944).
Streicher, whose knee was badly damaged, was very worried whether he would be able to climb the steps of the stairs to the gallows with the same firm step and without outside help, as he promised when saying goodbye to his wife and son. At that last meeting, he even told them that he was specially training for this occasion to walk without a cane. The last time the “Frankenfuehrer” performed these daily exercises was on the eve of his execution. The execution took place (as the famous British historian David Irving writes, “by a bizarre irony of fate”) on October 16 (on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month of Adar) 1946, on the day of the “merry holiday of Purim” - one of the main holy days on the Jewish calendar, reminiscent of the reprisal of the Jews against their main ill-wisher Haman, and at the same time - with his ten sons and with 75,000 “evil-wishers” who “thought evil about the Jews”, “during the days” of the reign of the ancient Persian king Artaxerxes. As we know from the Book of Esther, Haman and his ten sons were hanged (according to the Old Testament word: “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”). With great difficulty, hiding the pain in his knee, Julius Streicher climbed the steps of the gallows, accompanied by a priest.
"Heil Hitler!" Streicher shouted, standing under the gallows. - “Today we have a joyful Jewish holiday here! But still, this is my Purim, not yours! The day will come when the Bolsheviks will hang many of you, very many! And I’m leaving - to God!”
The executioners hastened to put a black bag over Streicher’s head, but before the hatch could leave under his feet, the Gauleiter managed to shout out: “Adele, my beloved wife!”
All the convicts were hanged on long ropes, so that their cervical vertebrae broke under the weight of their bodies, and death occurred quite quickly. But Julius Streicher was destined to die from suffocation, and therefore he was hanged on a very short rope, which made the death of the condemned man especially painful.
Tatyana Grigorievna Stupnikova, who participated in the Nuremberg trials as a translator, who, by the will of fate, became a witness to the last minutes of the earthly existence of the convicts, and described her impressions of the trial, told the author, then a young graduate student, about this final episode of the life and career of the “Frankenführer.” in the book of memoirs “Nothing but the Truth,” which was published for the first time only at the beginning of this, 21st century.
After the execution, the corpses of the condemned were photographed, first with their clothes on, and then stripped naked. Then the bodies were placed in coffins and taken from Nuremberg to the former German concentration camp Dachau, which, after the surrender of the Third Reich, was converted into an American camp. There the corpses were cremated and the ashes of those executed were poured into the Isar River.
By the way, one of the enterprising American officers hastened to make his own small business at this “event of the century.” He arranged with a local printing house to produce a series of souvenir postal envelopes with the emblem of the International Military Tribunal printed on them, an uncanceled postage stamp with a view of Nuremberg and a list of the names of all those hanged, with Goering's name printed on these envelopes (either by mistake or deliberately) - in order to give the envelopes additional value, as a philatelic rarity) not with the mark “executed”, but with the mark “committed suicide” (which, of course, corresponded to the duration).
This is the sad (albeit logical) situation to which a completely respectable, at first glance, German burgher was led by the anti-Semitism he had learned from his youth, under the influence of an incorrect upbringing in the spirit of intolerance and hatred of foreigners and people of other faiths, which (to somewhat paraphrase the statement of the great humanist Thomas Mann about anti-communism), can rightfully be called “the main stupidity of the twentieth century.”
This is the end and glory to our God!
Julius Streicher was born on February 12, 1885 in the Bavarian city of Fleinhausen. He worked as a school teacher in Nuremberg, during the First World War he rose to the rank of lieutenant, and after its end he became an active participant in the right-wing movement. In 1919, he joined the anti-Semitic German Federation for the Defense and Defense of Germany. Soon, Streicher founded a branch of the Socialist Party of Germany (SPG) in Nuremberg, the entire ideological foundation of which was based on hatred of Jews and communists - they, according to the Nazis, were to blame for the defeat of Germany.
In 1921, Streicher met a man who hated Jews as madly as he did - Adolf Hitler. He came to Munich and was delighted with the speech of the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). “This man spoke like a messenger from heaven...”, Streicher recalled his impressions. In October 1922, he joined the NSDAP and persuaded many of his comrades to do the same, thereby almost doubling the number of members of Hitler's party.
Streicher and Hitler in Nuremberg, 1923
In 1923, Streicher began publishing a weekly newspaper, Der Stürmer (The Stormtrooper), which contained anti-Semitic articles, accusations of ritual murder against Jews, racist cartoons, and letters from readers complaining about Jews (most of which were created by Streicher himself). The newspaper was never the official mouthpiece of the Nazi party, but with Hitler's rise to power it had a circulation of almost half a million copies and was posted on special stands throughout Germany.
During the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, Streicher marched with Hitler in the front row. When police squads blocked the Nazis' path to Odeonsplatz, shots rang out. There is an opinion that it was Streicher who shot first. The answer was not long in coming: 16 demonstrators were killed. Hitler fell face down at the first salvo. He later recalled: “That day when he (Streicher) lay next to me on the pavement... I swore that I would not leave him until he left me.”
Germans reading "Stormtrooper"
Hitler actually kept his promise. He consistently helped Streicher climb the career ladder: in 1929 he became Gauleiter of the united Franconia and was elected to the Bavarian parliament from the Nazi party, in 1933 he received a deputy seat in the Reichstag, and the following year he acquired the title of SS Gruppenführer.
The more power Streicher gained, the more scandalous and unbridled his behavior became. When walking around Nuremberg, he could take a heavy whip with him and beat anyone he didn’t like. Or suddenly come to the Nuremberg prison and start torturing prisoners. He took real pleasure in violence, especially if the victim was defenseless. The fame of Gauleiter's atrocities resounded throughout Franconia. It was no secret that Streicher loved pornography, constantly changing mistresses and extorting money from their husbands. He made a huge fortune by speculating on property taken from Jews. And in 1938, the propagandist found a new way to make money from hatred - publications for children. He began publishing a book with color pictures called Toadstools. It said that Jews are like poisonous mushrooms. She urged "Aryan" boys and girls to stay away from them and, if possible, uproot them.
Streicher (center) with Goering and Goebbels
Many representatives of the highest Nazi officials believed that the figure of Streicher cast a shadow on the party's policies. Its darkness and licentiousness frightened even those who themselves preached barbarism. Thus, Hermann Goering forbade his employees to read Sturmovik, and Joseph Goebbels in 1938 tried to stop publishing the newspaper altogether.
However, Hitler remained on Streicher's side. He was not interested in the moral qualities of the Gauleiter. The main thing is that he brings Nazi ideology to the masses. The man from the bottom, according to the Fuhrer, had to receive information about the “Jewish threat” in a simple and understandable form. And the Sturmovik coped with this task effectively. In addition, the newspaper expressed Hitler's true thoughts, which he sometimes had to hide due to political games. For example, in May 1939, that is, just a few months before the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Sturmovik published a headline article that read: “A punitive expedition against the Jews should be carried out in Bolshevik Russia. Soviet Jews will suffer the fate of all criminals and murderers - immediate reprisal and death. Then the whole world will see that the end of the Jews is the end of Bolshevism.”
Julius Streicher, 1935
Streicher's political career was put to an end after he quarreled with Hermann Goering. In his newspaper, he called the daughter of the German Reich Minister of Aviation “the fruit of artificial insemination.” Goering had a grudge against Streicher for a long time, until in 1940 he convinced the Fuhrer to conduct an audit of the activities of the editor of Der Stürmer, during which the Gauleiter’s fraud with Jewish real estate seized during Kristallnacht was revealed. Streicher was removed from all positions and deprived of the right to reside in Nuremberg. All that was left behind him was his newspaper. Until 1945, he continued to be the editor and publisher of Sturmovik, not a single issue of which Adolf Hitler missed.
A few weeks after the end of World War II, Streicher was identified by the American military in Waidring, Austria, and was immediately arrested. At the Nuremberg trials he was charged with “public incitement to the murder and extermination of Jews.” The indictment stated that propaganda was a tool of “psychological preparation for political actions and military aggression” by the Nazis. The main prosecutor from the USSR at the Nuremberg trials, Roman Rudenko, said: “Streicher can be considered the true “spiritual father” of those who tore children in two at Treblinka. Without the Stürmer and its master, German fascism would not have been able to so quickly raise those massive cadres of murderers who directly carried out the criminal plans of Hitler and his clique: the extermination of more than six million Jews in Europe.” Streicher denied all accusations against him. “The speeches and articles I wrote,” he said, “meant to inform the public... I did not intend to agitate or inflame, but to educate.”
Streicher during the Nuremberg trials
In Nuremberg, Streicher, who called the trial “the triumph of world Jewry,” was subjected to a psychiatric examination. Nothing other than pathological anti-Semitism was revealed - doctors declared him sane. On October 16, 1946, he was executed.
The trials of Nazi criminals confirmed the special role that propaganda, appealing to the basest human instincts, played in inciting hatred of the “enemies of the Aryan race” and inciting their total destruction. The prosecution of propagandists for “crimes against humanity” became a precedent that international bodies and courts still rely on today.
