THE PRESIDENT: You can rest assured that the Tribunal will see that everything that, in the opinion of the Tribunal, bears upon the case or is relevant to your case or is in any way material in your case will be presented and that you will be given the fairest opportunity of making your defense.
STREICHER: I thank you. From my life...
DR. MARX: Excuse me, Mr. President; may I ask briefly to be permitted to state my position. May it please the Court, when I was asked to take over Herr Streicher’s defense, I naturally had grave misgivings. I have...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, I do not think it is necessary, really, for you to make any personal explanation at this stage. It is very possible that the defendant may have different ideas about his own defense. I think we had better let him go on with his defense.
DR. MARX: Nevertheless, I should like to ask permission, Mr. President, just to mention the following point: As attorney and as defense counsel of a defendant I have to reserve for myself the right to decide how I shall conduct the defense. If the client is of the opinion that certain documents or books are relevant, and the attorney is of the opinion that they are not, then that is a difference of opinion between the counsel and his client.
If Herr Streicher is of the opinion that I am incapable or not in a position to conduct his defense, then he should ask for another defense counsel. I am aware that at this stage of the proceedings it would be very difficult for me to follow the matter to its logical conclusion and ask to be relieved of this task of defense. I am not terrorized by any journalist, but for a counsel to lose the confidence of his own client is quite another matter; and for that reason I feel bound to ask the Court to decide whether in these circumstances I am to continue to defend my client.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal thinks, Dr. Marx, that the explanation and the statement which you have just made is in accordance with the traditions of the legal profession and they think therefore that the case ought to proceed and that you should proceed with the case. Now, Defendant, will you go on?
STREICHER: About my life: I was born on 12 February 1885 in a small village in Bavaria Swabia. I was the youngest of nine children. My father was an elementary school teacher. I too became a teacher at an elementary school. In 1909, after I had taught for several years in my native district, I was called to the municipal school in Nuremberg. Here I had the opportunity of contact with the families of the working-class children in the suburbs and of observing social contrasts. This experience led to my decision in 1911 to go into politics. I became a member of the Democratic Party. As a young democratic speaker, I spoke at the Reichstag election in 1912. The car put at my disposal was paid for by the banking firm of Kohn. I stress this point because at that time I had occasion to associate a good deal with Jews, even in the Democratic Party. I must therefore have been fated to become later on a writer and speaker on racial politics.
The World War came and I, too, went into the army as a lance corporal in an infantry regiment. Then I became an officer in a machine-gun unit. I returned home with both Iron Crosses, with the Bavarian Order, and the rare Austrian Cross of Merit attached to the Ribbon for Gallantry. When I had returned home, I had no desire to go into politics again. I intended only to stay in private life and devote myself to my profession. Then I saw the blood-red posters of revolution in Germany and for the first time I joined the raging masses of that time. At a meeting, when the speaker had finished, I asked to be heard as an unknown person. An inner voice sent me onto the platform and I spoke. I joined in the debate and I spoke on recent happenings in Germany. In the November revolution of 1918 the Jews and their friends had seized the political power in Germany. Jews were in the Reich Cabinet and in all the provincial governments. In my native Bavaria the Minister President was a Polish Jew called Eisner-Kosmanowsky. The reaction among the middle classes in Germany manifested itself in the form of an organization known as Schutz und Trutzbund (Society for Protective and Offensive Action). Local branches of this organization were formed in all the large cities in Germany; and fate willed that after I had again spoken at a gathering, a man came up to me and asked me to come to the Kulturverein (Cultural Society) in the Golden Hall and hear what they had to say there.
In this way, Gentlemen of the Tribunal, I became involved in what brings me here today. Destiny made of me what international propaganda thought it had made. I was called a bloodhound—a blood czar of Franconia; my honor was attacked, a criminal was paid 300 marks to swear in this very hall that he had seen me, as an officer in France during the war, rape a Madame Duquesne, a teacher’s wife in Atis, near Peronne. It was 2 years before someone betrayed him and the truth came out.