Early Leaders of the Nazi Party

• Hans Frank

• Rudolf Hess

• Ernst Röhm

• Joseph Goebbels

• Heinrich Himmler

• Alfred Rosenberg

• Hermann Göring

• Adolf Hitler

• Julius Streicher

Hans Frank (1900-1946):

Hans Frank served as legal counsel for the Nazi Party members during the 1920s and 1930s; between 1939 and 1945, he was the Governor General of Poland, where he implemented Nazi policies in Eastern Europe.

Photo: Hans Frank. Image donated by Corbis - Bettmann.

Print: Hans Frank from Perpetrators exhibit. Print by Sid Chafetz. Used by permission.

Frank grew up in Munich and attended the universities of Kiel and Munich, where he studied law. While studying, he became involved with the early Nazi Party; he joined the SA and participated in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.

During the early years of the Nazi Party, Frank defended Hitler and others in libel suits. After the Nazis came into power in 1933, Frank was appointed the Minister of Justice for Bavaria, and in 1934, Minister without Portfolio. From 1934 until 1941, he was the President of the Academy for German Law and helped to develop laws that followed the principles of National Socialism.

In October 1939, just weeks after the German invasion of Poland, Hitler appointed Frank the Governor General of Poland. In this position, he had a constant battle with SS and Gestapo officials for control of the administration of Poland.

In June 1942, Frank returned to Germany where he made three speeches, stressing that Germany must restore the rule of law and stop the arbitrary arrests and imprisonments conducted without the due process of law. “Law either exists or it does not,” he said. “Where there is no system of justice, the state sinks into a pit of darkness and horror.”
Surprisingly, he only received a reprimand from Hitler for his outspoken criticism of the Nazi state. Henceforth, Hitler ordered Frank to follow the party line. Frank did comply with Hitler’s orders for the duration of the war.

Throughout his career with the party, Frank maintained a meticulous diary. In 19945, the diary filled 42 volumes with 11,367 pages.

At the end of the war, Frank was captured by American troops and tried at Nuremberg for war crimes and crimes against humanity. As the historian Joseph Persico explains in his Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial, Frank turned his diary over to authorities after his capture. Frank believed:

It was all there, the words that would save him, his improvement of lives of the Poles, his fights with Himmler, his brave law speeches in Germany, his attempts to resign the governor general’s job. Certainly, the Americans would see through the pro forma anti-Semitic rabble-rousing. It was simply the lip service any Nazi official was expected to spout in order to keep his job.

Quoted in, Joseph Persico, Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial (paperback), p. 26.

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Joseph Goebbels(1897-1945):

Joseph Goebbels became the Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in the Nazi government. (The Propagandaministerium [Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda] was the ministry for propaganda in Nazi Germany.) He became known as the Father of Modern Propaganda. At many times during the Third Reich, Goebbels was close to Hitler and ended his own life the day after Hitler committed suicide in 1945.

Photo: Joseph Goebbels. Image donated by Corbis - Bettmann.

Print: Goebbels family from Perpetrators exhibit. Print by Sid Chafetz. Used by permission.

Joseph Goebbels was born in Rheydt on the Rhine to a pious Catholic family. He had a clubfoot from birth and was thus unable to serve in the army during World War I. Instead, he attended the University of Heidelberg, where he earned a doctorate in literature and philosophy. He was unsuccessful in making a living as a writer. He joined the Nazi Party in 1924.

Like Goring, Goebbels rose in the ranks of the party during the late 1920s. In 1926 he became Gauleiter of Berlin, where he was charged with winning support for the Nazis in the capital. In 1928, he was elected to the Reichstag and two years later, in 1930, he was appointed the party chief of propaganda. Goebbels had a prominent role in running the election campaigns for the Nazis in 1930 and 1933.

Goebbels maintained a diary from the earliest years of his career. During his first years with the Nazi Party his diary entries reveal his fascination with Hitler. On November 6, 1925, he described Hitler in the following manner:

Wit, irony, humor, sarcasm, earnestness, passion, white heat—all this is contained in his speech. This man has everything it takes to be king. The great tribute of the people. The coming dictator.

His diary entry for June 6, 1926, praises Hitler as “The Born Agitator”:

As a speaker he [Hitler] combines gesture, mimicry, and language in great harmony. The born agitator. With that man one can conquer the world. Unleash him and he makes the whole corrupt republic totter.

On March 13, 1933, soon after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Goebbels was appointed the Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. In this position he took a leading role in nazifying German culture and controlling the media. For example, he promoted the burning of “un-German” books on May 10, 1933. In his speech on this day Goebbels revealed his support for the effort:

The age of extreme Jewish intellectualism had now ended, and the success of the German revolution has again given the right of way to the German spirit. . . . From these ashes there will rise the phoenix of a new spirit . . . . Brightened by these flames our vow shall be: The Reich and the nation and our Führer Adolf Hitler: Heil! Heil! Heil!

During the war years Goebbels’ talents for propaganda were used for psychological warfare. He sought to enlist widespread popular support for the totalitarian war; by 1944 he had full responsibility for mobilizing the German public behind the war effort. For example, after the German Army invaded the Soviet Union, Goebbels stressed that the task of German propaganda would be to denigrate everything the Soviet Union had tried to achieve. “A particularly impressive way of doing this,” he explained, “will be to contrast the inhuman conditions in the Soviet Union with the social progress, the high cultural level and the healthy joy in life of the working people in national socialist Germany.”

Quoted in Jeremy Noakes, ed., Nazism: A Documentary Reader, Vol. 4, p. 475.

As the Russian campaign bogged down in late 1942 and early 1943, Goebbels reiterated the principles of propaganda for total war. Three ideas that needed to be repeated at every opportunity were: the war had been forced on the German people; this war was a matter of life and death; and, there must be total war.

In the final days of the war, Goebbels was still close to Hitler. Nevertheless, he refused to take the position of Reich Chancellor. On May 1, 1945, the day after Hitler’s suicide, Goebbels and his wife committed suicide in Hitler’s bunker after ordering the killing of their six children.

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Hermann Göring (1893-1946):

Göring held a leading position in the military and economic policies of the Nazi Party and was designated as Hitler’s successor between 1939 and 1945 before he lost favor with Hitler in the closing days of World War II. Göring also played a key role in planning the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”

Photo: Hermann Goring. Image donated by Corbis - Bettmann.

Print: Hermann Goring from Perpetrators exhibit. Print by Sid Chafetz. Used by permission.

Göring was born in a town in Bavaria, the son of a wealthy family. He earned early fame as an ace pilot in World War I. In the postwar period he became smitten with Hitler’s oratory and the Nazi Party ideals. He joined the party in 1922 and became the commander of the SA. He was wounded while participating in the Beer Hall Putsch. In 1928, he was elected as a Reichstag deputy on the Nazi ticket, and in 1932 he became speaker of the Reichstag.

During the first six years that the Nazis were in power—1933-1939—Göring held a number of prominent political posts: Minister without Portfolio; Prussian Minister of the Interior; commander of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe); Reichsmarschall; head of the Four Year Plan; chair of the Reich Defense Council.

After World War II began, Göring was instrumental in designing policies for emigration of Jews from Nazi-occupied territories and administering confiscated Jewish property.

As the war wore on, Göring began losing favor with Hitler because the Luftwaffe failed to perform as expected. By the final days of the war, Hitler dismissed Göring from the Nazi Party and all his posts. Admiral Donitz was named Hitler’s successor in place of Göring.

At the Nuremberg Trials after the war, Göring was the most well-known defendant. He was found guilty on all four counts and sentenced to death by hanging. However, just before the hanging, Göring obtained cyanide and cheated the hangman. To this day, historians are trying to ascertain who gave Göring the poison.

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Rudolf Hess (1894-1987):

Rudolf Hess was born in Egypt to a father who managed a successful import-export business. Rudolf was not interested in carrying on his father’s business and was pleased to serve as an infantryman and pilot in World War I. He first heard Hitler speak in a tavern in Munich and decided to enroll as the sixteenth member of the Nazi Party on July 1, 1920. As an ardent follower he participated in the Beer Hall Putsch and agreed to follow Hitler to prison in Landsberg after the putsch failed. At Landsberg Hess shared ideas with Hitler as Hitler composed his autobiography Mein Kampf.

Photo: Rudolf Hess. Image donated by Corbis - Bettmann.

Print: Rudolf Hess from Perpetrators exhibit. Print by Sid Chafetz. Used by permission.

After his imprisonment, Hess became Hitler’s secretary. When the Nazis took power in 1933, He became the Deputy Fuhrer and Reichsminister without portfolio. While other Nazi leaders like Goring gained public attention, Hess worked in the background and gained immense power in controlling the Nazi bureaucracy. As the historian Joseph Persico has noted:

No domestic public law, decree, or rule could be issued without first passing through Hess’s hands. No act desired by the nazis could be denied by the government. It was as if a Republican or Democratic national chairman were to take control over the Washington government apparatus.

Joseph Persico, Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial, 291.

After the outbreak of the war, other members of the Nazi elite began to undermine Hess’ influence. His last major act was a flight to Scotland where he hoped to secure an agreement with the British. Captured in Scotland, he spent most of the war years in British captivity.

After the war, Hess was tried as a war criminal at Nuremberg. Hess’ primary defense was a loss of memory.

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Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945):

Heinrich Himmler became Reich Leader of the SS, head of the Getapo and Waffen SS, and Minister of the Interior from 1943-45.

Photo: Heinrich Himmler. Image donated by Corbis - Bettmann.

Print: Heinrich Himmler from Perpetrators exhibit. Print by Sid Chafetz. Used by permission.

Himmler was born in Munich to a middle-class family. He joined the army in 1917 as an officer cadet but never had an opportunity to serve at the front. Following the war he studied agriculture and economy at the Munich School of Technology. He then worked for a short time as a salesman and chicken farmer before he developed close ties with the Nazi Party. Having participated in the Beer Hall Putsch, he became involved with the early SA organizations and held a variety of positions in the Gau of Bavaria. In 1925, he joined the SS, and, by 1919, he ascended to leadership of the SS.

After Hitler became Chancellor, Himmler increased the power of the SS and after the Night of Long Knives established the independence of the SS and SA. By 1936, Himmler had assumed control of the entire police force to the Third Reich as the Reichsfuhrer of the SS and Head of the German Police.

Himmler’s desire to purify the Aryan race led to the creation of Lebensborn homes for women to mate with SS men to produce Aryan children. In addition, he laid out specifications for the marriages of SS men. This whole effort to produce a “master race” was expanded as the Reich included men from different nationalities. His ultimate aim was to create a European order of knighthood that owed total and unswerving allegiance to Adolf Hitler. The works of Richard Walter Darre and Hans L.K. Gunther strongly influenced Himmler in his goals to create a German racial aristocracy based on selective breeding. His ultimate aim was to create “an order of good blood to serve Germany.”

Himmler’s powers expanded during the war. In addition to his authority over the German police forces, he took charge of the operations for making Europe Judenrein (free of Jews). The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust aptly summarizes the enormous powers Himmler had assumed by the time Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941:

By the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Himmler controlled all the organs of police and intelligence power, and through the SS he dominated the concentration and extermination camps in Poland. His Waffen SS and its thirty-five divisions almost constituted a rival army to the Wehrmacht. He also controlled political administration in the occupied territories. When he was made Minister of the Interior in 1943, Himmler gained jurisdiction over the courts and civil service as well and to institute pseudo medical experiments on “asocial individuals”, to determine their resistance to extremes of cold and decompression.

Himmler's SS Chart: (click to enlarge)

Toward the end of the war, and as it appeared that the Germans were losing, Himmler made a number of abortive efforts to deal with the Allies. He also tried to conceal evidence of the mass murder. Following the surrender of Germany, Himmler tried to escape and assumed a false identity, but British forces captured him. On May 23, 1945, Himmler committed suicide before he could be brought to trial as a war criminal.

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Adolf Hitler (1889-1945):

Photo: Adolf Hitler. Image donated by Corbis - Bettmann.

Print: Parade Watchers from Perpetrators exhibit. Print by Sid Chafetz. Used by permission.

Image: Cover of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

Photo: Adolf Hitler's last visit to President von Hindenburg in July
1934. The President died shortly after this visit.Collection of the Florida Holocaust Museum.

Photo: The German People Mourn President von Hindenburg's Death,
August 2, 1934. The Commemoration was in the Berlin State Opera.
Henceforth, Adolf Hitler is the Fuhrer of the Reich, combining the offices of the Chancellor and the President. Collection of the Florida Holocaust Museum.

Adolf Hitler served as Chancellor of Germany from January 30, 1933 until the death of President von Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, when he assumed the title of Fuhrer, combining the offices of Chancellor and President. He was the Fuhrer of the Third Reich until the spring on 1945 when Germany was losing World War II and it appeared as though the Reich would collapse. Threatened by the Russian forces coming into Berlin and rubble from Allied bombing raids, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker on April 30, 1945.

Traditionally, German leadership often came from the Junker class, the Prussian military aristocracy. Even after World War I when Germany was proclaimed the Weimar Republic, there remained leaders from the traditional elites.

Adolf Hitler did not come from the aristocracy. He was born to a customs official in he small Austrian town of Braunau am Inn, in the Austrian Hungarian Empire in 1889. His schooling was in Linz, Austria. Between 1907 and 1913, Hitler lived in Vienna. Originally, he had aspirations to attend the Academy of Graphic Arts and become an artist. After being rejected from the academy, Hitler lived on an orphan’s pension and earnings from his sale of paintings, postcards and posters.

During his years in Vienna he encountered antisemitic literature and listened to right-wing politicians, accusing the Jews of a worldwide conspiracy to take over the world. He also attended Wagnerian operas, recalling the might of a once strong and vigorous German people.

In 1913, Hitler left the Austro-Hungarian Empire for Munich, Germany. He had come to loath the multicultural environment of the empire and sought to find the pure German people inside the borders of Germany. When World War I broke out, Hitler joined the Bavarian army and worked his way up to corporal by 1917. Hitler found his purpose in life in the war: he loved the comraderie of the soldiers united in an effort to defeat enemies of Germany. In 1918, while Hitler was recovering from a mustard gas attack in the hospital, he learned of the German surrender. He was devastated by the news and was incensed by the domestic revolution that brought about the creation of the Weimar Republic.

Upon leaving the hospital, Hitler returned to Munich, the capital of Bavaria, where he became enmeshed in right-wing politics. Serving as an informer for the military, he sat in on a meeting of the German Workers’ Party. This party, which changed its name on February 24, 1920 to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeitspartei, NSDAP or Nazi Party), captured Hitler’s attention and support. Within months he had become a member and assumed leadership.

As the leader of this nascent party, Hitler developed close relations with several men—Hermann Goring, Rudolf Hess, Ernst Rohm, and Alfred Rosenberg—who would remain loyal supporters of Hitler for years to come. In the early 20s the Nazi Party was one of several radical right-wing groups vying for power in the Bavarian capital. On November 8, 1923, the Nazis working with General Erich Ludendorff staged the abortive Beer Hall Putsch. In the aftermath, the party was declared illegal and Hitler received a prison sentence in the Bavarian town of Landsberg.

During his nine-month imprisonment, Hitler composed his autobiography Mein Kampf. While it was poorly organized and repetitive, Hitler set forth his visions on race, a new Germany and the destiny of Germany in the world community.

Released from prison in December 1924, Hitler resumed his political career in Bavaria. In 1928, the party began winning recognition in the north of Germany, and the deteriorating economic conditions of 1929 (following the Wall Street Crash) led to greater support for the party. In the early 30s, as unemployment escalated and conditions of poverty spread throughout Germany, Nazism gained increased public support and votes, and, by 1932, the Nazis emerged as the dominant party in the Reich. It was not total support however. Between the July 1932 elections and the elections of November 1932, the Nazis lost two million votes. As the historian Dick Geary succinctly explains:

What made Hitler chancellor in early 1933, . . . was not only the scale of his party’s support at the polls but also political intrigues on the part of conservative elites, in particular the army and agriculture, which decided to make a deal with him.

The Holocaust Encyclopedia, I, p. 289.

Hitler, as Chancellor and later as Fuhrer of the German Reich, pursued policies that had been outlined in the 25-Point Program of the Nazi Party in 1920 and Mein Kampf.

From 1933 until his suicide in Berlin in April 1945, Hitler’s life becomes totally entwined with the affairs of the Nazi Party and the German Reich. During the first six years of the Nazis in power, Hitler guided the process of coordination whereby the party infiltrated every organization and institution within the Reich.

Quite clearly, Hitler intended the Reich to restore German greatness that had been so badly tarnished with the defeat of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles. Starting in 1935, Hitler began dismantling the terms of Versailles. Germany began rearmament and by the late 1930s reoccupied areas lost after World War I. Moreover, in defiance of Versailles, Germany was reunited with Austria in the Anschluss of March 1938.

Also, during the first years of the Nazi state, antisemitic measures sought to exclude Jews from every part of German life. With the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935, Hitler warned Jews against incitement or protest to the restrictions:

The government of the German Reich is guided by the thought that it may be possible, by a unique secular solution, to achieve a basic situation, which may enable the German people to arrive at a tolerable relationship toward the Jews. Should this hope not be realized, and the Jewish incitement continue in Germany and in the international arena, the situation will be evaluated anew.

As quoted in Yehuda Bauer, A History of the Holocaust (revised edition), p. 118.

The war years coincided with the evolution of the policy of the “Final Solution” for the Jewish Question. Today, most historians concur that there were a series of stages of antisemitic policy that culminated in the “Final Solution.” Hitler relied on devoted followers in local areas to implement his policies. Working closely with his top advisers, Hitler kept abreast what was happening in the Reich and, when necessary, stepped in to make sure the radical policy of the mass murder of Jews was being fully implemented. Hitler ran his government in an unusual way, according to the historian Yehuda Bauer. There was no formal government meeting after 1938. Rather, Hitler had meetings with his close advisers: during the meetings nothing was written, and it was only after the meetings that attendees sought to write down their notes. Since historians do not have written minutes of what transpired in the sessions with Hitler, we will never know how much Hitler initiated policies and to what extent he was guided by information from his top advisers and the bureaucracy.

Bauer sums up the relationship between Hitler and the elite of the party in his Rethinking the Holocaust:

It was the elite of the Nazi Party, possibly a couple of hundred persons . . . , who saw in the Jews the major threat to German, Nordic, Aryan humankind. It was within that group that the murderous inclinations developed. Hitler himself, Joseph Goebbels, Richard Walter Darre, Heinrich Himmler, Martin Bormann, Alfred Rosenberg, Julius Streicher, Wilhelm Frick, Otto Thierack, Hans Frank, Reinhard Heydrich are some of the more prominent names that come to mind. The leadership of Hitler was crucial, because he was undoubtedly the radicalizing factor. People like Himmler or even Goring were moved into their murderous stance by Hitler; it is unlikely that they would have reached that point without him. Hitler influenced a group of what might be called pseudo-intellectuals who were prepared, socially, psychologically, and politically, to accept radical, murderous programs. . . .

Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, pp. 31-2.

At the very end of his life, he continued to believe in the eternal struggle against the Jews. On the day before he committed suicide (April 29, 1945) when Germany faced defeat and the entire Third Reich was about to collapse, Hitler composed My Political Testament:

More than thirty years have passed since I contributed my modest strength in 1914 as a volunteer in the First World War, which was forced upon the Reich.

In these three decades only love and loyalty to my people have guided me in my thinking, my actions and my life. They gave me the strength to make the difficult decisions, such as have never before confronted mortal man. I have used up my time, my working strength and my health in these three decades.

. . .

But before everything else I call upon the leadership of the nation and those who follow it to observe the racial laws most carefully, to fight mercilessly against the poisoners of all the peoples of the world, international Jewry.

As quoted in, Yitzhak Arad et.al., eds., Documents on the Holocaust, pp. 162-63.

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Ernst Röhm (1887-1934):
During the Nazi era, he became chief of the Storm Troopers (Sturmabteilung; SA).

Photo: Ernst Rohm. Image donated by Corbis - Bettmann.

Röhm was born in Munich as the son of an official. Serving in World War I, he attained the rank of captain. After the war he had a hard time finding employment and joined the Freikorps. He took part in the effort to overthrow the Soviet government in Munich in the immediate postwar period.

In 1919, Röhm met Hitler and joined the German Workers’ Party (the precursor to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party; the Nazi Party). In 1921 he helped to organize the SA; two years later he took part in the Beer Hall Putsch. His participation in the failed effort at treason led to his dismissal from the German army.

In 1924 Röhm became a commanding officer for a section of the SA. However, in the mid and late 1920s, Röhm became increasingly critical of Hitler and his leadership of the party. For a short time in the late 1920s he left Germany for Bolivia, but he returned to a leadership position in the SA after 1930 when the Nazis began to gain popularity and power in the Reichstag. The membership of the SA greatly increased: in 1930 there were 70,000 members; in 1931 there were 170,000 members; and in 1934 there were 4.5 million members.

After Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, the tension between Hitler and Röhm intensified. Röhm criticized how the party failed to fulfill promises of introducing socialist measures for a more equitable distribution of wealth; he was also critical of Hitler’s compromises with industrialists. Röhm and other leadership of the SA spoke of a “second revolution” that would displace the existing class structure and convert the SA into a peoples’ army replacing the existing Reichswehr.

The tension between Hitler and Röhm came to a head on the night of June 30, 1934 when Hitler ordered the murder of Röhm and seventy other leaders of the SA. The purge has become known as The Night of Long Knives. The Nazi leadership justified the murders claiming that the SA leaders were plotting to overthrow the government; the SA leaders were also accused of homosexual practices.

Röhm’s attitudes are summed up in his 1930 statement, “The Uses of Fear and Brutality:"

Brutality is respected. The people need wholesome fear. They want to fear something. They want someone to frighten them and make them shudderingly submissive. Haven’t you seen everywhere that after the beerhall battles those who have been beaten are the first to join the party as new members? Why babble about brutality and get indignant about tortures? The masses want them. They need something that will give them a thrill of horror.

From Hermann Rauschning’s Voices of Destruction as quoted in Howard J. Langer, ed., The History of the Holocaust: A Chronology of Quotations [Jason Aronson Inc.; Northvale, N.J. 1997], p 34.

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Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946):

Alfred Rosenberg was not a native German. He was born in Reval, Estonia, into a German speaking family. He studied engineering in Riga. He then went on to study architecture in Moscow when the Russian Revolution broke out. Appalled by the revolution, he fled to Paris and then to Munich, where he spent time among White Russian groups. In 1919 he joined the Nazi Party and became part of a small group surrounding Hitler in the early Munich period.

Photo: Alfred Rosenberg. Image donated by Corbis - Bettmann.

In 1923 Rosenberg became the editor of the Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter. He was an active participant in the Beer Hall Putsch. While in prison, Hitler instructed Rosenberg to take over leadership of the Nazi Party. He proved a poor leader and the party broke down into many factions and did not regain momentum until Hitler resumed leadership in 1925. As soon as Hitler got out of prison, he resumed leadership.

In 1929 Rosenberg founded the League for German Culture, specifically designed to combat “degenerate” art, and held a number of cultural and educational posts with the party. He published his book The Myth of the Twentieth Century, which included some of the philosophical concepts of the Third Reich. As he explained:

We now realize that the central supreme values of the Roman and Protestant churches, being a negative Christianity, do not respond to our soul. Liberalism preached: Freedom, generosity, freedom of trade, Parliamentarianism, emancipation of women, equality of sexes, etc., that is to say, it sinned against the law of nature, the creative actions can only come from the working or polarized potentials, that a potential of energy is necessary to produce work of any kind, to create culture. The German idea today demands in the midst of the disintegration of the old effeminate world. Authority, type-creating energy, self-elimination, discipline, protection of racial character, recognition of the eternal polarity of the sexes.

The idea of honor—national honor—does not permit Christian love, nor the humanity of the Freemasons, nor Roman philosophy.

As quoted in Robert Conot, Justice at Nuremberg [New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, Inc., 1983], p. 216.

Rosenberg aspired to be Foreign Minister for the Nazis but the highest office he achieved was Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories in July 1941. He also established the Eintab Rosenberg, an operation for looting the art of Europe; Hermann Göring was the primary beneficiary of the paintings Rosenberg gathered in occupied territories. In Paris, for instance, Rosenberg was responsible for having 29,984 paintings removed from some 69,619 Jewish apartments. He proudly reported this deed in his report to the Führer.

Although Rosenberg never achieved a higher office in the Nazi Foreign Service, he spoke out about the foreign policies. He objected to the policy of resettling Slavs and Germanizing the areas in the East; he preferred the notion of creating satellites to the Third Reich. As the historians Ann and John Tusa have noted, Rosenberg “would have rested happy with exterminating only Jews and not extending activity to the wiping out of Slavs as well.”

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Julius Streicher (1885-1945):

Julius Streicher was born in Fleinhausen, Bavaria, a small village near the city of Augsburg. He was the ninth child of a schoolmaster and was raised in the Catholic tradition. While growing up, Julius heard antisemitic remarks from his local priest. Between 1904 and 1913, he served as a teacher in a variety of settings and had several run-ins with local priests and authorities.

Photo: Julius Streicher. Image donated by Corbis - Bettmann.

Print: Julius Streicher from Perpetrators exhibit. Print by Sid Chafetz. Used by permission.

Serving in the army during World War I, Streicher found a purpose in life. He was distinguished with the Iron Cross, First Class. Following the war, he was bitter about Germany’s loss and blamed the defeat on the Jews. In 1919 he headed an antisemitic political party in Bavaria and demonstrated early on his talent for propaganda. In 1921, he joined the Nazi Party and, two years later, established the journal known as Der Stürmer.

Der Stürmer, an illustrated weekly, included articles about Jewish ritual murder and rape of Christian girls. On the front page and throughout the journal were graphic depictions of Jews. Also, the journal supported antisemitic actions such as the April 1, 1933 Boycott of Jewish shops. During the war the journal endorsed plans for the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”

In addition to his work with Der Stürmer, Streicher contributed to the Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter. On the eve of the Boycott, for example, Streicher contributed an article to the paper which announced the upcoming action: “On Saturday, 1 April, at 10 A.M., the German people begins defensive action against the Jewish world-criminals! National Socialists! Strike down the world-enemy!”

Streicher also published books for children that incorporated antisemitic themes. Among these publications was The Poisoned Mushroom, filled with short stories and illustrations contrasting the good and virtuous Aryan with the evil and untrustworthy Jew.

The following story from The Poisoned Mushroom illustrates the antisemitic tone that runs throughout the book:

Inge, that is the girl—Inge sits in the reception room of the Jew doctor. She has to wait a long time. She looks through the journals which are on the table. But she is much too nervous to read even a few words. Again and again she remembers her talk with her mother. Again and again her mind reflects on the warnings of her leader of the League for German Girls. A German must never consult a Jew doctor. And particularly not a German girl. Many a German girl who went to a Jew doctor to be cured met with disease and disgrace. When Inge entered the waiting room, she experienced an extraordinary incident. She heard the voice of a young girl saying: “Doctor, doctor, leave me alone.” Then she heard the scornful laughter of a man. And then all of a sudden all became absolutely silent. Inge had listened breathlessly. What can be the meaning of all this? she asked herself and her heart was pounding. And again she thought of the warning of a leader of the League of German Girls.

Inge had already been waiting an hour. Again she takes the journals and endeavors to read. Then the door opens. Inge looks up and the Jew appears. She screams. In terror she drops the paper. Horrified she jumps up. Her eyes stare into the face of the Jew doctor. And this face is the face of the Devil. In the middle of the devil’s face is a huge crooked nose. Behind the spectacles gleam two criminal eyes. Around the thick lips plays a grin, a grin that means, “Now I have you at last you little German girl.” And then the Jew approaches her. His fat fingers snatch at her. But now Inge has got hold of herself. Before the Jew can grab hold of her, she smacks the fat face of the Jew doctor with her hand. One jump to the door. Breathlessly Inge runs down the stairs. Breathlessly she escapes from the Jew house.

As quoted in International Military Tribunal: Nuremberg, Official Text, pp. 115-16.

During the Nuremberg Trials, the prosecution used The Poisoned Mushroom as evidence against the defendant Streicher, demonstrating how Streicher’s publications for children and adult contributed to an atmosphere of hatred that turn neighbor against neighbor.

Another Streicher publication that was designed for children was Don’t Trust the Fox in the Green Meadow nor the Jew on his Oath, written by Elvira Bauer and published by Der Stürmer in 1936, Throughout there are contrasts between the Aryan and the Jew:

A picture book for little ones. . . .

Jesus says, “The Jew is a murderer through and through.” And when Christ had to die the Lord didn’t know any other people who would have tortured him to death, so he chose the Jews. That is why the Jews pride themselves on being the chosen people. . . .

[Illustration shows the Jewish butcher.] He sells half-refuse instead of meat. A piece of meat lies on the floor, the cat claws another/. This doesn’t worry the Jewish butcher since the meat increases in weight. Besides one mustn’t forget, he won’t have to eat it himself. . . .

[Illustration] What a poor specimen the Jew is. He doesn’t have his own women and thinks himself clever if he steals a German woman for himself. Yet, look at the Jew: He doesn’t even fit her. . . .

[Illustration shows Streicher as friend and educator of German boys and girls.] We have a fighter in the German Gau of Franconia whom we have to thank that our country remains healthy and free of Jewish residue.

[Illustration shows German children reading Der Stürmer.]

[Illustration shows expulsion of Jewish children from the school whilst German children jeer.] Now it is going to be nice at school, for all Jewish children have to go, big ones and little ones. Crying, weeping, fury and anger doesn’t help. Away with the Jewish brood.]

Quoted in Howard J. Langer, The History of the Holocaust: A Chronology of Quotations, p. 55.

As an early member of the Nazi Party, Streicher rose in the ranks and eventually became Gauleiter of Franconia. However, his personality led to conflicts with Hitler and other leading party officials; eventually he was dismissed from the party.

After the war, Streicher was captured and tried at Nuremberg in the International Military Tribunal. He was found guilty of “crimes against humanity” and sentenced to death by hanging. His sentence was carried out on October 16, 1946.

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