That remains to be "proved" by you.michael mills wrote:Furthermore, it is more likely than not that the average educated, middle-class German was turned off by the obscene nature of Streicher's publications, and was uninfluenced by them.
Obviously, someone was reading Der Stürmer in Germany (see below). I am sure that some portion of those who read Der Stürmer accepted some or all of what was claimed within its pages.
(Bold mine)The Nazi Labor Front(DAF) urged its members to subscribe to Der Stürmer, and the SS commander of the Death's Head Division urged his recruits to read it.
Joseph Wulf, Presse und Funk im Dritten Reich, p. 252 as cited in Claudia Koontz, The Nazi Conscience, pp. 238-9.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmerMost of its readers were young people and people from the lowest strata of German society. Copies of der Stürmer were displayed in prominent display cases throughout the Reich. In 1927, it sold about 27,000 copies every week; by 1935, its circulation had reached around 480,000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmerHitler considered Streicher's ‘primitive methods’ to be effective in influencing the man on the street. He told a senior Nazi politician in the mid 1930s that:
"Anti-Semitism … was beyond question the most important weapon in his propagandist arsenal, and almost everywhere it was of deadly efficiency. That was why he had allowed Streicher, for example, a free hand. The man’s stuff, too, was amusing, and very cleverly done. Wherever, he wondered, did Streicher get his constant supply of new material? He, Hitler, was simply on thorns to see each new issue of the Stürmer. It was the one periodical that he always read with pleasure, from the first page to the last".
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/faculty/streich3.htmDer Stürmer Circulation: 1927-1938
Issue/Year Circulation
1927 14,000
1933 25,000
No. 6 (1934) 47,000
No.13 (1934) 49,000
No. 17 (1934) 50,000
No. 19 (1934) 60,000
No. 33 (1934) 80,000
No. 35 (1934) 94,114
No. 42 (1934) 113,800
No. 6 (1935) 132,897
No. 19 (1935) 202,600
No. 29 (1935) 286,400
No. 36 (1935) 410,600
No. 40 (1935) 486,000
No. 5 (1938) 473,000
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/faculty/streich3.htmNine special editions also were published after 1933, often timed to appear at the annual Nuremberg rally. These had themes such as ritual murder, Jewish criminality, the world Jewish conspiracy, Jewish sex crimes, and the Jews of Austria and Czechoslovakia. Print runs were as high as 2,000,000, and extensive national advertising was conducted.
The readership of the Stürmer was even larger than the circulation figures suggest, for thousands of elaborate display cases were built by loyal readers throughout Germany that displayed each week's issue. A journalism handbook published during the Nazi era claimed that such display cases were to be found everywhere in Germany, giving the paper an unprecedented readership.
Claudia Koontz, The Nazi Conscience, p. 237.If between three and five adults read each issue, the magazione reached no more than 2 or 3 million readers in a nation of 65 million.
Long before CNN invited its viewers to submit videos of newsworthy events, Der Stürmer invited readers to submit reports of Jewish "crimes."
Claudia Koontz, The Nazi Conscience, p. 231.Der Stürmer editors created networks of antisemitic vigilantes who spied on their neighbors and searched municipal records for evidence of Jewish mischief. They created a virtual community among geographically far-flung individuals which anticipated the call-in radio programs and Internet chatrooms of a later generation.
Claudia Koontz, The Nazi Conscience, p. 232.In his stolid anti-intellectualism, Streicher personalified the SA man. Instead of coiurting well-educated readers, he played the "bad boy of the Nazi movement ...
Claudia Koontz, The Nazi Conscience, p. 232.According to the prosecution at Streiucher's Nuremberg trial, the tabloid on over fifty occasions called for elimination, murder, or annihilation of Jews.
Penn44
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