The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

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                                                  [Page 307]

ONE-HUNDRED-AND-SIXTEENTH DAY

MONDAY, 29TH APRIL, 1946

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx.

DR. MARX (Counsel for defendant Streicher): Mr. President,
Gentlemen of the Tribunal: Before continuing with questions
to the defendant Streicher, may I ask permission to make a
statement.

Herr Streicher, on Friday afternoon, referred to a case,
namely, that Press report 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 me
and my activities 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, particularly not the members of the
world Press who are active here; nor did I wish to injure
their professional honour.

The reason for this statement of mine is a statement made on
the radio, according to which I 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 recognise fully the extremely difficult work, and the
responsibility 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: With the permission of the Tribunal, I shall then
continue with my examination.

BY DR. MARX:

Q. Witness, what aims did you pursue with your speeches and
your articles in "Der Sturmer"?

A. 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 arouse
hatred or anger, but to enlighten.

Q. Apart from your weekly journal, and particularly after
the Party came into power, were there any other instruments
of the Press in Germany which treated the Jewish question in
an anti-Semitic way?

A. Anti-Semitic Press views 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 on the defendants' bench 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 generation of
vipers and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy
them ...

Q. Herr Streicher, that is not my question, I am asking you
to answer my question as I put it. Please answer now with
"yes" or "no," whether there were -

                                                  [Page 308]

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I should like to raise an objection to
this method of answering by making speeches here. We are
utterly unable in this procedure to make objections when
answers are not responsive to questions. Already there has
been introduced 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 definite 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 about ...

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 are put to you.

BY DR. MARX:

Q. 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 that question.

Apart from your weekly journal, and particularly after the
Party came to power, were there other aspects of the Press
in Germany which dealt with the Jewish question in an
antagonistic way?

A. Yes, even before the coming to power there were in every
district 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 three thousand daily papers, numerous weekly
journals, and all types 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 "Sturmer," 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.

Q. Were the directives necessary for this issued by a
central office, say, for instance, by the National Socialist
Press Service?

A. Yes. The Propaganda Ministry in Berlin had a National
Socialist Press Service. In this service, in every number
issued, 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.

Q. The Indictment accuses you of contributing indirectly to
mass murders by incitement, and, according to the transcript
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 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?

A. To that I have the following to say: incitement means to
bring a person into a condition of excitement which causes
him to perform an irresponsible act.

                                                  [Page 309]

Did the contents of "Der Sturmer" incite, that is the
question? Briefly stated, the question must be answered,
"What did 'Der Sturmer' write?" Several volumes of "Der
Sturmer" are available here, but one would have to look at
all the issues of twenty years in order to answer that
question exhaustively. During those twenty years I published
enlightening articles dealing with the race, dealing with
what the Jews themselves wrote in the Old Testament, in
their history, what they wrote in the Talmud. I printed
excerpts from Jewish historical works, works, for instance,
written by Professor Dr. Graetz and by a Jewish scholar,
Gutnot.

In "Der Sturmer" no editorial appeared written by me, or
written by one of my co-workers, in which I did not include
quotations from the ancient history of the Jews, from the
Old Testament and from Jewish historical works of recent
times.

It is important, and I must emphasise that I pointed out in
all articles, that prominent Jews, leading authors,
themselves admitted that which during twenty years, as
author and public speaker, I publicly proclaimed.

Allow me to add that it is my conviction that the contents
of "Der Sturmer" as such were not incitement. During the
whole twenty years I never wrote in this connection: "Burn
Jewish houses down; beat Jews to death." Never once did such
an incitement appear in "Der Sturmer.

Now comes the question: Is there any proof that any deed was
done from the time "Der Sturmer" 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 twenty
years no progrom [sic] took place in Germany, during the
twenty 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?

Q. Streicher, you have explained this sufficiently. So that
one can form an opinion - you want to say: 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?

A. May I 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 great significance, if I can establish that in
Nuremberg, of all places, no murder took place, no single
murder and no progrom [sic] either? That is a fact.

THE PRESIDENT: You have already said it. I have just written
down, before I intervened, a saying that no Jews have been
killed, not only in Nuremberg, but anywhere else, as a
result of your incitement.

BY DR. MARX:

Q. Witness, we shall make reference to these demonstrations
of 9 and 10 November, 1938, later.

A. Yes, but may I continue - the Indictment accuses me of
having indirectly contributed by incitement 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 murders were carried out by his order that
the mass murders were a reprisal.

                                                  [Page 310]

Thus it is demonstrated that I, myself, cannot have been a
participant in the incredible events which occurred here.

Q. Finished?

A. 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 know.

THE WITNESS: I was a part of that nation during the war.
During the war I lived alone in the country. For five years
I never left my farm. I was watched by the Gestapo. From
1939 on I had been forbidden by the Fuehrer to speak.

BY DR. MARX:

Q. 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.

A. But I wish to state that I had no opportunity - that is
why I said this - to learn what was actually going on.

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 two or three 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 saw it, I would not have
believed that mass killings, to the extent to which they
have taken place, could have taken place.

Q. The prosecution also raises the charge against you that
it was the task of the administrators of the nation to train
the people to murder and to poison their minds with hatred,
that you had devoted yourself particularly to these tasks.
What do you want to answer to this charge?

A. That is an allegation. We trained no murderers. The
contents of the articles which I wrote could not have
created murderers. No murders took place, and that is proof
that we did not train murderers. What happened during the
war - well, I certainly did not train the Fuehrer. The
Fuehrer issued the order on his own initiative ...

Q. I now continue. The prosecution further asserts that the
Himmler and Kaltenbrunner groups and other S.S. 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 trend of thought of the German people along
these lines. Will you make a statement on that?

A. I do not believe that the National Socialists mentioned
read "Der Sturmer" 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 contents of that book were the authority, the
spiritual authority; but I do not believe either 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, 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 be facing some indictment which it has
not been possible to lodge against me. Perhaps fate has
taken a hand in this. But the conditions were in fact that
the Fuehrer had such a power of hypnotic suggestion that the
entire people believed in him; his ways were so unusual
that, if one realises this fact, one can understand why
everyone who received an order acted. And

                                                  [Page 311]

thus I wanted to reject as untrue and incorrect what was
here thought fit to assert against me.

Q. 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?

A. 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 order to be able to write that
book in so short a time, in prison. In other words, in his
book, Adolf Hitler stated to the world that he was anti-
Semitic and that he understood the Jewish problem
thoroughly. He himself often said to me personally ...

THE PRESIDENT: (Interposing) Dr. Marx, the book, "Mein
Kampf," is in evidence, and it speaks for itself.


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