Julius Streicher
Julius Streicher was a prominent figure in the Nazi Party, known primarily for his vehemently anti-Semitic publications and political actions. Born in 1885 in Bavaria, he initially followed a career in education but became increasingly radicalized in the wake of World War I, adopting a harshly anti-Jewish perspective that he propagated through his newspaper, Der Stürmer. Streicher's work was characterized by sensationalism and the revival of harmful stereotypes, contributing significantly to the normalization of anti-Semitic sentiment in Germany during the Nazi regime.
Despite his influence, he was not directly involved in the Holocaust or key government actions like the Nuremberg Laws, though his rhetoric was deemed to have helped facilitate such atrocities. Following World War II, Streicher was tried at the Nuremberg Trials, where he was found guilty of crimes against humanity due to his role in promoting hate and intolerance. He was sentenced to death and executed in 1946. Streicher's legacy remains a troubling example of how rhetoric can incite real-world violence and prejudice, illustrating the dangers of hate-filled propaganda.
Subject Terms
Julius Streicher
Nazi newspaper publisher and anti-Semitic propagandist
- Born: February 12, 1885
- Birthplace: Fleinhausen, Germany
- Died: October 16, 1946
- Place of death: Nuremberg, Germany
Major offenses: Crimes against humanity, namely his incitement and development of German anti-Jewish sentiment and policies
Active: May, 1923-April, 1945
Locale: Germany
Sentence: Death by hanging
Early Life
Julius Streicher (YEW-lee-uhs SHTRI-kuhr) was born to a schoolmaster in a rural town near Augsburg in southern Germany. Julius followed in his father’s footsteps and became a substitute teacher in January, 1904. In 1907 he entered military service for a year, but his rowdiness convinced his superiors he was unfit to become an officer. He returned to teaching and secured a position in Nuremberg. He became active in the local Democratic Party and married in 1913. When World War I broke out a year later, he reentered service and distinguished himself on battlefields in France, Romania, and Italy.
After the war he returned to Nuremberg to resume teaching and was profoundly affected by the problems the postwar German people faced. Unemployment, inflation, occupation, war guilt, and the myth of “Jewish back-stabbing” of the military effort were blended together and in his radicalized mind became the responsibility of Jews not only in Germany but also throughout the world. Raised on traditional German anti-Semitism, he now embraced a rhetorically violent anti-Jewish stance. He joined the Protective and Defensive Society and in 1920 the German Socialist Party, both right-wing political groups, but neither proved anti-Semitic enough for him.
On June 4, 1920, he nonetheless started the German Socialist, a party paper in which he ran terse, easily understood articles for the masses of malcontents. Despite internal opposition he carried on, because technically it was his paper. The National Socialist (Nazi) Party approached him in May, 1921, but at the time he preferred to create his own racialist coalition, changing the name of the paper to the Deutscher Volkswille (German people’s will). He also addressed his first mass meeting on April 14, 1922.
Criminal Career
In October, 1923, Streicher’s small group merged with Adolf Hitler’s Nazis, giving the future führer a solid Nuremberg connection. Streicher became blindly loyal to Hitler but never lost his streak of rowdy independence. He renamed his paper Der Stürmer (the stormer), and its first edition appeared in May, 1923. Streicher was jailed for complicity in Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in November, 1923, and joined the German Workers’ Party after the Nazis were outlawed. Elected to the Bavarian legislature, he proved a disruptive presence and left to form his own Greater German People’s Community. He was equally rowdy as a Nuremberg city councilman (fall, 1924). Upon his release from jail, Hitler appointed Streicher party Gauleiter (province leader) of the state of Franconia, a title he would hold for two decades. Known as the Bloody Czar of Franconia for his vocal advocacy in print and at mass rallies of violent anti-Semitic policies and actions, he never took part in anti-Jewish violence.
After Nazi Party victories in 1933, Der Stürmer grew in circulation, vituperation, and influence. Between 1927 and 1934 circulation doubled to twenty-eight thousand, and from 1934 to 1935 it grew twentyfold to more than half a million copies. Readership was several times that. Streicher retained his control of the publication, making it a semi-official party organ. Its anti-Jewish focus grew increasingly lurid, reviving the ancient “blood libel” of Jews murdering innocent Christians and feeding racist attitudes with pornographic depictions of Jewish sexual brutality. Though appreciated and rewarded by Hitler, Streicher was kept at arm’s length and had no role in the infamous major anti-Jewish governmental actions such as the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Kristallnacht (crystal night) of November, 1938, or the structuring and implementation of the Holocaust itself.
In 1939 a government commission secretly compiled a two-volume record of Streicher’s corruption, abuse of power, and sexual misdeeds, and in 1940 a tribunal declared him “unfit for human leadership.” Hitler had Streicher placed under house arrest in the Gauleiter’s villa outside Nuremberg, allowing him to retain his title and continue publication of Der Stürmer. At war’s end Streicher fled Franconia for Berchtesgaden, where he was captured by a Jewish officer of the U.S. Army.
Legal Action and Outcome
Along with leading Nazis, Streicher was tried for war crimes in Nuremberg. The International Military Tribunal accused him of two counts. He was found not guilty of the first, conspiracy to wage aggressive war, because there was no evidence to support it. On the second, crimes against humanity, he was found guilty. Unlike other defendants, however, he was not charged with specific acts of criminal behavior. The charges against him stemmed, rather, from his sustained and hate-filled anti-Semitic rhetoric, both spoken and published. Prosecutors charged—and the court found—that his career as “Chief Jew Baiter” had made the Holocaust and other atrocities possible, even if he had not participated in them. He had poisoned the minds of a generation, and the effects of his propaganda would continue to poison minds “for generations to come.”
In his defense, Streicher claimed that before 1933 he had only been a local figure with limited influence, and after the Nazi victory he was merely one of many Nazi proponents of racist ideas and policies. He further claimed that he personally rejected anti-Semitic violence and what little he knew of the Holocaust. Sentenced to death, he was hanged on October 16, 1946, but only after declaring his continuing allegiance to Hitler, the only convict to do so.
Impact
Julius Streicher’s vile campaign was a watershed of intolerance and hate that mixed interwar German resentment with ancient antipathies that were rooted in Christian mythology. Though many Germans and German leaders shared his anti-Semitism, Streicher’s strident popularization of filthy caricatures and racist lies fed the fires of intolerance and no doubt led many more to accept and even condone the policies and atrocities that characterized the Nazi pogrom. His crime was not merely hatred but also the instigation of hatred and ultimately the manifestation of that hatred in the Holocaust.
Bibliography
Bytwerk, Randall L. Julius Streicher: Nazi Editor of the Notorious Anti-Semitic Newspaper Der Stürmer. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001. Scholarly biography and study of his propaganda.
Davidowicz, Lucy. The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976. Classic account of the Holocaust that sets Streicher’s crimes in the context of Nazi atrocities.
Varga, William P. The Number One Nazi Jew-Baiter: A Political Biography of Julius Streicher, Hitler’s Chief Anti-Semitic Propagandist. New York: Carlton Press, 1981. Biographical study with an emphasis on Streicher’s reception by the Nazi hierarchy.