1942 Stuermer Article

Julius Streicher was convinced that there was an international Jewish conspiracy involving every single Jew on the planet.  Today I’m adding a 1942 article that asserts a Jewish gathering in Moscow provided proof of that conspiracy.  The orders from Jews in Moscow allegedly would be followed by their racial comrades wherever they might be.

  

The cover is by Fips (Phillipp Rupprecht), the regular Stürmer cartoonist. Its title: “Checking the Devil.”

Julius Streicher Confuses Gladstone and Disraeli

I usually post notes on recent additions to my site, but every now and again I come across a tidbit of information worth passing on.  I am reading Julia Boyd’s new book Travellers in the Third Reich, which reports a British embassy official who heard Julius Streicher speak in 1935:

Julius Streicher, seeking to illustrate to a Berlin audience how hopeless the British were at grasping the Jewish threat, told them that “the Jewish politician Disraeli had been ennobled by Queen Victoria under the title of ‘Lord Gladstone.’”

The book, by the way, is worth reading.

My Recent Lecture on Nazi Anti-Semitism

I gave a lecture at Oregon State University on April 9, 2018 on Nazi anti-Semitism.  It is available on YouTube:

Julius Streicher Meeting Posters

I’m adding a collection of eight posters advertising meetings addressed by Julius Streicher between 1922 and 1933.  After joining Hitler’s Nazi Party in 1922, Streicher began speaking extensively outside his home city of Nuremberg.

This poster promotes an August 1923 meeting in Vienna.

Photographs of Julius Streicher

One of the benefits of my web site is that people searching for information on items in their possession sometimes contact me.  Recently, a person whose father had collected some photographs of Julius Streicher in at his country estate in 1945 passed them along. Here’s an example:

I’ve added the pictures to the page on Julius Streicher.  If you think you can identify any of the people in the pictures, drop me an e-mail.

Julius Streicher and Vaccinations

Given all the recent controversy involving those who doubt the wisdom of vaccinations, I recalled this cartoon I came across from a 1932 issue of Der Stürmer.  It shows a Jewish doctor immunizing a child.  The caption translates as:  “It seems to me that poison and Jews seldom do good things.”

Vaccination

Now, most Nazis realized that vaccinating children was a good idea — but Streicher was a dangerous crackpot in more ways than one.

Books on Julius Streicher

To my surprise, it took along time to get a biography of Julius Streicher.  My dissertation on him was finished in 1975 and appeared in book form in 1983, with a second somewhat expanded edition in 2001.  It has sold well over the years and is the only English-language book on Streicher that remains in print.

Since I am a rhetorician, however,  I was interested more in the content of Streicher’s propaganda than in his biography, but since there was so little in English I did give two chapters of biographical material.  It was rather thin, and as a graduate student at the time I was only able to manage about a month in the German archives.  I missed some useful sources and other valuable sources surfaced after I completed the book.

Dennis E. Schowalter’s Little Man, What Now? Der Stürmer in der Weimar Republic is a fine book that appeared in 1982, but as the title suggests covers only the period before 1933.

There is also William P. Varga’s The Number One Nazi Jew-Baiter (New York: Carlton Press,  1981).  It was originally his 1974 dissertation at Ohio State.  Like my book, he did not have access to a variety of useful sources.

After that there was a long silence. Streicher was the most prominent Nazi leader who lacked a full biography.  There were books and articles that covered aspects of Streicher’s career, but the kinds of books one can find about Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and other Nazi leaders were missing.

That situation has now been remedied.  First came Franco Ruault, who completed an enormous dissertation at the University of Innsbruck in 2006.  It was published in two parts totaling over 950 pages:

“Neuschöpfer des deutschen Volkes”.  Julius Streicher im Kampf gegen “Rassenschande” (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2006)

and Tödliche Maskaraden. Julius Streicher und die “Lösung der Judenfrage” (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2009).

It’s hard to know what to say about Ruault’s project.  It’s not a biography, although it has biographical elements, and it’s not really a study of Der Stürmer and its propaganda, although it does cover some of that.  Ruault is interested in patriarchy and sexuality.  The prose is sometimes obtuse — although I have difficulties reading similar material in English so it just may be my denseness.  His books aren’t the place to start if you are interested in Streicher.

Then there is Ralph Keyser's Der Stürmer: Instrument de l'idéologie nazie, une analyse des caricatures d'intoxication (L’Harmattan, 2012).  This looks to be more a study of the Stürmer’s contents than a biography, but since I don’t read French I cannot say much about it.

I’ve just finished reading the book I’m surprised did not get written years ago: Daniel Roos’s Julius Streicher und “Der Stürmer” 1923-1945 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2014).  

It’s based on his 2013 dissertation at the University of Würzburg. It is a fine piece of work. I learned a lot.  Roos had access to a much wider range of sources than I did back in the mid-1970s.  He does a good job of laying out Streicher’s biography and also of analyzing the anti-Semitic content of Der Stürmer.  It is well-written.

At over 500 pages, Roos’s book does suffer from the weakness of dissertation writers, which is to include everything one finds.  The book would have been better, perhaps, were it one hundred pages shorter.  Still, this is where to start if you are interested in Julius Streicher, assuming you read German.  Otherwise, you can always read my book.

Julius Streicher Speech: 31 October 1939

Today I’m adding what was probably Julius Streicher’s last major speech, delivered on 31 October 1939.  He was in considerable difficulty at the time, and was shortly afterward exiled to his country estate outside Nuremberg.

World War II was in its “phony war” stage.  Poland was defeated, but little was happening on the battlefields.  Streicher includes his usual anti-Semitic arguments and encourages his audience to have faith in Hitler.

A 1927 Nazi Caricature: Killing Jews with Poison Gas

In Mein Kampf, Hitler writes that Germany would not have lost World War I if 12,000 - 15,000 “Hebrew corruptors of the people” had been killed with poison gas.

There were not a lot of such suggestions in Nazi propaganda before 1933 of killing Jews en masse, but Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer did run occasional cartoons like this one that I am today adding to the page on pre-1933 cartoons from Der Stürmer.

A Nazi is pumping poison gas into a tunnel beneath an oak tree representing Germany. Dead Jewish rats are strewn about.  The caption: “When the vermin are dead, the German oak will flourish.”

New Cartoons from Der Stuermer

I’ve been adding caricatures to the Der Stürmer page. Some provide a clear prediction of where Nazism was headed.  Take this cartoon from 1935, for example.

It is titled “Don’t Let Go!” The doggerel verse beneath says that it is better to strangle the Jewish serpent to death rather than allow Germany’s misery to return.

A similar theme shows up in September 1944.

Titled “The Jewish Beast,” it suggests that Germany is defending itself against the Jewish threat.  By September 1944, most of the mass murders of the Holocaust had already occurred.  

Two Advertising Flyers for “Der Stürmer”

A friend of the site provided these two promotional flyers for Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer a while back, which it took me a while to get around to adding.

They look to be from the mid-1930’s, and I am sure were part of a larger set.  If you happen to have others in the series, I’d appreciate images.

Two Nazi Anti-Semitic Posters from the East

A visitor to the site provided me with two vivid Nazi anti-Semitic posters I’d not seen before.  The first is, I think, in Ukrainian:

Google’s translation site suggests a meaning of “Satan has taken off his mask.”

The second I find particularly interesting:

I think it is in Ukrainian, which Google translates as “He poisons our lives.”  I had not realized that there was a Ukrainian translation of the book.

New Speech by Julius Streicher (1939)

The most prominent Nazi anti-Semite after Hitler, Julius Streicher was also Gauleiter of Franconia.  In that office he gave a speech on 5 January 1939 to the block wardens and cell leaders of his Gau.  These were low-level party volunteers who tended to pester their neighbors with requests for donations, attendance at political meetings, etc.  They were not always popular.  This is something of a pep talk, telling them how important they are and how much he depends on them.  He also explains that any comedian poking fun at them will face his wrath.

Before the end of the year Streicher was deposed from office for rather gross misconduct.

A Stuermer Article from 1943

Today I'm adding a July 1943 article from Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer titled "Our Faith," claiming that the Jews were responsible for the war, and that it had predicted back in 1938 that such a war would end with the destruction of the Jews.  It's one of numerous similar articles from the period.  This was published after the bulk of the killing had already occurred.

For those interested, my book on Julius Streicher goes into considerable detail on his work.

New Caricatures from "Der Stuermer"

I recently provided some images for a filmmaker. I'm adding six of them to the pages on Der Stürmer, Julius Streicher's anti-Semitic weekly. These come from 1932-1934. Some are on the pre-1933 page, others on the 1933-1945 page. Two examples:

Interview Sunday, July 26, on KGO San Francisco

I'll be a guest on John Rothmann's program on KGO, San Francisco, at 5 a.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, July 26. The primary topic will be my book on Julius Streicher. If you're interested, the show will be available for download for a week.

Two New Covers from "Der Stürmer"

I have added two new covers from Julius Streicher's notorious Der Stürmer.

Julius Streicher's Medical Journal

Early during Hitler's rule, Julius Streicher, publisher of Der Stürmer, issued an anti-Semitic medical "journal" that was eventually suspended, in part because it argued that vaccination was part of the Jewish plot. I've added a 1934 article titled "The Jew and Healing" that attacked Jews involved in the health care system.