Part Two: Julius Streicher: The Other Hitler

to get back to talking about Julius Striker. Yeah, yeah, So again as we left off, he is he's kind of one of the guys alongside Hitler that a lot of people in the German writer like, maybe this guy's are Messiah, you know, maybe he's the dude who's gonna bring us back to greatness and then convince us to invade Russia in an inopportune time and get several million of our young men killed again.

by his buddy Dikele. He takes the newspaper that he had started using the funding from the German Socialist Party and he brings it with him because he's the guy who owns it. He changes its name to Deutscher Volkesville, which I think just means German people's will. And he kind of ups the violence in his rhetoric, particularly the

anti Semitic violence by a couple of Jats. When he does this, not only does he start devoting more time to laying out conspiracy theories, but he starts accusing Jewish citizens in Germany, often by name of specific criminal acts, generally in Nuremberg. So he's not just doing the sort of general it's the Jews that causes to lose World War One, YadA, YadA. He's saying like there is a specific Jewish person or a specific group of ju Wish people who carry it out the specific crime in Nuremberg.

it's fucking nineteen twenty one. You know, kids trip and fall and cut their arms and get infections and shit exactly right, Like, yeah, so anytimes something like that happens, find a way to blame it on the Jews, you know, put this shit out. Now it's not legal to just like accuse random people of child abduction and murder, right, Like, you can get in trouble for that even back then. And he actually he goes so far in this stuff.

The Bavarian courts are pretty right wing, they're not like naturally inclined to prosecute a guy like Striker, but he goes so far in like accusing random Jewish people of crimes that he gets charged and convicted of slander. Getting convicted of slander as a right wing politico in nineteen twenty one Bavaria pretty hard, but Julius does it. Yeah.

This tiny amount of pressure from the government, though, winds up really helping him, like the fact that he's been convicted and charged, because now he's able to play the victim, right. Not only is he he's like, I'm being prosecuted, persecuted, you're trying to stop me from talking to you, and so it brings this helps to bring him more followers, bring more subscribers to his newsletter bring more members to the organization that Dickle founded, that he's kind of the

figure four, and Striker gets more famous. On April fourth, nineteen twenty two, several thousand Nurembergers, Nurembergians, whatever, show up to Burgers is good. Several thousand burger Now I'm hungry. Several thousand Burgers show up to listen to Striker give a speech in which he explains that in August of nineteen fourteen he had gone to war believing himself a soldier of Germany, only to find out that he was a pawn in this grand Jewish game for global control

and also the French you're involved. And a huge amount of his rhetoric is focused upon kind of taking advantage of and stoking the anxieties of young German men in this time who they've just lost a war. Like young men don't like losing wars, and they're kind of emasculated right by defeat and this sense of inferiority that it brings. And that's a big part of what Striker is going to take advantage of. I'm going to read you a

quote that he gave in this speech. Here stand in front of a hotel and see who takes the arms of the German girl, not the German worker. We know they sometimes give themselves to the Orientals. When a Negro or a black soldier on the Rhine misuses a German girl, she is lost to the race, and he is when he's bringing up like black soldiers going out with German girls.

What he's talking about is that the Rhine, which is kind of or the Ruer actually I think it is, which is the industrial It's all along the Rhine, though, which is the industrial heartland of Germany. It's where they've done a lot of their arms production for World War One. That's occupied under the Treaty of Versailles by French troops for a significant chunk of the Weimar period, and the French often send over like colonial soldiers, including like African soldiers.

Exactly exactly everywhere you have soldiers stationed in a foreign country, this shit will happen. Some number of them will do bad things. And whenever something like that happens with these French occupation troops, it is this huge deal on the right, you know, because there's this race panic issued towards it too. You know, they're angry just period at the fact that

they lost the war. So that's what Striker is kind of He's not only sort of like, you know, look, they've got these like black soldiers on our soil, but more broadly speaking, he's like, German women are being taken from German men because we've been emasculated by defeat, and this is part of a Jewish plot to like water down our blood. Right, that's the thing that Striker's doing. Yeah, you know, well, yes, of course, yeah, that do be the Nazis. So his time with the German Working Group

was short. One of his rallies was broken up by a giant street fight with Communists, which Dickle's organization apparently considered his fault. He left in the subsequent disagreement, unable as ever to handle anyone criticizing him, and this leaves Julius in a bit of a pickle. He needs an organization, right, He's not anything without sort of like he's got like a degree of celebrity, but like he wants to be

a part of a party, right. He wants to be working towards taking power, and his paper at this point is still too small to be profitable on its own without kind of the guaranteed regular sales that came with being the paper of a political organization. And he's so we sort of like fishing around who's going to take me? Who wants Julius, you know, who's who's willing to have

me be on their side? And the only party in Germany who's kind of rat enough to take someone like him, who's got the reputation he has is the new Nazi Party. Now they're still in the process of doing this merger at the time, and the guys who had been sort of running the Democratic Socialist Party and had worked with Striker earlier don't want him in the Nazi Party and the dudes who had sort of been fighting with Hitler within the German Workers Party also don't necessarily want Striker.

And so when he starts reaching out to Hitler because like Hitler's the guy he likes, basically sends a letter to being like, hey, I think I'd be willing to like work with you. Guys, they send Hitler a letter filled with like dirt on Julius, trying to basically like convince Hitler not to work with him, be like, ah, here's all this shit about like Julius Striker all this bad stuff you know about like why this guy's not trustworthy.

But then this is really interesting. Striker doesn't get along with most people who are in charge of him, and Hitler not a great guy at sharing the stage, but for whatever reason, the two of them kind of get along. And when Hitler gets this letter filled with dirt on Striker, he's like, I think this is bullshit. I think I like this guy and I want to work with him.

And we don't really know why. But in addition to Hitler kind of liking Striker and wanting to work with him, Striker, this guy who cannot take direction, who doesn't like to listen to people, who has a conflict with everyone who puts themselves above him, kind of decides at this moment, you know what, I'm willing to, like take a back seat and back Hitler as the fewer Like maybe I could do that, but I'm willing to like back him. I'm willing to give him, you know, my full faith

and support. We don't fully know why he makes this call, but in May of nineteen twenty two, he publishes an article on his newspaper called the Longing of a Strong Hand, echoing Subotandorf's work. He begged German Anti Simites to a knite behind a single leader who could give direction to the quarrel some right wing and he kind of ends with him like being like, you know, I think Hitler's problem probably a guy to watch for this one possibility here as that striker. At this point, he's been in

politics a while. He's had a couple of big failures. You know, he's tried to basically build two parties around him and failed two times. So he may have just like he's not a humble guy, but he may have actually just kind of recognized his limitations and been like, clearly, I can't do this and Hitler can, so I'm going

to support the guy who's doing it. You know. The other possibility, which I think, you know, both of these things are possible, is that he kind of just falls in love with Hitler, Like this seems to be genuine from him, like that he is like genuinely loyal and genuinely believes in Hitler as the fucking right wing messiah type dude. We don't actually know when the two first met, probably at some point in nineteen twenty two years later,

when he's on trial at Nuremberg. Julius is going to like give his sort of like explanation of how they too, how they met, And this is a lie. Obviously, we are talking about like a Nazi leader on trial for war crimes against humanity. He's not giving you the truth of whatever their meeting was. But I still think it's interesting. What he's later going to claim is like how the two of them like meet. So he says, you know,

he shows up at the speech that Hitler's giving. He's kind of curious about this guy that's sort of been billed as, you know, maybe his rival, and he's immediately taken in by Hitler's supernatural charisma. He's overwhelmed by the chanting of the crowd, and he he like has almost this vision of Hitler as a messenger from heaven. That's how he described it, quote clothed with the beauty of

inspired language. And Stryker claims that he's so overwhelmed with the raw godly force of Hitler's charisma that he like walks up to him right after the speech and swears fealty. Quote never before had I heard that song sung so imploringly, so filled with faith and hope, and never before had the singing of Deutsch lenduber ales moved me as deeply as it did in that mass meeting where I first saw Adolf Hitler and heard him speak. I felt it in this moment destiny calls to me a second time.

I hurried through the jubilant masses to the podium, stood before him and said, I am Julius Striker. At this moment, I know I can only be a follower, but you are a leader. I give you the popular movement which I have built in Franconia, which is the German state that Nuremberg's in.

he makes, it's absolutely a lie. And Randall bite Work, who is Striker's biographer, he kind of provides what I think is a much more realistic theory as to how these two guys get together, which is basically that like Striker, he he's a man without a party, but he's got a shitload of followers who just like him because they

like listening to him. He's got this paper and he sits down with Hitler in the Nazis and they have this like negotiation, like this kind of hard nosed negotiation in which you know, he's like, Hey, I need money from you guys to help me deal with the debts that I've accumulated. You know, in exchange, I'll bring you these followers I'll like back Hitler. It is very much

a rational political decision. While there's definitely hit like Striker will be loyal to Hitler, like there is a degree of legitimate affection between the two men, this is also just a very practical call for him. It's a business decision as well as a political one. So yeah, interesting stuff. Julius, for his part, seems to be one of the few

men Hitler respected. It's notable. You'll every time you read anything about the two, you will see it noted that Striker was one of a very small number of Nazis who are allowed to use the pronoun do to refer to Hitler.

The two are not friends, they don't hang out together. Hitler will actually kind of avoid him when he's in power and like big meetings and stuff like we'll try not say. But Hitler will also defend him against other Nazis who hate him because he has so much respect for Striker's skill as a propagandist, right, which is an interesting sort of relationship for them to have.

winning it. And in nineteen twenty three, Julius is sort of running the Nazi Party branch in Nuremberg, and as a result of like taking over, he decides to launch a new newspaper. And this is a publication that he's going to use for the specific goal of not just bringing people to the Nazi Party, but to inspire regular Germans to embrace his war on Judaism. He names it dear Sturmer. Now that means like the Stormer, right, like in terms of like a storm trooper, right like that's

how that term is used. He's very much calling up sort of people's memories of World War One. He's very much sort of making you a point of the fact that that's what he did in the war. He will later claim that his inspiration was that he wanted to use this paper to storm the red fortress of left wing politics in Germany, and initially in dere Stormer articles are kind of split between three major topics. He's one of the major topics is him just going on rants

against people who made fun of him. The other is attacking the Jews, and the last is going after the mayor of Nuremberg, Herman Lupa. Like half of his early articles are just attacking the mayor. He fucking hates this guy.

the communists. Lupa's not, you know, really in with the communists, but he is a bridge between like the Centrists and the Democratic Socialists, and he is profoundly an anti Nazi, and he does the best that he knows to try to go after Striker. Obviously it doesn't work, and you feel for the guy. He gets persecuted under the Nazis.

He winds up dying as a real bummer. He makes it through most of the war as like a persecuted political enemy of the Nazis, and then dies in an air raid in forty five, which is a fucking bummer, but you know, he tried. Yeah, Striker spends most of his first four issues attacking the mayor with publishing alongside, you know, ancillary articles accusing local Jewish people or organizations

of crimes. And it was this latter brand of content, you know, the these articles sort of making explicit allegations against Jewish citizens. That's going to lead to Striker's first period of time in jail. And I'm going to quote from Calvin University's German Propaganda archive here and one of these meetings held in nineteen twenty two in the town

of Schenengen in Franconia. Striker pointed out that sixteen newspapers had recently reported on the disappearance of over one hundred German children before the Jewish Passover season of nineteen nineteen. Since none of the boys was ever located, Striker concluded that they must have become victims of Jewish ritual murder.

He explained that his reasoning was based on teachings contained in the Talmud, which allegedly instructed Jews to kill Christians, especially children, and drink their blood during the Jewish Easter season. Striker was sued on the ground of defaming the Jewish religion and sentenced to fourteen days in prison. He appealed and the sentence was reduced to a fine of two

thousand marks plus court costs. And first off, it's interesting, you know, you and I before this call were kind of talking about our episodes a week or so ago on bTB about this kidnapping panic that's that's going everywhere you see, the same thing is going on in Vymar Germany, right this, You know, in America, the statistically here quoted is like half a million children go missing every year

in the United States, which is a lie. That would be one out of seven children born every year in the United States get subducted.

kids getting abducted by parents. There's probably some like creepy sex pests in there. But it's like any society, like

some number of kids, bad things will happen too. I'm not saying that to like write it off, but like if you sort of can blame it on a specific group of people, you can make a lot of political heay, And so anyway, that's working well for him, and he learns from his time getting arrested for this and like the fact that again getting fucked with by the court a little bit getting this fine, it doesn't really disrupt

his ability to organize. You know, the party pays the fine, but it helps him build support and he also like the fact that, you know, this strikes such a nerve. The reason why he gets prosecuted for this is because

it works. It gets a lot of people reading his paper, because people are interested when you claim that there's some conspiracy against their children, right, Like, it's just a thing people inherently pay attention to, and whatever punishment the state's going to give you for lying about this stuff is a lot less of an issue than like the benefit you get from making this a center of your politics.

So Dare Sturmer becomes a runaway hit, and in fact it's so successful that Maximon, who's the leader of the Nazi Party's press wing, asks him to stop publishing it because it's taking business away from the Nazi Party paper. Now Strikers not is going to ignore him, and it's going to wind up being good for the Nazis that he does ignore him. In these early days, dere Sturmer is it's not as the full sized newspaper's going to become.

It's kind of like a pamphlet right now, it's usually about four pages long, and so you know, it's building a name for itself. And then in nineteen twenty three, our boy Hitler has his Munich beer Hall putch, right, tries to take over the Government's not.

starts printing dere Sturmer and the Pusch. There's a couple of things that have happened here. For one, the Nazi Party has been temporarily banned. So suddenly this Nazi newspaper that, like folks in the party, had been frustrated because darre Sturmer was distracting attention from it. It can't publish anymore. But dar Sturmer is not a Nazi newspaper. It Striker's paper, so he can keep publishing it during this period in

which the party is kind of technically banned. The other thing that's happened here is that the court case that Hitler goes through, right when he's charged with doing this, this pusch, as we've talked about in our episode on the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, becomes like a media circus in Germany, right and everybody. Hitler uses it very effectively to spread propaganda. While he's on trial. He's giving these speeches about his beliefs and about what he sees is

necessary for the nation, and it works incredibly well. Like he makes a lot of political hay out of this, and in the wake of it, number One, Hitler's come a celebrity across the country as opposed to this kind of regional figure. And number two, a lot of Germans are now curious about Nazi beliefs and about anti Semitic politics, and Striker's paper, which is still publishing, kind of becomes the de facto paper for Nazi sympathetic people. During this

period in which the party is technically banned. By nineteen twenty five, it's increased its circulation to the size of a normal newspaper with full page advertisements and enough circulation to actually like make money. So Striker is now making a profit, and in fact, in the near future he's going to get rich off of the success of this newspaper.

So he continues while he starts, this thing starts blowing up to push the boundaries of what is considered at the time to be sort of acceptable anti Semitic discourse. Most mainstream racists in Germany stuck to vague insinuations that the Jews are in bed with the French or the socialists, or the French socialists and irresponsible for them losing the war, YadA, YadA. But you're also starting to get more and more writing

in the mainstream German press about Nazi racial theory. Right, a lot of these high minded articles about ancient Aryans start coming out. Now this stuff that existed before World War One, you know, as we've talked about, there's all these weird little right wing secret societies and vulcish secret societies and stuff. But now this starts to get out into the mainstream. And Stryker understood that when it came to getting people on board with this kind of propaganda.

One thing worked on getting the attention of regular people better than anything else, and that was blood. Right, The best way to get people to pay attention to your racism was to titillate them with gory stories of violence. And speaking of profiting off of titillating people with stories of violence. You know what time it is now, Jake?

That's right, Uh, we are back. So I was just telling you, Jake again, we're talking about like how modern this guy is part of what Striker does to like build a career for himself as he kind of gets into true crime, right, Like that's that's sort of like the thing that he's going. That's the kind of content that's going to like help make der Sturmer a big deal.

supposed ritual killing by Jews and Breslau. Quote. In Breslau, two children, Ottow and Erica Fessi, secretly vanished. They were murdered. The corpse pieces were found the same day in a tied package in a public place. The search for the murderer began. The cloth and corpse pieces, which were packaged, became an open showcase in a public window, which drew masses of people to come in view. According to the author of the article, the body parts had been bled

before they were package. This and history were enough to proclaim it a Jewish ritual murder. Here's striker again, doesn't the fact that the body parts were found totally bled point to such a Jewish butcher's procedure. Such was the report of two of the Silesian newspapers that announced that this Breslau child murder sounds as though it is possibly

a Jewish ritual murder. The Breslau child murder reminds us of the Koenitz boy murder that was discovered a few decades ago when for no apparent reason, a boy disappeared from school. The traces led to a house of Jewish butchers. The blood pieces of remains of the boy were also found in a public place. This unsolved mystery has been brought to the attention of the criminal police. The crime

was never solved. Now with the disappearance of these children in much the same way, should this case also be lost in the sand. And again you see what he's doing is he's like this case, which we have to assume is done by the Jews because we know this is the kind of thing they do, is the same as this other case decades ago where we know that a boy was murdered by Jewish people, and of course it was never solved, but like we know who it was. There's no not ever any evidence here, right, but like

are there? But you can give the details. Since you don't have evidence to actually connect this. What you do is you give the details of the murder, right, and that gets people at such an agitated state that you say and then obviously you know this was done by this group of people. And it works very well when

blood and violence weren't enough, Striker turned to sex. Many dere Sturmer articles contained livid descriptions of sexual violence, right, And this is generally he'll like have an article about some purported client crime by like you know, a non white French soldier in the Ruh, or by you know, Jewish cabals or whatever, and the purpose is both to like get people angry against those groups of people, but also he's able to spend paragraphs talking about know lurid

sexual assault stories and that gets people to buy the newspaper because like it's kind of the most accessible pornography at the time, right, Yeah, Like yeah, it's messy, but like this is like a big part of it's it's it's appeal. And in fact, one Nazi German writer who hated Striker described dare Stirmer's appeal this way. He wants to keep his readers in constant suspense. But what do his readers want? Sensation and filth? Striker gives that to them.

He floods his readers with tastelessness. And who are his readers? Mostly adolescents who are still wet behind the years thanks to Striker's education, Every lattice familiar with homosexuality and prostitution. One cannot blame Striker for speaking about these matters. Every newspaper today does. The question is how one speaks of them.

Striker gives them great prominence. May not one be concerned when one sees the Stirmer not only in the hands of older students, but also in possession of elementary school students. And that's interesting because it gels with something Randall bite Work says in his biography of Sturmer, which is that in the early years of Dere Sturmer, it was kind of an analog to Playboy magazine.

with each other. They'll like huddle around each other after school and like read these like lurid stories of sex and violence and whatnot, because like it's kind of where you get them. And this I had no idea this had gone on because the fascination with this sort of thing was so durable that a lot of dere Sturmer's early readers are Jewish Germans, who would buy every issue and read it cover to cover. Striker would actually jokingly thank them for supporting the paper in its early years.

And while he's not a trustworthy source. Byite Work notes that in nineteen twenty five, a Jewish newspaper in Nuremberg complained, quote, it is of great concern that the Sturmers very frequently read even in Jewish circles. We have found that large numbers of citizens of the Jewish faith by the Sturmer and then take it home concealed in a copy of you know, other newspapers. Thus, Jews directly support the Sturmer.

So this is like a problem for them, and they're supporting it not because they're like secretly you know, into Nazi propaganda, but because like where you read sex stuff, you.

more of a give and take relationship with his audience. Now, part of this was pragmatic and based on something other Nazi news paper owners would do, which is that it's expensive to hire writers to write articles, right, and like, you know, photographs cost too much money to have a lot of those. But publishing reader letters is free. Right.

If you solicit shit from your readers and then publish that stuff to a mailbox or whatever, you know, you can like get free content for your newspaper without paying for it. This is a thing that a lot of Nazi papers did. Where Striker and der Sturmer differed was that, again,

they consider this sort of a two way street. So when he starts to get a bunch of letters from readers who are like talking about a specific conspiracy theory they have of you know, so and so doing an evil thing, Striker will use that and he'll just sort of like write out an investigation, and you know, he doesn't actually send anyone to investigate but he'll take these. It's Alex Jones does this a lot where he'll like, you'll hear one episode he'll get like a caller come

in and make some sort of claim. In the next episode, he's like, I've got sources that say this is going on. You know, it's it's it's an easy way to make content, right, We'll do it. Sources never right, of course. Yeah. I found a fascinating analysis of the letters to dere Sturmer and like the different kind of ways they impacted content in the Journal of Modern Judaism by Dennis Showalter, and Showalter notes that dere Stirmer did sometimes publish just letters

by outright cranks, like you know people. One example he gives is, there was this guy who writes a letter to Striker about how the Jews stole my business and they forced me in an insane asylum. And it's you know, it's clearly some dude who just like had a mental breakdown and blamed it all on the Jews for whatever reason. But the letter, yes, yes, yeah, But letters, these kind of letters where it's just like some crank writing out of conspiracy theory are kind of rare in terms of

the kind of stuff. He published a much larger number of letters where requests for aid either by people claiming, you know, I got swindled by a Jewish merchant or something, or by people just claiming that they were suffering under the Weimar system, which was its self seen as Jewish and publishing all of these letters allowed Striker to make the case for Nazism in a way that was more

personal than even a lot of Hitler speeches. The pages of dere Strmer became a place where Germans suffering from hard times could come to ask for aid. You could sort of direct support to people who were suffering through the NewsPage was kept people coming in, which built the sort of relationship with the And again it's very modern to like the way social media works where you're like, oh, this guy is kind of politically on our side and he needs money for this. We'll do like a fundraiser

for him, you know. And this also serves as a way to like, you know, we can talk about this bad thing that happened to him and how it's part of the evil that our enemies are doing right right, and so dere Stirmer becomes kind of this is how it becomes so central a big part of how it becomes central to like the growing Nazi movement, and likewise Striker is able to use the kind of conversations he's having with his readers through these letters to forge Derek

Stirmer into a sort of weapon that really hadn't existed before. And to talk about that, I'm going to quote again from Showalter's piece. By far the largest category of letters in der Sturmer's files and pages expressed grievances of one kind or another. This correspondence could be further subdivided under four general headings. The first can be best described as

undifferentiated anti Semitism, dislike of Jews as Jews. Here's simple hatred was less common than hostility based on profound ignorance. One rural correspondent described in detail the alleged Jewish practice of throwing stones on the graves of their dead while saying, greet Abraham, Isaac and Jacob for me, and when you see the little carpenter, throw a stone at his head. The daughter of another local Nazi was employed by a gentile family as lady help until served a meal that

included ground meat purchased from a Jewish butcher. Years of anti Semitic horror stories about Jews deliberately polluting food, especially meat, and then selling it to gentiles had their effect. The girl refused her dinner, even when her employers mocked her Volkish prejudices and told her to eat or give notice to her proud father. This principled stand is served recognition in dar Sturmer and Striker agreed, then that may just

sound like undifferentiated Nazi propaganda, and it is. But also what's happening here is this girl or her dad at least, is using dere Stermer to say, Hey, this family, this prominent family who hired my daughter, are doing business with

a Jewish butcher. They're buying his products. And so not only does this spread this conspirat that Jews are poising people, but it also shames this specific family and kind of directs threats against them because darre Sturmer's readership are a bunch of asshole Nazis, right, so they hear, oh, this family's buying from a Jewish butcher. Let's go fuck with them, right, Let's, you know, do some graffiti at their house. Let's like

mess them up a little bit until they stop. And this is a really important point in turning point for Nazi propaganda because one of the first steps on the road to genocide anywhere that it exists, but in Nazi Germany this particular instance is the exclusion of targeted people

from daily life life right. Once Hitler takes power, of course, you know, they pass a bunch of laws to restrict Jewish employment, to get them out of public right, so that Germans on a daily basis are not making contact with Jewish people and thus don't have relationships with them, you know, won't stand up to stop the state from killing them in other ways. But during the Weimar period, Striker is able to push Germans to cut about tens of thousands, god knows how many to cut off ties

with their Jewish neighbors. By using his paper this way, readers start basically whenever they see they see it. You know, you've got like a German family, you know, or a German business that's like not run by racist right, So they're like, well, we'll sell products that are made by this Jewish owned company, or we'll have business with this Jewish butcher or whatever you write about to dare stirmer about them and then darre Sturmmer says, Hey, this grocery

store is selling meat from a Jewish butcher. Go pick it it, you know, go a spray pant, go break their windows, right and some a lot of businesses just start to pull back from their deal with Jewish business people, with Jewish companies, with Jewish doctors and stuff like you know one thing. People will literally get yeah exactly, because they don't want to be the subject of this shit.

Like people will write in letters being like my neighbor goes to a Jewish doctor, and then that guy will get like fucking egged in the street or like beat up by the essay or something. And it pushes people, huge numbers of people who are kind of centrists or even kind of progressive to cut off ties with their Jewish neighbors in a lot of cases because it's so dangerous to do so. It's disastrous to your business. You can wind up getting very badly hurt as a result

of it. He is using mass media to direct harassment campaigns in order to separate German Jews from other Germans, and it works extremely well. Dere Sturmer is a potent weapon, and it's a kind of weapon hadn't really existed before in this form because like mass media is sort of becoming getting born in this period of time.

kind of a consequence. It's not a consequence of an algorithm or anything, but it is this this understanding of like, well you could just like lie to piss off a bunch of people at a specific random person, and that will change their behavior in a way that might benefit me politically.

have as much sort of impulse control. So when these letters come out saying this family or this business is doing business with the Jews, there may be more likely to go funck shit up, go break stuff. You know. It works well and circulation increases during the period this like late twenties period, from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands, and this makes Julius a very

wealthy man. As the years go on, the Nazis draw ever closer to power, and Striker who is he's generally recognized is that he's not a particularly bright guy in most things. You know, he's not like a very academic person. He's not a guy as a teacher. He wasn't very successful. But he's not just. This is not just. He has like a degree of kind of like gut instinct as

a propagandist. But he also pays attention to what works and doesn't, and over time he starts to lay out a basis, the basis for a theory on how to properly deploy propaganda and a Nazi historian who worked with him in the thirties described Striker's style this way. Since he wanted to capture the masses, he had to write it in a way that the masses could understand, and a style that was simple and easy to comprehend. He had recognized that the way to achieve the greatest effect

on an audience was through simple sentences. Writing had to adopt the style of speaking if it were to have a similar effect. Striker wrote in The Sturmer the way that he talked. The worker who came home at night from the factory was neither willing nor able to read intellectual treatises. He was, however, willing to read what interested him and what he could understand. Striker therefore took the

content from daily life and the style from speech. He thus gave the Sturmer Its style, a style which many intellectuals could not understand, but which fundamentally was nothing but the product of his own experience, gained over the years. And it's one of the things that's compelling to me about this is that obviously, like you know, liberal and leftist intellectuals hate Striker and attack him and often kind of don't understand why what he does works. But also

Nazi intellectuals hate him because they don't. They think he's gross, he's boorish, his kind of anti Semitism is really low class, whereas theirs, they feel is very intellectual. Hitler a big part of what Hitler does is he defends Striker from the intellectuals and the Nazi Party who hate him by being like, you guys don't get it. This dude has a fucking like hotline to the like angrying up the blood of sort of like working class Germans. He gets it.

He gets how to talk to them, and you people don't with your like fancy as weird books about Nazi race magic, you know, like that's exactly it.

for months or even years each issue. There's never any new arguments, right, Every argument you're gonna get from Striker is laid out in the first, you know, issue of Dear Stirmer. But every issue brings more pieces of evidence to support these arguments, right, and the central argument is that the Jews are a threat to German life. The line that he uses over and over again is the Jews are our misfortune, right, which becomes one of the

most iconic pieces of anti Semitic Nazi propaganda. Right. Yeah. In the mid nineteen twenties, Striker adds cartoons to dear Stirmer he had become. This is another area in which he's a trailblazer because he's become a fan over the period of making this of a racist cartoonist named Philippe Rupricht who wrote racist cartoons under the pseudonym Phipps, and Striker is like the first Nazi dude to realize, like, hey, you know what, you know what everyone loves is a cartoon.

This is a great way to dispread our propaganda. Phipps is interesting because he was initially just like a cartoonist who happened to be a racist. And so he gets hired by a social Democratic paper to show up at a Striker speech and draw a caricature of Striker, right for this newspaper that doesn't like him. But Phipps kind

of falls in love with Striker. And instead draws caricatures of that mayor I talked about Lupa and a prominent Jewish citizen who's got like beef with Striker, and he instead of like doing the thing he'd been paid to, he goes to Striker and he's like, hey, man, I got paid to draw you, but instead I did these caricatures of these guys you hate. Will you publish them

in Dear Sturmer? Striker does, and over the next eight years, Phipps's anti Semitic caricatures became the standard German visual shorthand for like identifying a public figure as Jewish. Michael D. Bulmosch, whose family collection of Holocaust related propaganda is hosted by Kenyan University, describes the impact of Phipps's drawings this way.

These grotesque, often pornographic cartoons of Jewish stereotypes accompanied the propaganda Striker disseminated, saturating the consciousness of Germans during the Third Reich and contributing to the capacity of many Germans to accept the Nazi program. These drawings often ended with the statement the Jewish our misfortune, and without a solution

to the Jewish question, there was no salvation for mankind. Now, I'm going to have Sophie show you one of these cartoons, and we're not going to post any of this shit on the internet, because, by god, there's enough of it. But like, what's going on in this cartoon you're looking at. It shows like a Jewish butcher with his wife behind him. They are both drawn uncharitably, and he is putting rats in an organ grinder in order to make meat to

sell to Christians. Right, specifically, sort of conspiracy theories against Jewish butchers are a big part of the thing that Striker is pushing because it makes people feel like they're personally threatened. You know, it's a way to kind of force them out of society. So you know, yeah, you can see sort of like the visual shorthand that he's developing here.

in Nuremberg, which is against Striker's city. Right, That's where the base of his power has always been, the early years of political legitimacy, you know, because the thirties before Hitler kind of has made chancellor, the early thirties is when they're starting to get in to the Reichstag and whatnot. This has been good for not just Striker but other Nazi big wigs, and they'd started to get both rich and like literally physically overweight, right because they're not fighting

in the streets so much. They've all gotten older and now they have money for like nice food, and alcohol. And I bring this up because so you look at like iconic footage of Nazi rallies, have you noticed that a lot of them are at night, right, these big torchlit rallies. I had always assumed that like that was just because oh, torches are like impressive visually, like it makes it look kind of like more serious and whatnot.

But the reason why this first big Nuremberg rally is done like in torchlit style is because Hitler's like angry at the fact that all of his old fighters have gotten fat and he doesn't want their bellies to show. So he's like, we got it, we gotta do this at night so nobody sees. We don't want him to look at harm and garritt. Yeah, it's really it's kind of funny if you can, you know, not think about

what comes later a little bit. But yeah, So while most of the old fighters straight away took offices in Germany and set to work dismantling Weimar, Striker remains at his paper right, he doesn't a lot. Basically, all of the other guys who had been that tight with Hitler for that long get jobs in the government. Even if that job they're not really doing anything. It's just sort of like, well, now you can get money and like take bribes and stuff. They get gigs in the state.

Striker doesn't do that, and I think it's probably because Hitler and everyone knows, like, I know, you like this guy will take care of him, but like he can't work in the government. Likes he's just not that kind of person. He's not able to function within a bureaucracy. You know, he's a useful propagandist, but he's just too thorny to like function in a system like that. So they give him kind of this sort of like the prize that they give him that allows him to exist

outside of the state apparatus. He's made Gaulighter for Franconia, which is the region that Nuremberg is in, and Galllighter is a party position, so it's not part of the government. It's part of the Nazi party and it's effectively like the head of a state party. Right, Like you think about Gaulight, I know it's nonsense, nonsense language, and hey, I don't feel any better about France coming for you

next when we do the Napoleon episodes. So Galllighter is like, yeah, it's it's you think about, like in the United States, you've got like the Republican Party of Texas or the the Democratic Party of Wyoming or whatever, they're going to have like a person who is running the party for

that state. That's what the Gawlighter is. But because the Nazis have taken control of the state and are sort of in the process thirty three thirty four to thirty five of like eating the state apparatus, being the head of the party for Franconia puts him in functional control over the government of the region, but he's not actually responsible for anything, so he can step in anywhere. He could tell the mayor what to do, you can tell the governor what to do. He can like, you know,

force his will anywhere in Franconia he wants. But he also doesn't have to do anything, so he's not like managing the sewers. But if there's a way for him to like get money out of like the sewers, he could do that. You know. It's kind of a perfect position for a gangster type dude to be in, right because you don't actually have to accomplish anything for people, but you can take advantage whenever it sort of occurs to you, how you can do that? It's a sweet gig.

But as Biteworking explains, yeah, yeah, exactly. But as his biographer bite Work explains, even this sweetheart gig is not something that Julie is as well suited to handle. Just as he had been a poor soldier off the battlefield and a good one on it, he was better at fighting for political power than he wasn't using it. Indeed, the almost absolute power of a gau Lighter of the Third Reich exacerbated the flaws in his personality. He could not tolerate the orders of others, nor would he tolerate

disobedience on the path of his subordinates. And Randall goes on to cite the analysis of a historian named Edward Preston, which I find interesting, if slightly questionable in phrasing. Probably more so than any of his peers, Striker combined the elements of a dictator who would brook no opposition with those of the anarchist, the lover of chaos, who would accept no orders from superiors. This inability to fit into an organization, even his own, was his greatest weakness as Gaulighter.

His lack of control made him enemies above, such as Gerring and Himmler, who and drove honorable men out of his organization below, leaving miserable toadies who had to crawl at his feet. There was constant turmoil in Franconia because there was constant turmoil in Striker. So he's he's given this gig, which is like his reward for being loyal,

but he's like bad and he's fucking up. He's not just bad at it, but he's like fucking up the ability of the government to function in this This is a pretty crucial period for the Nazis, really, especially thirty three to thirty sixths or so. They're not it's not guaranteed that they're going to hold onto absolute power. The military doesn't really like them. They're in the process of replacing the police, right, there's still a chance that they

could get like pushed out at this stage. So they don't want a guy like Striker just like fucking around in the local government and being incompetent. It's like bad for them, you know.

that he's bad at being a gangster. You know. He after he chases his nemesis, the mayor out of job, the out of the job, he replaces him with a toady, like a guy who's supposed to you know, suck up to him, but like that guy isn't very good at his job and also doesn't work with Striker well because basically no one does. And the police chiefs that Himmler appoints in Franconia they also hate Striker because he's like super corrupt and is constantly breaking even like the minimal

laws they're trying to enforce. So over and over again, Striker will get, you know, in trouble with somebody for like fucking up something critical in the state, and Nazi functionaries will write complaints to Hitler, and Hitler will intervene again and again. This happens a bunch in the mid thirties, like Nazis trying to force Striker out as gal lighter and Hitler being like, nah, man, he's my boy. Nah, he's my boy. Like I know he's bad at this,

but like fuck you, he's my guy. And again, while this is going on, Nuremberg is a big city for Hitler. He visits there regularly. He doesn't like to see Striker. There's like a bunch of cases where he'll show up in Nuremberg for an event and he'll kind of like have like an advanced team go just to like warn him where Striker is so he doesn't have to like hang out with him, Like he really doesn't like it.

His talent is extremely focused on being a propagandist. But you know, outside of that, he's kind of a failure in every other aspect of life. The early years of the Reich are then largely about score settling for Julius. In nineteen thirty four, after the Night of Long Knives, a Nuremberg school teacher was heard in a cafe saying that strikers should have been among the victims. When word

got back to Julius, someone reports this teacher. He has the man arrested, and then he shows up in this teacher's cell with two other Nazis armed with whips and they beat this guy half to death with them. As they leave the cell, Julius has heard to say, I

needed that. Now I feel released, like you know, And I think this is like he's a street fighter, he's an old soldier, Like I'm going to use my part of what he is using his power on now that he is in political powers to like go beat the shit out of people whenever he wants to deal with his stress. Yeah, because he's you know, he's a big bully too. Maybe we have like glossed over that, but yeah, yeah, I.

for whipping some random teacher. But where Striker causes problems is so one of the first things he does when the Nazis take power is he helps to organize an anti Jewish boycott through his paper, which like is really successful, you know, And while it's actually kind of a mixed bag, but it's successful in making Nuremberg seen as the center

of Nazi racial jurisprudence. Because Striker is the guy who's writing all of these theories out, now that they're sort of in power, he doesn't need to like like spread conspiracies about the Jews as much as he needs to make specific suggestions for how German law should deal with them. And this feeds into the fact that in September of nineteen thirty five, at a Nuremberg rally, Hitler announces a new set of laws restricting the behavior of Jewish Germans

known as the Nuremberg Laws. Among other things, these legally banned sexual relations between German Jews and German non Jews. Now, Striker was not a part of writing these laws. Any reading, anything you ever read about the Holocaust, any documentary about the Holocaust will talk about the Nuremberg Laws. They are extremely important in the advancing sort of assembly of the apparatus that becomes the Holocaust. Striker gets credit for these laws.

He has no role in them actually, cause again, you're not going to bring in this dude to help you write laws. But because he was kind of the most known anti Semite in the Nazi Party, and because Nuremberg is his city, he gets credit for this thing that

he doesn't actually really make. I mean, obviously he does support them, but he also like part of why he's not going to get to write these laws that he gets credit for is that these laws are written by the Nazi intellectuals that we talked about, who don't believe the exact same things that he does, like among other things, Striker believes that, like Stryker has these like weird mishmash of different sort of conspiratorial or in different stort of

like historical almost some kind of like magical beliefs about the Jews and like where they came from, and like all of this weird stuff that kind of reaches back to like ariosophy and stuff like that Helena Blovotsky kind

of shit. We talk about all this stuff, and some of that is common among the Nazi intelligensia, but like Striker's version of it is considered kind of gutter, and so it's interesting he gets kind of the last laugh here because these guys who hate him because they consider him low class are the ones who write the Nuremberg Laws.

But Striker kind of gets credit for it. And in fact, after Hitler announces the Nuremberg Laws, like during his speech, there are chants of hail Striker that break out in the crowd because so many people give him credit for this stuff. Interesting side note under the individual.

old antisemitic tropes and canards from an early age. German youth would learn not only to recognize these repulsive descriptions of Jews, but as well the importance of standing together as a nation to remove the jew as a threat. Der Sturmer constantly reminded Germans that the Jews are our misfortune and jewry and its malignant influence had to be destroyed. So again, through all the issues, the first five years of Nazi power are broadly speaking a good time for him.

But in nineteen thirty eight he steps out of line again. And the cause here is Christallnacht happens, right, so you get this big night of rioting across Germany. Bunch of synagogues are burnt down, munch of Jewish businesses are like

robbed the windows, yeah, break in the wind. That's the night of broken glass, right, And Striker uses this as an excuse kind of in the wake of this to buy up millions of dollars of a Jewish property at forced sale prices, where it's basically like, hey, seeing what's happening to all these other Jewish owned businesses. Your shop can either get burnt down, you can sell it to me at like five percent of its actual value. Right now. The Nazi don't have an issue with this as a thing.

In fact, this is what they are all doing. But the problem is that Striker is not going within the party apparatus. He's just doing this at wherever he thinks there's a profit, and Harriman Gering is the guy who's supposed to be doing all this like making like buying all these businesses for nothing. So when Striker does this, he kind of steps on Gering's toes, and so the two men are wind up in conflict over this, and that conflict gets stoked by some of Striker's other enemies

within the Nazi Party apparatus. One of these guys is the local police president who like goes to Gering and is like, hey man, look, you and I are buds. I just want to let you know Striker's telling people your dick doesn't work. Like he's saying that, like your wife got artificially inseminated, because like you can't come anymore. I just want you to know, bro, like I'm not saying that. Jules is saying that. You know, it is

so petty, right, He's like, yeah, got him. So this pisses off Herman Gearing, who launches a yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, who launches a commission to investigate Striker and of course finds a lot of examples of outrageous corruption and obviously Herman Gehing is Herman Gearing. I don't trust that this was a good investigation. But Striker is outrageously corrupt, so it's probably not art and like it's so fucked up.

Like one of the things they're doing, there's like a fucking paparazzi element to this, where like Striker is constantly cheating on his wife, right, He's got all these mistresses, he's visiting prostitutes. So a big part of what they're doing is they're just like having photographers ambush him while he's like naked, fucking people and like take photos and stuff of him. Yeah, that's like a bunch this.

off as Rizaldebta. So that's like the hope, that's why they're going after him this way. So this force is

a wider investigation, you know, Gerring's investigation. And so it now becomes a matter for the Nazi courts, and the Nazi courts call up Striker's assistant, a guy nams Hans Kanig, to testify against him, and it does say as much of an asshole as Striker as to most people who works with Kanig is as loyal as you can be because when he gets subpoenaed, basically he goes to Striker and he's like, they're gonna make me, They're gonna question

me on the stand about you. And Striker's like, you should kill yourself, bro, the only way to get out of this, and Kanig does it. Kanag kills himself to protect Striker. What Yes, It's like, yes, sir, taking the order. Yeah, I guess, I guess this is how I'm doing it. Yeah, wha?

that no proper man would wear a wedding ring. Striker had collected those of his underlings to melt down into a jewelry box for his mistress and he Sits, who also received a regular salary for very limited duties from Striker's one of his newspapers. Other mistresses too, received paychecks from surprising sources. A country house with a well equipped

bedroom had been built for Striker's affairs. Further cases of the beatings of political opponents were uncovered, as were Striker's detailed examinations of the sex lives of arrested juvenile delinquents and his boasts in the presence of young people of sexual prowess. So he's doing shit like he's having all the people who work with him given his wedding rings so he can like melt them down to give a

present to his mistress. He's like whenever juvenile delinquents are arrested, he's like showing up to like sexually harass and sometimes assault them, like he'te real weird piece of shit. So again, a lot of Nazis are doing stuff like this. Striker's just really bad at covering it up. But still Hitler fights back against these attempts from the other Nazis to use this as a justification to remove him from power, and he continues to back Striker for another year until

the German invasion of Poland. And what finally gets Julius in trouble with Hitler is really dumb. Basically the invasion of Poland. Again, we forget this because of everything is kind of unpopular even in Germany at the time, right, Like, it's kind of a dicey move. It's a gamble. Hitler's a gambler. It's a gamble to invade Poland because people aren't fully on board with doing another World war at

this stage. While he's trying to build support for Hitler's invasion of Poland, Striker kind of goes off a little bit on a limb and he makes some comments critiquing the leadership of the Wehrmacht, which Hitler absolutely needs the army's support, and so when Striker fucks up and makes the army angry, Hitler has to ban Striker from giving public speeches in order to keep the army on his side.

This sort of forces another investigation against Striker, which reveals a bunch more corruption, and in nineteen forty, Hitler finally agrees to remove Julius from his official position as Gaulighter. Sort of he doesn't. Hitler can't have him in control anymore, but he doesn't want to like publicly insult him, so in public Striker is still named the Gawlighter, but he is privately another person is picked to do the job, and Striker is banned from leaving his home. Right, He's

not allowed to go to Nuremberg anymore. He's basically on like house arrest, but he's still allowed to publish Dare Stirmer. It's this weird back and forth Hitler has with him, where he's like, you are under house arrest, kit you if you go to Nuremberg. But also while the war is going on, I'm going to send you like precious supplies of fuel and paper in order to keep making their stirmer.

at being involved in politics directly right, and immediately got in. Yeah, these kind of guys come up and down in history, you know, like, yeah, it's that's just the way it goes. So Yeah, Oddly enough, firing Striker in this way is one of the few things Adolf Hitler ever felt guilty about. Like this kind of gnaws at his heart. There's like a very yeah a quote from him during a private dinner in nineteen forty two where he's like lamenting this

Striker affair is a tragedy. Striker is irreplaceable. There's no question of his coming back. But I must do him justice. If one day I write my memoirs, I shall have to recognize this man fought like a buffalo in our cause. I can't help thinking that in comparison with so many services, the reasons for Striker's dismissal are really very slender, Like it's so as a guy, he's a real piece of I mean, he's literally Hitler, but he's got this like he's like morally harmed by the fact that he's he

feels like he's not doing right by Striker. Like, it's so strange.

to publish newsletters. Most people in this period are actually going to be reading Dear Sturmer, not by like buying a copy, but because in every town in Germany they'll put up these big kind of like ground level billboard type things where every new issue will be like put under glass or something so you can see each page and like presented that way, so people in town can just like walk up to it to read that week's

issue of Dear Stirmer. Like that's how a lot of it gets handed out because like like for free, yeah, for free, because.

profitable it also people are less interested in it. During World War Two, Striker was had built his base of readers through sexual titillation and blood and guts and fear mongering about the Jews, that's the core of it, right, And by the time World War Two starts, there are not Jews publicly in German society, right, that's like the Holocaust, you know, And so there's nothing for him to fear

monger about, Right, what are you going to do? Like, how are you going to do the thing that you were doing?

through the floor. And in early nineteen forty five, Julius requests permission from Hitler to basically I want to you know, everything's falling apart, Please let me go to the front and like fight, and Hitler gives him permission, but Striker doesn't wind up doing that instead, he's just married his secretary after his wife died, who he'd been cheating with

on his wife for a long time. And right before the war ends, they flee to Burkedisgotten, which is where Hitler had, Like it's this nice little mountain town where Hitler had his like summer home, and they kind of just like move there with the plan of like writing it out as long as they can and then killing themselves. So while they're in hiding, American gis you know, capture Nuremberg and whatnot. And they find Striker's house and as

they're going this is a thing. All of these Nazis, right, you know, Hermann Gering's big palace gets like gone through by soldiers, so does like Hitler's place in Burkedisgotten. They find all of the different like art these guys had collected, and when it Striker, you know, these other big Nazis they had stolen like very valuable works of art. Inside Striker's home they find what might have been the largest stockpile of pornography in the world at the time.

who's an army major. His last name is Plitt, and he's walking around town one day in burked this godden and he sees Striker in his mistress, and Plitt doesn't think that he's Striker is instead is just like, hey, man, you look a lot like this escape Nazi. Has anyone ever told you that? Right? Like, he's just being kind

of casual about it. Yeah, but he does it in like German, and he's not great at speaking German, right, because he's an American, And so Striker, because the dude's German is broken, thinks this guy is saying you are the escaped Nazi Julius Striker and hands himself in Right, He's like, you got me, And then the Major's like, wait, really for real, why are you actually that guy? Yeah? So you know, the language barrier captured us at least one Nazi. There you go. Right now, Striker gets arrested.

If you go and read and if you're googling a lot of stories about Striker, you will wind up on a bunch of Nazi websites. Because they are livid that he gets they call it torture, which I guess you could. It's not not torture. Basically, what happens is when he gets arrested. This is a thing that happens to a number of arrested Nazis, a couple of like Jewish soldiers and Black soldiers just beat the shit out of him, right,

just absolutely to fuck it. But right, like, I'm not worried about this, This is not this doesn't tweak my heart. But Nazis get really angry about the fact that the Allies tortured this guy. Where it's like, yeah, I don't know, man. One thing that we know happens is that US troops starts circulating a picture of him after he got the hell beaten out of him that has a sign that says Julius stre or King of Jews. Yeah, yeah, so you kicked in. Yeah, he gets a little he gets

more of his come up ince than like most Nazis. Right, So he goes on, you know, he's captured. He's there's like a year or so where he's like, you know, in custody and everyone's trying to figure out how to do the Nuremberg trials because that's the whole process. And like while he's being interrogated while this court trial is going on, Striker he kind of like he has a

couple of weird periods. There's like one period of time where he starts because this is if you remember, you know your history, Right after World War Two, a number of these Jewish militias that had existed in Palestine start like fighting, you know, more openly, right, And he hears about this, and he starts making speeches about how now you know, if you'll let me go, I'll go to Palestine to fight on behalf of these Jewish militias because

unlike the German, they're willing to fight for their homeland or whatever. Right, it's very weird, Like I think he's just like fucking with people, right, like yeah, because he like he's trolling, right, like that is the guy this is like he knows this will get attention. He wants to troll people. He makes a claim at one point that like I met this Jewish American soldier who treated me well and it proved to me that there's good Jews.

But then he also writes like a final like big anti Semitic rant that's his like political statement about how everything's the fault. He's just like trolling people, right, like we don't need to get into it that. I mean the guy that he is in prison, Yeah he's going to say that shit, yeah exactly. So they have this big international military tribunal. Striker and Garring are kind of like two of the bigger Nazis there. There's some like

generals and whatnot. And the indictment of Striker concludes that he was like not directly involved in the physical commission of the Holocaust, right, not or at least not in a way that's like similar to you know, the people

who are running aushwit whatever. Right. But they note, and I think this is a really interesting and valuable thing that the Nuremberg trial does that while he was not a part of the state and he was not organizing death camps, his propaganda was consciously preparing the way for genocide, right, that that had been part of his goal, and that he was thus partly responsible for Nazi crimes against humanity.

There's a line in here, basically like within sort of the kind of indictments against him, there's this sort of a line that quote the effects of this man's crime, of the poison that he has poured into the minds of millions of young boys and girls, goes on, for he concentrated upon the youth and childhood of Germany. He leaves behind him a legacy of almost a whole people poisoned with hate, sadism, and murder and perverted by him. That people remain a problem and perhaps a menace to

the rest of civilization for generations to come. So yeah, that is the accurate conclusion of the Nuremberg Commission. He is sentenced to death.