Talk:Julius Streicher
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From the article:
- Despite having a tested IQ of 106, he was considered by many observers to be insane.
Sadly, low IQ and mental illness do not follow 1:1. In fact madness very commonly affects very intelligent people (although some cope with it better). Can we throw out the bit about Streicher's IQ? JFW | T@lk 23:23, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Having seen no response, I took out the bit about IQ.
-Vorpalbla 2/20/05
Well, if the IQ part is true, it should be mentioned in the article. But, it should be clear that IQ has nothing to do with mental illness.--Havermayer 00:32, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The following quote from the book by Airey Neave is probably apposite here though:
- "Two weeks after serving the indictment, I introduced him to Dr Marx of Nuremberg who represented him as counsel during the trial. Marx found his attitudes so extreme that he asked the tribunal to order Streicher's examination by a panel of psychiatrists. Streicher lectured the psychiatrists on the Jewish problem throughout the examination. They decided that he was suffering from a neurotic obsession but was not insane. Dr Gilbert summed up the case : 'No true psychiatric diagnosis, but this man is of a personality structure which borders on the frankly abnormal and which brought him into difficulties even in the pathological social environment of the Third Reich' ..." Nuremberg, P. 95
Dr Gilbert seems to contradict himself - part of the prosecution maybe?
It has to be said that Neave, when writing the chapter in his book on Streicher, viewed the man with undisguised loathing. Given the character of Streicher, and the legacy he left in his wake, it would be difficult to find many redeeming features with which to present a more sober and balanced view, and Neave's own personal encounters with the man during the progress of the Nuremberg Trials almost certainly resulted in a certain jaundiced view, as Streicher felt no need to endear himself to his enemies. Even with this in mind, Neave's open contempt for Streicher is, if perhaps less than ideal in a book aiming to be at least a partly historical account, refreshingly honest. Neave cites extracts from Der Stürmer and other Streicher writings, including a piece from a 1935 article entitled Alien Albumen which does, quite frankly, read like the ravings of a madman, so it is not surprising that a view of Streicher as insane enjoyed considerable circulation among his contemporaries. I could quote this piece as printed in Neave's book, but to be honest, I suspect many readers of the piece will feel the need to take a long shower afterwards - it is that bad.
Neave also cites details of the web of financial corruption within which Streicher was entangled, enriching himself at the expense of Jews deprived of their property, an investigation into said corruption being ordered by Hermann Goering after Streicher published a piece claiming that Goering's daughter Edda was conceived by artificial insemination. I think it is fair to say, given the details of Streicher's life, that the man seemed to have been hell-bent on acquiring for himself the epithet of "World's dirtiest old man", particularly as even the Nazis found themselves moved to put him on trial for sexual offences ... Calilasseia 10:31, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
From the article:
- ...ten evil men were hanged on that day...
This is an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias should never present moral judgements of real people as if they were facts, no matter how great a consensus exists. --Rwehr 23:28, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Whip
I have heard that while in charge of Nuremberg, he would personally "police" the streets and dispense "instant justice" with a whip. The article at present makes no mention of this. Who was whipped, for example? Some real criminals or just Jews and people who got in his way?
- Neave mentions this on more than one occasion in his book. If I turn to the chatper of Nuremberg entitled The Beast Of Nuremberg (pp.86 96), we find the following:
- "Streicher had been imprisoned on one occasion [under the Nazis] for assaulting a boy prisoner while on an official visit to the cells. He had arrived with two fellow sadists who had watched him while he beat the prisoner with a whip. He then announced that it gave him an orgasm." (p.87)
- "Streicher's teachings were repeated by others in more respectable form. Generals, admirals and diplomats assured the Nuremberg Tribunal of their disgust at his writings, but even after he was deprived of his office for corruption, they never denounced his propaganda. Repugnant though the lewd figure of Streicher, strutting through the streets of Nuremberg, whip in hand, may have been, they shared his essential beliefs. The laughed at his brutal jokes." (p.91)
- The central premise of Neave's biographical account is that Streicher was an arch sex criminal with a neurotic anti-Semitic obsession intimately woven between the threads of his lurid provlicities. For example:
- "When Gauleiter Streicher finallly came unstuck in 1940, and was forced by Hitler to retire, it ws not his sexual misconduct which forced the Party bosses to action. They were prepared to overlook his more harmless eccentricities, like walking to his office in bathing trunks. It was the cesspool of corruption and embezzlement in which he had lived for years that led to the investigation." (p.95)
- "He was like an ape exposing himself in a cage at the zoo. He was said by the prosecution to have boasted to his chauffeur of nightly wet dreams and exhibited the semen to prove it." (p.86)
- "Streicher was familiar with the Palace of Justice and its courtoom. He had already been tried there and in other courts more than once for slander, sadism and rape. Hitler at first protected him from further penalties." (p.86)
- "At first sight, Streicher, as his cell door opened, seemed insignificant. He was small and strongly built, being sixty at the time. He wore a khaki shirt and trousers. The shirt was open showing a very hairy chest. There was a peculiar light in his eyes. When exicted, they had the look of a hungry animal. Streicher was primarily a sex criminal. He said when he arrived at Nuremberg, 'I have of course been here before'." (p.87)
- "He looked, as Rebecca West as written, like the 'sort of old man who gives trouble in parks'." (p.87)
- While it may not be the place of the encyclopedia to pass moral judgements (alluding to the commentator above this section), by any reasonable standards, Streicher was a severely degenerate man. Neave went on to describe him thus:
- "He was standing, hands on hips, chin forward, ready for an argument. He was five feet, two inches tall, broad-chested, and sordid. He would have made a good subject for an indecent sixteenth-century woodcut. It was easy to imagine him as a fat, horned devil, advancing, erect, upon a virgin." (p.87)
- And then this:
- "The man himself was less dramatic. His head was shaped like a bullet, with a receding forehead. His nose was curved and his chin pointed. His short, fat neck made him look both coarse and evil: a professional torturer who might have operated the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg. When stripped to the waist, he appeared immensely strong for his age. A man, I thought, capable of any cruelty. He was also, I felt, stupid and cunning, and as the Nazis themselves discovered, a consummate liar." (p.88)
- Indeed, as I have alluded above, it is tempting to ponder upon the notion that Streicher seemed to be an avid competitor for the title of 'dirtiest old man of all time', and while commentators from a more academic background may have displayed a greater circumpsection with respect to revealing their disgust at the man, Neave's personal insights into Streicher provide a study in what might be termed 'the repugnant fasciantion of evil'. Calilasseia 04:17, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Is Neave to be believed, or his sources? Strange for a man of such low IQ and "well known depravity" to rise so high and accomplish so much. He was a propagandist, the history about him smells of propaganda too.
[edit] Confusing sentence
During the trial the other defendants, who, to a man, despised Streicher, refused to have anything to do with him. ??? Almost unreadable.
rv
