National Socialism
In 1922, Streicher finally found his mentor. He visited Munich in order to hear Adolf Hitler speak, an experience that he later said left him transformed:
| “ | "Have you already heard Adolf Hitler speak?" I had been asked for quite some time. ... It was on a winter's day in 1922. And there I sat in a public meeting, an unknown among unknowns. ... It was the last hour before midnight when his speech ended ... It was an immense wealth of ideas that in a more than three hour long speech came from his mouth, clad into the beauty of a gifted oratory. ... When he was standing on the podium with a face radiant with joy and looking at the stormy enthusiasm, I felt that there had to be something special in Hitler! ... Everybody could feel it: this man speaks on behalf of a divine appointment, as a messenger sent from heaven at a time when hell had opened to devour everything. "Haben Sie schon Adolf Hitler sprechen gehört?" so wurde ich seit einiger Zeit immer wieder gefragt. ... Es war an einem Wintertag des Jahres 1922. Da saß ich wieder einmal in einer öffentlichen Versammlung als Unbekannter unter Unbekannten. ... Es war die letzte Stunde vor Mitternacht gewesen, als seine Rede ausklang ... Es war ein ungeheurer Reichtum von Gedanken, die in einer mehr als dreistündigen Reden aus seinem Munde kamen, gekleidet in die Schönheit einer begnadeten Sprache. ... Jeder fühlte es: Dieser Mann spricht aus einer göttlichen Berufung heraus, er spricht als Abgesandter des Himmels in einem Augenblick, indem die Hölle sich auftat, alles zu verschlingen. |
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Soon after, Streicher joined the Nazi Party and merged his personal following with Hitler’s, almost doubling the party membership.
In May 1923 Streicher founded the newspaper, Der Stürmer (The Stormer, or, loosely, The Attacker). From the outset, the chief aim of the paper was to promulgate anti-Semitic propaganda. “We will be slaves of the Jew,” the paper announced. “Therefore he must go.”
In November of that year, Streicher participated in Hitler’s first effort to seize power, the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. Streicher marched with Hitler in the front row of the would-be revolutionaries and braved the bullets of the Munich police. His loyalty earned him Hitler’s lifelong trust and protection; in the years that followed, Streicher would be one of the dictator’s few true intimates.
As a reward for his dedication, when the Nazi Party was legalized again and re-organized in 1925 Streicher was appointed Gauleiter of the Bavarian region of Franconia (which included his home town of Nuremberg). In the early years of the party’s rise, Gauleiter were essentially party functionaries without real power; but in the final years of the Weimar Republic, they became paramilitary commanders. During the 12 years of the Nazi regime itself, party Gauleiter like Streicher would wield immense power, and be in large measure untouchable by legal authority.
Streicher was also elected to the Bavarian "Landtag" or legislature, a position which gave him a margin of parliamentary immunity — a safety net that would help him resist efforts to silence his racist message.
Read more about this topic: Julius Streicher
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