Streicher, Julius

(1885-1946)

   politician; the Republic's most notori-ous anti-Semite. Born near Augsburg in the Swabian village of Fleinhausen, he was the ninth child in a strict Catholic* family. Like his father, he trained as a primary-school (Volksschule) teacher. In 1909 he moved to Nuremberg. After World War I, in which he was decorated (Iron Cross, First Class) and achieved the rank of lieutenant, he returned to Nuremberg and became absorbed in local radical politics. Associated with several volkisch groups, he gained prominence in Franconia's German Socialist Party (DSP). But in 1921 he resigned from the DSP (taking its newspaper,* Deutscher Sozialist, with him) when his fanatical anti-Semitism* spawned dissension. With several adherents, he threw his sup-port to Hitler* in October 1922. When the NSDAP established a branch in Nuremberg, Streicher became its chairman. In short order he organized new branches in thirteen towns throughout Franconia.

   Streicher, who sported a riding whip in public, delighted in violence and had a notoriously trying personality. While he gained his own devotees (he was utterly loyal to Hitler), he aroused loathing in those who opposed him. He was involved in myriad lawsuits (he bragged of inducing seven libel actions in a single month); his celebrated conflict with Hermann Luppe, the mayor of Nu-remberg, colored city politics. Using Der Sturmer, a weekly founded in April 1923, to promulgate anti-Semitism, he also stirred strife by attacking Catholics, a tactic that enhanced his position in predominantly Protestant* Franconia. Briefly jailed after the Beerhall Putsch,* Streicher and Hermann Esser organized the Grossdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft (Greater German People's Community, GVG) in March 1924 as a successor to the banned NSDAP. Rabidly anti-Semitic, the GVG was opposed by the National Socialist Freedom Movement, a successor group centered on Gregor Strasser* and Erich Ludendorff.* Al-though Streicher berated parliamentary participation, he was elected in May 1924 to the Bavarian Landtag and to Nuremberg's city council in December.

   In April 1925, soon after Hitler reestablished the NSDAP, Streicher was ap-pointed Gauleiter of Franconia. Despite his fanaticism, he soon built his region into one of the Party's key strongholds. While his demeanor provoked recrim-ination from other Nazis, he retained Hitler's trust. Nuremberg's school com-mission found him guilty of "conduct unbecoming a teacher" and dismissed him in 1928. In March 1933 he entered the Reichstag*; the next month he was the most ardent proponent of Germany's anti-Jewish boycott. Throughout the 1930s he remained Franconia's Gauleiter and continued publishing ugly rhetoric against Jews.* His Nazi enemies, led by Hermann Goring,* were so annoyed by the extent of his sadism and personal enrichment that they finally indicted him in 1940 on corruption charges. Appearing before the Supreme Party Court, he was found guilty and dismissed from his offices (Hitler let him retain his position with Der Sturmer). The Nuremberg tribunal sentenced him to death in 1946 for inciting racial hatred.

   REFERENCES:Bytwerk, Julius Streicher; Lenman, "Julius Streicher"; Showalter, Little Man, What Now?; Varga, Number One Nazi Jew-Baiter.