Julius Streicher

Julius Streicher published Der Stürmer, the most virulently antisemitic newspaper in the Reich, every week from 1923 to 1945. The paper produced the public-facing antisemitic incitement on which the regime depended for popular acceptance of the persecution and ultimately the killing programme. Streicher was tried at Nuremberg, found guilty of crimes against humanity on the basis of his publications, and hanged on 16 October 1946. He is the case in which a journalist was sentenced to death for what he had written.

Der Stürmer

Der Stürmer ran from 1923 to 22 February 1945, the last issue. It was a weekly tabloid, published in Nuremberg, with circulation peaking at around 800,000 in 1936 and remaining substantial throughout the war. The content was the wildest available antisemitic material: blood libel stories revived from medieval Christian polemic, sexual fantasies about Jewish men and Aryan women, conspiracy theories about Jewish economic and political dominance, and explicit calls for the elimination of Jews from Europe.

The paper’s style was the consistent feature. The illustrations, by the artist Philipp Rupprecht who signed himself Fips, depicted Jews in grotesque caricature, often as predators on small Aryan children. The headlines were direct calls to action against Jewish neighbours. The features ranged from invented cases of supposed Jewish ritual murder to detailed lists of suspected Jews in particular German towns whom readers were encouraged to denounce. The 1934 special issue on ritual murder, devoted entirely to the blood libel, was distributed in tens of thousands of additional copies.

The escalation

Der Stürmer escalated through the 1930s and 1940s in step with the regime’s policy. The pre-1933 paper was crude antisemitic incitement. The mid-1930s paper supported the Nuremberg Laws and the Aryanisation programme. The wartime paper supported, and from 1942 onwards openly called for, the killing of European Jewry. A characteristic 1942 issue contained the headline The Jews must be exterminated alongside articles claiming that this was the only solution to what the paper called the Jewish problem. The wartime issues bear the imprint of a publisher who knew what was happening to the Jews of Europe and who openly endorsed it.

The personal corruption

Streicher was a serious personal corruption case even by the standards of senior Nazis. He used his position as Gauleiter of Franconia (the regional Nazi Party leader for Nuremberg and the surrounding area, a position he held from 1929 to 1940) to acquire substantial Aryanised Jewish property at confiscatory prices. The corruption was so blatant that the Nazi Party’s own internal investigators recommended his expulsion in 1940. He lost the Gauleiter position but Hitler personally protected him from further consequences. He continued publishing Der Stürmer until the end of the war.

The Nuremberg trial

Streicher was tried at Nuremberg on the crimes against humanity count, principally on the basis of Der Stürmer. The prosecution argued that his decades of antisemitic publication had constituted incitement to genocide and that he was as responsible for the killings as the men who had carried them out. The argument was novel in international law. The judges accepted it. The verdict, delivered on 1 October 1946, found Streicher guilty on the basis that his publications had been part of the operational propaganda effort that made the killings possible at the scale they did. The judgment is the foundation of the modern international legal doctrine on incitement to genocide.

Streicher was hanged at Nuremberg on 16 October 1946. He went to the gallows shouting antisemitic and pro-Nazi slogans. His final words were Heil Hitler and a curse against the Jewish people. He was 61.

What he was

Streicher is the case of the antisemitic publisher as senior perpetrator. He held no operational position in the SS, the police, or the Wehrmacht. He commanded no killing units. He attended no Wannsee. What he did, week after week for twenty-two years, was produce the public language and the popular ideology in which the killing of European Jewry could be framed as a reasonable national project. The Nuremberg verdict treated this work as a war crime. The verdict has remained a foundational case in international law on the relationship between incitement and genocide. It is invoked, today, in cases concerning Rwanda, Yugoslavia, and Myanmar.

See also

Sources

  • Randall Bytwerk, Julius Streicher: Nazi Editor of the Notorious Anti-Semitic Newspaper Der Stürmer, Cooper Square, 2001
  • Dennis Showalter, Little Man, What Now? Der Stürmer in the Weimar Republic, Archon, 1982
  • Bound complete file of Der Stürmer, 1923-1945, Bundesarchiv and Library of Congress
  • Nuremberg International Military Tribunal judgment on Streicher, 1 October 1946
  • USHMM: Julius Streicher