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Julius Streicher: Nazi Editor of the Notorious Anti-semitic Newspaper Der Sturmer

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Many people are familiar with the fact that Julius Streicher was one of the Nazis executed as a result of the Nuremberg trials. Most aren't clear on what Streicher's crimes were, however. In this book Randall Bytwerk reveals what it was that Streicher did to deserve having his neck snapped like a twig on the gallows in 1946.

Julius Streicher was one of Hitler's earliest comrades during the Nazi rise to power in the 1920's and 1930's. Streicher helped Hitler gain a foothold in Nuremberg, which helped the Nazi regime consolidate its hold on Germany. Streicher's main role, however, was as a sort of common man's Joseph Goebbels. Streicher was a teacher by trade, and a fairly effective one at that. He had the rare ability to motivate his students by instilling his enthusiasm for any subject into the minds of his pupils. Streicher used this ability later in his duties for the Nazi party. Streicher published the notorious anti-Jewish newspaper Der Sturmer, which pumped out the most strident and hateful propaganda on the "Jewish Problem" for over twenty years. Bytwerk examines how effective Der Sturmer was on the common German, and how the newspaper went about reducing Jews to the status of non-humans. When this status was reached, the result led to the concentration camps and mass murder.

Included in the book are many reproductions from Der Sturmer, most of which are cartoons that present Jews as animals or as evil, deformed creatures bent on the destruction of Germany. Many cartoons attempt to show Jews as a threat to German women or girls, thereby appealing directly to German manhood and nobility. Bytwerk convincingly argues that these cartoons and articles were quite effective in conditioning the German people into a state in which they regarded the Jews as pure evil. As propaganda, Der Sturmer was a masterpiece. Bytwerk points out that while it convinced Germans that Jews were evil, its most important accomplishment was that it created an atmosphere of indifference. Most Germans didn't run out and attack Jews after reading this stuff. What they did do was not stand up when laws began to appear that stripped Jews of their rights. In other words, Der Sturmer convinced most Germans to do nothing to help Jews.

One of the best parts of the book is when Bytwerk examines the history of German anti-Semitic thought. The Nazis were building their particular programs on a foundation that had been created by other authors in the past. This foundation allowed Streicher's propaganda to work much faster and accomplish more in a shorter time. The dislike and distrust were already in place. All Streicher did was to bring it up to date and articulate it in a way that was easy for the common German to understand. Since Der Sturmer was so effective, I disagree with Bytwerk when he states that Streicher was not a bright man. Streicher may have not been a brilliant party organizer, but he certainly accomplished what he set out to do. With all that Streicher got accomplished, and the way he did it, I'd say he was a genius at propaganda, and one who rivaled Joseph Goebbels, who Bytwerk seems to think was Streicher's intellectual "better".

This book is a worthy read, although it is out of print and might be somewhat difficult to find on a local level. Try Amazon.com's search service. Wherever you look, try and pick up a copy. It will be well worth the time.

Originally founded in May 1925 as a platform to attack STREICHER's inner party rivals, the infamous weekly DER STÜRMER quickly became notorious. During the remaining years of the Weimar republic and throughout the twelve years of National Socialist rule (the last issue appeared in February 1945) DER STÜRMER was Germany's leading and most low-brow anti-Semitic newspaper. At the beginning, it was a local paper, but it quickly turned out to be successful nationwide. 25000 copies were sold at the time when HITLER came to power in 1933, but publication quickly rose and peaked at around 700000 in the late 1930ies. (During the war circulation figures went down dramatically due to paper shortages.) There were also thousands of elaborate display cases throughout Germany, each displaying the current issue.
Nine special editions (about topics like Jewish sex crimes, Jewish conspiracy, ritual murder, Jews in Czechoslowakia and Austria, and ritual murder) were published, with up to 2 million issues printed of each. The newspaper's appeal was also not limited to Germany:
"New outrages from the Stuermer were regularly denounced by the world press. But there were many who looked on Streicher's work more sympathetically. A single issue in 1935 contained replies to readers in Greece, Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, England, Australia, and the United States. Photographs of foreign readers were printed regularly. In the United States, Nazi organisations mailed copies to those interested. Even those unable to read German could absorb much of Streicher's message by looking at the cartoons and photographs. Branch offices of the Stuermer were opened in Vienna, Prague, and Strasbourg once Nazi armies had marched in, and a Danish edition was attempted in 1941." (p. 172)
In addition to his editorship and his duties as Gauleiter of Franconia STREICHER also published illustrated anti-Semitic children books, a short lived anti-Semitic medical journal and even academic books.

The focus of the book under review is an analysis of the publication history and the content of the weekly, and not so much a biography of STREICHER, who by all accounts was a rather unpleasant man. Born on 12 February 1885 in a small village near Augsburg in Bavaria, Julius STREICHER was a school teacher by trade and a highly decorated veteran of world war 1. While he was politically active before the war in mainstream avenues, he embraced anti-Semitism by 1919. According to BYTWERK (p. 8) it is not exactly known why. (I wonder whether the numerous communist uprisings (Berlin, Munich, Hungary, among others) usually lead by Jews, would have had anything to do with it?)
Anyway, thus began his infamous political career, which led him to be editor of his newspaper and Gauleiter (local nazi party leader) of Franconia. He beat up political opponents with a whip, was sexually insatiable and embezzled funds that should have gone to Reich accounts.
Being an early party member, already involved in the 1923 Munich beer hall coup, and because of his loyalty and propagandistic efforts, HITLER long protected him, but could not help him in the long run.
The account of the intrigues that led to STREICHER's downfall as Gauleiter of Franconia following a party trial in February 1940 (he remained editior of his weekly) makes particular interesting reading. (STREICHER even ordered one of his accomplices to commit suicide! The man complied.)
BYTWERK has obviously put much effort in his book, analysing every aspect of the Stuermer newspaper, from the crude caricatures by cartoonist "Fips" (Philippe RUPPRECHT, who ironically originally worked for a Social Democrat newspaper) to various changes in the focus of reporting reflecting political changes and the infamous pillory column, introduced in 1933. Fanatical readers often sent in letters denouncing
Germans who e.g. did their shopping in Jewish shops, dated Jews or made business deals with them, accompanyied with addresses and pictures. (Occassionally whole photo essays were provided).
I have some issues with the book despite the interesting subject (there are very few books about STREICHER available). Firstly, there are some translation issues. For instance the names of two fringe groups STREICHER briefly belonged to following the ban of the Nazi party after the failed coup are not provided in English. (I am native speaker of German, but the book was written for an English speaking audience in the first place.) Secondly, there are some misleading explanations. Of the first radical party STREICHER joined, the German Socialist Party, author BYTWERK writes, "it was despite its name a right-wing group holding many of the traditional values that Streicher supported" (p. 9), while a more accurate description would be a folkish socialist political party. The American church that reprinted the ritual murder special edition in 1976 is indeed "an anti-Semitic organisation", but it is apparently also a Christian Identity group.
Thirdly and more importantly the book tends very much toward political correctness and the usual German bashing, the afterword with author BYTWERK speaking out against GOLDHAGEN's view regarding German eliminatory anti-Semitism notwithstanding.
Without wanting to play devil's advocate it is evident to me that author BYTWERK did not devote much space for arguments in STREICHER's favour at the Nurmberg military tribunal (e.g. that many of his anti-Jewish attacks in his newspaper were in response to foreign threats of annihilation of Germany etc.)
The book is profusely illustrated and also has three sample Stuermer articles (one of them incomplete) and two tales from the children book THE POISONOUS MUSHROOM.
Recommended for anyone interested in analysis of propaganda, but be aware of the shortcomings.

I would agree with elements of "The Bully Pulpit"s review, below, in that the biography element of this book concerning Julius Streicher is minimal and shallow. The great majority of the book is concerned with describing and attacking anti-semitism in general and in some cases specifically where it was used by Julius Streicher in his newspaper Der Sturmer.
Had I wanted a book detailing anti-semitism, I would have sought one out. In this instance I thought I was buying a biography of Julius Streicher, but this turned out not to be the case.
I can not really recommend this book for readers seeking to find out more about the life of Julius Streicher.

Actually I'd never heard of Julius Streicher before, even though I've reading too much about WWII and the Holocaust. Names like Hitler, Himmler, Mengele, Goebbels were too familiar to me, but not Streicher.

One fundamental issue that made Final Solution possible was propaganda. Many people wonder how an educated people like germans, lovers of culture and classic music could allow such despicable things. To see that people were murdered and not even blink. Precisaly, the answer to this question is propaganda, because the nazis put Germany in the position of "if we don't do something about the jews, they will destroy Germany" (literally)

That explains then the importance of Julius Streicher and his publication Der Sturmer. Der Sturmer was directed to the common men, the average people, not too poor, not too rich, not too intelligent, not too dumb. Average. And kind of easy to convice. As the book points: Hitler was too far, Goebbels too intelectual, but Streicher was the example of average people.

So, Der Sturmer had easy texts and disgusting images. If Hitler compared the jews to a plague, Streicher and his cartoonist "Fips" gave the image of those words to the german people more visible. Drawing the jews like vermins, bats, spiders, monsters in the perfect sense of the word took away the idea that jews were people like everybody else. Retouching pictures of jews making them look uglier and perverted so the germans could see how horrible they were.

Besides, the text was helpful for Streicher's purpose. "It doesn't matter if a jew says is your friend, because is lying, because he doesn't have any feelings" I bet those words made many people who know jews for years to doubt about them, to even denounce them. Streicher took in his hands the job of poisoning german people's mind. In this book there are tales that were published in books for children like "the poisonous mushroom", children who are always easy to convice, most if those words are said by an important nazi and school teacher like Streicher was; there also letters from young kids to Streicher "thank you for opening my eyes about the jewish question, now I know how dangerous they are..."

By the time when Final Solution was happening, the average german people was convinced that jews were vermins and if they were vermins they should be exterminated like one. By poison gas mainly. The people were already sure of Hitler's words, Goebbels' propaganda and Der Sturmer's ideas.

The reason why Streicher was condemned in 1946 it was because his job didn't end with his arrest or his death, like many other nazi leaders. No. The minds he poisoned remain like that even when the person who did it is already gone. An idea is easy to spread and hard to change. In this case, an absolut crime against humanity.

This book proves what is perhaps the only important thing about Julius Streicher - his unimportance. Yes, he wrote anti-Semitic polemics and yes, some people did read them but the simple fact is that Dr. Streicher had absolutely no influence on Hitler nor the policies of the National Socialist government. In fact, he was such an irritant, that Hitler himself had him kicked out of office as Nuremberg Gauleiter in 1940. Aside from continuing to publish Der Sturmer, Dr. Streicher remained in relative obscurity and retirement until arrested by the allies in 1945.

After Germany's defeat, Streicher was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity yet the prosecution at Nuremberg did not produce one witness to attest that official policy regarding the Jews could be traced back to either Der Sturmer or anything else Dr. Streicher wrote or advocated. Streicher had no position in the German government either before or during the war nor was he ever consulted nor were his views ever solicited whenever Hitler formulated policies.

European political thought was rife with anti-Semitism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and Dr. Streicher's writings were certainly no different than many other writers and agitators of the time. Why was Streicher singled out for trial and execution? No one knows. The legal basis for his conviction and execution does not exist under any rule of law and can only be traced back to a desire for simple vengence against a man only the Allies took seriously.

I should start by saying the title of Randall Bytwerk's book, JULIUS STREICHER, is a bit misleading. STREICHER is not strictly speaking a biography; only about fifty of its 200 pages are devoted to the life of the man who from 1923 - 1945 was Hitler's chief anti-Semitic propagandist, agitator and "Jew-baiter." The rest of the work is essentially an examination of his newspaper, DER STUERMER, and the various methods it used to stir up anti-Jewish bias in Germany. One might call the book a study of how Streicher and the STUERMER (Stormer or Attacker) laid the emotional (if not the ideological) foundations for what happened to Europe's Jews during World War II.

Streicher is more or less a forgotten figure now, but he played a fairly crucial role in the struggle of the Nazi Party to attain power in Germany, and long after he himself had fallen from the Party's graces, he continued to enjoy Hitler's personal protection. A coarse, depraved, bullying man with a hair-trigger temper and a pugnacious attitude, Striecher had precisely the sort of characteristics which would endear him to Hitler: he was of common birth, a Bavarian, had won the Iron Cross in WWI, and held militant socialist, nationalist and anti-Jewish opinions, which he was more than ready to defend with his fists. Hitler respected Streicher for his courage and energy, and frequently told his confidants that DER STUERMER was the only news publication in Germany he read from cover to cover. He was not alone. Simon Weisenthal contended: "The SS who murdered our families had DER STUERMER in their field packs." His execution at Nuremberg was largely due to this fact, and it remains a controversial act: was Streicher truly guilty of anything except big-mouthed bigotry, or was he murdered (as many contend Rosenberg was) simply for what he thought and wrote?

A good way to address this question is by asking, What sort of paper was the STORMER? The most common description by Western historians is "a vile anti-Semitic rag", one which combined salacious gossip, detailed conspiracy theory, and quasi-pornography in an attempt to produce an emotional, rather than intellectual, reaction in the reader. If Alfred Rosenberg was the intellectual pillar of anti-Semitism in the Third Reich, Streicher was its vulgar streetcorner shill. THE STORMER is a nasty, villainous piece of work, and it is Bytwerk's thesis (just as it was the Allies contention at Nuremberg in 1946) that the STORMER was responsible for creating an atmosphere of hatred which made things like Krystalnacht and the Einsatzgruppen possible. Bytwerk uses many examples to show that while many Germans found the STORMER to be disgusting nonsense or at least in incredibly bad taste, its cumulative effect was to benumb the German populace to their fate. If it did not necessarily produce hatred, it certainly produced indifference ("Machts nicht," as the Germans say).

As a book, STREICHER is a bit of a mixed bag. The biography of Streicher himself is entertaining but fairly superficial - it left me hungry for more. The examination of the STURMER's message and methodology is very interesting, and Bytwerk has some penetrating insights as to the nature of propaganda. The main flaw in the work is his examination of anti-Semitism - not because it is factually inaccurate but because it is too partisan. When tackling radical ideology, a historian has three courses open to him: sympathy, neutrality or antipathy. Sympathy is always to be avoided, but many historians seem to think that antipathy amounts to the same thing. Afraid of appearing pro-Nazi, they spend too much time attacking its ethos and not enough time trying to explain the more legitimate sources of its appeal. No less a man than George Orwell has said that in order to fight fascism, it is necessary to understand that it contains some good as well as much evil; and any honest study of German anti-Semitism must start by recognizing that (whatever its origin) German Jews did have a disproportionate representation in import-export business, the diamond trade, banking, the legal profession, the medical profession, publishing, music, entertainment, and teaching (particularly at the university level), among other vocations. This applies to involvement in communist politics as well. This was bound to cause resentment and breed conspiracy theories, and it would hardly be "anti-Semitic" to admit this before entertaining a discussion of why the STORMER found such fertile soil. But when Bytwerk mentions these sort of things, he usually is quoting them as statistics taken from the STORMER, which leaves the reader with the assumption that they must be false. He is willing to expose the innumerable instances where Streicher lied, exaggerated, took statements out of context, or used logical fallacies to support his arguments, but he seems unwilling to grant that the conditions which led to such a surplus of anti-Jewish feeling in Germany were sometimes rooted in everyday reality, and not merely a product of Streicher's strident and incessant Jew-baiting. Obviously, it's ticklish to discuss these things, lest the historian be accused of validating the Nazi ethos that "the Jew was our misfortune", but I think anyone intelligent enough to read a history book of this nature can tell the difference between an explanation of bigotry and an apologia for it.

Having said that, I maintain that STREICHER is a solid and important work by a diligent historian who perhaps attempted a bit too much for just 200 pages (this could be two books; a bio on Streicher and an analysis of his paper) but does not come off any worse for the attempt. I would recommend it to any collection of history on the Third Reich.

About the only biography of Julius Streicher, the man who was hanged for exercising his freedom of speech - this was his only crime, whether you share his point of view or hate it and the man himself.