The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Shofar FTP Archive File: imt/tgmwc/judgment//j-defendants-streicher


Archive/File: imt/ tgmwc/judgment/j-defendants-streicher
Last-Modified: 1997/09/06

                          Judgment
                           of the
               International Military Tribunal
                           For The
             Trial of German Major War Criminals

                           London
               His Majesty's Stationery Office
                            1951
                                                            
                                                  [Page 100]

                          Streicher
                                                            
Streicher is indicted on Counts One and Four. One of the
earliest members of the Nazi Party, joining in 1921, he took
part in the Munich Putsch. From 1925-1940 he was Gauleiter
of Franconia. Elected to the Reichstag in 1933, he was an
honorary general in the SA. His persecution of the Jews was
notorious. He was the publisher of Der Stuermer, an anti-
Semitic weekly newspaper, from 1923 to1945 and was its
editor until 1933.

Crimes against Peace

Streicher was a staunch Nazi and supporter of Hitler's main
policies. There is no evidence to show that he was ever
within Hitler's inner circle of advisers; nor during his
career was he closely connected with the formulation of the
policies which led to war. He was never present, for
example, at any of the important conferences when Hitler
explained his decisions to his leaders. Although he was a
Gauleiter there is no evidence to prove that

                                                  [Page 101]
                                                            
he had knowledge of those policies. In the opinion of the
Tribunal, the evidence fails to establish his connection
with the conspiracy or common plan to wage aggressive war as
that conspiracy has been elsewhere defined in this Judgment.

Crimes against humanity

For his 25 years of speaking, writing, and preaching hatred
of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as "Jew-Baiter
Number One". In his speeches and articles, week after week,
month after month, he infected the German mind with the
virus of anti-Semitism, and incited the German People to
active persecution. Each issue of Der Stuermer, which
reached a circulation of 600,000 in 1935, was filled with
such articles, often lewd and disgusting.

Streicher had charge of the Jewish boycott of 1st April,
1933. He advocated the Nuremberg Decrees of 1935. He was
responsible for the demolition on 10th August, 1938, of the
synagogue in Nuremberg. And on 10th November, 1938, he spoke
publicly in support of the Jewish pogrom which was taking
place at that time.

But it was not only in Germany that this defendant advocated
his doctrines. As early as 1938 he began to call for the
annihilation of the Jewish race. Twenty-three different
articles of Der Stuermer between 1938 to 1941 were produced
in evidence, in which extermination "root and branch" was
preached. Typical of his teachings was a leading article in
September, 1938,  which termed the Jew a germ and a pest,
not a human being, but "a parasite, an enemy, an evildoer, a
disseminator of diseases who must be destroyed in the
interest of mankind". Other articles urged that only when
world Jewry had been annihilated would the Jewish problem
have been solved, and predicted that 50 years hence the
Jewish graves "will proclaim that this people of murderers
and criminals has after all met its deserved fate".
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. A leading
article of Der Stuermer 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."

As the war in the early stages proved successful in
acquiring more and more territory for the Reich, Streicher
even intensified his efforts to incite the Germans against
the Jews. In the record are 26 articles from Der Stuermer,
published between August, 1941 and September, 1944, twelve
by Streicher's own hand, which demanded annihilation and
extermination in unequivocal terms.

He wrote and published on 25th December, 1941:

     "If the danger of the reproduction of that curse
     of God in the Jewish blood is finally to come to
     an end, then there is only one way  the
     extermination of that people whose father is the
     devil."

And in February, 1944, his own article stated:

     "Whoever does what a Jew does is a scoundrel, a
     criminal. And he who repeats and wishes to copy
     him deserves the same fate, annihilation, death."

                                                  [Page 102]
                                                            
With knowledge of the extermination of the Jews in the
Occupied Eastern Territory, this defendant continued to
write and publish his propaganda of death. Testifying in
this trial, he vehemently denied any knowledge of mass
executions of Jews. But the evidence makes it clear that he
continually received current information on the progress of
the "final solution". His press photographer was sent to
visit the ghettos of the East in the spring of 1943, the
time of the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto. The Jewish
newspaper, Israelitisches Wochenblatt, which Streicher
received and read, carried in each issue accounts of Jewish
atrocities in the East, and gave figures on the number of
Jews who had been deported and killed. For example, issues
appearing in the summer and fall of 1942 reported the death
of 72,729 Jews in Warsaw, 17,542 in Lodz, 18,000 in Croatia,
125,000 in Rumania, 14,000 in Latvia, 85,000 in Yugoslavia,
700,000 in all of Poland. In November, 1943, Streicher
quoted verbatim an article from the Israelitisches
Wochenblatt which stated that the Jews had virtually
disappeared from Europe, and commented "This is not a Jewish
lie." In December, 1942, referring to an article in the
London Times about the atrocities, aiming at extermination,
Streicher said that Hitler had given warning that the second
World War would lead to the destruction of Jewry. In
January, 1943, he wrote and published an article which said
that Hitler's prophecy was being fulfilled, that world Jewry
was being extirpated, and that it was wonderful to know that
Hitler was freeing the world of its Jewish tormentors.

In the face of the evidence before the Tribunal it is idle
for Streicher to suggest that the solution of the Jewish
problem which he favored was strictly limited to the
classification of Jews as aliens, and the passing of
discriminatory legislation such as the Nuremberg Laws,
supplemented if possible by international agreement on the
creation of a Jewish State somewhere in the world, to which
all Jews should emigrate.

Streicher's incitement to murder and extermination at the
time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most
horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on
political and racial grounds in connection with War crimes,
as defined by the Charter, and constitutes a Crime against
Humanity.

Conclusion: The Tribunal finds that Streicher is not guilty
on Count One, but that he is guilty on Count Four.


Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor

© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2012

This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and to combat hatred. Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.

As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.