by J. Duncan on 22 May 2012 11:03
trespasser,
Unfortunately, the book by Vargas is very hard to find. I think it was privately published only in numbered copies. Mine was signed by the author. It is a very good book however, so I suggest you be patient and continue to check abebooks.com periodically. "Racketeers of Hatred" is also extrememly rare and very expensive, but a very informative book. If you do not have any biographies on Streicher, I suggest you start with Randall Bytwerk's book, which is affordable and highlights Streicher's career and periodical "Der Stürmer". It does not have many of the personal details on Streicher as can be found in Varga's book, but it gives a very good overview. There is also Dennis Showalter's book "Der Stürmer in the Weimar Republic", which is a very good study of his newspaper in the pre-1933 years. It contains much biographical detail of his early life and career. One of the old books I have highlighting Streicher is "Hitler's Twelve Apostles" by author Oswald Dutch. In the chapter on Streicher, he tells a gossipy story about how Streicher used to walk around his office in bathing trunks! The story is repeated in Robert Edwin Herzstein's Time-Life WWII "classic" "The Nazis". I do not think it's very credible, but smear was quite common writing about these fellows as far back as the 1930's and clearly illustrates the hatred the world press had for these men. "Caesar's in Goose Step" is another example of this kind of book. There is a story in the book highlighting an experience the author had on one of Ley's cruiseships. Ley was still drunk from the night before ("Sorry, but last night found me alone with a bottle of cognac, and well, you know how that goes..."). William Bayles (the author) speaks of Ley's room littered with trash, broken and empty liquor bottles, half-eaten sandwiches, odors of cigar smoke and leftover wurst. Ley, with a bandage around his hand (he had cut it opening a liquor bottle) waved a bloody hand at his guest "Mr Americano! How are you?" and proceeds to clear a coffee table simply by sweeping everything off it onto the floor with his arm. Ley's adjudant had to be physically supported by his aide de camp as he was too drunk to stand. These kind of stories are told over and over by these journalists of the 1930's.
Last edited by J. Duncan on 22 May 2012 17:23, edited 1 time in total.
