STREICHER: This is a warning. The Führer made a prophecy; nobody could interpret that prophecy properly. The prophecy was not quoted only in this article, but in 10 others. Again and again we referred to these prophecies, the first of which had been made in 1929. Today we know what the Führer wanted to say; at that time we did not. And I confess quite openly that with this quotation we wanted to warn world Jewry: “Against their threat, this threat.”
So as to defend myself I might mention in this connection that the author, Dr. Emil Ludwig Kohn, who had left Germany and emigrated to France, had written in the paper Le Fanal, in 1934, “Hitler does not want war, but he is being forced into it. Britain has the last word.” Thus...
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: We are not discussing war now. We are discussing the extermination, the mass murder of Jews, by the National Socialists. That is what we are discussing. Let me read on:
“When Adolf Hitler stepped before the German people 20 years ago to submit to them the National Socialist demands which pointed the way into the future, he also made the promise which was to have the gravest repercussions; that of freeing the world from its Jewish tormentors. How wonderful it is to know that this great man and leader is following up this promise with practical action. It will be the greatest deed in the history of mankind.”
Do you say that you are not putting forward propaganda for the policy of mass extermination which the Nazi Government had set out to do?
STREICHER: We too had freedom of the press like democratic countries. Every author knew of the forecast, which perhaps later on turned out to be a fact, and could write about it. That is what I did.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well.
STREICHER: But for my defense, Mr. Prosecutor, I want to be allowed to say that wars too can be mass murder, with their bombs, et cetera. And if it is proved that someone says that we are forcing Hitler into war, then I can certainly say that a man who knows that Hitler is being forced into war is a mass murderer.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: With the permission of the Tribunal I am going to interrupt you again because we are not discussing whether or not Hitler was forced into war. We will leave that now.
Just let us go on and see if you are really speaking the truth in saying that while you are writing these articles you are not perfectly well aware of what was happening in the Eastern territories.