What the devil do we care — we don’t give a hoot any more,
We will go marching forward, though everything fall away,
For the world will be ours tomorrow, as Germany is today.
It is necessary for Germany to hate, passionately and ceaselessly, everything that stands in the way of world mastery. Even the innocent concepts of “Reason,” “Piety,” and “Love of Peace,” threaten it. Hatred is nurtured; and it is easier to hate a man than an idea; people you see in the flesh, than people far away; a relatively small number than a greater group. Hatred for the Jews, then, seems the best and most “productive.” Fuel of all sorts is therefore added: calumny, pseudo-science, and pornography.
One of the oldest and most intimate friends of the Führer is Julius Streicher, Gau Leader of Franconia and editor and publisher of the weekly, Der Stürmer. Although Streicher has had bitter enemies in the Party ranks, Hitler remains with him, because he regards him as a good hater. He values the smut of Streicher as a weapon in the Nazi struggle, and approves its use in teaching. Distinguished foreigners, traveling through Germany, are always assured that no sensible person ever reads the Stürmer, that Streicher himself has “good intentions,” although “sometimes he goes too far in his eagerness” — another fact to be disparaged for the outer world. As a matter of fact, the Stürmer, which writes almost exclusively about sexual outrages, bedroom gossip, and scandal, is read in the schools to children between six and fourteen; its denunciations are themes for their homework, and their “education” is based on its improprieties.
The principal of the Overbeckstrasse School in Cologne, Max Burkert, writes: “From your glorious fighting magazine, the Stürmer, I have cut the photos of a number of Jews who once were permitted to rule Germany, and have mounted them, as the accompanying photograph will show. Armed with this illustration, I lecture on the Jewish question in all the upper classes of my school…. How deeply-rooted your idea already is can be seen from the following story of an experience I had with a nine-year-old pupil. He came to school one day and said to me: ‘Sir, yesterday I went for a walk with my mother. Suddenly, as we passed the Kaufhof (a Jewish store), my mother happened to remember that she badly needed a few balls of twine. She wanted to give me some money to go into the shop and buy the twine for her. Whereupon I said to my mother, “I will not go in there. You will have to do that yourself. But I promise you that, if you do go into that shop, I’ll tell my teacher tomorrow. He will order you to come to school, and then you’ll see what happens.” ’
“If the accompanying picture pleases you, my children will be very glad, especially if you publish it in the Stürmer. I am convinced that such pictures can only set a good example.
“Wishing you nerves of steel in the furious battle, I am with best greetings and
“Heil Hitler, “Max Burkert, “Principal.”
Each week the Stürmer publishes similar letters to the editor, abundant evidence of its wide circulation in the sanctuaries of education. Erna Listing, who lives in Gelsenkirchen, writes: