DR. MARX: Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Tribunal: Before continuing with questions to the Defendant Streicher, may I ask permission to make a statement?
On Friday afternoon, Herr Streicher referred to a case, namely, that press event which concerned me and my professional attitude. I thereupon took the opportunity to refer to this case in my statement as well, and I pointed out that at that time I had had to ask for the protection of the Tribunal against this damaging attack on my work and that this protection was given me very graciously. On that occasion and in that extemporary explanation I used the expression "newspaper writer." I used it exclusively with reference to the particular journalist who had written the article in question in that Berlin newspaper regarding my person and my activity as a lawyer.
By no means did I express, or mean to express, a reference to the press in general. It was far from my intention in any way to attack the press, the group of press experts, and particularly not the members of the world press who are active here; nor did I wish to injure their professional honor.
The reason for this statement of mine is a statement made on the radio, according to which I, the attorney Marx, had attacked and disparaged the press in general. I am, of course, aware of the significance of the press. I know precisely what the press has to contribute and I should be the last person to fail to recognize fully the extremely difficult work and the responsible task of the press. May I, therefore, quite publicly before this Tribunal ask that this statement be accepted; and may I ask the gentlemen of the press to receive my statement in the spirit in which it is made, namely, that this was merely a special comment on that particular gentleman and not in any way on the entire press. That is what I wanted to say.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, the Tribunal understood your statement the other day in the sense in which you have now explained it.
DR. MARX: Yes. With the permission of the Tribunal, I shall then continue with my examination.
317
29 April 46
Witness, what aims did you pursue with your speeches and your articles in Der Stuermer?
STREICHER: The speeches and articles which I wrote were meant to inform the public on a question which appeared to me one of the most important questions. I did not intend to agitate or inflame but to enlighten.
DR. MARX: Apart from your weekly journal, and particularly after the Party came into power, were there any other publications in Germany which treated the Jewish question in an anti-Semitic way?
STREICHER: Anti-Semitic publications have existed in Germany for centuries. A book I had, written by Dr. Martin Luther, was, for instance, confiscated. Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants' dock today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the Prosecution. In the book The Jews and Their Lies, Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent's brood and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them...
DR. MARX: Herr Streicher, that is not my question, I am asking you to answer my question in accordance with the way I put it. Please answer now with "yes" or "no," whether there were . . .
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I should like to interpose an objection to this method of answering unresponsively and with speeches here. We are utterly unable in this procedure to make objections when answers are not responsive to questions. We have already got into this case, through Streicher's volunteered speeches, an attack on the United States which will take considerable evidence to answer if we are to answer it. It seems to me very improper that a witness should do anything but make a responsive answer to a question, so that we may keep these proceedings from getting into issues that have nothing to do with them. It will not help this Tribunal, in deciding Streicher's guilt or innocence, to go into questions which he has raised here against us-matters that are perfectly capable of explanation, if we take time to do it.
It seems to me that this witness should be admonished, and admonished so that he will understand it, if that is possible, that he is to answer questions and stop, so that we can know and object in time to orations on irrelevant subjects.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, will you try, when you put the questions to the witness, to stop him if he is not answering the questions you put to him?
DR. MARX: Yes, Mr. President. I was just in the process...
318
29 April 46
THE PRESIDENT: Defendant Streicher, you understand, you have heard what has been said and you will understand that the Tribunal cannot put up with your long speeches which are not answers to questions which we put to you.
DR. MARX: I will now repeat the question and I want you to answer the question first with "yes" or "no" and then to add a brief explanation regarding the question.
Apart from your weekly journal, and particularly after the Party came into power, were there other publications in Germany which dealt with the Jewish question in an anti-Semitic way?
STREICHER: Yes, even before the coming to power there were in every Gau weekly journals that were anti-Semitic and one daily paper called the Volkischer Beobachter in Munich. Apart from that, there were a number of periodicals which were not working directly for the Party. There was also anti-Semitic literature. After the seizure of power, the daily press was co-ordinated, and now the Party found itself in control of some 3,000 daily papers, numerous weekly journals, and all type of periodicals; and orders were given by the Fuehrer that every newspaper should provide enlightening articles on the Jewish question. The anti-Semitic enlightenment was, therefore, after the seizure of power, carried out on a very large scale in the daily press as well as in the weekly journals, periodicals, and books. Consequently, Der Stuermer did not stand alone in its enlightening activity. But I want to state quite openly that I make the claim of having treated the question in the most popular way.
DR. MARX: Were the directives necessary for this issued by a central office, say, for instance, by the National Socialist press service?
STREICHER: Yes. The Propaganda Ministry in Berlin had a National Socialist press service. In this service, in every issue, there were a number of enlightening articles on the Jewish question. During the war the Fuehrer personally gave the order that the press, far more than previously, should publish enlightening articles on the Jewish question.
DR. MARX: The Prosecution accuse you of having contributed indirectly to mass murders by incitation, and according to the minutes of 10 January 1946, the following charge has been made against you: No government in the world could have undertaken a policy of mass extermination, as it was done here, without having behind it a nation which agreed to it; and you are supposed to have brought that about. What have you to say to this?
STREICHER: To that I have the following to say: Incitation means to bring a person into condition of excitement which causes
319
29 April 46
him to perform an irresponsible act. Did the contents of Der Stuermer incite, this is the question? Briefly stated, the question must be answered, "What did Der Stuermer write?" Several volumes of Der Stuermer are available here, but one would have to look at all the issues of 20 years in order to answer that question exhaustively. During those 20 years I published enlightening articles dealing with the race, dealing with what the Jews themselves write in the Old Testament, in their history, what they write in the Talmud. I printed excerpts from Jewish historical works, works for instance, written by a Professor Dr. Graetz and by a Jewish scholar, Gutnot.
In Der Stuermer no editorial appeared written by me or written by anyone of my main co-workers in which I did not include quotations from the ancient history of the Jews, from the Old Testament or from Jewish historical works of recent times.
It is important, and I must emphasize that I pointed out in all articles, that prominent Jews, leading authors themselves, admitted that which during 20 years as author and public speaker I publicly proclaimed.
Allow me to add that it is my conviction that the contents of Der Stuermer as such were not incitation. During the whole 20 years I never wrote in this connection, "Burn Jewish houses down; beat them to death." Never once did such an incitement appear in Der Stuermer.
Now comes the question: Is there any proof to be furnished that any deed was done from the time Der Stuermer first appeared, a deed of which one can say that it was the result of an incitement? As a deed due to an incitement I might mention a pogrom. That is a spontaneous deed when sections of the people suddenly rise up and kill other people. During the 20 years no pogrom took place in Germany, during the 20 years, as far as I know, no Jew was killed. No murder took place, of which one could have said, "This is the result of an incitement which was caused by anti-Semitic authors or public speakers."
Gentlemen, we are in Nuremberg. In the past there was a saying that nowhere were the Jews in Germany so safe and so unmolested as in Nuremberg.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, is not this becoming a rather lengthy speech?
DR. MARX: Streicher, you have explained this now sufficiently, so that one can form an opinion-you mean, "I have not incited in such a way that any spontaneous action carried out against the Jews by any group of people or by the masses resulted"?
320
29 April 46
STREICHER: May I make a remark in this connection? Here we are concerned with the most serious, the most decisive accusation raised against me by the Prosecution, and here I ask the Tribunal to permit me to defend myself against it objectively. Is it not of tremendous significance if I can establish that in Nuremberg, of all places, no murder took place, no single murder and no pogrom either? That is a fact.
THE PRESIDENT: You have already said it. I have just written down, before I intervened, saying that no Jews have been killed not only in Nuremberg but anywhere else as a result of your incitement.
DR. MARX: Witness, we shall make reference to these demonstrations of 9 and 10 November 1938 later.
STREICHER: Yes, but may I continue? The Indictment accuses me of having indirectly contributed by incitation to mass murders, and I ask to be allowed to make a statement on this: Something has been ascertained today about which I myself did not know. I learned of the will left behind by the Fuehrer, and I assume that a few moments before his death the Fuehrer told. the world the truth in that will. In it he says that mass killings were carried out by his order; that the mass killings were a reprisal.
Thus it is demonstrated that I, myself, cannot have been a participant in the incredible events which occurred here.
DR. MARX: Finished?
STREICHER: Yes. You said that the Indictment accuses me in saying that these mass killings could never have taken place if behind the Government and behind the leaders of the State there had not been an informed people.
Gentlemen, first of all, the question, "Did the German people really know what was happening during the years of the war?" We know today...
THE PRESIDENT: Defendant, that is a matter of argument and not a matter upon which you can give evidence. You can say what you knew.
STREICHER: I was a part of that nation during the war. During the war I lived alone in the country. For 5 years I never left my farm. I was watched by the Gestapo. From 1939 on I have been forbidden by the Fuehrer to speak.
DR. MARX: Herr Streicher, we will certainly come to that later. I have interrogated you now on this question, and I will proceed with my questions. The other will come later.
STREICHER: But I wish to state that I had no opportunity- that is why I said this-to learn what was actually going on.
321
29 April 46
I first heard of the mass murders and mass killings at Mondorf when I was in prison. But I am stating here that if I had been told that 2 or 3 million people had been killed, then I would not have believed it. I would not have believed that it was technically possible to kill so many people; and on the basis of the entire attitude and psychology of the Fuehrer, as I knew it, I would not have believed that mass killings, to the extent to which they have taken place, could have taken place. Finished.
DR. MARX: The Prosecution also raise the charge against you that it was the task of the educators of the nation to educate the people to murder and to poison them with hatred, that you had devoted yourself particularly to these tasks. What do you want to answer to this charge?
STREICHER: That is an allegation. We educated no murderers. The contents of the articles which I wrote could not have educated murderers. No murders took place, and that is proof that we did not educate murderers. What happened during the war-well, I certainly did not educate the Fuehrer. The Fuehrer issued the order on his own initiative.
DR. MARX: I now continue. The Prosecution further assert that the Himmler-Kaltenbrunner groups and other SS leaders would have had no one to carry out their orders to kill, if you had not made that propaganda and if you had not conducted the education of the German people along these lines. Will you make a statement on that?
STREICHER: I do not believe that the National Socialists mentioned read Der Stuermer every week. I do not believe that those who received the order from the Fuehrer to carry out killings or to pass on the order to kill, were led to do this by my periodical. Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, existed, and the content of that book was the authority, the spiritual authority; nor do I believe that the persons mentioned read that book and carried out the order on the strength of it. Based on my knowledge of what went on in the Movement, I am convinced that if the Fuehrer gave an order everyone acted upon it; and I state here quite openly that maybe fate has been kind to me. If the Fuehrer had ordered me to do such things, I would not have been able to kill; but perhaps today I would face some indictment which it has not been possible to lodge against me. Perhaps because fate has taken a hand in this. But the conditions were thus, that the Fuehrer had such a power of hypnotic suggestion that the entire people believed in him; his way was so unusual that, if one knows this fact, one can understand why everyone who received an order acted. And thus I want to reject as untrue and incorrect what was here thought fit to assert against me.
322
29 April 46
DR. MARX: What do you know about the general attitude of Adolf Hitler to the Jewish question? And when did Hitler first become hostile to the Jews, according to your knowledge?
STREICHER: Even before Adolf Hitler became publicly known at all I had occupied myself journalistically with anti-Semitic articles. However, on the strength of his book, Mein Kampf, I first learned about the historic connections of the Jewish problem. Adolf Hitler wrote his book in the prison in Landsberg. Anyone who knows this book will know that Hitler many years back, either by study of anti-Semitic literature or through other experiences, must have developed this knowledge in himself in order then to be able to write that book in prison in so short a time. In other words, in his book Adolf Hitler stated to the world public that he was anti-Semitic and that he knew the Jewish problem through and through. He himself often said to me personally...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, the book Mein Kampf is in evidence, and it speaks for itself.
STREICHER: I will now answer your question, not with reference to the book. You asked me whether Adolf Hitler had discussed the Jewish problem with me. The answer is "yes." Adolf Hitler always discussed the Jewish problem in connection with Bolshevism. It is perhaps of importance in answering that question to ask whether Adolf Hitler wanted a war with Russia. Did he know long in advance that a war would come, or not? When he was with us Adolf Hitler spoke of Stalin as a man whom he honored as a man of action, but that he was actually surrounded by Jewish leaders, and that Bolshevism...
DR. MARX: Herr Streicher, that is going too far again. The question which I put was quite exact, and I am asking you not to go so far afield. You have heard the Tribunal object to it, and in the interest of not delaying the proceedings you must not go into so many details. You must not make speeches.
GEN. RUDENKO: Mr. President, I believe that some time ago Mr. Justice Jackson remarked, quite justly, quite reasonably, that the Defendant Streicher became so intoxicated by his own speeches that he did not answer the questions put to him or the charges made against him. I therefore invite the attention of the Tribunal to this fact and suggest that the defendant abstain from making lengthy speeches and merely give brief replies to the charges brought against him.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you go on, Dr. Marx, and try to keep the witness to an answer to the questions which you have no doubt prepared.
DR. MARX: Very well, Mr. President.
323
29 April 46
STREICHER: May I, please, as a defendant, say a few words, here? The question was...
THE PRESIDENT: [Interposing.] No, you may not. You will answer the questions, please.
DR. MARX: Next question. Is there reason for the assumption that Hitler, when he decided to have the Jews in Europe killed in masses, was subject to any influence, or what is to be considered the motive for that dreadful decision?
STREICHER: The Fuehrer could not be influenced. As I know the Fuehrer, if somebody had gone to him and said that Jews should be killed, then he would have turned him down. And if, during the war, somebody had gone to him and said, "I have learned that you are giving the order that mass killings are to be carried out," then he would have turned that man down too. I therefore answer your question by saying that the Fuehrer could not be influenced.
DR. MARX: In other words, you want to say that the decision in this matter was made entirely on his own initiative.
STREICHER: I have already said that that becomes clear from his will.
DR. MARX: In August 1938 the main synagogue in Nuremberg was demolished. Was this done on your orders?
STREICHER: Yes. In my Gau there were approximately 15 synagogues, in Nuremberg one main synagogue, a somewhat smaller one, and I think several other prayer rooms. The main synagogue stood in the outskirts of the medieval Reichsstadt. Even before 1933, during the so-called period of struggle, when we still had the other government, I stated publicly during a meeting that it was a disgrace that there should be placed in the Old City such an oriental monstrosity of a building. After the seizure of power I told the Lord Mayor that he should have the synagogue torn down, and at the same time the planetarium. I might point out that after the World War, in the middle of the park grounds laid out for the recreation of the citizens, a planetarium had been built, an ugly brick building. I gave the order to tear down that building and said that the main synagogue, too, should be razed. If it had been my intention to deprive the Jews of their synagogue as a church or if I had wanted to give a general signal, then I would have given the order, after the seizure of power, that every synagogue in my Gau should be torn down. Then I would likewise have had all the synagogues in Nuremberg torn down. But it is a fact that in the spring of 1938 only the main synagogue was torn down; the synagogue in the Essenweinstrasse, in the new city, remained untouched. That the order was then given in November of that year to set fire to the synagogues, that is no fault of mine.
324
29 April 46
DR. MARX: In other words, you want to say that you did not order the tearing down of this building for anti-Semitic reasons but because it did not conform to the architectural style of the city?
STREICHER: For reasons of city architecture. I wanted to submit a picture to the Tribunal on this, but I have not received any.
DR. MARX: Yes, we have a picture.
STREICHER: But you cannot see the synagogue in it. I do not know whether the Tribunal want to see the picture. The picture actually shows only the old houses, but the front of the synagogue facing the Hans-Sachs-Platz is not visible. I do not know whether I may submit the picture to the Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, certainly, the photograph can be put in. Let us see the photograph.
DR. MARX: In that case, I will submit it to the Tribunal as evidence and I am asking you to accept it accordingly.
THE PRESIDENT: What will it be, exhibit what?
DR. MARX: I cannot say at the moment, Mr. President. I shall take the liberty of stating the number later and for the moment I confine myself to submitting it. I could not present it any earlier because I had not come into possession of this picture. It was only in the last days...
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, go on.
DR. MARX: In your measure in connection with the main synagogue did you rely on any statements of art experts?
STREICHER: I had frequent opportunities to discuss the subject with architects. Every architect said that there must have been a city council which had no feeling whatsoever for city architecture, that it was impossible to explain it.
These statements were not in any way directed against the synagogue as a Jewish church, but rather against such a building in this part of the city. Strangers, too, whom I guided-for on Party rally days I used to accompany British and American people across the Hans-Sachs-Platz-and I remember only one case where when I said "Do you not notice anything?" that the person did not. But all other strangers said "How could that building get there in the midst of these medieval buildings?" I could also have submitted a book, written in 1877, which is in the prison library, where a Professor Berneis, who was famous, wrote at that time to the author, Uhde, in Switzerland, that he had now seen the Sachs Platz...
325
29 April 46
DR. MARX: Herr Streicher, that is enough now. In other words, you have indicated that you believed you could rely on the judgment of architects who seemed to you to be authorities?
STREICHER: Yes.
DR. MARX: At the time when the synagogue was demolished, did you make a speech?
STREICHER: Yes, but I want to point out that the Prosecution have submitted an article, a report from the Tageszeitung, that was written by a simple young man. I want to state that this article does not contain a true representation of the statements which I made.
DR. MARX: I now come to the demonstrations on the night of 9 to 10 November 1938. What can you say concerning those demonstrations and what role did you play in that connection? Were those demonstrations initiated by the population?
STREICHER: Every year the Gauleiter and SA and SS leaders met the Fuehrer in Munich on the occasion of the historic day of 9 November. We sat down to dinner in the old Town Mall, and it was customary for the Fuehrer to make a short speech after the dinner. On 9 November 1938, I did not feel very well. I participated in the dinner and then I left; I drove back to Nuremberg and went to bed. Toward midnight I was awakened. My chauffeur told me that the SA leader Von Obernitz wanted to talk to the Gauleiter. I received him and he said the following: "Gauleiter, you had left already when the Minister of Propaganda, Dr. Goebbels, took the floor and said"-I can now repeat it only approximately-"said, 'I.egation Counsellor Vom Rath has been murdered in Paris. That is now the second murder abroad of a prominent National Socialist. This murder is not the murder by the Jew, Gruenspan; this is rather the execution of a deed which has been desired by all Jewry. Something should now be done."' I do not know now whether Goebbels said the Fuehrer had ordered it; I remember only that Von Obernitz told me that Goebbels had stated the synagogues were to be set on fire; and I cannot now remember exactly, but I think he told me that the windows of Jewish business houses were to be smashed and that houses were to be demolished.
Then I said to Obernitz-for I was surprised-"Obernitz, I think it is wrong that synagogues be set on fire, and at this moment I think it is wrong that Jewish business houses be demolished; I think these demonstrations are wrong. If people are let loose during the night, deeds can be perpetrated for which one cannot be responsible." I said to Obernitz that I considered the setting on fire of synagogues particularly wrong because abroad and even among the German people the opinion might arise that National Socialism
326
29 April 46
had now started the fight against religion. Obernitz replied, "I have the order." I said, "Obernitz, I will not assume any responsibility here." Obernitz left and the action took place. What I have said under oath here I have previously stated in several interrogations; and my chauffeur will confirm it, for he was witness to this night's conversation, and shortly afterwards when he went to bed told his wife what he had heard up there in my bedroom.
DR. MARX: Have you finished?
STREICHER: Yes, but you asked another question...
DR. MARX: Yes, whether it was a spontaneous act of force initiated by the masses of the people?
STREICHER: Yes. In the National Socialist press there appeared after this action an article to the same effect, which stated that a spontaneous demonstration of the people had revenged the murder of Herr Vom Rath. It had therefore been deliberately ordered from Berlin that there should be a public statement to the effect that the demonstration of 1938 was spontaneous. That this was not the case I was also able to learn in Nuremberg; and it is remarkable that the indignation at what had happened during those demonstrations expressed itself even here in Nuremberg, even among the Party members.
The Prosecution have submitted an article which is a report on a speech which I made on 10 November; and that is a remarkable piece of evidence of the fact that the people were against this action. I was forced, because of the atmosphere which prevailed in Nuremberg, to make a public speech and say that one should not have so much sympathy for the Jews. Such was the affair of November 1938.
Perhaps it might also be important for you to ask me how I, of all people, happened to oppose the idea of these demonstrations.
DR. MARX: I thought you had explained that already. Very well. Who gave the order then for the burning down of the synagogue still standing on Essenweinstrasse?
STREICHER: I do not know who gave the order; I believe it was SA leader Von Obernitz. I do not know the details.
DR. MARX: A further question: Did you yourself express publicly your disapproval of these brutalities?
STREICHER: Yes. In a small circle of leading Party members I said what I have always said, what I have always said publicly: I stated that this was wrong. I talked to lawyers during a meeting- I do not know whether my defense counsel himself was there-I believe it was as early as November 1938 that I stated, to the Nuremberg lawyers at a meeting, that what had happened here
327
29 April 46
during that action, was wrong; that it was wrong as regards the people, and as regards foreign countries. I said then that anyone who knew the Jewish question as I knew it would understand why I considered that demonstration a mistake. I do not know whether this was reported to the Fuehrer at that time, but after November 1938 I was never again called to the Hotel Deutscher Hof when the Fuehrer came to Nuremberg. Whether this was the reason I do not know, but at any rate I did criticize these demonstrations publicly.
DR. MARX: It is assumed by the Prosecution that in 1938 a more severe treatment of the Jews was introduced. Is that true, and what is the explanation?
STREICHER: Yes. In 1938 the Jewish question entered a new phase; that is shown, indeed, by the demonstration. I myself can only say in this connection that there was no preliminary conference on this subject. I assume that the Fuehrer, impulsive as he was and acting on the spur of the moment, got around probably only on 9 November to saying to Dr. Goebbels, "Tell the organizations that the synagogues must be burned down." As I said, I myself did not attend such a meeting; and I do not know what happened to bring about this acceleration.
DR. MARX: On 12 November 1938 the decree was published according to which the Jews were to be eliminated from the economic life of the country. Was there a connection between the orders for the demonstrations of 9 November and that further decree of 12 November 1938, and would that decree be due to the same reason?
STREICHER: Well, here I can say only that I am convinced that there was a connection. The order, rather the decrees, which were to have such an extensive effect in the economic field, came from Berlin. We did not have any conference. I do not remember any Gauleiter meetings in which that was discussed. I do not know of any. That happened just as everything happened; we were not previously informed.
DR. MARX: How was it that not you, but the Co-defendant Rosenberg, was given the task of attending to this matter?
STREICHER: Rosenberg was the spiritual trustee of the Movement, but he was not given this particular task nor the task of the demonstration nor that of economic matters.
DR. MARX: No, we are talking of different points. Rosenberg was the one given the task by the Leaders of the State of taking care, as it was called, of racial-political and other enlightenment tasks; and you were not. How can that be explained? How can it be explained that you were not chosen?
328
29 April 46
STREICHER: Rosenberg, as he himself said, had met the Fuehrer very early and was anyway, because of his knowledge, intellectually suited to take over this task. I devoted myself more to popular enlightenment.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, he has told us that he wasn't given the task. Unless he had some communication with Rosenberg he can't tell us anything more about it except that he wasn't given the task. All the rest is mere comment and argument.
DR. MARX: Yes.
[Turning to the defendant.] I now put the next question to you: Was an order issued during the year 1939 forbidding you to make speeches?
STREICHER: Yes. In the autumn of 1939 my enemies went so far that the Fuehrer, without my being asked beforehand, issued a written order through Party Member Hess forbidding me to make speeches. The threat of immediate arrest was made should I act against this order.
DR. MARX: Is it also correct that in 1938 an effort was evidently made to stop further publication of Der Stuermer, I mean in government circles?
STREICHER: Such intentions existed quite often, and also at that time. Perhaps I might refer to two other documents in this connection in order to save time.
The Prosecution have submitted copies of a letter from Himmler and Baldur von Schirach. Here I can give quite a simple explanation right now. At that time, in 1939, there were intentions of prohibiting Der Stuermer. Bormann had even issued some such order. Then the Chief Editor of Der Stuermer wrote to prominent members of the Party, asking them to state their opinion about Der Stuermer. And thereupon letters were also received from Himmler and Von Schirach. Altogether, I think about 15 letters were received from prominent members of the Movement; they were merely kind replies to an inquiry.
DR. MARX: That is sufficient. Is it true that at the outbreak of the war you were not made Armed Forces District Commissioner (Wehrkreis-Kommissar) in your own Gau?
STREICHER: Yes.
DR. MARX: How can that be explained?
STREICHER: Well, maybe that is not so important; that is how conditions were at the time. There were certain personal feelings, et cetera; it is of no significance. At any rate, I did not become Armed Forces District Commissioner.
329
29 April 46
DR. MARX: The Prosecution have stated that after 1 September 1939 the persecution of the Jews increased more and more. What was that due to?
STREICHER: That question only the Fuehrer could answer; I cannot.
DR. MARX: But do you not think this had something to do with the outbreak of war?
STREICHER: The Fuehrer always said so in public, yes.
DR. MARX: A proceeding was instituted against you before the Supreme Party Court. How did that happen? What was the development and the result of that trial?
STREICHER: I am grateful that I have an opportunity to state quite briefly before the International Military Tribunal something which I have had to keep silent about up to now because of a Fuehrer order. I myself had instituted proceedings against myself before the Supreme Party Court in order to defend myself against people who were denouncing me. I was being accused...
THE PRESIDENT: Is the defendant talking about some order which Hitler gave that he was not to be allowed to speak or is he talking about something else?
You remember, Dr. Marx, that certain allegations were struck out of the record. If he is talking about those, it seems to me that we have got nothing whatever to do with it. Am I right in recollecting that something was struck out of the record?
DR. MARX: Yes it was, Mr. President, but only certain things from the Goering report were struck out, only the one passage which concerned the affair with the three young persons; but everything else was retained by the Prosecution. The Defense, therefore, must be able to take a stand in regard to these points, if the Prosecution do not say that they are dropping the entire Goering report; and in that connection this proceeding before the Supreme Party Court also plays a part. He can make a brief statement about it.
THE PRESIDENT: All right.
DR. MARX: Witness, be brief.
STREICHER: Yes. It is important then that I instituted proceedings against myself; about 10 points were involved which had been raised against me, among them a matter referring to some shares. An affidavit exists from the Goering report which states that I had been found guilty. May I state here that the trial was never completed and no sentence was passed.
That is the answer to the question which you have put to me.
330
29 April 46
DR. MARX: The matter referring to shares, does that have something to do with the shares of the Mars works?
STREICHER: We will come to it later. It was not the main point.
DR. MARX: And then you were ordered to remain permanently at the Pleikershof? Were you under the guard of the Gestapo there, and was there also a check-up as far as visitors were concerned?
STREICHER: It is not correct that I was ordered to stay at the Pleikershof. What is true is that I retired voluntarily with the intention of never again being active in the Movement. It is correct that the Gestapo watched me, and every visitor was called to the police station and interrogated as to his conversations he had had. That is a fact.
DR MARX: During your stay at the Pleikershof did you have any connections or correspondence with any leading personalities of the Party or State?
STREICHER: No. As far as prominent persons of the Movement and of the State are concerned, I had no correspondence whatsoever with them; that is why the Prosecution could hardly find any letters. I never stated in letters my opinion on the Jewish problem or on other matters. I shall have to state then, in order to answer your question exactly, that I had no correspondence with prominent persons of the Party and the State.
DR. MARX: After the outbreak of the war, were you informed of or consulted in any way on any measures intended against the Jews?
STREICHER: No.
DR. MARX: What were your relations to Himmler? Did you know him at all closely? Did you ever speak to him about measures against the Jews or did he talk about intended mass executions of the Jews?
STREICHER: I knew Himmler just as I knew the SA leaders, or other SS leaders. I knew him from common meetings, Gauleiter conferences, et cetera. I did not have a single political discussion with Himmler' except in society when he may have touched on this or that, in the presence of others. The last time I saw Himmler was in Nuremberg when he spoke to the officers in their mess. When that was I cannot say exactly but I think it was shortly before the war. I never had a talk with him on the Jewish question. He himself was, of course, well informed on this question. He had an organ of his own called the Schwarze Corps. And what his inner attitude toward me was is something that I did not discover until
331
29 April 46
my stay on the farm. There were denunciations against me which reached him. It was stated that I was being too humane with the French prisoners. Shortly after that I received a letter in which he reproached me and made serious representations against me. I gave no answer at all. Without having made any previous inquiries with me as to whether these denunciations were true, he made a serious charge against me; and I state quite openly that it was actually my feeling at the time that I might possibly lose my liberty through arrest. These were my relations with Himmler.
DR. MARX: That is enough.
During this Trial you have heard mentioned the names of a great number of Higher SS and Police Leaders who played a leading part in the Jewish persecutions, as for instance, Heydrich, Eichmann, Ohlendorf, and so on. Were there any connections between you and one of these Higher SS and Police Leaders?
STREICHER: I heard the names you have mentioned for the first time during an interrogation here. I did not know these men; they may well have seen me, but there was never a discussion involving me and the senior SS or SA leaders. Furthermore, I never was in any of Himmler's offices in Berlin, or any Ministry in Berlin. Thus, no conference ever took place.
DR. MARX: The Prosecution have drawn the conclusion from numerous articles in Der Stuermer, that as early as 1942 and 1943 you must have had knowledge of the mass executions of Jews which had taken place.
What statement can you make on this, and when, and in what way, did you hear of the mass executions of Jews which took place in the East?
STREICHER: I had subscribed to the Jewish weekly that appeared in Switzerland. Sometimes in that weekly there were intimations that something was not quite in order; and I think it was at the end of 1943 or 1944-I believe 1944-that an article appeared in the Jewish weekly, in which it said that in the East-I think it was said in Poland-Jews were disappearing in masses. I then made reference to this in an article which perhaps will be presented to me later. But I state quite frankly that the Jewish weekly in Switzerland did not represent for me an authoritative source, that I did not believe everything in it. This article did not quote figures; it did not talk about mass executions, but only about disappearances.
DR. MARX: Have you finished?
STREICHER: Yes.
DR. MARX: Did you make proposals in Der Stuermer for the solution of the Jewish question, during the war?
332
29 April 46
STREICHER: Yes.
DR. MARX: And in what sense?
STREICHER: As I said yesterday, I represented the point of view that the Jewish question could be solved only internationally, since there were Jews in all countries. For that reason we published articles in my weekly journal referring to the Zionist demand for the creation of a Jewish state, such as had also been provided for or indicated in the Balfour Declaration. There were therefore two possibilities for a solution, a preliminary solution within the countries through appropriate laws; and then the creation of a Jewish state.
During the war, I think it was in 1941 or 1942, we had written another article-we were subject to the Berlin censorship-and the censorship office sent back the proof submitted with the remark that the article must not be published in which we had proposed Madagascar as the place for the establishment of a Jewish state. The political relations with France were given as the reason why that article should not be published.
DR. MARX: If you had expected that question to be solved by mass executions, would you then too have written this article?
STREICHER: At that time, at any rate, it would still have been nonsensical to publish it.
DR. MARX: Did it not make you uneasy to deal with the Jewish question in a biased way, in a way which left completely out of sight those qualities of the Jews which can be described as great?
STREICHER: I did not understand this question fully, perhaps I did not hear it correctly.
DR. MARX: You can be accused of treating, in a biased way, only those qualities of the Jews that appear disadvantageous to you, whereas the other qualities of the Jewish people you ignored. What is your explanation?
STREICHER: I think that this question is really superfluous here. It is perfectly natural that I, as an anti-Semitic person and as I saw the Jewish question, was in no way interested in that. Perhaps I did not see the good traits which you or some others see in the Jews. That is possible. But at any rate I was not interested in investigating as to what particular good qualities might be recognized here.
DR. MARX: Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: This would seem a good time to break off.
[A recess was taken.]
333
29 April 46
DR. MARX: Did you visit concentration camps?
STREICHER: Yes. I visited the Dachau Concentration Camp.
DR. MARX: When was that?
STREICHER: I believe the first time was when all the Gauleiter were called together. I believe 1935, I do not know definitely, 1934 or 1935, I do not know.
DR. MARX: At what intervals did you then visit this camp? It is said that you were in Dachau every 4 weeks.
STREICHER: Altogether I was at Dachau four times.
DR. MARX: It is asserted that after each of your visits in Dachau, Jews disappeared there.
STREICHER: I do not know whether Jews disappeared.
DR. MARX: What caused you to visit the Dachau Camp repeatedly?
STREICHER: I went to the Dachau Camp to visit Social Democratic and Communist functionaries from my Gau who were in prison there to have them introduced to me. I picked out-I do not know how many hundreds of them there were-but every time I was in Dachau I picked out 10 or 20 of those of whom it had been ascertained by the Police that they had no criminal record; I had them picked out from among the inmates, and at Christmas every year I had them brought in buses to Nuremberg to the Hotel Deutscher Hof, where I brought them together with their wives and children and had dinner with them.
I should like to ask the Tribunal, for the benefit of the Nuremberg public, to permit me to make a very short statement as to why I took these Communists out. Party proceedings were initiated against me because I did this. There were rumors which were not true. May I make a very short statement as to why I did it?
DR. MARX: I should like to ask the Tribunal to approve this, Mr. President, so that the reasons why the defendant did this may be ascertained.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, as long as it is brief.
DR. MARX: Be brief.
STREICHER: When I walked through the streets of Nuremberg children approached me and said, "My father is in Dachau." Women came to me and asked to get their husbands back. I knew many of these officials from the time when I spoke at revolutionary meetings, and I could vouch for these people. I know of only one case where I was wrong in the selection of those people. All the others behaved impeccably. They kept the word which they had given me. Thus, perhaps my Party comrades, who sit here in the
334
29 April 46
dock, see now that I did not want to harm my country but that I wanted to do, and did do, something humanely good.
DR. MARX: Now I come to the picture books which appeared in Der Stuermer publishing house. You know that two picture books were published, one with the title, Trust No Fox in the Field, and the other one with the title, The Poisonous Toadstool. Do you assume responsibility for these picture books?
STREICHER: Yes. May I say, by way of summary, that I assume responsibility for everything which was written by my assistants or which came into my publishing house.
DR. MARX: Who was the author of these picture books?
STREICHER: The book Trust No Fox in the Field and No Jew Under His Oath was done and illustrated by a young woman artist, and she also wrote the text. The title which appears on the picture book is from Dr. Martin Luther.
Tthe second picture book was done by the Editor-in-Chief of Der Stuermer, who was a former schoolteacher. Two criminal cases in Nuremberg, which were tried here in this courtroom, as far as I know, were the occasion for my publishing these two books. There was a manufacturer, Louis Schloss, a Jew, who with young Nuremberg girls some of them still innocent, had...
DR. MARX: Herr Streicher, we do not want to hear that now. My question was only as to who was the author of these picture books and whether you assumed the responsibility for them?
STREICHER: It is important for the Tribunal, in fact, right for them to know how it came about that all of a sudden two picture books for young people appeared in my publishing house. I am making this statement absolutely objectively. I am speaking here of legal cases. There are gentlemen here, who are witnesses, who were here in this court and were present during the proceedings. Only thus can one understand why these books were published. They were the answer to deeds that had occurred.
DR. MARX: Yes. but we are concerned here only with the accusation made against you, that thereby you exerted an influence on the minds of young people which was not beneficial and which could be considered designed to have a poisonous effect.
STREICHER: And I should like to prove by my statement that we wanted to protect youth because things had, in fact, occurred.
DR. MARX: Yes, but young persons could hardly understand the Schloss case, or any such case, could they?
STREICHER: It was a matter of public discussion in Nuremberg and beyond that all over Germany.
335
29 April 46
DR. MARX: As far as I am concerned, this question is answered, Mr. President.
STREICHER: But not for me as defendant.
THE PRESIDENT: You told us that the books were published to answer things which had occurred here. That is sufficient.
DR. MARX: Witness, another serious accusation made by the Prosecution against you is that a special issue concerning ritual murders was published in the publishing house of Der Stuermer and appeared in one number of Der Stuermer. How did this special issue come about and what was the cause for it? Were you the author of that special issue?
STREICHER: No.
DR. MARX: Who was the author?
STREICHER: My collaborator, the Editor-in-Chief at that time, Karl Holz, who is now dead. But I assume the responsibility.
DR. MARX: Is it not true that even during the twenties you dealt with that question in Der Stuermer?
STREICHER: Yes, and in public speeches.
DR. MARX: Yes, in public speeches. Why did you now in 1935 stir up again this doubtlessly very grave matter?
STREICHER: I should like to ask my counsel to express no judgment as to what I have written; to question me, but not to express judgment. The Prosecution are going to do that.
You have asked me how this issue came about. I will explain very briefly...
DR. MARX: Excuse me, Mr. President. I have to protest against the fact that Herr Streicher here, in the course of his interrogation by me, thinks he can criticize the manner in which I put my questions. Therefore, I ask the Court to give a decision on this, since otherwise I am not in a position to ask my questions at all.
THE PRESIDENT: You have already stated your position and the Tribunal has given you full support in your position. Will you please continue?
And let me tell you this, Defendant, that if you are insolent either to your counsel or to the Tribunal, the Tribunal will not be able to continue the hearing of your case at this moment. You will kindly treat your counsel and the Tribunal with due courtesy.
STREICHER: May I ask to say something about this?
THE PRESIDENT: No. Answer the question, please.
DR. MARX: I will go on now with my questioning.
336
29 April 46
The Prosecution accuse you, in connection with this ritual murder affair, of having treated the matter without documentary proof, by referring to a story from the Middle Ages. What, in brief, was your source?
STREICHER: The sources were given in that issue. Nothing was written without the sources being given at the same time. There was reference made to a book written in Greek by a former Rabbi who had been converted to Christianity. There was reference made to a publication of a high clergymen of Milan, a book which has appeared in Germany for the last 50 years. Not even under the democratic government did Jews raise objections to that book. That ritual murder issue refers to court files which are located in Rome, it refers to files which are in Court. There are pictures in it which show that in 23 cases the Church itself has dealt with this question. The Church has canonized 23 non-Jews killed by ritual murder. Pictures of sculptures, that is, of stone monuments were shown as illustrations; everywhere the source was pointed out; even a case in England was mentioned, and one in Kiev, Russia. But in this connection I should like to say, as I said to a Jewish officer here, that we never wanted to assert that all Jewry was ready now to commit ritual murders. But it is a fact that within Jewry there exists a sect which engaged in these murders, and has done so up until the present. I have asked my counsel to submit to the Court a file from Pisek in Czechoslovakia, very recent proceedings. A court of appeal has confirmed a case of ritual murder. Thus, in conclusion I must say...
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I object to this statement, Your Honor. After his counsel has refused to submit it, he insists on stating here the contents of a court record. Now this is not an orderly way to make charges against the Jewish people. Streicher says he is asking counsel to submit. His counsel apparently has refused, whereupon he starts to give evidence of what he knows, in any case, is a resume of the matters which his counsel has declined to submit here. It seems to me that, having appointed counsel to conduct his case, he has shown repeatedly that he is not willing to conduct his case in an orderly manner and he ought to be returned to his cell and any further statements that he wishes to make to this Court transmitted through his counsel in writing. This is entirely unfair and in contempt of Court.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, I think you had better continue.
DR. MARX: I should like to say that that closes this affair. The essential thing is whether one can say that he treated the case without documentary proof. The Defense is not interested in the affair at all; and, according to my recollection, I even suggested to
337
29 April 46
one of the gentlemen of the Prosecution that this affair perhaps be left out altogether, because it is really so gruesome and so horrible that it is better not to treat it. But the defendant only wanted to say that it was only on the basis of various pieces of evidence that he dealt with the case, and I believe that is sufficient; that should close the matter.
Now, Herr Streicher, you fall again and again into the mistake of going too far in your explanations and of discussing things which can be considered propaganda on your part. I should like to ask you now for the last time to stick to the questions and leave out everything else. It is in your own interest. You are accused of having carried on various activities in your Gau, which were Crimes Against Humanity, of having mistreated people who lived in your Gau. Thus you are accused of having sought out a political prisoner, a certain Steinruck, in his cell and of having beaten him. Is that correct?
STREICHER: Yes.
DR. MARX, Was Steinruck a Jew?
STREICHER: No.
DR, MARX: For what reason did you do that?
STREICHER: Steinruck, in a public place, in the presence of many witnesses, had made derogatory statements about the Fuehrer, libelous statements. He was at police headquarters. I had spoken to the Police President about it and told him that I should like to look at that Steinruck once. I went with my adjutant-the Goering report says that a Party member, Holz, was there too, but that is not correct-I went with my adjutant to police headquarters. The same Police President, who later denounced me to Reich Marshal Goering, took me to Steinruck's cell. We went into the cell; I stated here that I had come with the intention of talking to him, talking to him reasonably. We talked to him. But he behaved so cowardly that it became necessary at the moment that he be chastised. I do not mind stating here that I am sorry about that case, that I regret it as a slip.
DR. MARX: Then it is asserted that in August 1938 you beat up an editor, Burger. Is that correct?
STREICHER: No, that is not correct. If I had beaten him up, then I would say so here. But I believe that my adjutant and somebody else had an argument with him.
DR. MARX: What about the incident in the Kuenstlerhaus in Munich?
STREICHER: I went to Munich to the Inn Kuenstlerstatte, or something like that. I was received by the manager. Then a young
338
29 April 46
man came up to me, drunk and quarrelsome, and shouted at me. The manager protested and ordered him out of the place. But the drunken young fellow came back again and again and then my chauffeur grabbed him and my son helped. They took him into a room and beat him up and then the proprietor of the inn thanked me for having rid him of the drunkard.
And now I should like to have the Tribunal's permission to state very briefly my position on one case which I believe the Prosecution also have dropped, where I was accused of sadistic tendencies . . .
THE PRESIDENT: Defendant, you know perfectly well that that incident has been stricken from the record and is not, therefore, mentioned against you, so that it is quite unnecessary to go into it. The Tribunal cannot hear you on it.
DR. MARX: Witness, from the so-called Goering report I should like to submit to you some points which have been presented by the Prosecution.
You know that after the action of November 1938, in the district of Franconia, Aryanization of Jewish property was undertaken to the utmost extent. Would you like to make a statement about that?
STREICHER: Here in the Goering report is a reference to a statement of the deceased Party member, Holz. In that statement it is pointed out that Holz came to see me after that action, that he made a report about the action and likewise declared the action to be wrong; he said furthermore that now that this had happened, he considered it necessary to go further and Aryanize the property. The Goering report states that I then told Holz that could not be done and that I opposed it. Then it states further that Holz said to me that he still thought it would be right if one were to do it. We could then get out of it the means for the establishment of a Gau school. Holz also states that I said something like: "Well, Holz, if you believe you can do it, then go ahead and do it."
I want to state here that what Party member Holz said is true. I was opposed at first; and then, acting on a sudden impulse, which I cannot understand today, I said, "Well, if you can do it, then go ahead and do it." I want to state that at that time when I said it, I did not believe at all that it was to be done or would be done; but it was done. The Reich Marshal, as Delegate for the Four Year Plan, later stated his position on it in Berlin, sharply rejecting it. Only at that time did I find out exactly how Holz accomplished this Aryanization. I had a talk with him, got into a serious dispute; and our friendly relations were broken off at that time. Holz volunteered in an armored unit, went to the front, and resigned as deputy. I returned from Berlin to Nuremberg, and later there
339
29 April 46
appeared in Nuremberg a Police Inspector sent by the Reich Marshal in his capacity as Delegate for the Four Year Plan. He reported to me and asked me if I would agree to an investigation of the whole matter, and I stated that I would welcome the investigation. Then the investigation took place. The Aryanization was repealed, and it was established that Holz personally had not gotten any material advantage from it. Aryanization was then taken over by the State, repealed, and taken over.
I state frankly that in that affair I am at least guilty of negligence.
DR. MARX: Did you know that the amounts paid in the Aryanization of houses or real estate represented only about 20 percent, or even less, of the actual value?
STREICHER: Holz had not come to see me for weeks. He had carried on the Aryanization in the Labor Front Office with the expert there. Not until later, in Berlin during the meeting which the Reich Marshal held, did I learn of the real facts; and thus the dispute and the break between Holz and me came about, because I had to disapprove the manner in which the Aryanization had been handled.
DR. MARX: You are further accused of having had shares in the Mars Works at Nuremberg acquired at an extraordinarily low price, for purposes of enriching yourself and, in the course of this acquisition, of having exerted an undue pressure on the owner of the shares?
STREICHER: It says in the Goering report, literally, that I had instructed and in another place that I had given the order that the Mars shares be acquired for me. I state here that I neither instructed nor ordered anyone to acquire the Mars shares. The whole thing was like this. The director of my publishing house, who had power of attorney because I, personally, never in all the years bothered with financial or business matters, could do what he wanted. One day he came to see me with my adjutant. I do not recollect now whether the adjutant or the director of my publishing house was the one who spoke first. I was told the following: An attorney had called and said that the Mars shares were being offered for sale at an advantageous price. The director of my publishing house asked me whether I agreed. I stated that never in my life had I owned any shares, that I had never bothered about financial matters in my publishing house. If he thought that the stock should be bought, then he could do it. The shares were bought. It was the most serious breach of confidence ever committed against me by any Party comrade or employee. After a short time it turned out; that is, I was informed how these shares
340
29 April 46
had been acquired. I found out that the owner had been threatened. When I found out under what conditions this stock purchase had been made, I gave the order at once to return the stock. In the Goering report it is noted that this return took place. Among the confiscated files of my publishing house there is an official statement about this affair which shows that these shares were returned.
In this connection perhaps I may be permitted to say that my publishing house was located until the end of the war in a rented house. At the time of the Aryanization I was approached with the plan that an Aryanized house be acquired for my publishing firm. I refused that. I state here in conclusion that I have in my possession no Jewish property.
When those demonstrations occurred in 1938, jewels had been brought into the Gau house. These pieces of jewelry were turned over to the police. A man who was bearer of the honorary Party emblem was convicted and sentenced to 6 years penal servitude because he had given his sweetheart a ring and another piece of jewelry dating from that time. But I may add one thing: The guilt of this bearer of the Party emblem rests perhaps with those who gave the order: "Go into the Jewish houses." That man, as far as I knew him, had always been personally decent. Because of that order, he got into a position in which he committed a crime.
I have finished what I wanted to say.
DR. MARX: Is it not true the allegations, made by the chief of the publishing firm Fink before the Party Court and also even before that, at a police interrogation, were different, in the main points, from your present statements?
STREICHER: The whole thing was that Fink, the publishing house manager, was called to police headquarters and interrogated. The police Chief was interested in the hearing since for many years he had been a friend of mine and of my family. Fink returned from the interrogation completely upset. He paced up and down in front of me and shouted, "I was threatened, I have made statements which are not true. I am blackguard. I am a criminal" A witness of that incident was my chauffeur. I calmed him down and told him, "I was called in for a hearing once, too. I was even imprisoned once. I will give you opportunity. . ."
THE PRESIDENT: Is it necessary to go into such detail in this matter?
DR MARX: Excuse me, Mr. President. Perhaps this is necessary, because in this very report reference is made to the testimony of Fink; and an attempt is made to prove with this that the explanation made by the Defendant Streicher is wrong, that he gave the order to purchase this stock, possibly under pressure, and that he
341
29 April 46
approved of it, whereas he counters that he knew neither that these shares were to be bought at such a low price nor that blackmail was to be used.
If this is taken for granted, then, of course, we can close the matter.
THE PRESIDENT: That is what he has already said. He has said that quite clearly, has he not? I was only suggesting that it was not necessary to go into such detail in the matter.
DR. MARX: Witness, it may be of some importance to state what the development of Der Stuermer has been since 1933, as far as circulation is concerned. Give us a short statement on the circulation of Der Stuermer, and then I shall put another question to you.
STREICHER: Der Stuermer appeared in 1923 in octave format, and in the beginning it had a circulation of 2,000 to 3,000 copies. In the course of time the circulation increased to 10,000. At that time Der Stuermer circulated-until 1933 really-only in Nuremberg, in my Gau, perhaps also in Southern Bavaria. The publisher was a bookseller and he worked first with one man, then with two. This is proof that the circulation was really small.
In 1933-but I say this with certain reservations because it may be that the publisher did not always tell me the correct circulation figures and I had no written contract with him-I say with reservations, that in 1933 the circulation was 25,000 copies.
In 1935 the publisher died; and at that time it was, I believe, 40,000. Then an expert took over the publishing house and organized it to cover all of Germany. The circulation increased then to 100,000, and went up as high as 600,000. It fluctuated, decreased, and then dropped during the war; I cannot say exactly but I believe it was about 150 000 to 200,000.
DR. MARX: You said that that new man organized the circulation to cover all of Germany. Was the Party machinery utilized in this, and were not industries and other offices-the German Labor Front, for instance-utilized in order to increase the circulation forcibly?
STREICHER: Well, the attitude of the Party was made manifest in a letter, which was sent to all Gaue, signed by Bormann. There it was expressly pointed out that Der Stuermer was not a Party organ and had nothing to do with the Party. Thereupon several Gauleiter saw this an occasion for ordering that Der Stuermer should not appear in their Gaue any more. Now it is clear that within the organizations there were Party members who, because of idealism or for other reasons, worked to increase the distribution of Der Stuermer. However, I myself, neither in writing nor orally, ever issued any order to any Party organization to support Der Stuermer.
342
29 April 46
DR. MARX: Herr Streicher, even before 1933 you came in contact with the courts on various occasions, both because of your articles and because of your attitude as evidenced in Der Stuermer. Would you give us a short statement as to how often that occurred and what consequences it had for you?
STREICHER: How often? I cannot answer that exactly now, but it was very often. I was frequently given a court summons. You ask me about the consequences. I was many times in prison, but I can say proudly that in the sentences it repeatedly stated "an incorruptible fanatic for the truth."
That was the consequence of my activity as a speaker and writer, but perhaps it is important to add the following: I never was arraigned because of criminal charges, but only because of my anti-Semitic activity; and the charge was brought by an organization of citizens of the Jewish faith. The chairman filed charges repeatedly when we made a slip in speaking and thus exposed ourselves to prosecution on the basis of the laws and regulations existing at that time. But perhaps I may also point out here that the Jewish Justizrat, Dr. Suessheim, the Prosecuting Attorney, stated before the court here in this courtroom, "Your Honors, he is our inexorable enemy, but he is a fanatic for the truth. He is convinced of what he does; he is honest about it."
THE PRESIDENT: What years were they that you were repeatedly in jail?
STREICHER: That was, of course, before 1933. The first time I went to Landsberg, to prison, because I had taken part in the Hitler Putsch. Then I was sentenced to three and a half months in prison in Nuremberg, where I am now. Then I got three months...
THE PRESIDENT: You needn't bother with the details.
STREICHER: That is to say, before 1933 I was repeatedly given prison sentences or fined.
DR. MARX: Mr. President, the Goering report also mentions the fact that the Defendant Streicher was personally interested in various Jewish plants, allegedly in order to get some capital out of them. However, I am of the opinion that it is not essential to deal with these points. The same applies to the fact that the house on Lake of Constance was sold, and to whom. I do not know whether the defendant should make any statements about this here. In my opinion there is no cause to ask him any questions concerning that.
THE PRESIDENT: I think you could leave that and see whether it is taken up in cross-examination. If it is, then you may reexamine him.
343
29 April 46
DR. MARX: Yes, certainly.
Mr. President, this concludes my questions to the defendant.
THE PRESIDENT: Do any members of defendants' counsel wish to ask questions of the defendant?
[There was no response.]
The Prosecution?
LIEUTENANT COLONEL J. M. G. GRIFFITH-JONES (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): If the Tribunal please.
When you handed over your Party to Hitler in 1922, did you know his policy and what was to become the policy of the Nazi Party?
STREICHER: The policy? First I should like to say, "no." At that time one could not speak of things which could not exist even as thoughts. The policy then was to create a new faith for the German people, that is, a faith which would deny the chaos and disorder and which would bring about a return to order.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: May I take it that, within a short course of time, you knew the policy, the policy according to the Party program and according to Mein Kampf?
STREICHER: I did not need a Party program. I admit frankly that I never read it in its entirety. At that time programs were not important, but mass meetings...
THE PRESIDENT: That's not an answer to the question. The question was whether, a short time after 1922, you knew the policy as indicated in the Party program and in Mein Kampf.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: You knew, did you not, that the policy included the Anschluss with Austria? Can you answer that "yes" or "no''?
STREICHER: No. There was never any talk about Austria. I do not remember that the Fuehrer ever spoke about the fact that Austria should be annexed.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I only want you to answer my question. My question was: Did you know that the Fuehrer's policy was the annexation of Austria to Germany? I understand your answer to be "no." Is that correct?
STREICHER: That he intended it? No, that I did not know.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Did you know that he intended to take over Czechoslovakia or at least the Sudetenland?
STREICHER: No.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Did you know that from the beginning in Mein Kampf his ultimate objective was Lebensraum?
344
29 April 46
STREICHER: What I read in Mein Kampf is marked in red. The book has been confiscated. I only read that. I read only what concerns the Jewish question; I did not read anything else. However, that we had the objective of acquiring Lebensraum for our people, that goes without saying. I personally also had set myself the objective of contributing in some way to providing a future for the surplus children.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. May I take it that during the years 1922 and 1923, as editor and owner of Der Stuermer, and as a Gauleiter from 1925, you did everything you could to put the Nazi Party into power?
STREICHER: Yes; that is to be taken as a matter of course.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: And after 1933 did you continuously support and issue propaganda on behalf of the Nazi Party's policy?
STREICHER: Yes.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Not only in respect to the Jewish question, but to the foreign policy as well?
STREICHER: No, that is not correct. In Der Stuermer there is not a single article to be found which dealt with foreign policy. I devoted myself exclusively...
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: That is quite enough. I am not going to occupy very much time with this matter. But I would ask you to look at Document Number D-802.
My Lord, this is a new exhibit.
THE PRESIDENT: Which will be what?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Exhibit Number GB-327.
My Lord, I am sorry, but the document seems to be missing for the moment. Perhaps I might read the extract.
[Turning to the defendant.] Let me just read to you an extract from an article which you wrote in Der Stuermer of March 1938, immediately after the Anschluss with Austria. I want you to tell me whether or not you are advocating the Nazi policy in regard to Austria.
"Our Lord is making provision that the power of the Jews may not extend to heaven itself. What was only a dream up to a few days ago has now become reality. The brother nation of Austria has returned home to the Reich."
And then, a few lines farther down:
"We are entering into glorious times, a Greater Germany without Jews."
345
29 April 46
Do you say that you are not there issuing propaganda on behalf of the Nazi policy?
STREICHER: I did not indulge in propaganda politics, for Austria was already annexed. I just welcomed the fact. I did not need to make any more propaganda about it.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. Perhaps you'll tell me what you mean by the "Greater Germany" that you are approaching. What Greater Germany are you approaching in March 1938, a Germany greater than it was after the Anschluss with Austria?
STREICHER: A Greater Germany, a living area in which all Germans, German-speaking people, people of German blood, can live together.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Do I understand that you are advocating Lebensraum, greater space, not yet owned by Germany?
STREICHER: Not at first, no. At first it was merely a question of Austria and Germany. The Austrians are Germans and, therefore, belong to a Greater Germany.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I won't argue with you. I will just ask you once more, what do you mean by the "Greater Germany" that you are approaching in March of 1938?
STREICHER: I have already explained, a Germany where all those can live and work together who speak German and have German blood.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Would you look at Document Number D-818, which will become Exhibit Number GB-328. Perhaps I can carry on. In November of 1938, after Munich, did you yourself personally send a telegram to Konrad Henlein, the leader of the Sudeten-German Party?
STREICHER: If it says so here, then it is true. I do not recall it.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Let me refresh your recollection as to what you said, "Without your courageous preparatory work the great task would not have succeeded."
Are you there advocating and issuing propaganda in support of the policy of the Nazi Government?
STREICHER: I have to ask you again, would you please repeat your question?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I am asking you whether or not that telegram, which you sent to Konrad Henlein and reprinted in your newspaper under a picture of that gentleman-I am asking you whether or not that was propaganda in support of the Nazi policy, Nazi foreign policy?
346
29 April 46
STREICHER: I have to say the same to this as I said before. That was a telegram of greeting, of thanks. I did not have to make propaganda any more because the Munich Agreement had already taken place.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I put it to you and I'll leave it. I'll put it to you that throughout the years from 1933 until 1944 or 1945 you were in fact doing everything you could to support the policy of the Government, both domestically and in regard to its foreign affairs.
STREICHER: As far as possible within my field of activity, yes.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I want to turn now to the question of the Jews. May I remind you of the speech that you made on 1 April 1933, that is to say, the day of the boycott.
My Lord, this will be found in the original document book, Document Number M-33. It was not actually put in before. It now becomes Exhibit Number GB-329. It is in the document book on Page 15, in the original document book which the Tribunal have.
[Turning to the defendant.] Now, I give you the document book. If you want to see the original, you may do so in every case. [The document book was submitted to the defendant.]
"For 14 years we have been crying to the German nation, 'German people, learn to recognize your true enemy,' and 14 years ago the German Philistines listened and then declared that we preached religious hatred. Today German people have awakened; even all over the world there is talk of the eternal Jews. Never since the beginning of the world and the creation of man has there been a nation which dared to fight against the nation of blood-suckers and extortioners who, for a thousand years, have spread all over the world."
And then I go down to the last line of the next paragraph: "It was left to our Movement to expose the eternal Jew as a mass murderer."
Is it right that for 14 years you had been repeating in Germany, "German people. learn to recognize your true enemy"?
STREICHER: I state first of all that what you have given me here has nothing to do with that. You have given me an article...
THE PRESIDENT: You are asked a question. You are asked whether it is true that for 14 years you had been repeating to Germany, "Learn to recognize your true enemy." Is that true?
STREICHER: Yes.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: And in doing so, is it true that you had been preaching religious hatred?
347
29 April 46
STREICHER: No.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Will you look at . . .
STREICHER: May I be permitted to make a statement concerning this answer? In my weekly, Der Stuermer, I repeatedly stated that for me the Jews are not a religious group but a race, a people.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: And do you think to call them "blood-suckers," "a nation of blood-suckers and extortioners"-do you think that's preaching hatred?
STREICHER: I beg your pardon. I have not understood you?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: You may call them a race or a nation, whichever you like, now; but you were saying, on 1 April 1933, that they were a "nation of blood-suckers and extortioners." Do you call that preaching hatred?
STREICHER: That is a statement, the expression of a conviction which can be proved on the basis of historical facts.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Understand me. I did not ask you whether it was a fact or not. I am asking whether you called it preaching hatred. Your answer is "yes" or "no."
STREICHER: No, it is not preaching hatred; it is just a statement of facts.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Will you look two pages further on in that last document, M-33, and do you see the fourth paragraph from the end of the extract? That is Page 17 of the document book: "As long as I stand at the head of the struggle, this struggle will be conducted so honestly that the eternal Jew will derive no joy from it."
STREICHER: That I wrote; that was right.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: And you were, were you not, one of those who did stand and continue to stand at the head of that struggle?
STREICHER: Did I stand at the head? I am too modest a man for that. But I do claim to have declared my conviction and my knowledge clearly and unmistakably.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Why did you say that so long as you were at the head of it, the Jew would derive no joy from it?
STREICHER: Because I considered myself a man whom destiny had placed in a position to enlighten people on the Jewish question.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: And "enlightenment"-is that another word for persecution? Do you mean by "enlightenment," "persecution"?
STREICHER: I did not understand that.
348
29 April 46
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Do you mean by "enlightenment" the word "persecution"? Is that why the Jew was to have no joy from it, from your enlightenment?
STREICHER: I ask to have the question repeated.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I can show it to you and we will repeat the question as loud as you want it. Do you mean by "enlightenment" the word "persecution"? Do you hear that?
STREICHER: I hear "enlightenment" and "production." I mean by "enlightenment" telling another person something which he does not yet know.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: We won't go on with that. You know, do you not, that starting with the boycott which you led yourself in 1933, the Jews thereafter were, during the course of the years, deprived of the right to vote, deprived of holding any public office, excluded from the professions; demonstrations were conducted against them in 1938, they were fined a billion marks after that, they were forced to wear a yellow star, they had their own separate seats to sit on, and they had their houses and their businesses taken away from them. Do you call that "enlightenment"?
STREICHER: That has nothing to do with what I wrote, nothing to do with it. I did not issue the orders. I did not make the laws. I was not asked when laws were prepared. I had nothing to do with these laws and orders.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: But as those laws and orders were passed you were applauding them, and you were going on abusing the Jews and asking for more and more orders to be passed; isn't that a fact?
STREICHER: I ask to have put to me which law I applauded.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Now, you told the Tribunal yesterday, did you not: that you were responsible, you thought, for the Nuremberg Decrees, which you had been advocating for years before they came into force; isn't that a fact?
STREICHER: The Nuremberg Decrees? I did not make them. I was not asked beforehand, and I did not sign them either. But I state here that these laws are the same laws which the Jewish people have as their own. It is the greatest and most important act of legislation which a modern nation has at any time made for its protection.
THE PRESIDENT: I think that is the time to break off.
[The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours.]
349
29 April 46
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom): My Lord, I wonder if the Tribunal would be good enough to consider setting aside a half hour some time for the discussion of the documents of the Defendant Von Schirach. We are ready to clear up outstanding points at any time that is suitable to the Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: [Turning to the defendant.] Now, I just want to ask you a few questions as to the part you played in the various actions against the Jews between 1933 and 1939.
Will you look at Document M-6, which is at Page 20 in the document book that you have before you, Page 22 in the document book that the Tribunal have in English. It is Page 20 in the German document book; M-6, which is already Exhibit Number GB-170.
Now, I just want to refer to what you said about the Nuremberg Decrees. You told us this morning that you thought when they had been passed that that was already the final solution of the Jewish question. Will you look at the paragraph beginning in the center of the page, "However, to those who believe... ":
"However, to those who believe that the Jewish question has been finally solved and the matter thus settled for Germany by the Nuremberg Decrees, be it said that the battle continues-world Jewry itself is seeing to that anyhow-and we shall only get through this battle victoriously if every member of the German people knows that his very existence is at stake. The work of enlightenment carried on by the Party seems to me to be more necessary than ever today, even though many Party members seem to think that these matters are no longer real or urgent."
STREICHER: Yes, I wrote that.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: What do you mean by saying "the battle continues," if you have already solved the Jewish problem by the issuance of the Nuremberg Decrees?
STREICHER: I have already stated today that the solution of the Jewish problem was regarded by me as having to be solved, first of all, within the country and then in conjunction with other nations. Thus "the battle continues" means that in the International Anti-Semitic Union, which I had formed and which had representatives from all countries in it, the question was discussed as to what could be done from an international point of view to terminate the Jewish problem.
350
29 April 46
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Are we, therefore, to take it that everything that you said and wrote after 1936 was in connection with an international problem and had nothing to do with the Jews in Germany as such?
STREICHER: Yes, mainly international, of course.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Let me just refer you to half way through the next paragraph, "Der Stuermer's 15 years' work of enlightenment has already led an army of those who know, millions strong, to National Socialism." Is that so?
STREICHER: That is correct.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: You see, you were telling the Tribunal this morning that up to 1933, and indeed afterwards, you said the circulation of your paper was only very small. Is it true, in fact, that your 15 years' work had led an army, millions strong, to National Socialism?
STREICHER: I have said today that the moment the press was politically co-ordinated, 3,000 daily newspapers were committed to the purpose of enlightenment about the Jewish problem. There were 3,000 daily papers ire addition to Der Stuermer.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. I don't think you need go on. Let me just finish reading through that paragraph:
"The continued work of Der Stuermer will help to insure that down to the last man every German will, with heart and hand, join the ranks of those whose aim it is to crush the head of the serpent Pan-Judah."
Wait one moment, let me ask my question. There is nothing there about an international problem. You are addressing yourself to the German people, are you not?
STREICHER: In that article? Yes. And if that article was read abroad, then also to countries abroad, but as to the remark about crushing the serpent's head, that is a biblical expression.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Will you now let us discuss for a moment the breaking up of the synagogue in Nuremberg, which you have told about, on the 10th of August of 1938. Will you look at Page 41 of the book that you have in front of you, Page 42 of the English document book that the Tribunal has.
Now we have heard your explanation of that breaking up of the synagogue. The Frankische Tageszeitung of the 11th of August states this; "In Nuremberg the synagogue is being demolished. Julius Streicher himself inaugurated this work by a speech lasting more than an hour and a half." Were you talking to the inhabitants of Nuremberg upon the architectural value of their city for an hour and a half on the 10th of August 1938?
351
29 April 46
STREICHER: I no longer know in detail what I said, but I refer to what you have remarked and what you find important. There was a branch of the Propaganda Ministry in Nuremberg. The young Regierungsrat had press conferences with the editors every day, and at that time he told the editors during a press conference that Streicher would speak and that the synagogue was being demolished and that this was to be kept secret.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I asked you, were you talking for that hour and a half on the architectural beauties of Nuremberg and not against the Jews? Is that what you are telling us?
STREICHER: That, too, of course.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: At the press conference to which you referred-you no doubt have seen the document; it is Page 40 of the Tribunal's document book-do you remember that it was arranged that the show should be staged in a big way, the show of pulling down the synagogue? What was the object of arranging the demonstration to demolish that synagogue in such a big way?
STREICHER: I was merely the speaker. What you are intimating here that was done by the representative of the Ministry of Propaganda; but I would not object to it if you decided to assume, let me put it like that, that I would naturally have been in favor of making a big show if I had been asked.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Let me just ask you now a word about the demonstrations which followed that in November of that year-My Lord, I refer to Page 43 of the document book; 42 of the German-as I understand it, you tell us that you disapproved of those demonstrations that took place and they took place without your knowledge or previous knowledge. Is that correct, "yes" or "no"?
STREICHER: Yes, it is correct.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I just want to remind you of what you said on the following day, the 10th of November. This is an account of what happened:
"In Nuremberg and Fuerth there were demonstrations by the crowd against the Jewish gang of murderers. These lasted until the early hours of the morning." I now pass to the end of that paragraph: "After midnight the excitement of the public had reached its peak and a large crowd marched to the synagogues in Nuremberg and Fuerth and burned those two Jewish buildings where the murder of Germans had been preached."
This is now what you say-it is on Page 44 of the document book, My Lord:
352
29 April 46
"From the cradle on, the Jew is not taught as we are: 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself' or 'If you are smitten on the left cheek offer then your right one.' No. He is told 'With the non-Jew you can do whatever you like.' He is even taught that the slaughtering of a non-Jew is an act pleasing to God. For 20 years we have been writing about this in Der Stuermer. For 20 years we have been preaching it throughout the world, and we have made millions recognize the truth."
Does that sound as though you had disapproved of the demonstrations that had taken place the night before?
STREICHER: First of all I must state that the report, part of which you read, appeared in a daily paper. Thus I am not to be held responsible for this. If someone wrote that part of the populace rose up against the gang of murderers then that is in keeping with the order from the Ministry of Propaganda in Berlin; outwardly that action was described as a spontaneous demonstration of the populace . . .
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: That does not answer my question. Does that passage that I have read sound as though you had disapproved of the demonstrations that had taken place the night before? Does it or does it not?
STREICHER: I was against that demonstration.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Just let me read on:
"But we know that we have in our midst people who take pity on the Jews, people who are not worthy of living in this town, who are not worthy of belonging to this people, of whom you are a proud part."
Why should it have been necessary for people to have had pity on the Jews, if you were not-you and the Nazi Party-persecuting them?
STREICHER: I have already pointed out today that I was forced, after this demonstration had taken place, to make a public comment and say that one should not have so much pity. I wanted to prove thereby that this was not a spontaneous action by the people; in other words, the matter does not speak against me; it speaks for me. The people, as I myself, were opposed to the demonstration and I found that I had cause to-should I say-get public opinion to the point where one might possibly not regard that action as something too severe.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: But, why, if you were opposed to it and if the people were opposed to it, should it have been your duty to try and convert them so that they should be in favor of that kind of thing? Why were you opposed to it and why should you try to turn them against the Jew?
353
29 April 46
STREICHER: I do not understand what you mean.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I understand you to say that you were opposed to these demonstrations and that the people also were opposed to the demonstrations; that, therefore, it was your duty to try to stir them up and make them in favor of the demonstrations after they had happened. Why should it have been your duty to do that?
STREICHER: Today one can perhaps say that this or that was my duty, but one must consider what those times were-the confusion that existed--that to make a quick decision, as one might have to in this courtroom, was quite impossible. What happened has happened. I was against it and the public too. What was written about it otherwise was done so for tactical reasons.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. Were you in favor of the Aryanization of Jewish houses and businesses? Were you in favor of that or did you disapprove of that issue?
STREICHER: I have answered that question today in great detail, in connection with a statement of Party comrade Holz. I have stated and I repeat that my deputy came to me. . .
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Just stop for a moment, I don't want a speech. I asked you a question which you could answer "yes" or "no." Did you approve or disapprove of the system of Aryanization of Jewish businesses and houses?
STREICHER: One cannot answer that quickly with "yes" or "no." I have made it clear today, and you must allow me to explain it so that there is not any misunderstanding. My Party comrade. ..
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I am not going to allow you to repeat it. I will go on if you are not prepared to answer that question. The Tribunal have heard it and I pass on.
STREICHER: I certainly want to answer it. After my Party comrades . . .
THE PRESIDENT: Defendant...
STREICHER: After the Party comrades came...
THE PRESIDENT: You have refused to answer the question properly, a question to which you can give either an affirmative or a negative answer. Did you approve or did you not approve? You can give an answer to that and then you can give any explanation afterwards.
STREICHER: I personally was not for Aryanization. When Holz repeated that, giving as a reason that the houses had been pretty badly damaged, et cetera, that we might get material for a Gau (district) building, I said "All right, if you can do it, go ahead." I already stated today that this was carelessness on my part.
354
29 April 46
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: There were in fact a very great number of Jewish businesses and houses Aryanized in Nuremberg and Franconia, were there not?
STREICHER: Yes.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Would you just look at a new exhibit, Document Number D-835, which becomes Exhibit GB-330. That is a list-it is an original document-it is a list of Jewish property in Nuremberg and Fuerth which was Aryanized. Have you seen that list or anything Like it before?
STREICHER: No.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Well, you can take it from me that that list contains the addresses of some 800 properties in Nuremberg and Fuerth which have been taken from the Jews and handed over to Aryans. Would you agree that that would be at least 800 houses in your city here that were Aryanized?
STREICHER: I do not know about it in detail; but I must establish something: I do not know-is that the official document? I have already stated today that my Party comrade Holz started Aryanizing. That was rescinded by Berlin. Then came the Aryanization carried out by the State. I could not have had any influence here, either, so that this was none of my business. This Aryanization, the expropriation of Jewish property, was ordered by Berlin.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Now, you mentioned this morning that you were a subscriber to a weekly newspaper called the Israelitisches Wochenblatt; is that correct?
STREICHER: Yes.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: When did you start subscribing to that newspaper?
STREICHER: What did you say?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: At what date did you start subscribing to that newspaper?
STREICHER: I do not know.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Well, I have no doubt you can tell the Tribunal approximately. Have you always, since 1933, been a subscriber of that newspaper?
STREICHER: Well, I do not think I could have read every issue, since I traveled a great deal.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: You were, as I think it is stated in this application of your wife to give evidence, a regular reader of it, were you not?
STREICHER: My friends, the editors, and I used to share in the reading of this paper.
355
29 April 46
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: May I take it that between yourself and your editors-I don't say every copy was read-but it was regularly read from 1933 onwards; is that fair?
STREICHER: You cannot say "read regularly."
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: A large number of the copies that you subscribed for, which came weekly to you, were they read by yourself or by your editors?
STREICHER: Certainly.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Now, I want to turn to something else for a moment. I want to make myself perfectly clear to you.
DR. MARX: Mr. President, I should like to draw the attention of the Tribunal to the fact that the document which has just been presented, "Confiscated Property and Real Estate," has the heading "Aryanization Department for Real Estate, Nuremberg." That cannot mean anything except that this document comes from the official department which was later set up for the confiscation of such real estate. But by no means can this be a document to prove that we are concerned here with the real estate Aryanized by Holz, subsequent to 9 November.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I accept that that may be so.
DR. MARX: I should like to ask, therefore, that the appropriate correction be made.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: If I was mistaken in saying that those properties had been Aryanized, I would be right then, would I not, in saying that that list of properties was prepared by the Aryanization Department in Nuremberg for the purpose of Aryanizing them in the future? Would that be a fair statement to make?
STREICHER: No.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I won't pursue that matter any further.
I want to make myself quite clear to you in what I am suggesting. I am suggesting that from 1939 onwards you set out to incite the German people to murder and to accept the fact of the murder of the Jewish race. Do you understand that?
STREICHER: That is not true.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: No doubt you will say it isn't true. I just wanted you to be quite clear on what my suggestion is going to be.
I want you to look now at a bundle, which will be given to you, of extracts from Der Stuermer. You can see the originals which are in Court if you desire to do so, but it will save time if we use the document books there.
356
29 April 46
Now, will you look at Page 3-A. For convenience, the pages in this bundle are all marked "A" to distinguish them from the numbers in the original document book.
THE PRESIDENT: Are they all in evidence?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: None of them are in evidence at the moment. Perhaps the most convenient way would be for me to put the actual documents in evidence together at the end, unless the Tribunal or the defendant desire to see any copies of them. I will give them numbers as I go along.
Will you look at Page 3-A of that bundle, Document Number D-809, which becomes Exhibit Number GB-331:
"The Jewish problem is not yet solved, nor will it be solved when one day the last Jew will have left Germany. Only when world Jewry has been annihilated, will it have been solved."
Is that what you were working for when you say you were working for the international solution to this problem, an annihilation of world Jewry?
STREICHER: If that is how you understand "annihilation." That was written by my chief editor at the time. He says that the Jewish problem will not yet be solved when the last Jew will have left Germany. And when he suddenly says that only when world Jewry has been annihilated will it be solved, then he certainly may have meant that the power of world Jewry should be annihilated. But my Party comrade Holz did not think of mass killing or the possibility of mass killing.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: The German word used there is "vernichtet," is it not? Look at your copy. "Vernichtet" that means "to annihilate."
STREICHER: Today when you look back, you could interpret it like that, but not at that time.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well, we won't waste time because we have quite a number to look through. Will you look on to the next page. That was in January you were writing that. In April 1939, Document D-810, Exhibit GB-332, I refer only to the last two lines. This is an article again by your editor: "Then perhaps their graves will proclaim that this murderous and criminal people has, after all, met its deserved fate."
What do you mean by "graves" there? Do you mean excluding them from the business of the world?
STREICHER: This is the first time that I have seen this article. That is the statement of opinion of a man who was probably looking ahead and making a play on words; but as far as I knew him, and as far as we discussed the Jewish problem, there was no question
357
29 April 46
of mass extermination; we did not even think of it. Maybe it was his wish-I do not know-but anyway, that is the way it happened to be written.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. Just turn over, will you now, to May 1939, Document Number D-811, Exhibit Number GB-333. I quote the last six lines: "There must be a punitive expedition against the Jews in Russia."
This, of course, was before the Russian invasion.
"There must be a punitive expedition 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 utterly exterminated. Then the world will see that the end of the Jews is also the end of Bolshevism."
STREICHER: Who wrote that article?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: It is published in your Stuermer. We can find out, if necessary. It is not written by you, but it is published in your Der Stuermer; and you have told the Tribunal that you accept responsibility for everything that was written in that newspaper.
STREICHER: All right, I assume responsibility; but I want to state that, here too, this is the private opinion of a man who in May 1939 could not have thought that ex nihilo-- for we had no soldiers-a "March to Russia" could be started. This is a theoretic and very strongly-worded expression of opinion of that anti-Semitic person.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: All I ask you about that is: Is that not advocating the murder of Jews, that article; if it is not, what is it advocating?
STREICHER: The whole article would have to be read so that I could tell what motives existed for writing something like that. I therefore ask you to make public the whole article. Then one can form a proper judgment.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Well, we'll go on. We won't waste time unless you really want to see the whole article.
My Lord, if I perhaps might be allowed to put these documents in evidence. As Your Lordship will see, this bundle is a bundle of extracts from Der Stuermer.
DR. MARX: Mr. President, with the permission of the Tribunal, I would like to make the following statements: A number of extracts from Der Stuermer have been mentioned here which have been put before me for the first time. Some of them are articles
358
29 April 46
which have not been written by the defendant personally. Some are signed by Hiemer, and some by Holz, who was particularly radical in his manner of writing, and passages are being quoted which are perhaps taken out of context.
I must ask, therefore, that I be afforded the opportunity of going over these extracts together with the Defendant Streicher. Otherwise, he might come to the conclusion that his defense is being made too difficult for him and that it is being made impossible for him to prepare himself appropriately.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, you will have an opportunity of checking up on these various extracts, and then you will be able to introduce, if necessary, any passages which explain the extracts. That is a matter which has been explained to defendants' counsel over and over again.
Colonel Griffith-Jones, are there not certain of these extracts which are written or signed by the defendant?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Well, with Your Lordship's permission I will refer to some of them, but so that I should not have to refer to all of them, I was going to suggest that perhaps I might put them in and, if it is necessary, let the Tribunal know afterwards the numbers of them to save time.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, certainly.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I put the whole bundle in evidence and will not refer to all of them.
THE PRESIDENT: Then you can give us the exhibit numbers later.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: If that is suitable to the convenience of the Court.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Well now, the Tribunal will see by looking at this bundle, from the first page-which I think is 3-A-to Page 25-A, that there are various extracts which have been written either by yourself or by members of your staff between January 1939 and January 1941.
Do I understand you to say now, to have said in your evidence, that you never knew that Jews were being exterminated in thousands and millions in the Eastern territories? Did you never know that?
STREICHER: No.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: As I understood your evidence about the Israelitisches Wochenblatt this morning you said this, as I have written it down:
359
29 April 46
"Sometimes that journal contained hints that everything was not in order. Later in 1943 an article appeared stating that masses of Jews were disappearing but the article did not quote any figures and did not mention anything about murders."
Are you really saying that those copies of the Israelitisches Wochenblatt, which you and your editors were reading, contained nothing except for a hint of disappearance with no mention of figures or murder? Is that what you are telling this Tribunal?
STREICHER: Yes, I stick to that, certainly.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Now, I want you, if you will, to take this bundle and keep it in front of you. It is a bundle of extracts from the Israelitisches Wochenblatt from July 1941 until the end of the war. The Tribunal will be able to see what a fanatic for the truth really tells.
[The document was submitted to the defendant.]
My Lord, this bundle, for convenience again, is marked "B." [Turning to the defendant.] Will you look at the first page? That is an article on the 11th of July 1941. "Some 40,000 Jews died in Poland during the last years. The hospitals are overfull."
Now, you need not turn over for the moment, Defendant. We will turn the pages soon enough.
Did you happen to read that sentence in the issue of the 11th of July 1941?
STREICHER: No.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Will you look at Page 3, 3-B? In November 1941: "Very bad news comes from the Ukraine. Thousands of Jewish dead are being mourned, among whom are many of the Galician Jews who were expelled from Hungary."
Did you read that?
STREICHER: That might be possible. It says "thousands," thousands are being mourned. That is no proof that millions were killed. There are no details as to how they came to their end.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: If that is the explanation you want us to accept we will leave it.
Just go on again to the next page, will you? The 12th of December 1941, a month later:
"According to news which has arrived from several sources, thousands of Jews-one even speaks of many thousands-are said to have been executed in Odessa"-and so on.-"Similar reports reach us from Kiev and other Russian cities."
Did you read that?
360
29 April 46
STREICHER: I do not know; and if I had read it then it would not change a thing. That is no proof.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: But you have told the Tribunal, you know, that there was nothing except hints of disappearance. Doesn't it show that you were not telling the truth when you read these extracts?
STREICHER: In that case may I say the following? When the war started we no longer received the Israelitisches Wochenblatt. During the later years one could only get the Israelitisches Wochenblatt through the Police. We got that paper, toward the end, into Germany by smuggling. On one occasion we asked the Police to provide us with foreign newspapers and this weekly, and we were told that it was not possible. But we nevertheless got it. What I mean to say by this is that I did not read every one of those issues. The issues which I did read were confiscated on my farm. Whatever is underlined has been read by me or it was read by my editor in chief. I cannot, therefore, guarantee that I read every article.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: No, I appreciate that and that is why we have quite a number of them. You see, we have an extract for practically every week or month over the course of 3 years.
I would just like you to turn to Page 30-A of the "A" bundle. I just want you to see what you were writing after having heard, or after having read, or anyway after those copies of the Israelitisches Wochenblatt had been published. This is a leading article by yourself.
"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 open-the extermination of that people whose father is the devil."
And is the word that you use for extermination there "Ausrottung," rooting out, extirpation?
STREICHER: First of all, I would like to ask whether this issue is known to my defense counsel, and if the translation is correct?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: It does not matter. He has copies of all this and he will be able to protect your interests. We are now just testing the truth of the evidence that you have given.
Can you tell me, is that "extermination"? Does that mean murder of Jews? What else can it mean?
STREICHER: It depends on the whole context. In that case I want you to read the whole article.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Well, if there is anything in the rest of the article which can be helpful to you, your counsel will have an opportunity to see the article and be able to put it before
361
29 April 46
the Tribunal. I can assure you that the remainder of your articles, as a general rule, do not assist your case.
STREICHER: When that article appeared, mass killing had already taken place a long time ago.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. Well now, we will not go through this at any length.
If you will look at your "B" bundle, your bundle of extracts from the Israelitisches Wochenblatt...
THE PRESIDENT: I think you should draw his attention to the date on Page 30-A.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I am very much obliged to Your Lordship.
[Turning to the defendant.] The 25th of December 1941.
If you will glance at "B" bundle you will see a number of extracts going from Page A to Page 21. Now, I would like you to glance at Page 24 of that "B" bundle.
STREICHER: Page 24?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Yes, Page 24. This is an article which appeared in the Israelitisches Wochenblatt on the 27th of November 1942. I just wondered whether you read this:
"At the Zionist Congress of Switzerland the representative of the 'Jewish Agency' in Geneva . . . gave a report on European Jewry.... The number of victims goes into millions. If the present conditions continue and the German program is carried out, it is to be reckoned that, instead of 6 or 7 million Jews in Europe only 2 million will still be left."
Then there are the three last lines of the extract:
"The Jews who were there had mostly been deported to the notorious unknown destination further to the East. At the end of this winter the number of victims will be 4 million."
Is that what you call a hint of disappearance of Jews from the East?
STREICHER: I cannot recollect that I have ever read that but I do want to say that if I had read it I would not have believed it.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Well now, let us just turn to the "A" bundle again and look at the article that you wrote on the 17th of December 1942. It is Page 34-A. This is an article which is initialed "STR" so I presume it was written by you.
"The London newspaper, The Times, of the 16th of September 1942 published a...
STREICHER: I have not got it yet.
362
29 April 46
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Page 34-A.
STREICHER: Just a minute.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Find it for him. It is headed: "Eye for Eye, Tooth for Tooth."
"The London newspaper, The Times, of 16 September 1942 published a resolution which had been unanimously passed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. This resolution expresses the grief and horror of the Anglo-Jewish Community at the unspeakable atrocities committed by Germany and her allies and vassals against the Jews of Europe which had only one aim, to exterminate the whole Jewish population of Europe in cold blood."
Now, you must have read of that in The Times because you say so.
STREICHER: Yes.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES:
"Strange how the Jews of the Anglo-Jewish Community suddenly begin to prick up their ears. When the second World War began the Fuehrer of the German nation warned the Jewish warmongers against plunging the world into a blood bath again. Since then the German Fuehrer has warned and prophesied again and again that the second World War, instigated by world Jewry, must necessarily lead to the destruction of Jewry. In his last speech too, the Fuehrer again referred to his prophecies."
Did you write that?
STREICHER: Yes, this is merely a quotation. It refers to a forecast from the Fuehrer, of which nobody could possibly tell what it really meant.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well.
If you had not even read that or the Israelitisches Wochenblatt, did you ever hear of the declaration of the United Nations which was made on the 17th of December 1942?
[The document was submitted to the defendant.]
Do you remember hearing of that? You appear to have been reading The Times; you appear to have been reading some copies of the Israelitisches Wochenblatt. Maybe you heard of this declaration which was published in London, Washington, and Moscow at the same time with the assent and support of all Allied nations and dominions. I will just read it to you and see if you remember it:
"The attention of the Belgian, Czechoslovak, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norwegian, Polish, Soviet, United Kingdom, United States, and Yugoslav Governments and also the French
363
29 April 46
National Committee has been drawn to numerous reports from Europe that the German authorities, not content with denying to persons of Jewish race in all the territories over which their barbarous rule has been extended the most elementary human rights, are now carrying into effect Hitler's often repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.
"From all the occupied countries Jews are being transported in conditions of appalling horror and brutality to Eastern Europe. In Poland, which has been made the principal Nazi slaughterhouse, the ghettos established by the German invaders are being systematically emptied of all Jews except a few highly skilled workers required for war industries. None of those taken away are ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death in labor camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation, or are deliberately massacred in mass executions.
"The number of victims of these bloody cruelties is reckoned in many hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women, and children.
"The above-mentioned Governments and the French National Committee condemn, in the strongest possible terms, this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination. They declare that such events can only strengthen the resolve of all freedom-loving peoples to overthrow the barbarous Hitlerite tyranny. They reaffirm their solemn resolution to ensure that those responsible for the crimes shall not escape retribution, and to press on with the necessary practical measures to this end."
Did you never hear of this declaration?
STREICHER: I do not know, but if I should have heard of it, then I would have to say the following:
After the seizure of power the foreign press published so many atrocity stories, which turned out to be rumors, that I would have had no reason to believe anything like this; nor is there any mention here that millions of Jews were killed.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Well, you see, it isn't altogether uncorroborated. You say you had no reason to believe it; but your Israelitisches Wochenblatt, which you were subscribing to, was saying exactly the same thing.
Would you look at Page 26-B of the "B" bundle? That is the declaration of the United Nations of the 17th of December. Just see what the Israelitisches Wochenblatt says on the 18th. And there I quote the second paragraph:
364
29 April 46
"At that time the Polish Government in London gave the number of Jews executed as 700,000. The Berlin radio hereupon declared that these reports were untrue, but admitted that in Poland 'Jews' had had to be executed because they carried out acts of sabotage."
Then the last paragraph quoted:
"'Up to the end of September 1942,' writes the Daily Telegraph, '2 million Jews have lost their lives in Germany and in the countries occupied by the Axis, and it is to be feared that the number of victims will be doubled by the end of this year."'
Did you happen to read that article?
STREICHER: I cannot remember having read it, but I would not have believed it if I had.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: You see, there is another article in that same paper on the 23rd of December, in the same terms; another on the 30th of December; and another on the 8th of January. Look at what it says on the 8th of January:
"The Polish Government in London has issued a new declaration which states that all the information received agrees that a third of the 3 million odd Jews have lost their lives."
Did you read that?
STREICHER: I do not know, but I have to repeat, I would not have believed it.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Well now, just let's see just what you were writing on the 28th of January. Look at 35-A of your own bundle; 35-A. Now just see what your Chief Editor, the witness you are going to call, I understand, Hiemer-see what he has got to say first of all:
"But the ghetto too, which has today been re-established in nearly all European countries, is only an interim solution, for mankind once awakened will not merely solve the ghetto question but the Jewish question in its totality. A time will come when the present demands of the Jews will be fulfilled. The ghetto will have disappeared-and with it Jewry."
What is he referring to, if he isn't referring to the mass killing, murder, of the Jewish race?
STREICHER: That was a statement of his opinion, his conviction. That conviction must be understood in the same way as something which a Jewish author wrote in his book in America. Erich Kauffmann wrote that German men capable of fathering children should be sterilized, and in that manner the German people should be exterminated. It was at the same time that Hiemer wrote his
365
29 April 46
article, and I want to say that the very severe tone in Der Stuermer at that time was due to that book from America.
The interrogating officers know-and so does my counsel-that I have repeatedly pointed out that I wanted that book to be produced. It was in the Voelkischer Beobachter.
If in America an author called Erich Kauffmann can publicly demand that all men in Germany capable of fathering children should be sterilized, for the purpose of exterminating the German people, then I say, eye for eye and tooth for tooth. This is a theoretical literary matter.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. I am sure we have heard your explanation. Let's see what you have to say about your own article on the same date. I quote from the middle of the next paragraph:
"But now, in the fourth year of this war, world Jewry is beginning in its retrospective considerations to understand that the destiny of Jewry is finding its fulfillment at the hands of German National Socialism."
What did you mean by that? Perhaps I should have quoted a little earlier, going back to the beginning:
"When, with the outbreak of the second World War, world Jewry again began to manifest themselves as warmongers, Adolf Hitler announced to the world from the platform of the German Reichstag that the World War conjured up by world Jewry would result in the self-destruction of Jewry. This prophecy was the first big warning. It was met with derision from the Jews, as were all the subsequent warnings."
And then you go on to say:
"But now, in the fourth year of this war, world Jewry is beginning in its retrospective considerations to understand that the destiny of Jewry is finding its fulfillment at the hands of German National Socialism."
What did you mean by that?
STREICHER: Pardon me?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: What do you mean by saying "World Jewry is finding its fulfillment at the hands of National Socialism"? How did you mean that National Socialism was finding the fulfillment of Jewry's destiny?
STREICHER: National Socialism could not fulfill the fate, that is to say, find the solution, since the Fuehrer intervened with the hand of destiny. That was not a solution.
366
29 April 46
During an interrogation I pointed out that I who personally wanted a total solution, was, right from the beginning, against trying to solve the Jewish problem by means of pogroms. If I said that the destiny of Jewry was to be fulfilled by National Socialism, then I wanted to say that through National Socialism the world would gain the knowledge and the realization that the Jewish problem must be solved internationally.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Let's just go on.
"That which the Fuehrer of the German people announced to the world as a prophecy at the beginning of this second World War is now being fulfilled with unrelenting inevitability. World Jewry, which wanted to reap big dividends from the blood of the warring nations, is rushing with gigantic steps toward its extirpation."
And again you use the word "Ausrottung."
Does that mean just as it sounds, as though the fulfillment that you were aiming at was warning the world about Jewry? What do you mean by it? "Rushing with gigantic steps toward its extirpation"-Ausrottung. What did you mean by it?
STREICHER: This is a warning. The Fuehrer made a prophecy; nobody could interpret that prophecy properly. The prophecy was not quoted only in this article, but in 10 others. Again and again we referred to these prophecies, the first of which had been made in 1929. Today we know what the Fuehrer wanted to say; at that time we did not. And I confess quite openly that with this quotation we wanted to warn world Jewry: "Against their threat, this threat."
So as to defend myself I might mention in this connection that the author, Dr. Emil Ludwig Kohn, who had left Germany and emigrated to France, had written in the paper Le Fanal, in 1934, "Hitler does not want war, but he is being forced into it. Britain has the last word." Thus...
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: We are not discussing war now. We are discussing the extermination, the mass murder of Jews, by the National Socialists. That is what we are discussing. Let me read on:
"When Adolf Hitler stepped before the German people 20 years ago to submit to them the National Socialist demands which pointed the way into the future, he also made the promise which was to have the gravest repercussions; that of freeing the world from its Jewish tormentors. How wonderful it is to know that this great man and leader is following up this promise with practical action. It will be the greatest deed in the history of mankind."
367
29 April 46
Do you say that you are not putting forward propaganda for the policy of mass extermination which the Nazi Government had set out to do?
STREICHER: We too had freedom of the press like democratic countries. Every author knew of the forecast, which perhaps later on turned out to be a fact, and could write about it. That is what I did.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well.
STREICHER: But for my defense, Mr. Prosecutor, I want to be allowed to say that wars too can be mass murder, with their bombs, et cetera. And if it is proved that someone says that we are forcing Hitler into war, then I can certainly say that a man who knows that Hitler is being forced into war is a mass murderer.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: With the permission of the Tribunal I am going to interrupt you again because we are not discussing whether or not Hitler was forced into war. We will leave that now.
Just let us go on and see if you are really speaking the truth in saying that while you are writing these articles you are not perfectly well aware of what was happening in the Eastern territories.
We got as far as January 1943. I would like you to just look at one or two more of the Israelitisches Wochenblatt and see if you remember reading any of these. Will you look at Page 30-B the 26th of February, in your "B" bundle?
"Exchange reports from the Polish Government circles in London that Warsaw, Lvov, Lodz and other cities have been 'liquidated,' and that nobody from the ghettos remained alive. The last investigations have ascertained that only about 650,000 Jews remain out of 2,800,000."
Listen to me. Did you read that? Do you remember it?
STREICHER: I do not know. For months, perhaps half a year, we did not get an issue, but if I had read it, I would not have believed that either.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Did you believe Hitler? If you will turn over the page to 31-B, did you believe Hitler? According to the last two lines quoted in the Israelitisches Wochenblatt of the 5th of March 1943: "Hitler, in his proclamation of 24 February, again proclaimed the extermination of the Jews in Europe as his goal."
Did you believe your own beloved Fuehrer when he was saying the same things as the Israelitisches Wochenblatt, the United Nations, and The Times newspaper in London?
STREICHER: No. I declare that whoever got to know the Fuehrer's deepest emotions and his soul, as I have personally, and
368
29 April 46
then later had to learn from his testament that he, in full possession of his faculties, consciously gave the order for mass extermination, is confronted with a riddle. I state here...
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: We really don't want another long speech about the Fuehrer. Just turn over the page and look at what is being said on the 26th of March:
"The report of the Polish Government on the measures against the Jewish population is published in full in the English press. A passage reads, 'In the town of Vilna 50,000 Jews were murdered, in Rovno 14,000; in Lvov half of the total Jewish population.'
"Many details are also given about the use of poison gas, as at Chelm, of electricity in Belzec, of the deportations from Warsaw, the surrounding of blocks of houses, and of the attacks with machine guns."
Did you read that one?
STREICHER: I do not know. However, that shootings must have occurred, of course, where Jews committed sabotage, et cetera, is self-evident. During a war that is considered as a matter of course. However, the figures which are quoted here were just simply not believable.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Yes. I understand you to say that now, but what I do not understand is what you meant when you said this morning that the Israelitisches Wochenblatt made no mention of murders and gave no figures. You didn't say that the figures were unbelievable; you told this Tribunal, on your oath, that the newspaper contained nothing except the hints of disappearance, with no mention of figures. What did you mean by that?
STREICHER: I have said the truth under oath, but it is possible that one might not remember everything. During an interrogation some time back I stated, based on memory, that an issue must exist which mentions the disappearance of Jews, and so on. It is in the Israelitisches Wochenblatt, and I thought I said that it was in 1943 and it is true. If one article after the other is put before me-well, even if I had seen it, how can I remember it? But that I, under oath, should have deliberately told you an untruth, that is, at any rate, not so.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: We will deal with the article you mention in 1943 in one moment; but just before we do that, just see if you believe your own staff. Turn, will you, to 38-A, M-139. Now, on the 6th of May it so happens just after those last three extracts from the Israelitisches Wochenblatt we have looked at, within 2 or 3 months, 1 or 2 months afterwards your newspaper is publishing this article. It is headed "Children of the Devil."
369
29 April 46
"Der Stuermer paid a visit to the ghettos in the East. Der Stuermer sent its photographic reporter to various ghettos in the East; a member of Der Stuermer's staff is well acquainted with the Jews. Nothing can surprise him easily. But what our contributor saw in these ghettos was a unique experience for him. He wrote, 'What my eyes and my Leica camera saw here convinced me that the Jews are not human beings but children of the devil and the spawn of crime.... It is hard to see how it was possible that this scum of humanity was for centuries looked upon as God's chosen people by the non-Jews.... This satanic race really has no right to exist.' "
Now, you have heard of what was happening in the ghettos in the East during 1942 and 1943? Are you really telling this Tribunal that your photographer went with his camera to those ghettos and found out nothing about the mass murder of Jews?
STREICHER: Yes, otherwise he would have reported to us about it.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Warsaw ghetto, you remember, exterminated, wiped out in April 1943. Your photographer must have been around just about that time, if you were writing this on the 6th of May, if he had just returned. Did you think he could have been there looking at ghettos for Der Stuermer, for Julius Streicher, the Jew-baiter, and have discovered nothing of what was happening in the ghetto in Warsaw and elsewhere?
STREICHER: I can only remember that immediately after the end of the Polish campaign a Viennese reporter went over there, made films and made reports, in 1942. I would like to ask-is there a name, a signature there, to show by whom it was written? One thing I know is that the ghetto was destroyed; I read it in a summary, an illustrated report which I think originated in the Ministry Of Propaganda. But as to the destruction of the ghetto during an uprising-well, I consider that legal; from my point of view it was right. But mass murders in the ghetto in Warsaw are something I never heard of.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Now, just let's look at the article to which you referred a moment ago. Will you look at 44-A of the document book?
My Lord, this is the same as was included at Page 53 in the original document book; it was Document Number 1965-PS, Exhibit Number GB-176, but there is slightly more of the extract quoted at Page 44-A.
[Turning to the defendant.] Now, I just want you to examine for the last time whether or not you are speaking the truth in telling the Tribunal that you did not know what was happening. You quote
370
29 April 46
in that article from the Swiss newspaper, the Israelitisches Wochenblatt, of the 27th August 1943-you will see that date, My Lord, in the middle of the first paragraph-I start now from that, line in the middle:
"The Swiss Jewish newspaper goes on to say, 'The Jews of Europe, with the exception of those in England and of insignificant Jewish communities in the few neutral countries, have disappeared, so to speak. The Jewish reservoir of the East that was able to counterbalance the force of assimilation in the West no longer exists."'
That is the end of your quotation from the newspaper, and you go on to say:
"This is not a Jewish lie; it is really true that the Jews have, 'so to speak,' disappeared from Europe and that the 'Jewish reservoir of the East' from which the Jewish pestilence spread for centuries among the European nations has ceased to exist. If the Swiss newspaper wishes to affirm that the Jews did not expect this kind of development when they plunged the nations into the second World War, this is to be believed; but already at the beginning of the war the Fuehrer of the German Nation prophesied the events that have taken place. He said that the second World War would swallow those who had conjured it."
Now, are you really saying that when that article was written you did not know how to interpret the word "disappearance," the disappearance of the Jews from the East? Are you really telling the Tribunal that?
STREICHER: Yes, the word "disappear" after all does not mean extermination en masse. This deals with a quotation from the Israelitisches Wochenblatt and is a repeated quotation of what the Fuehrer had prophesied.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Well, now, would you look at the article from which you quote there, which you will find at Page 36-B; and I would like you to follow it, and we will read the two together. Now, the particular paragraph which I want to read in the Israelitisches Wochenblatt is that quotation which I have just read to you and you will find the same quotation.
My Lord, it starts at the end of the eighth but last line, "The Jews were" or rather "The Jews of Europe..." Have you got them in front of you, Defendant?
STREICHER: I shall listen to you.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: It would be better, I think, if you followed it. I want to help you as much as possible. Page 44-A and 36-B. I will read slowly first of all from your Stuermer again:
371
29 April 46
"The Jews of Europe, with the exception of those in England and of insignificant Jewish communities in the few neutral countries, have, so to speak, disappeared..."
and you will see that you then go on in the quotation and say:
". . . the Jewish reservoir of the East which was able to counterbalance the force of assimilation in the West no longer exists." Now, would you look at the original article:
"The Jews of Europe"-this is 36-B-"the Jews of Europe, with the exception of those in England and of insignificant Jewish communities in the few neutral countries, have, so to speak, disappeared."
Now-there you go on, "The Jewish reservoir of the East"-the original goes on-"three million dead, the same number outlawed; many thousands, all over the world, mentally and physically broken."
Are you telling this Tribunal now that on the 27th of August, or when you read that article of the 27th of August, you didn't know that Jews were being murdered in the East and that you had not read of those things in the Israelitisches Wochenblatt?
STREICHER: Whether I had read it or not, I would not have believed it, that 3 million Jews had been killed. That is something I would not have believed, and that is why I left it out, at any rate. Anyhow, the German censorship would not have allowed the spreading of something which is not credible.
THE PRESIDENT: You didn't read the last part of the line, did you?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: [Repeating.] ". . . were mentally and physically broken. That is the result of the new order." I am very much obliged to you.
[Turning to the defendant.] "That is the result," you say, "of the 'new order' in Europe..."
You say you didn't believe it. Is that what you say now, that you must have read it-must you not?
STREICHER: Yes.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: But you just didn't believe it; is that right?
STREICHER: No, I did not believe it.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Even if you didn't believe it, when you were reading this newspaper more or less regularly, when your cameraman had been to the ghettos in the East, did you think it right to go on, week after week, in your newspaper crying for the extermination, murder, of the Jews?
372
29 April 46
STREICHER: That is not correct. It is not true that murder was demanded week after week. And I repeat again, the sharpening of our tone was the answer to the voice from America that called for our mass murder in Germany-eye for eye, tooth for tooth. If a Jew, Erich Kauffmann, demands mass murders in Germany, then perhaps I, as an author, can say that the Jews too should be exterminated. That is a literary matter. But the mass murders had taken place a long time before without our having known about them; and I state here that if I had known what had in fact happened in the East, then I would not have used these quotations at all.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: But, Defendant, you must have known then, must you not, after reading that article, after sending your cameraman, after the United Nations published their declaration, after Hitler's prophecies had been made again and again in his proclamations, after you said his prophecy had been fulfilled? You really say you didn't know?
STREICHER: The cameraman is at your disposal. He is in Vienna, and I ask to have him brought here. And I state that this cameraman reported nothing, and could not have reported anything, about mass murders.
THE PRESIDENT: I think we might adjourn now.
[A recess was taken.]
DR. MARX: Mr. President, with the permission of the Tribunal, and in the interest of clarification of the facts, I should like to point out the following: The Prosecutor, Sir Griffith-Jones, has mentioned a document, Page 38-A from Der Stuermer of 6 May 1943. That seems to be an error, because we are dealing here with Der Stuermer of 6 March 1943.
That date is of the greatest importance because if the photographer of Der Stuermer published a report of 6 March in Der Stuermer, then he must have been at the ghetto in Warsaw before 6 March 1943. Presumably...
THE PRESIDENT Why do you say 6 March? The document I have before me has 6 May.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: There has been a mistake, I am afraid, in the German that Dr. Marx has. I have the original before me, which is 6 May 1943.
DR. MARX: Excuse me. At the present moment I cannot recall when the destruction of the ghetto of Warsaw took place. That was Document 1061-PS.
373
29 April 46
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I cannot remember for the moment the number of the document, but the date was, I think from memory, from the 1st to the 23rd of April.
DR. MARX: Then, of course, my remark is without foundation. Please excuse me.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Now we had just dealt with the Israelititsches Wochenblatt issue for 27 August, the copy that you quoted from. I just refer you to one more copy of that newspaper. Would you look at Page 37-B, which is an issue of 10 September 1943:
"Statistics presented by the Convening Committee showed that 5 millions out of the 8.5 million Jews of Europe had died or been deported... About 3 million Jews had lost their lives through forced labor and deportation."
Did you read that one?
STREICHER: I do not know, and again I would not have believed it. To this day I do not believe that 5 million were killed. I consider it technically impossible that that could have happened. I do not believe it. I have not received proof of that up until now.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: It is quite clear that there were plenty of figures for you, quoted in this Israelitisches Wochenblatt over the period that we are discussing. Plenty of figures, it now turns out, doesn't it?
STREICHER: Pardon?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: We will go on. Now, I just want to put one or two further articles of your own to you. You remember what I am suggesting, that you are inciting the German people to murder. We know now that at least you had read one article in the Israelitisches Wochenblatt where murder is mentioned. I just want to see what you go on to publish in your own paper after that date.
Would you look at Page 47-A. This is an article by yourself on 6 January 1944. This is after you had been living on your estate for some time.
"After the National Socialist uprising in Germany, a development began in Europe, too, from which one can expect that it will free this continent for all time of the Jewish disintegrator and exploiter of nations; and, over and above this, that the German example will, after a victorious termination of the second World War, bring about the destruction of the Jewish world tormentor on the other continents as well."
What example was the German nation setting to the other nations of the world? What example do you mean there?
374
29 April 46
STREICHER: This article corroborates what I have been saying all along. I spoke of an international solution of the Jewish question. I was convinced that if Germany had won this war or had been victorious over Bolshevism, then the world would have agreed that an understanding should be reached with the other nations for an international solution of the Jewish question. If I wrote here about destruction, it is not to be understood as destruction by mass killing; as I have said, that is an expression; I have to point out that I do not believe that Erich Kauffmann really wanted to kill the German people by sterilization, but he wrote it, and we sometimes wrote in the same manner, echoing the sounds that we heard in the other camp.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: You have not yet told us what is this international solution that you are advocating by talking about extermination; if it is not murder, what is it? What is the solution?
STREICHER: I have already said that I founded the Anti-Semitic Union, and through this Anti-Semitic Union we wanted to create movements among the nations which should, above and beyond governments, act in such a way that an international possibility would be created, such as has been represented today here in this Trial-thus I conceived it, to form an international congress center which would solve the Jewish question by the creation of a Jewish state and thereby destroy the power of the Jews within the nations.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: That is your answer-that you were advocating a Jewish state? Is that all that this comes to? Is it simply that you were advocating a Jewish national home? Is that what you have been talking about in all these extracts that we have read? Is that the solution which you are advocating?
STREICHER: Well, I do not know what you want with that question. Of course, that is the solution.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. Let us just go on now. Turn to Page 48-A now, will you? This is 24 January 1944, "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."
Are you still advocating a national Jewish home?
STREICHER: Yes, that has nothing to do with the big political plan. If you take every statement by a writer, every statement from a daily newspaper, as an example, and want to prove a political aim by it, then you miss the point. You have to distinguish between a newspaper article and a great political aim.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well, let us just turn now to the next page, 2 March 1944, "Eternal night must come over the
375
29 April 46
born criminal race of Jews so that eternal day may bless awakening non-Jewish mankind."
Were they going to have eternal night in their national Jewish state? Is that what you wanted?
STREICHER: That is an anti-Semitic play of words. Again it has nothing to do with the great political aim.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: It may be an anti-Semitic play of words, but the only meaning it can have is murder. Is that not true?
STREICHER: No.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Will you turn to the next page, 25 May 1944; and I remind you that these are all after you must have read of the murder in Israelitisches Wochenblatt. I quote the second paragraph:
"How can we overcome this danger and restore humanity to health? Just as the individual human being is able to defend himself against contagious diseases only if he proclaims war against the cause of the disease, the germ, so the world can be restored to health only when the most terrible germ of all times, the Jew, has been removed. It is of no avail to battle against the outward symptoms of the world disease without rendering the morbific agents innocuous. The disease will break out again sooner or later. The cause and the carrier of the disease, the germ, will see to that. But if the nations are to be restored to health and are to remain healthy in the future, then the germ of the Jewish world plague must be destroyed, root and branch."
Is that what you mean? Are you saying there when you say "must be destroyed root and branch"-did you mean to say "ought to be given a Jewish national state"?
STREICHER: Yes, it is a far cry from such a statement in an article to the act, or to the will, to commit mass murder.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Turn over to the 10th of August. "When it loses this struggle, Judaism will be ruined, then the Jew will be extinguished. Then will Judaism be annihilated down to the last man."
Are we to read from these words: Provide the Jews with a Jewish national state?
STREICHER: That is a vision of the future. I would like to call it an expression of a prophetic vision. But it is not incitement to kill 5 million Jews. That is an opinion, a matter of belief, of conviction.
376
29 April 46
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: It is the prophetic vision of what you wanted, is it not-of what you have been advocating now for the last 4 years-the beginning of the war? Isn't that what it is?
STREICHER: Mr. Prosecutor, I cannot tell you today what I may have been thinking years ago at a certain moment when writing an article. But still I admit that when I saw lying before me on the table declarations from the Jewish front, many declarations saying, "the German nation has to be destroyed; bomb the cities, do not spare women, children, or old men"-if one has declarations like these in front of one, it is possible that things will come from one's pen such as I have often written.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: You know, do you not, now, even if you do not believe the full figures, that millions of Jews have been murdered since the beginning of the war? Do you know that? You have heard the evidence, have you not?
STREICHER: I believe it...
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I only wanted to know whether you had heard that evidence. You can answer "yes" or "no," and I presume it will be "yes."
STREICHER: Yes, I have to say, evidence for me is only the testament of the Fuehrer. There he states that the mass executions took place upon his orders. That I believe. Now I believe it.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Do you think that it would have been possible to carry out the extermination of 6 million Jews in 1921? Do you think the German people would have stood for it? Do you think it would have been possible under any regime in 1921 to have carried out the murder of 6 million men, women, and children of the Jewish race?
STREICHER: Whether that would have been possible with the knowledge of the people-no, it would not have been possible. The prosecutor himself has said here that since 1937 the Party had full control over the people. Now even if the people had known this, according to the opinion of the Prosecution, they could not have done anything against that dictatorship because of that control. But the people did not know it. That is my belief, my conviction, and my knowledge.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Was it possible to exterminate people in that way only after some 20 years of incitement and propaganda by you and other Nazis? Is that what made that possible?
STREICHER: I deny that the population was incited. It was enlightened, and sometimes a harsh word may have been directed
377
29 April 46
against the other side as an answer. It was enlightenment, not incitement. And if we want to keep our place before history I have to state again and again that the German people did not want any killings, whether individually or en masse.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I am not going to let you go into another history about the German people. I am going to remind you of what you have said...
STREICHER: Adolf Hitler ..
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I am going to remind you of what you said yesterday. I read from the transcript: You speak of a Jewish question at the time-that is 1923-"I would like to say that the public distinguished Jews only by their religion; to speak about a Jewish problem then would have been nonsense."
Was that because there was no Jewish problem then, and that the Jewish problem had only been created by you and the Nazi regime?
STREICHER: It was my aim, and I reached that goal in part: If the laws which in the future should make impossible sexual intercourse between different races, that is to say if that should become law-then it would make the public realize that to be a Jew is not a point of religion but of people and race. I helped to create that basis. But mass killings were not the result of the enlightenment, or as the Prosecution say, incitement. Mass killings were the last acts of will of a great man of history who was probably desperate because he saw that he would not win.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I have no further questions. Perhaps I might be allowed to just sort out the exhibits and then mention to the Tribunal their numbers. If the Tribunal would agree, those that I have put in evidence, which are the other parts of the bundle other than I have actually quoted from-perhaps I could put them all in as one number and hand the exhibits in to the clerk, if that would be the convenient course.
THE PRESIDENT: I think so, yes. If they are in one bundle and you are going to give one number to a number of documents, it had better be in one bundle, had it not?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, do you want to re-examine?
DR. MARX: I do not consider it necessary any more.
THE PRESIDENT: Then the defendant can return to the dock. Dr. Marx, will you continue the defendant's case?
DR. MARX: I call now, with the permission of the Court, the witness Fritz Herrwerth.
378
29 April 46
[The witness Herrwerth took the stand.]
THE PRESIDENT: Will you state your full name?
FRITZ HERRWERTH (Witness): Fritz Herrwerth.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me: "I swear by God-the Almighty and Omniscient-that I will speak the pure truth-and will withhold and add nothing."
[The witness repeated the oath in German.]
You may sit down.
DR. MARX: How long have you known the Defendant Streicher?
HERRWERTH: Since the Party Rally in 1934.
DR. MARX: When did you enter his service and in what capacity?
HERRWERTH: I was employed on 15 October 1934, in Nuremberg, not in the personal service of Herr Streicher himself, but in the municipal motor pool. However, I worked for the then Gauleiter Streicher.
DR. MARX: When did you leave that service?
HERRWERTH: In August 1943.
DR. MARX: For what reason?
HERRWERTH: It was a personal dispute, and mainly due to my fault.
DR. MARX: Did you have any other tasks to carry out for Herr Streicher?
HERRWERTH: Yes.
DR. MARX: And which?
HERRWERTH: Well, whatever came up. I also did agricultural work at the end.
DR. MARX: Thus you were very often with Streicher?
HERRWERTH: Yes.
DR. MARX: And therefore you knew about the most important incidents during that period?
HERRWERTH: Yes. I do not know, however, what you call important incidents. There were things that I do not know about, that is, at least I assume that.
DR. MARX: I will ask you later in detail.
HERRWERTH: Yes, if you please.
DR. MARX: The Defendant Streicher is accused of having caused acts of violence against the Jews and of having participated in these acts. Do you know of any such case?
379
29 April 46
HERRWERTH: Not a single one.
DR. MARX: Will you please wait until the end of my question, and then I shall say "end of question." On 9 November 1938, did you drive Streicher back to Nuremberg from Munich, and when? End of question.
HERRWERTH: It was on 9 November, yes. I do not know the time exactly. At that time Streicher left Munich a bit earlier, and it may have been about-I do not know for sure-9 o'clock perhaps.
DR. MARX: Did Streicher know already during that ride back that something was to be done that night against the Jewish population?
HERRWERTH: No, he knew nothing about that.
DR. MARX: Then, during the night of 9 November, did you witness a conversation between Streicher and the SA Leader, Von Obernitz?
HERRWERTH: Yes.
DR. MARX: Where did that conversation take place?
HERRWERTH: In order to answer that question, I have to explain a little further. When Herr Streicher went to bed, I was usually with him or the house superintendent. On that evening Herr Stretcher went to bed earlier than usual. I do not know the reason. And that concluded my work for the day. I went from Herr Streicher to the Casino of the Gauleitung. That was in the cellar of the Gauleitung building on Schlageterstrasse. I played cards there. And then the former SA Obergruppenfuehrer, Von Obernitz, came and called me, as was customary, by the name of Fritz and told me he had to speak to Herr Streicher very urgently; and I answered him that Herr Streicher had already gone to bed. Then he said. "Then I must rouse him," and he told me he would assume the responsibility; it was an important affair. Herr Von Obernitz went to Herr Streicher's apartment in my car. Herr Streicher's bedroom is above my apartment. I had the keys and of course I could get in at any time.
On the way to the apartment at night I noticed that many SA men were in the streets. I asked Herr Von Obernitz the reason for that. He told me that that night something was going to happen; the Jewish homes were to be destroyed. He did not say anything further to me.
I accompanied Herr Von Obernitz all the way to the bed of Herr Streicher. Herr Von Obernitz then reported to Streicher about what was happening that night. I cannot recall the details very well any more, but I believe that he said that that night the Jewish homes were to be destroyed. Herr Streicher was, if I may say so,
380
29 April 46
surprised. He had not known anything about it. He said literally to Herr Von Obernitz, and I remember that very clearly, "That is wrong. One does not solve the Jewish question that way. Do what you have been ordered. I shall have no part in it. If anything should occur so that you need me, then you may come for me." I can also mention that thereupon Herr Von Obernitz said that Hitler had declared that the SA should be allowed to have a fling as retribution for what had occurred in Paris in connection with Herr Vom Rath. Streicher stayed in bed and did not go out during that night.
DR. MARX: Did Herr Von Obernitz mention anything about the fact that the synagogues were to be set on fire?
HERRWERTH: I believe so, yes. But, as far as I remember, Herr Streicher refused to do that, too, because the synagogue, as far as I know, was burned down by the regular fire department, and upon orders from Herr Von Obernitz.
DR. MARX: How do you know that?
HERRWERTH: I was there.
DR. MARX: Did you watch it?
HERRWERTH: Yes. I was at the synagogue during the night.
DR. MARX: And how could one assume that the regular fire department started the fire?
HERRWERTH: How that could be assumed I do not know, but I saw it. The regular fire department started the fire.
DR. MARX: Were you there in time to see how the fire was started or did you arrive when the building was already on fire?
HERRWERTH: The building was not yet on fire, but the fire department was there already.
DR. MARX.: Is that right?
HERRWERTH: I can say nothing else.
DR. MARX: Did Herr Streicher at that time mention anything about the fact that he was afraid of a new wave of excitement on the part of the world press if the synagogue was burned? Did he say that that is why he refused to do it?
HERRWERTH: I believe so, yes, but I could not say definitely; but, if I remember correctly, they spoke about that.
DR. MARX: Did Obernitz say from whom he had received the order?
HERRWERTH: He only repeated what Hitler had said-the SA should be allowed to have a fling.
381
29 April 46
DR. MARX: Is it correct that you, Witness, told your wife during the same night about that conversation between Obernitz and Streicher?
HERRWERTH: I believe I did not speak about the conversation; but when I walked down from the second floor to the ground floor through my apartment, I told my wife that I would probably be a little late because that night that action was going to be started; I told her briefly what was happening but nothing about the conversation.
DR. MARX: Then, later you were at the Pleikershof when Streicher had been forced to retire there or had retired?
HERRWERTH Yes. .
DR. MARX: Do you remember an incident where the future Frau Streicher spoke about the incidents at Magdeburg which had occurred there the same night?
HERRWERTH: No, I know nothing of that.
DR. MARX: Did you not tell the then Frau Merkel that she should not talk about these incidents because Streicher always got very excited about them?
HERRWERTH: I can recall that Herr Streicher once said that he had been right in his opinion, for, not long after that night he received information-I do not know through whom-that, for instance, the glass for the window panes had to be bought from Holland again. Herr Streicher said then that that was the first confirmation of the correctness of the opinion he had expressed at that time.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, just one moment.
Sir David, would it be convenient to you and the counsel for the Defendant Von Schirach if we discussed the question about the documents at 0930 tomorrow morning?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, I will find out. Yes, counsel for Von Schirach says that he thinks it is all right.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, 0930 tomorrow morning.
DR. MARX: What observations did you make during your stay at Pleikershof about the attitude of Streicher with regard to the Jewish question? What was that about the Israelitisches Wochenblatt?
HERRWERTH: Well, what do you want to know about the Israelitisches Wochenblatt? Herr Streicher received it.
DR. MARX: Did he receive it regularly?
382
29 April 46
HERRWERTH: Yes, I believe I can say that quite certainly. I always saw large bundles of newspapers of the Israelitisches Wochenblatt. They came continuously.
DR. MARX: Herr Streicher said that during the first years of the war he had great difficulty in getting that paper and the Police did not release it easily.
HERRWERTH: Yes, that can very well be. For I do not know, after all, of what year they were. I just saw them and it is difficult for me to tell now of what date these papers were.
DR. MARX: Yes, you said there were always large bundles of them.
HERRWERTH: Yes, on and off, but there were other newspapers too. Swiss newspapers were there, the Israelitisches Wochenblatt, and so on. There were always so many newspapers lying about and among them I saw here and there the Israelitisches Wochenblatt. I mean to say that it would not be possible for me to say how many there were.
DR. MARX: All right. Did Streicher speak at times about his knowledge of happenings in the East or of happenings in concentration camps in the East?
HERRWERTH: Well. Herr Streicher did not know anything at all about it. Thus he could not say anything about it. At least that is my conviction.
DR. MARX: Did you, then, ever speak to him about it?
HERRWERTH: Not that I know of; I did not know anything about it myself.
DR. MARX: Did you ever receive knowledge of a letter in which Streicher was reproached by Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler because he treated the French prisoners too well? Did you understand me?
HERRWERTH: Yes, I understood, but I have to think about it. I know quite well that Herr Streicher once mentioned something about the treatment of prisoners. I know that the Frenchmen were treated very well, but whether the cause for that was a letter from Himmler I do not know.
DR. MARX: No, no. The cause for the good treatment, you mean?
HERRWERTH: No, the cause for Herr Streicher's speaking about it. Herr Streicher spoke about reproaches against the good treatment of the Frenchmen; but I do not know whether the fact that he spoke about it was due to a letter from Himmler. But I do not believe that there was a single Frenchman who could complain in any way about the treatment.
383
29 April 46
DR. MARX: You were no longer present when the Frenchmen left?
HERRWERTH: No.
DR. MARX: Do you know about an incident when the publisher Fink came into the garden of Streicher's home and admitted having lied to the police in an affair concerning shares?
HERRWERTH: The question must be put in detail, Mr. Attorney, for I do not know all about it, only part of it. I know that the then Director Fink stood in tears before Streicher, that he wailed, that he accused himself, saying that he was a rascal and a traitor. But why, I do not know. For Herr Streicher then walked farther into the garden with him, and I only saw that Herr Fink wept, and again heard how he accused himself.
DR. MARX: Do you know that Streicher at certain intervals brought people from the SPD and the KPD (Social Democratic Party and Communist Party) from the Dachau Concentration Camp?
HERRWERTH: Yes.
DR. MARX: How many do you suppose there were?
HERRWERTH: I do not know. It was every year around Christmas time. I estimate that there were about 100 to 150 men every year. They came from Dachau. Herr Streicher had dinner prepared for them in a separate room, in the Hotel Deutscher Hof, and I believe that used to be the family reunion-that is to say, the prisoners rejoined the members of their family. Streicher also saw to it that released prisoners found work, and he intervened personally for them.
DR. MARX: Did he also get work for one or another of these released persons?
HERRWERTH: Yes.
DR. MARX: What do you know about that?
HERRWERTH: I remember that three men, I believe, came into the Mars motorcycle factory. Herr Streicher at that time told the plenipotentiary of the German Labor Front to find positions for these people, as far as I remember.
DR. MARX: What was the attitude of Streicher when he found out that members of the Party had acquired cars and villas of Jewish property at very low prices?
HERRWERTH: I can still remember when Herr Streicher returned from Berlin. I do not know how much Herr Streicher knew at that time about these purchases; but at any rate, when Herr Streicher returned from Berlin where Herr Goering had expressed his views about these low-priced purchases of buildings, Herr
384
29 April 46
Streicher, just arrived at the Nuremberg railroad station, said- and I heard it myself-that these purchases had to be nullified at once.
Besides. I know only about one case where a Party member had to do with the purchase of a house. I do not know whether there were more of them.
DR. MARX: Do you know whether Streicher was under surveillance by the Gestapo while on his farm and that there was a prohibition against visiting him there?
HERRWERTH: In answering the first question, I cannot say for sure that Criminal Police agents were there. I cannot affirm categorically that Herr Streicher was once under observation, but it could be safely assumed. I know of a woman who even stated that she had been photographed in the forest when she came from the railroad station to the farm. And what was the second question?
DR. MARX: Whether people were prohibited from visiting him.
HERRWERTH: Yes. I met various members of the Party within the city and whomever I asked said to me, "Impossible to get out there, impossible to get out there." And if I asked who had issued the prohibition, then no one would talk about it; but as one heard it here and there, this prohibition was said to have been issued by the Deputy of the Fuehrer, Herr Hess.
DR. MARX: Do you know anything about the fact that Streicher, when he found out that acts of violence against Jews or other political adversaries were intended, stopped them immediately?
HERRWERTH: Yes. At least, on the basis of his statements. He always said that that was wrong.
DR. MARX: Do you know of any case where he took measures against somebody who had been a party to such acts of violence? If you do not know it, say you do not know.
HERRWERTH: Very well, at this moment I cannot recall any case.
DR. MARX: Do you know anything about that affair concerning the Mars Works shares? What do you know about it?
HERRWERTH: Yes. I know about that case through statements made by Streicher at that time. I was not a witness to these events myself, but Herr Streicher once related to me what had happened. Shall I describe it briefly?
DR. MARX: Yes, but very condensed, please.
HERRWERTH: Streicher was in a Turkish bath at the time when the Director Fink and his adjutant, Koenig, came and offered to sell the shares to Herr Streicher. Herr Streicher said, "What
385
29 April 46
kind of shares are they?" The answer was, "They are shares of the Mars Works." He said, "How many?" The answer was "100,000 marks' worth." Then Streicher said, 'what do the shares cost?" He was told "5,000 marks." Herr Streicher asked, "Why are these shares so cheap?" Finally Herr Fink said, I believe, "Because they are Jewish shares."
Whoever knows Herr Streicher as I do, knows that Herr Streicher has never taken anything from a Jew. He protested very emphatically against the fact that such an offer had been made to him at all.
That seemed to settle the matter for the time being, and then suddenly the then Gauleiter Herr Streicher had the thought that with that money he could possibly construct the third Gau building. He mentioned that to the gentlemen as they left, and they decided to buy the shares. Herr Streicher forbade them to use Party money. Then both did not know what to do. Herr Streicher said he would advance these 5,000 marks.
That settled the case, but I had another experience later. It was about one and a half years after that trial that Streicher had had in Munich, when he was dismissed. At that time the wife of NSKK Obergruppenfuehrer Zuehlen came to me and asked whether I already knew that the criminal police was again in Nuremberg concerning the Streicher case. I said "no" to Frau Zuehlen and added, "If they want to find out something why do they not come out to the farm to Herr Streicher himself? He will give them all the necessary information."
After about 2 to 3 weeks, I met the Director of Der Stuermer, Fischer, successor to Herr Fink. He told me-but I would like to mention first that the shares, together with the 5,000 marks, were confiscated from Herr Streicher. The then Director Fischer told me that on that same day he had received a phone call from the trustee association, and that the trustee association had reported to Director Fischer that they had transferred to the account of Der Stuermer the 5,000 marks which Streicher at that time had advanced for the purchase of the shares.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, do you not think he is going into rather too much detail about this?
DR. MARX: Yes.
HERRWERTH: Yes, I will make it shorter.
The man from the trustee association said that the 5,000 marks were released because the innocence of Streicher had been proved in this matter.
DR. MARX: You witnessed the Supreme Party Court session at that time?
386
29 April 46
HERRWERTH: Yes.
DR. MARX: What did Herr Fink say at that time? Did he not accuse himself again of having made false statements?
HERRWERTH: I was not present when Herr Fink was questioned.
DR. MARX: Very well. Then I would like to ask you, were you present when the incident in Munich occurred at the Kuenstlerhaus Inn-with the man who accosted Streicher?
HERRWERTH: Yes.
DR. MARX: Can you give us a description of how that incident occurred?
HERRWERTH: Well, Herr Streicher left the inn after dinner. I cannot remember the exact words any more, but I am going to try to describe it as well as possible. Herr Streicher left the inn, and as he went out that man approached Herr Streicher in a-may I say-improper manner. Streicher continued on his way and was silent at first. He asked the people around him, myself also, whether we knew that man. Nobody knew him.
Then Herr Streicher sent his son, Lothar, back into the room again to speak to the man and to ask him what the reason was for such behavior. Lothar Streicher came out and said that the man had behaved in just the same manner again.
DR. MARX: Will you please be more brief? You should only tell us how that incident occurred and what caused you and also Herr Streicher to use violence against the man.
HERRWERTH: You mean his behavior?
DR. MARX: Yes. What happened then?
HERRWERTH: Herr Streicher asked the landlord for a room, and in that room Streicher spoke to the man personally. There again the man made offensive remarks, and then it came to blows, first with Lothar Streicher. Now, as it happened, he was a strong man, and of course all of us helped to get him down.
DR. MARX: All right.
I am through with the questioning of this witness, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Do any of the Defense Counsel want to ask any questions? Do any of the Prosecution Counsel wish to cross-examine? Then the witness can retire.
[The witness left the stand.]
DR. MARX: Then I should like to call the witness Wurzbacher, if he is available. Is he not? I do not know which one of the witnesses is still in the witness room. Is there anyone? Wurzbacher? Hiemer?
387
29 April 46
MARSHAL (Colonel Charles W. Mays): Frau Streicher is available.
THE PRESIDENT: Is not the witness Wurzbacher here?
MARSHAL: I will see, Sir. He was not here a while ago. He was not called for.
THE PRESIDENT: What other witnesses have you got, Dr. Marx?
DR. MARX: The wife of the defendant could be called as a witness now.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, let her be called then.
MARSHAL: The witness Strobel is available now.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr: Marx wants to call Frau Streicher.
DR. MARX: Excuse me, Mr. President. If it is rather difficult to call Frau Streicher, then the witness...
[The witness Frau Streicher took the stand.]
THE PRESIDENT: Will you give me your full name?
FRAU ADELE STREICHER (Witness): Adele Streicher, born Tappe.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me: "I swear by God-the Almighty and Omniscient-that I will speak the pure truth-and will withhold and add nothing."
[The witness repeated the oath in German.]
You may sit down.
DR. MARX: Your maiden name is Tappe and you were born in Magdeburg?
FRAU STREICHER: Yes.
DR. MARX: Were you a member of the NSDAP or of the Frauenschaft?
FRAU STREICHER: No.
DR. MARX: When did you become Herr Streicher's secretary and for how long were you in that job?
FRAU STREICHER: On 7 June 1940, I became Julius Streicher's secretary and I remained in that job until the end of the war.
DR. MARX: And during that period, you were continuously on his farm?
FRAU STREICHER: Yes, I was always with him.
DR. MARX: Were you also in charge of all the correspondence for Herr Streicher?
FRAU STREICHER: Yes.
DR. MARX: What did that correspondence mainly consist of?
388
29 April 46
FRAU STREICHER: Mainly letters to his sons and to relatives.
DR. MARX: What were Streicher's activities during that period of 5 years?
FRAU STREICHER: Julius Streicher did mainly physical work; that is, agriculture and gardening, and from time to time he wrote articles for Der Stuermer.
DR. MARX: During these 5 years did he leave the farm at all or was he ever absent from the farm for any length of time?
FRAU STREICHER: During the first few years of his stay there Julius Streicher did not leave the farm at all; later, once in a while, he would pay a visit in the neighborhood. His longest absence did not comprise an entire day and never a single night.
DR. MARX: Did you know that it was prohibited for prominent Party members to visit Herr Streicher?
FRAU STREICHER: Yes, there was such a prohibition.
DR. MARX: How did you know that?
FRAU STREICHER: From conversations. Then, too, I myself remember, when Dr. Goebbels visited the farm, that Julius Streicher said to him, "Doctor, you dare to come here? Do you not know that it is prohibited by the Party chiefs to visit me?"
DR. MARX: When did the visits of Dr. Ley and Dr. Goebbels occur?
FRAU STREICHER: Dr. Ley came to the farm on 7 May 1944. The visit of Dr. Goebbels occurred on 4 June 1944.
DR. MARX: Would you please describe the character of these visits and what was the subject of the conversations?
FRAU STREICHER: Both visits were of a rather unofficial character. Dr. Ley wanted mainly to know how Julius Streicher was doing, personally. No political questions were raised. Ley said only, "Stretcher, the Fuehrer is waiting for you."
DR. MARX: And what did Streicher say to that?
FRAU STREICHER: Julius Streicher answered that he had become accustomed to his solitude, that he was happy as a farmer, and that Ley should tell the Fuehrer that he, Streicher, wanted nothing more. At the visit of Dr. Goebbels the subject of the conversation dealt mainly with Julius Streicher's dismissal from his office as Gauleiter, and Dr. Goebbels was of the opinion that Julius Streicher should return into the circle of old Party members; but he gave him the same answer, "Tell the Fuehrer I wish for nothing."
DR. MARX: Were you always present during these conversations?
389
29 April 46
FRAU STREICHER: Yes.
DR. MARX: Was not the Jewish question a subject of these conversations?
FRAU STREICHER: No, they never spoke about the Jewish question.
DR. MARX: Did they not speak about the happenings in the Eastern territories or in the concentration camps?
FRAU STREICHER: No, that never came up any more.
DR. MARX: Did not Streicher speak to you about the articles he intended to write for Der Stuermer, and did he not also speak about what he considered to be the solution of the Jewish problem?
FRAU STREICHER: From all conversations with Julius Streicher I could see with certainty that he never thought of the solution of the Jewish question in terms of violence, but hoped for the emigration of Jews from Europe and their settlement in territories outside Europe.
DR. MARX: Was Herr Streicher in correspondence with leading personalities of the Party or of the State?
FRAU STREICHER: No, neither personally nor by correspondence was there any such connection.
DR. MARX: I will now mention several names, of whom I want you to tell me whether they had any connection with him: Himmler, Heydrich, Bormann, or other leading men of the Police or the SS or the Gestapo.
FRAU STREICHER: No, I know nothing of any of these men. With the exception of one letter from Herr Himmler there was never any mail.
DR. MARX: What was the reason for that letter?
FRAU STREICHER: In that letter Herr Himmler complained about the fact that the French prisoners of war who were employed on our Pleikershof farm were treated too well.
DR. MARX: How was the treatment of the prisoners of war and the foreign civilian workers on the farm?
FRAU STREICHER: On the Pleikershof eight French prisoners of war, one Polish girl, and one Slovene girl were employed. They were all treated very well and very humanely. Each service for which Julius Streicher asked, each piece of work for which he asked personally, was especially rewarded with tobacco, pastry, fruit, or even money. Such cordial relations developed with some of the Frenchmen during the years that they were there that they assured us, with tears in their eyes at their departure, that they would visit Julius Streicher after the war with their families.
390
29 April 46
DR. MARX: Did Streicher not finally receive credible information about these mass executions in the East?
FRAU STREICHER: I believe he found out about it through Swiss newspapers in 1944. We were never informed about it officially.
DR. MARX: But it is asserted that he already had knowledge before that.
FRAU STREICHER: No.
DR. MARX: You do not know anything about it?
FRAU STREICHER: I only know about the Swiss newspapers.
DR. MARX: Very well. You once brought up the subject, in a conversation, that in Magdeburg, from the 9 to 10 November 1938, you witnessed the demonstration against the Jews and that you were revolted by it. Is that true?
FRAU STREICHER: Yes, I spoke about it and said that I was shocked at this action. Julius Streicher got very excited during that conversation and said, "Such nonsense occurred in Nuremberg also. That is not anti-Semitism; that is just great stupidity."
DR. MARX: Is it correct that Herr Streicher was hardly interested in the financial affairs of the publishing firm and left these things to the manager?
FRAU STREICHER: Julius Streicher never bothered about financial affairs at all, neither in the house nor in the firm. Again and again the gentlemen of the firm were disappointed when they wanted to report about annual balances or the like and Julius Streicher would tell them, "Do not worry me with your business matters. There are other things besides that are more important than money."
DR. MARX: How did he take care of the household expenses, then?
FRAU STREICHER: I received 1,000 marks every month from the firm. That provided for the household, presents, and so on.
DR. MARX: Do you know that he is supposed to have acquired shares through illegal pressure against a Jewish banker?
FRAU STREICHER: That is completely out of the question. I consider it quite impossible that Julius Streicher acquired shares that way. I believe that he does not even know what a share looks like.
DR. MARX: Did he not tell you anything about it?
FRAU STREICHER: I only heard that he never received shares.
391
29 April 46
DR. MARX: How did it come about that you and the defendant were married as late as April 1945?
Did you understand the question?
FRAU STREICHER: Yes. Julius Streicher wanted to take part in the fighting in Nuremberg. I wanted to accompany him, so he married me before we left. We wanted to die together.
DR. MARX: Then you left the Pleikershof with him, and where did you go from there?
FRAU STREICHER: First we wanted to go to Nuremberg, and that was refused for fear of difficulties with the authorities. So we drove in the direction of Munich. In Munich we were told to continue in the direction of Passau. From Passau they sent us to Berchtesgaden; from Berchtesgaden they sent us to Kitzbuehel.
DR. MARX: How did it happen that the original intention to die together was not followed up? What caused him to change his mind?
FRAU STREICHER: The cause for that was a conversation with three young soldiers.
DR. MARX: And what was that? I will be through right away, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: I do not think you should go into that, Dr. Marx.
DR. MARX: Well, then. I will forego the question. Only one more question: Is it correct that Streicher gave the managers of his publishing firm a written power of attorney which meant that they could dispose of the money as they saw fit?
FRAU STREICHER: Yes, Julius Streicher gave the power of attorney to whoever happened to be the manager of the firm, and thereby gave him his full confidence without any restrictions.
DR. MARX: Mr. President, I have no more questions.
THE PRESIDENT: Do any of the defendants' counsel want to ask any questions?
Does the Prosecution wish to ask any questions?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: No.
THE PRESIDENT: Then the witness can retire, and the Court will adjourn until 0930 tomorrow morning.
[The Tribunal adjourned until 30 April 1946 at 0930 hours.]
392
| Nuremberg Trials Page | Volume 12 Menu |