In this connection I should add that one of the main points in the program of the NSDAP was the slogan, “Get rid of Versailles!” The defendant adopted this point of the program which, however, does not mean he envisaged a repeal of the treaty by means of war.
Even the former democratic German governments, in the course of their negotiations with their former opponents in the World War, stressed the fact at all times that the Versailles Treaty presented no proper basis for permanent world peace and particularly for economic adjustment. Not only in Germany but everywhere in the rest of the world clear-thinking economic circles were against the Versailles Treaty. We may point especially to the United States of America as an example of this.
Almost all political parties in Germany, irrespective of their other aims, agreed that the Treaty of Versailles should be revised. Neither was there any difference of opinion over the fact that such revision was possible only on the basis of an agreement. Even to consider any other possibility of solution would have seemed Utopian, for the German Reich lacked all military power. The NSDAP also strove, at any rate as far as could be seen from outward signs, to find a solution to the problem in this way. To support such an aim, however, cannot be looked upon as a violation of treaty obligations and, therefore, cannot be made the object of a charge against the defendant. No proof has been offered that he thought of warlike complications or that he desired them.
I now come to the matter of the defendant’s attitude in the Jewish question. He is accused of having incited and instigated for decades the persecution of the Jews and of being responsible for the final extermination of Europe’s Jewry. It is clear that this accusation constitutes the decisive point of the Indictment against Julius Streicher and perhaps the decisive point of the total Indictment, for in this connection the attitude of the German people to this question must be tried and judged as well. The Prosecution takes the point of view that there is just as little doubt as to the responsibility of the defendant as there is doubt about the guilt in which the German people are involved. As evidence of this the Prosecution put forward:
(a) The speeches by Streicher before and after the seizure of power, particularly one speech in April 1925, in which, he spoke about the extermination of the Jews. Herein, in the prosecutor’s opinion, is the first evidence to be seen regarding the final solution of the Jewish question planned by the Party, namely, the extermination of all Jews.
(b) Active assertion of the person and authority of the defendant, especially on “Boycott Day,” 1 April 1933.
(c) Numerous articles published in the weekly paper, Der Stürmer, among them especially those dealing with ritual murder and with quotations from the Talmud. He is said to have knowingly and intentionally described therein the Jews as a criminal and inferior race and created and wished to create hatred of these people and the wish to exterminate them. The defendant’s reply to these points is as follows:
He states that he worked merely as a private writer. His aim was to enlighten the German people on the Jewish question as he saw it. His description of the Jews was merely intended to show them as a different and a foreign race and to make it clear that they live according to laws which are alien to the German conception. It was far from his intention to incite or inflame his circle of listeners and readers. Moreover, he always only propagated the idea that the Jews, because of their alien character, should be removed from German national and economic life and withdrawn from the close association with the body of the German people.
Further, he always had in mind an international solution of the Jewish question; he did not favor a German or even European partial solution and rejected it. That was why he suggested, in an editorial in Der Stürmer in the year 1941, that the French island of Madagascar should be considered as a place of settlement for the Jews. Consequently, he did not see the final solution of the Jewish question in the physical extermination of the Jews but in their resettlement.
It cannot be the aim of the Defense to go into further details of the defendant’s actions as a writer and speaker, particularly with regard to Der Stürmer and his reply to the accusations raised against him. His ideology and convictions shall not be explained, excused, or defended, nor his manner of writing and speaking either. Examination and judgment in this respect rest with the Tribunal alone. This much only shall be said, that between the defendant’s actions and the expressions frequently employed by him there is an antithesis which cannot be bridged. It may be stated that the defendant never, when in charge of an anti-Jewish undertaking, had coercive measures used against the Jewish population, as might necessarily be expected of him if the accusations made by the Prosecution were true.