Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview (43 page)

3
Fest,
The Face of the Third Reich
, 163.

4
Fritz Nova,
Alfred Rosenberg: Nazi Theorist of the Holocaust
(New York: Hippocrene Books, 1986).

5
James Biser Whisker,
The Philosophy of Alfred Rosenberg: Origins of the National Socialist Myth
(Torrance: The Noontide Press, 1990).

6
Paul Douglass,
God among the Germans
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935), 30.

7
Arthur Duncan-Jones,
The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Germany
(London: Victor Gollancz, 1938), 24.

8
Nova,
Alfred Rosenberg
, 31.

9
Nova,
Alfred Rosenberg
, 31.

10
Max Domarus,
The Essential Hitler: Speeches and Commentary
(Wauconda: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2007), 403.

11
Cited in Domarus,
The Essential Hitler
, 403.

12
Peter Peel, “Preface,” in Alfred Rosenberg,
The Myth of the Twentieth Century
(Torrance: The Noontide Press, 1982), v.

13
Raymond T. Feely,
Nazism versus Religion
(New York: The Paulist Press, 1940), 26.

14
Feely,
Nazism versus Religion
, 167.

15
Paul Roland,
The Illustrated History of the Nazis
(Edison: Chartwell Books, 2009), 57.

16
Dutch,
Hitler’s 12 Apostles
, 85.

17
Dutch,
Hitler’s 12 Apostles
, 26.

18
Richard J. Evans,
The Coming of the Third Reich
(New York: The Penguin Press 2004), 178.

19
Adolf Hitler,
Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 1941–1944
, trans. Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens; intro. H.R. Trevor-Roper, “The Mind of Adolf Hitler” (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953), 342.

20
Dutch,
Hitler’s 12 Apostles
, 82.

21
Hans Weinert,
Entstehung der Menschenrassen
, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Fredinand Enke Verlag, 1942), 314–315.

22
Heinz Brücher, “Lebenskunde,”
Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte
(1937), 8:190–192.

23
Dutch,
Hitler’s 12 Apostles
, 83.

24
Nova,
Alfred Rosenberg
, 31.

25
Robert Cecil,
The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology
(New York: Dodd and Meade, 1972), 12.

26
Whisker,
The Philosophy of Alfred Rosenberg
, 190–191.

27
Whisker,
The Philosophy of Alfred Rosenberg
, 191.

28
Whisker,
The Philosophy of Alfred Rosenberg
, 191.

29
Cited in Fest,
The Face of the Third Reich
, 168.

30
Whisker,
The Philosophy of Alfred Rosenberg
, 202.

31
John Grabowski,
Josef Mengele
(Farmington Hills: Lucent Books, 2004), 20.

32
Peel, “Preface,” in Rosenberg,
The Myth of the Twentieth Century
, xv.

33
Mitchell Geoffrey Bard, ed.,
The Complete History of the Holocaust
(San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2001), 34.

34
Douglass,
God among the Germans
, 45.

35
Whisker,
The Philosophy of Alfred Rosenberg
, 98, 136.

36
Whisker,
The Philosophy of Alfred Rosenberg
, 28.

37
Dutch,
Hitler’s 12 Apostles
, 83.

38
Whisker,
The Philosophy of Alfred Rosenberg
, 181.

39
Cecil,
The Myth of the Master Race
.

40
Christopher R. Browning,
Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2010), 122.

41
Browning,
Remembering Survival
, 122.

42
Peel, “Preface,” in Rosenberg,
The Myth of the Twentieth Century
, xv.

43
Fest,
The Face of the Third Reich
, 168.

44
Nova,
Alfred Rosenberg
, 22.

45
Douglass,
God among the Germans
, 36, 38.

46
Roland,
The Illustrated History of the Nazis
, 115.

47
Nova,
Alfred Rosenberg
, 21.

48
Browning,
Remembering Survival
, 144.

49
Roland,
The Illustrated History of the Nazis
, 115.

50
Nova,
Alfred Rosenberg
, 23.

51
Browning,
Remembering Survival
, 150.

52
Kingsbury Smith, “The Nuremberg Trials: The Execution of Nazi War Criminals,”
International News Service
(October 16, 1946): 1.

53
Bard, ed.,
The Complete History of the Holocaust
, 371.

Julius Streicher: Anti-Catholic Darwinist and Hitler’s mentor

INTRODUCTION

J
ulius Streicher (February 12, 1885 – October 16, 1946) was the founder and editor of the now infamous and vehemently anti-Semitic newspaper
Der Stürmer
—loosely translated
The Attacker
—the only newspaper that Hitler read “from beginning to end…from the first to the last line.”
¹
The paper’s sole aim was the “incitement of the German nation against the Jewish race.”
²

Der Stürmer
focused especially on what Streicher called the “race shame” crime, which was romance between an Aryan and a non-Aryan. This view came from the “scientific” belief that, in its purer forms “this racial doctrine, by no means limited to Germany, developed there with all the trappings of pseudoscholarship.”
³
The doctrine taught that the Jews as a race were so degenerate that they could not to be improved, presumably even by Darwinian methods “since they were racially inferior, as were the black and yellow peoples.”
⁴

Called “the man who persuaded a nation to hate Jews,” Herr Streicher relentlessly pursued Jews for much of his life in speeches and college lectures, but mostly in print.
⁵
Der Stürmer
regularly featured allegations of ritual murder by Jews and claimed “world conspiracy of Jewry” myths that were of very questionable validity. Nazi historian Oswald Dutch called
Der Stürmer
the “lowest and least reputable newspaper that has ever been circulated in any country as an official news organ.”
⁶
Davidson wrote that Streicher’s

anti-Semitism was of the brass-knuckles kind. He had delighted in the destruction of the synagogues, the beatings, the smashing of people and storefronts, in every turn of the screw, up to the Final Solution in the pits and gas chambers. He had always wanted the Jews exterminated. Streicher was the core within the core of the Party. He stood for the one thing all the [Nazi] defendants had in common. Although the others did their best to keep their distance from him, all had believed, in some part, at least, in the endlessly repeated message he wrote as editor of
Der Stuermer
, which had as a subtitle, “Nuremberg weekly for the fight for truth.”
⁷

Called one of the “pornographic, neurotic Jew-baiters,” Streicher was later joined by Joseph Goebbels, propelling his position forward until it eventually dominated Nazi policy, especially after 1935.
⁸
Exactly why Streicher hated Jews is unclear and many theories have been offered. As Dutch wrote, “It is not entirely clear what impelled Julius Streicher…to make anti-Semitism not only his life work, but also his almost exclusive source of remuneration.”
⁹

One rumor, likely false but which caused Streicher a lot of problems, is that a girl he took a liking to as a young man turned him down for a Jew. More likely, he came under the influence of men like Hitler, Professor Otto Dickel of Augsburg University and other anti-Semites. He had a “close connection” with Hitler since 1923.
¹⁰
Professor Dickel taught that Jews were the greatest threat, not only to Germany, but also to the entire European continent.

STREICHER ACCEPTS SOCIAL DARWINIAN RACISM

Although Streicher’s views on Darwinism are mixed, it is well documented that he accepted the social Darwinian inferior race theory, and concluded that Jews were one of the worst of all biologically inferior races. He believed that a single act of sexual intercourse with a Jew would contaminate an Aryan woman for life. For this reason, he condemned mixing what he judged as superior races with inferior races. He also accepted the ideas of the social Darwinists, such as Arthur de Gobineau and Ernest Renan who