For his twenty-five 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 Sturmer", 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
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 Sturmer
" between 1938 and 1941 were produced in evidence, in which the
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 evil-doer, 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 I problem have been
solved, and predicted that fifty 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 Sturmer'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 Socialists policy of
Jewish persecution and extermination. 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."
As the war in the early stages proved successful acquiring
more territory for the Reich, Streicher even intensified his efforts
to incite the Germans against the Jews. In the record are twenty-six
articles from 'Der Sturmer ", 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
"If the danger of the reproduction of that curse
of God in the Jewish blood is to finally come to an end, then there
is only one way-the extermination of that people whose father is the
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."
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 favoured 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.