Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

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michael mills
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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#31

Post by michael mills » 26 Feb 2017, 02:06

I hope you understand that exculpatory statements by Eichmann do not amount to proven facts.
The statements made by Eichmann about his rejection of the type of sexually-based anti-Semitism propagated by Streicher were hardly exculpatory.

If he had wanted to exculpate himself, he would have said that the only reason he committed anti-Jewish actions was because he was influenced by the evil Streicher.

Instead, he said the exact opposite. He said that Streicher's publications and ideas had no effect on him at all, and that Streicher was rejected at the highest levels of the SS.

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Sergey Romanov
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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#32

Post by Sergey Romanov » 26 Feb 2017, 02:34

michael mills wrote:
I hope you understand that exculpatory statements by Eichmann do not amount to proven facts.
The statements made by Eichmann about his rejection of the type of sexually-based anti-Semitism propagated by Streicher were hardly exculpatory.

If he had wanted to exculpate himself, he would have said that the only reason he committed anti-Jewish actions was because he was influenced by the evil Streicher.

Instead, he said the exact opposite. He said that Streicher's publications and ideas had no effect on him at all, and that Streicher was rejected at the highest levels of the SS.
Puh. Being influenced by Streicher is hardly exculpatory. Both for a general obvious reason, and because Eichmann's defense strategy was to present himself as a non-antisemite, a mere bureaucrat. Saying that he was influenced by Streicher would have proven Eichmann's antisemitism and would have given a criminal motive to his actions (other than simply following orders).

Meanwhile Streicher was convicted by the IMT, and the prosecution sought to link him to Eichmann, making him an albatross around Eichmann's neck. So yes, Eichmann's distancing from Streicher was exculpatory.

That said, Eichmann did provide one interesting bit that Michael chose not to quote. When interrogated by Less, Eichmann stated:
For a long time Himmler was under the influence of Streicher-Stürmer ideas, in sharp contradistinction to Heydrich, his Security Police and SD chief, who had no use for this unrealistic, fool's wisdom, as I called it on one occasion.


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Sergey Romanov
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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#33

Post by Sergey Romanov » 26 Feb 2017, 02:44

> But that is not reflected in the reports of shooting actions

Why would something that might have made it psychologically easier to shoot someone be also necessarily reflected in any reports? You might know that someone is ordered to be shot on some abstract basis (and it is this abstract basis that would be reflected in the reports), but it won't make it any easier for you to shoot them, especially if they are children, regarding whom the abstract basis becomes even less psychologically convincing. If you however think they're a bloodthirsty alien tribe with cannibalistic rituals, you will have an easier time pulling the trigger.

So I'm afraid what you wrote doesn't make any sense to me.

Anyway, the point was that the Einsatzkommando personnel was not "above" the Streicher-like propaganda, whatever Eichmann might have said in his exculpatory statements.

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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#34

Post by ChristopherPerrien » 26 Feb 2017, 06:35

Blackadder2000 wrote:In my opion, I don't really understand how Streicher could have been sentenced to death at the Nürnberg trials.
He didn't have any real power, (In February 1940 he was even stripped of his party offices and withdrew from the public eye, although he was permitted to continue publishing Der Stürmer) and although his newspaper Der Stürmer was dispicable, it still can be considered to be Freedom of Press.

So, IMO the death sentence of Streicher is controversial. Any thoughts?
As I brought up 15(?) years ago in the original topic. Streicher was tried and sentenced to death, because Goebbels, having committed suicide(to prevent/avoid this very thing/trial) was not around. Streicher was the "stand in " for the "Minister of Propaganda of the NSDAP government of Germany, and of the NAZI movement itself.

No real need to argue any details of Streicher's guilt or innocence of thoughtcrime. He would never have been a part of the "show" at Nuremberg, IF Goebbels had been alive.

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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#35

Post by michael mills » 26 Feb 2017, 06:40

Sergey, what you have written is highly speculative; you have not presented any hard evidence whatever that any member of the Einsatzgruppen, or of any other SS-Police units involved in the massacre of the Jews, was in any way motivated by reading "Stuermer" or any other of Streicher's publications, to go out and kill Jews.

The same sort of unsupported speculation was clearly the basis for the conviction of Streicher by the IMT for Crimes against Humanity. The IMT judgement on Streicher was able to quote only one example of a German being influenced by Streicher's publications, namely this one:
Streicher, in February 1940, published a letter from one of Der Stuermer's readers which compared Jews with swarms of locusts which must be exterminated completely. Such was the poison Streicher injected into the minds of thousands of Germans which caused them to follow the National Socialist policy of Jewish persecution and extermination.
From that one very weak and inconclusive example, the IMT concluded that it was the influence of Streicher's words, what it called "poison injected into the minds" of Germans which caused them to follow the policy of persecution and extermination of the Jews. However, it adduced no evidence whatever of any causal connection between Streicher's words and the crimes against the Jews committed by the German Government, it merely speculated that such a causal connection must have existed.

Even wilder speculation is found in the Prosecution case against Streicher:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nur ... -streicher

The Prosecution made this claim:
The crime of Streicher is that he made these crimes possible, which they would never have been had it not been for him and for those like him. Without Streicher and his propaganda, the Kaltenbrunners, the Himmlers, the General Stroops would have had nobody to do their

In its extent Streicher's crime is probably greater and more far-reaching than that of any of the other defendants. The misery which they caused ceased with their capture. The effects of this man's crime, of the poison that he has put into the minds of millions of young boys and girls goes on, for he concentrated upon the youth and childhood of Germany. He leaves behind him a legacy of almost a whole people poisoned with hate, sadism, and murder, and perverted by him. That people remain a problem and perhaps a menace to the rest of civilization for generations to come.
The exaggeration in this passage is monumental. It is essentially saying that if Streicher and his propaganda had never existed, it would have been impossible to carry out the killing of millions of Jews, since nobody in Germany would have been willing to perpetrate such an act.

The reality is that the main ideological motivation for individuals to accept the necessity to kill Jews en masse was the concept of Judeo-Bolshevism, the idea that the Russian Revolution and all the atrocities following from it had been the work of the Jews, who allegedly were conspiring to inflict the same atrocities on the German and other European peoples through instigating revolutions. As I have shown, that motivation affected many people in Eastern Europe who had never been exposed to Streicher and his propaganda. As Himmler expressed it in his address to German political and military leaders in his Posen speeches of late 1943 and early 1944: "We had the right to kill this people that wanted to kill us".

Most egregious is the claim that Streicher had "poisoned a whole people with hate, sadism, and murder", and had "perverted" them, to the extent that that people, the Germans, remained "a problem and perhaps a menace to the rest of civilisation for generations to come". The historical fact of course is that once Germany collapsed, the anti-Jewish imagery created by Streicher vanished almost without trace, leaving a German population showing no overt signs of active anti-Semitism, certainly far less than some other European peoples in the immediate aftermath of the war, the Poles for example.

In fact, it would seem that Streicher's anti-Semitic propaganda, far from having a formative influence on the thinking of the German people, actually depended on the support of the National Socialist regime for its dissemination, and once that support evaporated due to the collapse of the regime, the ideas promoted by Streicher simply vanished from the German mentality.

The judgement against Streicher also quotes one example from his publications that shows how out of touch he was with the actual thinking of the German Government, and accordingly how little influence he had on it:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nur ... -streicher
A leading article of "Der Sturmer" in May, 1939, shows clearly his aim:

"A punitive expedition must come against the Jews in Russia. A punitive expedition which will provide the same fate for them that every murderer and criminal must expect. Death sentence and execution. The Jews in Russia must be killed. They must be exterminated root and branch."
Thus in May 1939, Streicher was calling for a "punitive expedition" against the Jews of Russia, which could only occur in the context of a war against the Soviet Union. However, precisely at that time, Hitler was preparing for a war against Poland, which might entail a war against Britain and France also, and far from contemplating a war against the Soviet Union, some of the German leaders, in particular Ribbentrop, were making moves to secure a détente with it, to ensure that it would remain neutral in the coming war with Poland and possibly the West.

It is obvious that in May 1949 no-one in the German Government was paying any attention to Streicher, who was peddling ideas totally contrary to the course that Hitler and the other top leaders were pursuing at the time.

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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#36

Post by BarKokhba » 26 Feb 2017, 11:16

MM, your train of thought and evidence re Streicher's execution is commendable, but even a cursory look at Streicher's record as a Nazi Party official with numerous titles (until his demotions), his horrific record as Gauleiter of Nuremberg, his use of Dur Sturmer attacking individual Jews with Jew-baiting economic (not sexual) slander, his participation as a leader in the Kristallnach Pogrom, and his publication of antisemitic books for children, etc., made him a criminal against humanity, if not a substitute for Hitler at the Trial, and subject to execution by the Allies, who witnessed the grim results of his work from 1923-1945 first-hand.

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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#37

Post by Sergey Romanov » 26 Feb 2017, 20:59

> Sergey, what you have written is highly speculative; you have not presented any hard evidence whatever that any member of the Einsatzgruppen, or of any other SS-Police units involved in the massacre of the Jews, was in any way motivated by reading "Stuermer" or any other of Streicher's publications, to go out and kill Jews

Michael, that's a bit of strawman, since I was responding to your point about the antisemitism of the SS being of a different (supposedly more intellectual) sort than Streicher's vulgar fare.

Whether they were influenced specifically by Streicher is a separate topic which I have not addressed except indirectly, by quoting Eichmann who claimed that Himmler used to be influenced by Streicher. Be that as it may, it was not the main point I was making.

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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#38

Post by Boby » 27 Feb 2017, 12:22

Sergey Romanov wrote:> Sergey, what you have written is highly speculative; you have not presented any hard evidence whatever that any member of the Einsatzgruppen, or of any other SS-Police units involved in the massacre of the Jews, was in any way motivated by reading "Stuermer" or any other of Streicher's publications, to go out and kill Jews

Michael, that's a bit of strawman, since I was responding to your point about the antisemitism of the SS being of a different (supposedly more intellectual) sort than Streicher's vulgar fare.

Whether they were influenced specifically by Streicher is a separate topic which I have not addressed except indirectly, by quoting Eichmann who claimed that Himmler used to be influenced by Streicher. Be that as it may, it was not the main point I was making.
A comparison of "Der Stürmer" with "Der Schwarze Korps" would be helpful, at least for the public sphere. Internal SS memoranda of the SS was already published by Wildt in 1995 "Die Judenpolitik des SD"

And even if Himmler was, for some time, influenced by Streicher`s "Radau-Antisemitismus" doesn`t mean the rest of SS leaders (RSHA, HSSPFs/SSPFs, IdS/BdS, etc......) were.

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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#39

Post by Blackadder2000 » 27 Feb 2017, 18:45

ChristopherPerrien wrote:
Blackadder2000 wrote:In my opion, I don't really understand how Streicher could have been sentenced to death at the Nürnberg trials.
He didn't have any real power, (In February 1940 he was even stripped of his party offices and withdrew from the public eye, although he was permitted to continue publishing Der Stürmer) and although his newspaper Der Stürmer was dispicable, it still can be considered to be Freedom of Press.

So, IMO the death sentence of Streicher is controversial. Any thoughts?
As I brought up 15(?) years ago in the original topic. Streicher was tried and sentenced to death, because Goebbels, having committed suicide(to prevent/avoid this very thing/trial) was not around. Streicher was the "stand in " for the "Minister of Propaganda of the NSDAP government of Germany, and of the NAZI movement itself.

No real need to argue any details of Streicher's guilt or innocence of thoughtcrime. He would never have been a part of the "show" at Nuremberg, IF Goebbels had been alive.
I agree. That's exaclty what Göring said to the psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn while he was standing trial at Nürnberg

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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#40

Post by Sergey Romanov » 28 Feb 2017, 04:55

Boby wrote: A comparison of "Der Stürmer" with "Der Schwarze Korps" would be helpful, at least for the public sphere.
You're welcome to go ahead with this project.
And even if Himmler was, for some time, influenced by Streicher`s "Radau-Antisemitismus" doesn`t mean the rest of SS leaders (RSHA, HSSPFs/SSPFs, IdS/BdS, etc......) were.
Maybe, maybe not, but considering who Himmler was, influencing him in this direction would probably be worth more than influencing a thousand HSSPFs, BdS etc.
Not to mention that Hitler seemed to have a weak spot for Streicher too. But I digress.

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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#41

Post by David Thompson » 28 Feb 2017, 06:31

Streicher's final statement at the Nuremberg trials may be of interest -- he put the blame on Hitler:
It has been established that:
(1) Mass killings were carried out exclusively upon orders by the Head of the State, Adolf Hitler, without other influence.
(2) The mass killings were carried out without the knowledge of the German people and in complete secrecy by the Reichsfuehrer SS, Heinrich Himmler.

* * *
According to his last testament the mass killings ordered by the leader of the State, Adolf Hitler, were supposed to be a reprisal which was only brought about by the course of the war, then recognized as becoming unfavorable.

These actions of the leader of the State against the Jews can be explained by his attitude toward the Jewish question, which was thoroughly different from mine. Hitler wanted to punish the Jews because he held them responsible for unleashing the war and for the bombing of the German civilian population. It is deeply regrettable that the mass killings, which can be traced back to the personal decision of the leader of the State, Adolf Hitler, have led to a treatment of the German people which must also be considered as not humane. I repudiate the mass killings which were carried out, in the same way as they are repudiated by every decent German.
Julius Streicher, IMT Proceedings, vol. 22 p. 385

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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#42

Post by ChristopherPerrien » 01 Mar 2017, 00:14

Blackadder2000 wrote:
I agree. That's exaclty what Göring said to the psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn while he was standing trial at Nürnberg
It has been noted by many people, Goering's mind "cleared up" as he was forced "by the times" :wink: , to kick his morphine addiction. Also, IIRC, his IQ was at the higher end of the defendants. His frankness at Nuremberg was striking. It, and his personality, shines through, even in translation, and years past, in his comments and testimony.

IMO, if you really want to know what truly happened in Germany and at Nuremberg and why. Read Goering's words and testimony during the Nuremberg trials. I won't apologize if I sound like a "fan" of Goering, I am, and it is because of the things he said during Nuremberg.

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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#43

Post by Sergey Romanov » 02 Mar 2017, 06:01

Which of course blows the usual "they were forced to confess" line out of the water :)

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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#44

Post by ChristopherPerrien » 02 Mar 2017, 16:19

Sergey Romanov wrote:Which of course blows the usual "they were forced to confess" line out of the water :)
Ah yes isolating a singular occurrence to discount context.
Sergey , your left is showing. :lol: No problem, I fully expected it ,
with the bait I was throwing :wink: , But as to your comment-

Many were, However Goering knew he was going to die (and that he was going to kill himself beforehand , if not shot) and the "show" needed a star witness. It is good for the historical record that Goering was captured alive and was candid, and also the circumstances being such he had no reason to lie and much reason to set the story right as he viewed it for the historical record. I'd put his testimony and Nuremberg's comment as a "deathbed confession/last testament" and in the RW such carries weight. And notably Goering did not like like Streicher both because he considered Streicher crude and uncouth( perhaps Prussian/Bavarian, high class/low class, dislikes there) and also he was jealous of Streicher as Streicher had some "pull/influence" with Hitler. So, given that, it goes to reason, Goering saying Streicher was a "stand-in" for Goebbels, was a parting derogatory/minimizing remark about someone he did not like as well.


Again back to Streicher. As has been brought up Streicher was kind of a "favored jester" of Hitler, and while sanctioned during the NSDAP reign for illegal acts and also saying some bad things about Goering's family, he lived well through the war and was not imprisoned.

Which leds us back to Nuremberg. It was stated and "proven" at Nuremberg. Streicher influenced German's to commit crime against humanity by poisoning their minds. However given Hitler's penchant for Streicher and also for supposedly reading every issue of the Sturmer with relish. It might be well that the one German Streicher really influence with his "porno mag", was Hitler. And that would definitely account for him being really guilty as of Nuremberg.

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Re: Julius Streicher at Nürnberg Trials

#45

Post by Blackadder2000 » 02 Mar 2017, 17:32

ChristopherPerrien wrote:
Sergey Romanov wrote:Which of course blows the usual "they were forced to confess" line out of the water :)
Which leds us back to Nuremberg. It was stated and "proven" at Nuremberg. Streicher influenced German's to commit crime against humanity by poisoning their minds. However given Hitler's penchant for Streicher and also for supposedly reading every issue of the Sturmer with relish. It might be well that the one German Streicher really influence with his "porno mag", was Hitler. And that would definitely account for him being really guilty as of Nuremberg.
Yet, there is no proof of the fact that Hitler was influenced by Streicher :wink:

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