Allow me to add that it is my conviction that the contents of Der Stürmer as such were not incitation. During the whole 20 years I never wrote in this connection, “Burn Jewish houses down; beat them to death.” Never once did such an incitement appear in Der Stürmer.
Now comes the question: Is there any proof to be furnished that any deed was done from the time Der Stürmer first appeared, a deed of which one can say that it was the result of an incitement? As a deed due to an incitement I might mention a pogrom. That is a spontaneous deed when sections of the people suddenly rise up and kill other people. During the 20 years no pogrom took place in Germany, during the 20 years, as far as I know, no Jew was killed. No murder took place, of which one could have said, “This is the result of an incitement which was caused by anti-Semitic authors or public speakers.”
Gentlemen, we are in Nuremberg. In the past there was a saying that nowhere were the Jews in Germany so safe and so unmolested as in Nuremberg.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, is not this becoming a rather lengthy speech?
DR. MARX: Streicher, you have explained this now sufficiently, so that one can form an opinion—you mean, “I have not incited in such a way that any spontaneous action carried out against the Jews by any group of people or by the masses resulted”?
STREICHER: May I make a remark in this connection? Here we are concerned with the most serious, the most decisive accusation raised against me by the Prosecution, and here I ask the Tribunal to permit me to defend myself against it objectively. Is it not of tremendous significance if I can establish that in Nuremberg, of all places, no murder took place, no single murder and no pogrom either? That is a fact.
THE PRESIDENT: You have already said it. I have just written down, before I intervened, saying that no Jews have been killed not only in Nuremberg but anywhere else as a result of your incitement.
DR. MARX: Witness, we shall make reference to these demonstrations of 9 and 10 November 1938 later.
STREICHER: Yes, but may I continue? The Indictment accuses me of having indirectly contributed by incitation to mass murders, and I ask to be allowed to make a statement on this: Something has been ascertained today about which I myself did not know. I learned of the will left behind by the Führer, and I assume that a few moments before his death the Führer told the world the truth in that will. In it he says that mass killings were carried out by his order; that the mass killings were a reprisal.
Thus it is demonstrated that I, myself, cannot have been a participant in the incredible events which occurred here.