Nuremberg Remembered Biography: Julius Streicher

Julius Streicher started his career as an elementary school teacher and then entered World War I, where he earned the Iron Cross. He was dismissed from the army in 1918 because of his outspoken criticism of the newly formed Weimar Republic, which he despised for its acceptance of the Treaty of Versailles.

In 1919 Streicher helped establish an antisemitic party in Bavaria that merged with the nascent National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis) in 1921. Streicher became closely allied with Hitler and joined the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923.

In 1925 Streicher became gauleiter (party leader) of the district of Franconia. Four years later he became a member of the Bavarian legislature. When Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, Streicher was elected to serve in the Reichstag (the national parliament). Throughout these years Streicher was virulent in his antisemitic views, which permeated his speeches and publications such as the newspaper Der Stuermer and children's books such as The Poisoned Mushroom.

In the spring of 1933 Hitler put Streicher in charge of planning a boycott of Jewish businesses and professional offices. As the thirties wore on, Streicher became infamous for his corrupt practices and abuse of power. His campaigns against the Jews were so extreme that even his Nazi colleagues considered them excessive. In 1940, shortly after the outbreak of the World War II, Hitler banned Streicher from all Nazi posts.

During the war Streicher continued publishing antisemitic articles and stories.

Week after week, month after month, he described Jews as ‘vermin in need of extermination.' In a typical article he ranted that the Jew was not a human being, but ‘a parasite, an enemy, an evil-doer, a disseminator of diseases which must be destroyed in the interest of mankind.' In May of 1939 (4 months before the war began and 25 months before the invasion of Russia), Streicher told his readers, 'A punitive expedition must come against the Jews in Russia. . . .the Jews in Russia must be killed. They must be exterminated root and branch.'

-Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior, "A Man of Words" (Brookline: Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Inc., 1994), 429.

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Photo: USHMM, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park