When in May of the past year the final battles of the greatest and most
horrible war of all time came to an end, the Germans were slow to rise
again from the stupor in which they had, for the most part, spent the
last months of the war. Like all the peoples of Europe they had suffered
unspeakably for years. The last months in particular, with their hail of
bombs, had brought so much misery to both the country and the people
that it almost surpassed human endurance. This terror was increased by
the knowledge that the war was lost, and by the fear of the uncertain
fate which the occupation period would bring. And when finally the
period of first anxiety had passed, when the German people were slowly
beginning to breathe again, paralyzing horror spread once more.
Through the press and radio, through newspapers and motion pictures,
knowledge was spread of the atrocities which had taken place in the
East, on the steppes and in the concentration camps. Germany learned
that people, men of its own blood, had slaughtered millions upon
millions of innocent Jewish people. Most people felt instinctively that
these deeds would necessarily be the greatest of all the accusations the
world had to level against Germany.
The question of whether the German people in its totality had known and
approved of these actions was, and is, the truly fateful question. It is
the touchstone by which the decision must be made as to whether or not
Germany will ever be able to return again as a nation with equal rights
into the common cultural and spiritual sphere of the world. As in every
case of guilt, there immediately arose here also the question as to who
was responsible, and the search for that individual. Who had ordered
these atrocities, who had carried them out, and how could such
inconceivable things have happened at all, the like of which cannot be
found in history even in the earliest days?
During all this asking and guessing, the news arrived that the former
Gauleiter of Franconia and publisher of Der Stürmer, the present
Defendant Julius Streicher, had fallen into the hands of the American
troops. From the echo this news aroused in the press, which was
exclusively directed and published by the occupying power, as well as in
the radio news, it was to be gathered that the world was of the opinion
that in the person of Julius Streicher not only had one of the numerous
anti-Semitic propaganda agents of the Third Reich been taken prisoner,
but in short Enemy Number One of the Jews.
Throughout the rest of the world the opinion evidently prevailed that in
the person of Julius Streicher not only the most active propaganda agent
for the persecution and extermination of the Jews had been seized, but
that he had also participated to the highest degree in carrying out
these acts of extermination. He was said to have been, as one heard, not
only the greatest hater of the Jews and the greatest preacher of
extermination of the Jews, but also the person to whose direct influence
one could trace back the extermination of European Jewry.
It is only from this angle that it can be explained why the Defendant
Streicher should sit here in the dock, together with the other
defendants, among those chiefly responsible for the National Socialist
system. For neither by virtue of his personality nor measured by his
offices and positions does he belong to the circle of leaders of the
NSDAP or to the Party’s decisive personalities. This view was probably
also held in the beginning by the Prosecution, but was abandoned by them
at an early stage, for the written Indictment already no longer charged
the Defendant Streicher with any personal and direct part in the
abominable mass murders. Rather did it state that there was less guilt
with which he would be charged than in the case of any of the other
defendants; only his propaganda, his activities by the written and
spoken word, were made the subject of the accusation against him.
As far as particulars are concerned, the Counts of the Indictment
against the Defendant Streicher were summed up as follows:
I. Support of seizure of power and consolidation of power of the NSDAP
after the latter’s entry into the Government.
II. Preparation of aggressive wars by propaganda aimed at the
persecution of the Jews.
III. Intellectual and spiritual preparation and education to encourage
hatred against the Jews,
(a) in the German people,
(b) in the German youth, and
(c) in the active extermination of Jewry.
Without Julius Streicher, no Auschwitz, no Mauthausen, no Maidanek, no
Lublin—thus the Indictment may be summed up briefly.
As far as Count One of the Indictment is concerned, the defendant does
not deny that as regards the Party’s later seizure of power he supported
and promoted it with all his might from its earliest inception. His
support went to the extent of placing a whole movement which he had
built up personally in Franconia at the disposal of Adolf Hitler’s Party
which was small after the first World War, as one can imagine, and
limited to southern Bavaria only. Furthermore, after Hitler’s release
from the fortress of Landsberg, he immediately joined him again and
subsequently championed his ideas and goals with the greatest
determination.
THE PRESIDENT: I think this is a good time to break off. The Tribunal
will adjourn.
[_The Tribunal adjourned until 12 July 1946 at 1000 hours._]