The Nuremberg Interviews (46 page)

“I felt this war coming. I tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Hitler in 1945. I am not concerned with jurisdiction of the court as Hess or others are.” (Laughs.) “History will show the trials to be necessary.” He feels he is less guilty than some, but that anyone who accepted a position of responsibility in that government was guilty. “In that sense I am guilty. That Hitler’s government was criminal is a fact. Also I was made party to the use of forced labor, although Sauckel is the one who supplied it. I was an architect, but less interested in architecture than arms production after 1942, when Hitler made me production chief.” He fell from Hitler’s good graces, he feels, a month or two before the end, because he advised surrender two months before Hitler’s suicide. Hitler wanted to fight to the last German.
¹

Julius Streicher
1885–1946

Julius Streicher was founder and editor of the anti-Semitic journal
Der Stürmer
. Found guilty by the Nuremberg tribunal of crimes against humanity, he was hanged on October 16, 1946.

I interviewed Julius Streicher with the aid of Gilbert, who translated. Streicher’s German is easy to comprehend. Streicher had developed a tachycardia (flutter rate) in court Wednesday at 2 p.m. I saw him Thursday morning with Captain Horowitz, at which time he had a pulse of one hundred; he said he felt fine, and looked his usual self. Streicher wanted very much to go to court that day, but both Horowitz and myself agreed he should not. Meanwhile we arranged for a portable EKG to be taken on Streicher. That was done Thursday morning. In the afternoon, the results of the EKG were reported as normal.

Streicher is a short, almost bald, hook-nosed figure of sixty-one years. He appears about his given age. He smiles constantly, the smile something between a grimace and a leer, twisting his large, thin-lipped mouth, screwing up his froggy eyes, a caricature of a lecher posing as a man of wisdom. He requires no stimulation to embark on his unique and favorite topic, anti-Semitism, which has been and remains his raison d’être. “I know more about the Jews than the Jews do themselves. I’ve known all along you are Jewish [referring to Dr. Gilbert] by your voice. At first I wasn’t sure. But then one of the others [apparently another
defendant] told me. Then I listened and I could tell by your voice.” All this in a friendly fashion.

He said he had no personal feelings in the matter. He was a student of the Jews for the past twenty years. He is a “scientific and psychological” observer. The Jews were always a small group, and in a way he admires them, in that such a small group should have always gotten into a position where they dominate the world. For example, Christ. A Jew. And now that Germany is defeated, Jewish Bolshevism reigns in Russia. Stalin is just a figurehead. The Jews are behind him. And in North America we have Jewish democracy. All this with automatic enthusiasm and fluency, as with a well-rehearsed speech.

He has a frequent mannerism of looking at his hands, first the right and then the left, as if examining the fingernails. Asked why he does so, he dismissed the question by stating it was “a little nervousness.”

He is really a Zionist, he continued. He knows such men as Chaim Weizmann and other Zionists and shares their opinions. The Jews should be in their own country, not allowed elsewhere. Asked about the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
,
¹
he replied that they were not “exact” but that every word stated in them was true, and could be found elsewhere in Jewish works as in the Talmud. He poses as a scholar and researcher into Jewish writings, of which he has accumulated, in fact, a library.

He seems to me to be a man of probably limited normal intelligence, generally ignorant, obsessed with maniacal anti-Semitism, which serves as an outlet for his sexual conflicts, as evidenced by his preoccupation with pornography. Circumcision is a diabolical Jewish plot, and a clever one, he said, to preserve the purity of the racial Jewish stock. Christ, a Jew, was born of a mother who was a Jewish whore. Who could believe the story of the immaculate conception? he said, smiling or leering. Of course, he couldn’t write that in
Der Stürmer
, and he only mentions it to show how deep-rooted is the Jewish problem.

He denies any personal animosity toward the Jews. He considers himself merely a beacon of truth and has dedicated his life to that end. He can prove in court, he said, that he knew nothing about the anti-Jewish riots that occurred in Nuremberg in 1938;
²
in fact he was just returning from somewhere, and was told about the riots starting on the night he returned, which proves he didn’t order them. His chauffeur could testify to it.

Streicher impresses me as an old psychopathic personality with sexual and other conflicts, whose inadequacy found expression in an obsessive
preoccupation which for the past twenty years has filled the narrow stream of his life. He says he suddenly came upon anti-Semitism one evening years ago, and in the morning he realized that his life work was to become an authority on anti-Semitism. When Hitler appeared, Streicher fitted a ready-made niche.

For the past few days Streicher has been ill with a slight upper respiratory infection and displayed some cardiac arrhythmia, which was probably a combination of fibrillation and flutter. Several EKG records were taken and confirmed this clinical impression. There was, however, no cardiac failure.

Today he was completely asymptomatic and was his “old self.” He constantly asked for small favors, such as longer walks, more sweets or chocolate in his diet, less noise from the guards, which he has asked for in the past on many occasions. I have always had the impression that he is really not too concerned about obtaining these requests but that it is part of his obsessive-compulsive nature and that he tried to avoid any serious discussion about his childhood or development or about his actual activities or worldview by so doing.

We did discuss Streicher’s favorite subject, the “Jewish problem.” He had very little new to say about it but repeated his old line more or less as follows: “The Jewish problem is historical. I stumbled across it and chanced to become an authority on it through having read the Talmud, which the Jews call a Christianlike book. That is false. The racial laws emanate from the Talmud itself. I consider myself a leading scholar and student of Jewish writings, particularly of the Talmud.” A characteristic smirk or leer passed over Streicher’s face and he smiled thinly and leaned forward, and said in a confidential manner, “Have you ever thought about circumcision?” I replied that as a doctor I had performed many circumcisions of babies, both Jewish and gentile children, and that I had not thought about it very much. I certainly knew of it and considered it a surgical procedure. Streicher looked at his fingers a few times while I said these words and glanced at me incredulously. He said that circumcision was a Jewish mischief and its only aim was to preserve racial purity among Jews. “I have no objection to that as long as the Jews don’t interfere with our pure Aryan bloodlines because we must preserve our racial purity, too, then. As far as what you say about circumcision
being practiced on gentiles as well as on Jews, I know that to be the case, and don’t you see how devilish that is?” He smiled again in the manner of a wise man instructing a young student.

I said I did not see the point, and just what was devilish about it? As usual, Streicher had no rational explanation for what he called this devilish procedure, but made some inconsequential remarks about how, if circumcision was Jewish, it should not be inflicted on non-Jews. It was clear that he considered circumcision as something which had no medical or surgical import, but merely a racial custom. I asked him whether he did not know that in certain instances circumcision was a necessary operation to prevent various infections and mechanical difficulties due to phimosis. I explained to him what I meant by the term “phimosis.” Streicher replied, “Well, if an operation like that must be done, it should be done on Jews and not on gentiles. I have never heard of an Aryan whose bloodline was pure requiring such an operation.” He spoke with vehemence and a repetitive clicking tap of staccato speech. His remarks and speech were interjected with squinting of the eyes, peering at his fingertips, and frequently wetting his lips with his tongue.

Pinning Streicher down to any particular subject was most difficult because his ability to discuss anything logically was quite limited. We talked for a while about this and that, but in general, I gave him free rein to discuss what he wished. He asked me whether I had interviewed Ernst Hiemer, who was here in this prison as a witness for Streicher. Hiemer was Streicher’s chief editor of
Der Stürmer
after the removal of Holz. I replied that I had interviewed Hiemer. I asked Streicher what he thought of that man. Streicher said, “Hiemer is a schoolteacher, an honorable man, who could put into writing anti-Semitic articles and make them clear and simple so that the common man could read them and believe them. He was a very valuable, faithful worker and I chose him because of his simple but useful abilities.”

We continued to talk about
Der Stürmer
. “My publication was for a fine purpose. Certain snobs may now look down on it and call it common or even pornographic, but until the end of the war I had Hitler’s greatest respect, and
Der Stürmer
had the party’s complete support. At our height we had a circulation of 1.5 million. Everybody read
Der Stürmer
, and they must have liked it or they wouldn’t have bought it. The aim of
Der Stürmer
was to unite Germans and to awaken them against Jewish influence which might ruin our noble culture.”

I said he had mentioned a few moments ago that although he was in disfavor with certain party elements since 1940, he nevertheless regularly received greetings from Hitler and party support. I asked him what had happened in 1940 and why he was in disfavor and banned from Nuremberg at that time. “I had a trial then and it took place right here in this same prison. I was supposed to have said something about Goering’s child — that it was artificially conceived or something. But really, the trial was a farce. Goering was angry with me and he had his so-called Goering Commission investigate my activities as party district administrator of Franconia. There were some charges, which were never substantiated, that I had purchased stocks or bonds illegally — stock which had been seized from Jewish holders. It was true that I had certain stocks from Jews in my possession for a short time, but I had returned them to the state after I found out that I had been wrongly informed about my right to take them.

“As a result of the trial in 1940, I was forced to leave Nuremberg and to live in Fürth on my estate. I continued to publish
Der Stürmer
. I never ceased my editorial supervision of that publication, and Holz or Hiemer and my other associates held daily or weekly conferences with me so that I vetted everything that was printed in
Der Stürmer
. Hitler promised me protection after I had participated in the Munich putsch in 1923. I am very proud that I marched alongside Hitler in that affair. Hitler was never forgetful of that fact, and his faith and confidence in me was unshaken until the end. I, in turn, never broke my oath of loyalty to him.”

We discussed next the problem of religion. I said that I had heard that he was areligious. Could Streicher tell me what his real attitude toward religion might be? “It’s hard to say. Christ was a Jew and God, he is supposed to have made the universe. That’s a little far-fetched because if God made the world, who made God?” He smiled complaisantly as if he had scored quite a point. I asked him whether he had any other thoughts on the subject of religion. “Well, in my mind I have many things to say but I can’t tell them to you because who knows but that you might tell them to the newspapers. For example, if I were to tell you that my idea of the Virgin Mary and the immaculate conception was that both of these ideas were ridiculous, and that in my own opinion, Mary must have had relations with somebody in order to give birth to Jesus, you might think that was an insult to the church. Personally, I don’t care if the church is
insulted or not, but I didn’t want the newspapers to get hold of such things because that might hurt me more than any of my anti-Semitic statements, which are well known and which were published regularly in the press.”

We seemed to have expended the subject temporarily and Streicher suddenly abandoned it and turned to the subject of his personal hygiene. “I was sick yesterday and the day before as you know, but nevertheless I had a terrific urge today to take a bath. I know that you doctors would probably say I should take it easy because of my heart, so I just went ahead and got as much water as I could and washed myself all over from this basin.” He pointed to a galvanized water basin which lay on the floor next to the toilet.