Part Two: Julius Streicher: The Other Hitler

Robert and Jake conclude the story of Julius Streicher, the trailblazing Nazi cancel culture pioneer.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Jake, are you a you a morning person? Hew? Do
you handle waking up starting the day good?

Speaker 2 (00:08):
I really, I really think it's like real important to
get up early, But I hate it all the time.
You know, it's a real bottle for me, To be
honest with.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
You, I'm exactly the opposite. I hate getting up, Like
twelve forty five is kind of a normal time for
me to wake up, Like, oh oh, I love that shit.
Then I just get to stay.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
I'm depressed if I get up late.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
I don't know why. Well, I am always depressed, so
that might be something to that.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
I'm opening it this long times people like ask me
something to ask Robert. I'm like, he will not be
awake for at least four hours. I don't know. You
for me, like you will not be you would late?

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Right? Uh? Huh? I did. I woke up at eight
am this morning actually recording, and then I was like,
why would I do this? Horrible? And then I went
to sleep until right before this recording started and woke
up feeling like.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Shit, that sounds like just your life voices.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yeah it sure was. Uh, Sophie, why did you make
me get up this early? Huh uh?

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Jake, doesn't live in our time zone, and it seems
fokay okay to make somebody record a podcast in the
middle of the night.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
You know, we're talking about conspiracy theorists today. It seems
like kind of a conspiracy to suggest that the time
might be different just because you're in another country. Sophie,
you're son.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
You should stick through, like you guys should follow real
time British time.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
But yeah, isn't it? Isn't it Greenwich meantime? Is that
what you guys use? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:38):
We just call it real time, just real time, just
the actual the time, as opposed to fight American time.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah. Oh, our time zones are fucking nonsense. You know.
It's like I don't know using inches? But wait, do
you guys use inches? Are you? I always forget how
it works?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Do you know what we use everything? It's weird. Use
all of them, right, depending on what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah, Like, like people give America shit because we like
picked the one thing that no one else basically uses.
But you guys picked like both of them, which is
also kind of nonsense.

Speaker 4 (02:09):
Yeah, I love it, love it. Were a stupid place,
really everyone is. This is behind the bastards A podcast
about the stupid place that is the world and the
terrible people who make it worse. I guess Jake ready
to get back to talking about Julius Striker. Yeah, yeah,
So again as we left off, he is he's kind

(02:32):
of one of the guys alongside Hitler that a lot
of people in the German writer like, maybe this guy's
are Messiah, you know, maybe he's the dude who's gonna
bring us back to greatness and then convince us to
invade Russia in an inopportune time and get several million
of our young men killed again.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Whatever. That's what That's what people are saying about Striker
and about Hitler, and Striker is part of this kind
of like anti Semitic, you know, u in or Ober
organ whereas Hitler's, you know, part of the German Workers Party,
which is in the process of merging with the German
Socialist Party to form the National Socialist German Workers Party

(03:10):
aka de Nazis so win, Striker joins this organization run
by his buddy Dikele. He takes the newspaper that he
had started using the funding from the German Socialist Party
and he brings it with him because he's the guy
who owns it. He changes its name to Deutscher Volkesville,
which I think just means German people's will. And he

(03:32):
kind of ups the violence in his rhetoric, particularly the
anti Semitic violence by a couple of Jats. When he
does this, not only does he start devoting more time
to laying out conspiracy theories, but he starts accusing Jewish
citizens in Germany, often by name of specific criminal acts,
generally in Nuremberg. So he's not just doing the sort
of general it's the Jews that causes to lose World

(03:55):
War One, YadA, YadA. He's saying like there is a
specific Jewish person or a specific group of ju Wish
people who carry it out the specific crime in Nuremberg.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Right.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Often these crimes are complete Generally these crimes are completely
made up. He's basically always making up like who was
the culprit behind them. A lot of it is like
accusing rabbis of ritually murdering Christian children and stuff. It
doesn't matter that like kids aren't going missing, or sometimes
like a kid will die just the way. You know,
it's fucking nineteen twenty one. You know, kids trip and

(04:25):
fall and cut their arms and get infections and shit
exactly right, Like, yeah, so anytimes something like that happens,
find a way to blame it on the Jews, you know,
put this shit out. Now it's not legal to just
like accuse random people of child abduction and murder, right, Like,
you can get in trouble for that even back then.
And he actually he goes so far in this stuff.

(04:48):
The Bavarian courts are pretty right wing, they're not like
naturally inclined to prosecute a guy like Striker, but he
goes so far in like accusing random Jewish people of
crimes that he gets charged and convicted of slander. Getting
convicted of slander as a right wing politico in nineteen
twenty one Bavaria pretty hard, but Julius does it. Yeah.

(05:13):
This tiny amount of pressure from the government, though, winds
up really helping him, like the fact that he's been
convicted and charged, because now he's able to play the victim, right.
Not only is he he's like, I'm being prosecuted, persecuted,
you're trying to stop me from talking to you, and
so it brings this helps to bring him more followers,
bring more subscribers to his newsletter bring more members to

(05:35):
the organization that Dickle founded, that he's kind of the
figure four, and Striker gets more famous. On April fourth,
nineteen twenty two, several thousand Nurembergers, Nurembergians, whatever, show up
to Burgers is good. Several thousand burger Now I'm hungry.
Several thousand Burgers show up to listen to Striker give
a speech in which he explains that in August of

(05:56):
nineteen fourteen he had gone to war believing himself a
soldier of Germany, only to find out that he was
a pawn in this grand Jewish game for global control
and also the French you're involved. And a huge amount
of his rhetoric is focused upon kind of taking advantage
of and stoking the anxieties of young German men in
this time who they've just lost a war. Like young

(06:18):
men don't like losing wars, and they're kind of emasculated
right by defeat and this sense of inferiority that it brings.
And that's a big part of what Striker is going
to take advantage of. I'm going to read you a
quote that he gave in this speech. Here stand in
front of a hotel and see who takes the arms
of the German girl, not the German worker. We know
they sometimes give themselves to the Orientals. When a Negro

(06:42):
or a black soldier on the Rhine misuses a German girl,
she is lost to the race, and he is when
he's bringing up like black soldiers going out with German girls.
What he's talking about is that the Rhine, which is
kind of or the Ruer actually I think it is,
which is the industrial It's all along the Rhine, though,
which is the industrial heartland of Germany. It's where they've
done a lot of their arms production for World War One.

(07:03):
That's occupied under the Treaty of Versailles by French troops
for a significant chunk of the Weimar period, and the
French often send over like colonial soldiers, including like African soldiers.
Exactly exactly everywhere you have soldiers stationed in a foreign country,
this shit will happen. Some number of them will do

(07:26):
bad things. And whenever something like that happens with these
French occupation troops, it is this huge deal on the right,
you know, because there's this race panic issued towards it too.
You know, they're angry just period at the fact that
they lost the war. So that's what Striker is kind
of He's not only sort of like, you know, look,

(07:46):
they've got these like black soldiers on our soil, but
more broadly speaking, he's like, German women are being taken
from German men because we've been emasculated by defeat, and
this is part of a Jewish plot to like water
down our blood. Right, that's the thing that Striker's doing. Yeah,
you know, well, yes, of course, yeah, that do be

(08:08):
the Nazis. So his time with the German Working Group
was short. One of his rallies was broken up by
a giant street fight with Communists, which Dickle's organization apparently
considered his fault. He left in the subsequent disagreement, unable
as ever to handle anyone criticizing him, and this leaves
Julius in a bit of a pickle. He needs an organization, right,

(08:28):
He's not anything without sort of like he's got like
a degree of celebrity, but like he wants to be
a part of a party, right. He wants to be
working towards taking power, and his paper at this point
is still too small to be profitable on its own
without kind of the guaranteed regular sales that came with
being the paper of a political organization. And he's so

(08:50):
we sort of like fishing around who's going to take me?
Who wants Julius, you know, who's who's willing to have
me be on their side? And the only party in
Germany who's kind of rat enough to take someone like him,
who's got the reputation he has is the new Nazi Party.
Now they're still in the process of doing this merger
at the time, and the guys who had been sort

(09:11):
of running the Democratic Socialist Party and had worked with
Striker earlier don't want him in the Nazi Party and
the dudes who had sort of been fighting with Hitler
within the German Workers Party also don't necessarily want Striker.
And so when he starts reaching out to Hitler because
like Hitler's the guy he likes, basically sends a letter
to being like, hey, I think I'd be willing to

(09:33):
like work with you. Guys, they send Hitler a letter
filled with like dirt on Julius, trying to basically like
convince Hitler not to work with him, be like, ah,
here's all this shit about like Julius Striker all this
bad stuff you know about like why this guy's not trustworthy.
But then this is really interesting. Striker doesn't get along
with most people who are in charge of him, and

(09:54):
Hitler not a great guy at sharing the stage, but
for whatever reason, the two of them kind of get along.
And when Hitler gets this letter filled with dirt on Striker,
he's like, I think this is bullshit. I think I
like this guy and I want to work with him.
And we don't really know why. But in addition to
Hitler kind of liking Striker and wanting to work with him, Striker,

(10:18):
this guy who cannot take direction, who doesn't like to
listen to people, who has a conflict with everyone who
puts themselves above him, kind of decides at this moment,
you know what, I'm willing to, like take a back
seat and back Hitler as the fewer Like maybe I
could do that, but I'm willing to like back him.
I'm willing to give him, you know, my full faith

(10:39):
and support. We don't fully know why he makes this call,
but in May of nineteen twenty two, he publishes an
article on his newspaper called the Longing of a Strong Hand,
echoing Subotandorf's work. He begged German Anti Simites to a
knite behind a single leader who could give direction to
the quarrel some right wing and he kind of ends
with him like being like, you know, I think Hitler's

(10:59):
problem probably a guy to watch for this one possibility
here as that striker. At this point, he's been in
politics a while. He's had a couple of big failures.
You know, he's tried to basically build two parties around
him and failed two times. So he may have just
like he's not a humble guy, but he may have
actually just kind of recognized his limitations and been like, clearly,

(11:22):
I can't do this and Hitler can, so I'm going
to support the guy who's doing it. You know. The
other possibility, which I think, you know, both of these
things are possible, is that he kind of just falls
in love with Hitler, Like this seems to be genuine
from him, like that he is like genuinely loyal and
genuinely believes in Hitler as the fucking right wing messiah

(11:46):
type dude. We don't actually know when the two first met,
probably at some point in nineteen twenty two years later,
when he's on trial at Nuremberg. Julius is going to
like give his sort of like explanation of how they too,
how they met, And this is a lie. Obviously, we
are talking about like a Nazi leader on trial for
war crimes against humanity. He's not giving you the truth

(12:08):
of whatever their meeting was. But I still think it's interesting.
What he's later going to claim is like how the
two of them like meet. So he says, you know,
he shows up at the speech that Hitler's giving. He's
kind of curious about this guy that's sort of been
billed as, you know, maybe his rival, and he's immediately
taken in by Hitler's supernatural charisma. He's overwhelmed by the
chanting of the crowd, and he he like has almost

(12:30):
this vision of Hitler as a messenger from heaven. That's
how he described it, quote clothed with the beauty of
inspired language. And Stryker claims that he's so overwhelmed with
the raw godly force of Hitler's charisma that he like
walks up to him right after the speech and swears fealty.
Quote never before had I heard that song sung so imploringly,

(12:51):
so filled with faith and hope, and never before had
the singing of Deutsch lenduber ales moved me as deeply
as it did in that mass meeting where I first
saw Adolf Hitler and heard him speak. I felt it
in this moment destiny calls to me a second time.
I hurried through the jubilant masses to the podium, stood
before him and said, I am Julius Striker. At this moment,
I know I can only be a follower, but you
are a leader. I give you the popular movement which

(13:13):
I have built in Franconia, which is the German state
that Nuremberg's in.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
So I was like, he was giving Hitler the DICKU
you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, he's given. He's definitely like boot licking here. Pretty,
He's like deep throating that boot. He's got it up
to the he.

Speaker 5 (13:29):
I'd just been trying to work you out.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yeah, proud of you my head, Yeah, just churning along
like a cement mixer, just like white. Yeah. Now this
is what I just related to you. Again. I think
it's worth having because this is like the claim that
he makes, it's absolutely a lie. And Randall bite Work,
who is Striker's biographer, he kind of provides what I

(13:53):
think is a much more realistic theory as to how
these two guys get together, which is basically that like Striker,
he he's a man without a party, but he's got
a shitload of followers who just like him because they
like listening to him. He's got this paper and he
sits down with Hitler in the Nazis and they have
this like negotiation, like this kind of hard nosed negotiation
in which you know, he's like, Hey, I need money

(14:15):
from you guys to help me deal with the debts
that I've accumulated. You know, in exchange, I'll bring you
these followers I'll like back Hitler. It is very much
a rational political decision. While there's definitely hit like Striker
will be loyal to Hitler, like there is a degree
of legitimate affection between the two men, this is also
just a very practical call for him. It's a business

(14:36):
decision as well as a political one. So yeah, interesting stuff. Julius,
for his part, seems to be one of the few
men Hitler respected. It's notable. You'll every time you read
anything about the two, you will see it noted that
Striker was one of a very small number of Nazis

(14:58):
who are allowed to use the pronoun do to refer
to Hitler.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
Do you.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
I'm not a German speaker, I barely speak English, but
but do is like an intimate pronoun, like you only
use it with somebody that you're like close with, right right,
Like you're your actual friend, like your actual friends, actual
like almost people you. Yeah. And obviously this is I
think on Hitler's part, letting Striker do this is more

(15:23):
of a it's a it's a it's a kind of
a political move, but it's also based on his respect
for the man's loyalty because Hitler does not personally like Striker.
The two are not friends, they don't hang out together.
Hitler will actually kind of avoid him when he's in
power and like big meetings and stuff like we'll try
not say. But Hitler will also defend him against other

(15:45):
Nazis who hate him because he has so much respect
for Striker's skill as a propagandist, right, which is an
interesting sort of relationship for them to have.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
It just sounds like that guy whay, he's like, oh fuck,
it's him again, you.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
Know it's him again, but also a man, and that
he's fucking good at what he does.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
He's good. Yeah, we need him around, but I don't
want him around me.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, I don't want to like have dinner with him,
but like will, I will back him to the hilt
as long as he stays away. So Striker never quarreled
with Hitler, but he did get into regular conflict with
other Nazis, and he has a particular early issue with
the leader of the Nuremberg essay, you know, the storm
the Nazi street fighting organization. They're proud boys, so to speak,

(16:25):
because he winds up taking control of the city's Nazi Party. Like,
this struggle kind of goes on and he winds up
winning it. And in nineteen twenty three, Julius is sort
of running the Nazi Party branch in Nuremberg, and as
a result of like taking over, he decides to launch
a new newspaper. And this is a publication that he's
going to use for the specific goal of not just

(16:47):
bringing people to the Nazi Party, but to inspire regular
Germans to embrace his war on Judaism. He names it
dear Sturmer. Now that means like the Stormer, right, like
in terms of like a storm trooper, right like that's
how that term is used. He's very much calling up
sort of people's memories of World War One. He's very

(17:08):
much sort of making you a point of the fact
that that's what he did in the war. He will
later claim that his inspiration was that he wanted to
use this paper to storm the red fortress of left
wing politics in Germany, and initially in dere Stormer articles
are kind of split between three major topics. He's one
of the major topics is him just going on rants

(17:30):
against people who made fun of him. The other is
attacking the Jews, and the last is going after the
mayor of Nuremberg, Herman Lupa. Like half of his early
articles are just attacking the mayor. He fucking hates this guy.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
He is not the guy that did him for Tolkien bad.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Yeah, he had a major role in that. That's a
big part I think where it starts and Lupa, to
his credit, he's not a left wing radical. I'm not
saying that's too script, but just to describe him, he's
not a left wing radical. He's kind of politically he's
like a brid between moderate centrist liberals and democratic socialists
who are sort of like the moderate leftists of their day,
you know, and obviously the kind of centrist Libs don't

(18:09):
get along with the Democratic Socialists, don't get along with
the communists. Lupa's not, you know, really in with the communists,
but he is a bridge between like the Centrists and
the Democratic Socialists, and he is profoundly an anti Nazi,
and he does the best that he knows to try
to go after Striker. Obviously it doesn't work, and you
feel for the guy. He gets persecuted under the Nazis.

(18:30):
He winds up dying as a real bummer. He makes
it through most of the war as like a persecuted
political enemy of the Nazis, and then dies in an
air raid in forty five, which is a fucking bummer,
but you know, he tried. Yeah, Striker spends most of
his first four issues attacking the mayor with publishing alongside,

(18:52):
you know, ancillary articles accusing local Jewish people or organizations
of crimes. And it was this latter brand of content,
you know, the these articles sort of making explicit allegations
against Jewish citizens. That's going to lead to Striker's first
period of time in jail. And I'm going to quote
from Calvin University's German Propaganda archive here and one of
these meetings held in nineteen twenty two in the town

(19:13):
of Schenengen in Franconia. Striker pointed out that sixteen newspapers
had recently reported on the disappearance of over one hundred
German children before the Jewish Passover season of nineteen nineteen.
Since none of the boys was ever located, Striker concluded
that they must have become victims of Jewish ritual murder.
He explained that his reasoning was based on teachings contained
in the Talmud, which allegedly instructed Jews to kill Christians,

(19:36):
especially children, and drink their blood during the Jewish Easter season.
Striker was sued on the ground of defaming the Jewish
religion and sentenced to fourteen days in prison. He appealed
and the sentence was reduced to a fine of two
thousand marks plus court costs. And first off, it's interesting,
you know, you and I before this call were kind
of talking about our episodes a week or so ago

(19:58):
on bTB about this kidnapping panic that's that's going everywhere
you see, the same thing is going on in Vymar Germany,
right this, You know, in America, the statistically here quoted
is like half a million children go missing every year
in the United States, which is a lie. That would
be one out of seven children born every year in
the United States get subducted.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Right.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
What it is is that, Yeah, there's like four or
five hundred thousand every year.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Report.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Well, it's not it's reports of kids going missing, which
is generally not a kid actually going missing. It's either
you have a custody dispute between you know, two people
and one of them takes the kid and it's you know,
there's a report filed against the police as part of
that ongoing thing, or like you know, some of a
lot of its mistakes and stuff. There's not a half

(20:46):
a million children who just disappear, right, Like that would
be like that would be a calamity, you know.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think the thing is
though it's it's one of the ones where as dark
as is it's smart to use something like that, because yeah,
one child going missing is a total tragedy. Yeah, and
to play on people, you know, kids, everybody loves that
kids or they should do, you know, and everyone loves kids,
and it's like, yeah, it's it's so hates you right

(21:16):
in the ha you know, so say it's a tactic,
as we can see old as time.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, and who knows why these one hundred kids go missing? Right? Yeah,
for one thing hundred kids across Germany in nineteen twenty two,
that's not like an epidemic. But each of those cases,
as you said, is like a dagger to the heart. Now,
I'm sure there's a bunch of different reasons. Striker is
just using that statistic and then making the unfounded claim
it's the Jews that are doing it, whereas I'm sure

(21:41):
it's a mix of you know, kids falling down wells,
kids getting abducted by parents. There's probably some like creepy
sex pests in there. But it's like any society, like
some number of kids, bad things will happen too. I'm
not saying that to like write it off, but like
if you sort of can blame it on a specific
group of people, you can make a lot of political heay,
And so anyway, that's working well for him, and he

(22:02):
learns from his time getting arrested for this and like
the fact that again getting fucked with by the court
a little bit getting this fine, it doesn't really disrupt
his ability to organize. You know, the party pays the fine,
but it helps him build support and he also like
the fact that, you know, this strikes such a nerve.
The reason why he gets prosecuted for this is because

(22:25):
it works. It gets a lot of people reading his paper,
because people are interested when you claim that there's some
conspiracy against their children, right, Like, it's just a thing
people inherently pay attention to, and whatever punishment the state's
going to give you for lying about this stuff is
a lot less of an issue than like the benefit
you get from making this a center of your politics.

(22:46):
So Dare Sturmer becomes a runaway hit, and in fact
it's so successful that Maximon, who's the leader of the
Nazi Party's press wing, asks him to stop publishing it
because it's taking business away from the Nazi Party paper.
Now Strikers not is going to ignore him, and it's
going to wind up being good for the Nazis that
he does ignore him. In these early days, dere Sturmer

(23:09):
is it's not as the full sized newspaper's going to become.
It's kind of like a pamphlet right now, it's usually
about four pages long, and so you know, it's building
a name for itself. And then in nineteen twenty three,
our boy Hitler has his Munich beer Hall putch, right,
tries to take over the Government's not.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
With our boy Hitler.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
Okay, sure, sure, Sophie a friend of the pod Adolph,
So no, he does his Pusch. It doesn't go well.
A lot of people get shot, and strikers a part
of that, right, he's one of what the Nazis are
going to call the old fighters, you know. So he
he's in the Puch. He doesn't get killed, but he

(23:49):
does get arrested. He does a couple of months, you know,
in prison, so not that bad a sentence. Hitler's more
like a year. And he gets out afterwards and he
starts printing dere Sturmer and the Pusch. There's a couple
of things that have happened here. For one, the Nazi
Party has been temporarily banned. So suddenly this Nazi newspaper that,

(24:10):
like folks in the party, had been frustrated because darre
Sturmer was distracting attention from it. It can't publish anymore.
But dar Sturmer is not a Nazi newspaper. It Striker's paper,
so he can keep publishing it during this period in
which the party is kind of technically banned. The other
thing that's happened here is that the court case that
Hitler goes through, right when he's charged with doing this,

(24:32):
this pusch, as we've talked about in our episode on
the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, becomes like a media circus
in Germany, right and everybody. Hitler uses it very effectively
to spread propaganda. While he's on trial. He's giving these
speeches about his beliefs and about what he sees is
necessary for the nation, and it works incredibly well. Like

(24:52):
he makes a lot of political hay out of this,
and in the wake of it, number One, Hitler's come
a celebrity across the country as opposed to this kind
of regional figure. And number two, a lot of Germans
are now curious about Nazi beliefs and about anti Semitic politics,
and Striker's paper, which is still publishing, kind of becomes

(25:14):
the de facto paper for Nazi sympathetic people. During this
period in which the party is technically banned. By nineteen
twenty five, it's increased its circulation to the size of
a normal newspaper with full page advertisements and enough circulation
to actually like make money. So Striker is now making
a profit, and in fact, in the near future he's
going to get rich off of the success of this newspaper.

(25:38):
So he continues while he starts, this thing starts blowing
up to push the boundaries of what is considered at
the time to be sort of acceptable anti Semitic discourse.
Most mainstream racists in Germany stuck to vague insinuations that
the Jews are in bed with the French or the socialists,
or the French socialists and irresponsible for them losing the war, YadA, YadA.
But you're also starting to get more and more writing

(26:01):
in the mainstream German press about Nazi racial theory. Right,
a lot of these high minded articles about ancient Aryans
start coming out. Now this stuff that existed before World
War One, you know, as we've talked about, there's all
these weird little right wing secret societies and vulcish secret
societies and stuff. But now this starts to get out
into the mainstream. And Stryker understood that when it came

(26:23):
to getting people on board with this kind of propaganda.
One thing worked on getting the attention of regular people
better than anything else, and that was blood. Right, The
best way to get people to pay attention to your
racism was to titillate them with gory stories of violence.
And speaking of profiting off of titillating people with stories

(26:43):
of violence. You know what time it is now, Jake?
That's right, Uh, we are back. So I was just
telling you, Jake again, we're talking about like how modern

(27:05):
this guy is part of what Striker does to like
build a career for himself as he kind of gets
into true crime, right, Like that's that's sort of like
the thing that he's going. That's the kind of content
that's going to like help make der Sturmer a big deal.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
That changes everything. Yeah, yeah, exactly, he kind of you know,
it doesn't sound so bad now, No.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Sounds so bad now, I'm scared of serial killers. Sure,
these aren't actual true crimes, but that's how he like
frames what he's doing. The first reference to ritual murder
in dere Sturmer is in nineteen twenty four, and reader
responses start to roll in, convincing Julius that this is
a second spring of audience interest. By nineteen twenty six,
he'd built to focusing an entire issue of dere Sturmer

(27:48):
on ritual murder, framing it as an investigation into the
supposed ritual killing by Jews and Breslau. Quote. In Breslau,
two children, Ottow and Erica Fessi, secretly vanished. They were murdered.
The corpse pieces were found the same day in a
tied package in a public place. The search for the
murderer began. The cloth and corpse pieces, which were packaged,

(28:08):
became an open showcase in a public window, which drew
masses of people to come in view. According to the
author of the article, the body parts had been bled
before they were package. This and history were enough to
proclaim it a Jewish ritual murder. Here's striker again, doesn't
the fact that the body parts were found totally bled
point to such a Jewish butcher's procedure. Such was the

(28:30):
report of two of the Silesian newspapers that announced that
this Breslau child murder sounds as though it is possibly
a Jewish ritual murder. The Breslau child murder reminds us
of the Koenitz boy murder that was discovered a few
decades ago when for no apparent reason, a boy disappeared
from school. The traces led to a house of Jewish butchers.
The blood pieces of remains of the boy were also
found in a public place. This unsolved mystery has been

(28:52):
brought to the attention of the criminal police. The crime
was never solved. Now with the disappearance of these children
in much the same way, should this case also be
lost in the sand. And again you see what he's
doing is he's like this case, which we have to
assume is done by the Jews because we know this
is the kind of thing they do, is the same
as this other case decades ago where we know that
a boy was murdered by Jewish people, and of course
it was never solved, but like we know who it was.

(29:13):
There's no not ever any evidence here, right, but like
are there? But you can give the details. Since you
don't have evidence to actually connect this. What you do
is you give the details of the murder, right, and
that gets people at such an agitated state that you
say and then obviously you know this was done by
this group of people. And it works very well when
blood and violence weren't enough, Striker turned to sex. Many

(29:36):
dere Sturmer articles contained livid descriptions of sexual violence, right,
And this is generally he'll like have an article about
some purported client crime by like you know, a non
white French soldier in the Ruh, or by you know,
Jewish cabals or whatever, and the purpose is both to
like get people angry against those groups of people, but
also he's able to spend paragraphs talking about know lurid

(30:01):
sexual assault stories and that gets people to buy the
newspaper because like it's kind of the most accessible pornography
at the time, right, Yeah, Like yeah, it's messy, but
like this is like a big part of it's it's
it's appeal. And in fact, one Nazi German writer who
hated Striker described dare Stirmer's appeal this way. He wants

(30:25):
to keep his readers in constant suspense. But what do
his readers want? Sensation and filth? Striker gives that to them.
He floods his readers with tastelessness. And who are his readers?
Mostly adolescents who are still wet behind the years thanks
to Striker's education, Every lattice familiar with homosexuality and prostitution.
One cannot blame Striker for speaking about these matters. Every

(30:45):
newspaper today does. The question is how one speaks of them.
Striker gives them great prominence. May not one be concerned
when one sees the Stirmer not only in the hands
of older students, but also in possession of elementary school students.
And that's interesting because it gels with something Randall bite
Work says in his biography of Sturmer, which is that
in the early years of Dere Sturmer, it was kind

(31:06):
of an analog to Playboy magazine.

Speaker 5 (31:09):
Right.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
That was a big part of its appeal to the
kids who are going to get sort of pilled on
early Nazi politics. Is that, like you start reading Dear
Sturmer because it's where you read about like sex, right exactly.
It's like titillating, you know, and boys will like they'll
get copies without their parents knowing, and they'll share them
with each other. They'll like huddle around each other after
school and like read these like lurid stories of sex

(31:32):
and violence and whatnot, because like it's kind of where
you get them. And this I had no idea this
had gone on because the fascination with this sort of
thing was so durable that a lot of dere Sturmer's
early readers are Jewish Germans, who would buy every issue
and read it cover to cover. Striker would actually jokingly
thank them for supporting the paper in its early years.

(31:54):
And while he's not a trustworthy source. Byite Work notes
that in nineteen twenty five, a Jewish newspaper in Nuremberg complained, quote,
it is of great concern that the Sturmers very frequently
read even in Jewish circles. We have found that large
numbers of citizens of the Jewish faith by the Sturmer
and then take it home concealed in a copy of
you know, other newspapers. Thus, Jews directly support the Sturmer.

(32:15):
So this is like a problem for them, and they're
supporting it not because they're like secretly you know, into
Nazi propaganda, but because like where you read sex stuff, you.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Know, right, everyone likes smut.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Yep, that is a that is the secret to Striker's brilliance,
as he understands, like you wrap your racism in some smut,
you'll get everybody's money, you know. Yeah. Striker was also
innovative in another way, While most Nazi propagandists, including Hitler,
saw themselves as like these central powerful figures guiding people

(32:49):
towards the set of truths, Striker was willing to have
more of a give and take relationship with his audience. Now,
part of this was pragmatic and based on something other
Nazi news paper owners would do, which is that it's
expensive to hire writers to write articles, right, and like,
you know, photographs cost too much money to have a
lot of those. But publishing reader letters is free. Right.

(33:11):
If you solicit shit from your readers and then publish
that stuff to a mailbox or whatever, you know, you
can like get free content for your newspaper without paying
for it. This is a thing that a lot of
Nazi papers did. Where Striker and der Sturmer differed was that, again,
they consider this sort of a two way street. So
when he starts to get a bunch of letters from
readers who are like talking about a specific conspiracy theory

(33:33):
they have of you know, so and so doing an
evil thing, Striker will use that and he'll just sort
of like write out an investigation, and you know, he
doesn't actually send anyone to investigate but he'll take these.
It's Alex Jones does this a lot where he'll like,
you'll hear one episode he'll get like a caller come
in and make some sort of claim. In the next episode,
he's like, I've got sources that say this is going on.

(33:53):
You know, it's it's it's an easy way to make content, right,
We'll do it. Sources never right, of course. Yeah. I
found a fascinating analysis of the letters to dere Sturmer
and like the different kind of ways they impacted content
in the Journal of Modern Judaism by Dennis Showalter, and
Showalter notes that dere Stirmer did sometimes publish just letters

(34:17):
by outright cranks, like you know people. One example he
gives is, there was this guy who writes a letter
to Striker about how the Jews stole my business and
they forced me in an insane asylum. And it's you know,
it's clearly some dude who just like had a mental
breakdown and blamed it all on the Jews for whatever reason.
But the letter, yes, yes, yeah, But letters, these kind

(34:41):
of letters where it's just like some crank writing out
of conspiracy theory are kind of rare in terms of
the kind of stuff. He published a much larger number
of letters where requests for aid either by people claiming,
you know, I got swindled by a Jewish merchant or something,
or by people just claiming that they were suffering under
the Weimar system, which was its self seen as Jewish

(35:01):
and publishing all of these letters allowed Striker to make
the case for Nazism in a way that was more
personal than even a lot of Hitler speeches. The pages
of dere Strmer became a place where Germans suffering from
hard times could come to ask for aid. You could
sort of direct support to people who were suffering through
the NewsPage was kept people coming in, which built the

(35:22):
sort of relationship with the And again it's very modern
to like the way social media works where you're like, oh,
this guy is kind of politically on our side and
he needs money for this. We'll do like a fundraiser
for him, you know. And this also serves as a
way to like, you know, we can talk about this
bad thing that happened to him and how it's part
of the evil that our enemies are doing right right,
and so dere Stirmer becomes kind of this is how

(35:44):
it becomes so central a big part of how it
becomes central to like the growing Nazi movement, and likewise
Striker is able to use the kind of conversations he's
having with his readers through these letters to forge Derek
Stirmer into a sort of weapon that really hadn't existed before.
And to talk about that, I'm going to quote again
from Showalter's piece. By far the largest category of letters

(36:08):
in der Sturmer's files and pages expressed grievances of one
kind or another. This correspondence could be further subdivided under
four general headings. The first can be best described as
undifferentiated anti Semitism, dislike of Jews as Jews. Here's simple
hatred was less common than hostility based on profound ignorance.
One rural correspondent described in detail the alleged Jewish practice

(36:29):
of throwing stones on the graves of their dead while saying,
greet Abraham, Isaac and Jacob for me, and when you
see the little carpenter, throw a stone at his head.
The daughter of another local Nazi was employed by a
gentile family as lady help until served a meal that
included ground meat purchased from a Jewish butcher. Years of
anti Semitic horror stories about Jews deliberately polluting food, especially meat,

(36:50):
and then selling it to gentiles had their effect. The
girl refused her dinner, even when her employers mocked her
Volkish prejudices and told her to eat or give notice
to her proud father. This principled stand is served recognition
in dar Sturmer and Striker agreed, then that may just
sound like undifferentiated Nazi propaganda, and it is. But also
what's happening here is this girl or her dad at least,

(37:12):
is using dere Stermer to say, Hey, this family, this
prominent family who hired my daughter, are doing business with
a Jewish butcher. They're buying his products. And so not
only does this spread this conspirat that Jews are poising people,
but it also shames this specific family and kind of
directs threats against them because darre Sturmer's readership are a

(37:34):
bunch of asshole Nazis, right, so they hear, oh, this
family's buying from a Jewish butcher. Let's go fuck with them, right, Let's,
you know, do some graffiti at their house. Let's like
mess them up a little bit until they stop. And
this is a really important point in turning point for
Nazi propaganda because one of the first steps on the
road to genocide anywhere that it exists, but in Nazi

(37:54):
Germany this particular instance is the exclusion of targeted people
from daily life life right. Once Hitler takes power, of course,
you know, they pass a bunch of laws to restrict
Jewish employment, to get them out of public right, so
that Germans on a daily basis are not making contact
with Jewish people and thus don't have relationships with them,
you know, won't stand up to stop the state from

(38:16):
killing them in other ways. But during the Weimar period,
Striker is able to push Germans to cut about tens
of thousands, god knows how many to cut off ties
with their Jewish neighbors. By using his paper this way,
readers start basically whenever they see they see it. You know,
you've got like a German family, you know, or a
German business that's like not run by racist right, So

(38:36):
they're like, well, we'll sell products that are made by
this Jewish owned company, or we'll have business with this
Jewish butcher or whatever you write about to dare stirmer
about them and then darre Sturmmer says, Hey, this grocery
store is selling meat from a Jewish butcher. Go pick
it it, you know, go a spray pant, go break
their windows, right and some a lot of businesses just

(38:58):
start to pull back from their deal with Jewish business people,
with Jewish companies, with Jewish doctors and stuff like you
know one thing. People will literally get yeah exactly, because
they don't want to be the subject of this shit.
Like people will write in letters being like my neighbor
goes to a Jewish doctor, and then that guy will
get like fucking egged in the street or like beat
up by the essay or something. And it pushes people,

(39:21):
huge numbers of people who are kind of centrists or
even kind of progressive to cut off ties with their
Jewish neighbors in a lot of cases because it's so
dangerous to do so. It's disastrous to your business. You
can wind up getting very badly hurt as a result
of it. He is using mass media to direct harassment

(39:42):
campaigns in order to separate German Jews from other Germans,
and it works extremely well. Dere Sturmer is a potent weapon,
and it's a kind of weapon hadn't really existed before
in this form because like mass media is sort of
becoming getting born in this period of time.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
So yeah, that's good sets off for real chain reaction, right.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
M Yeah, I mean variants of this tactic are used
all around today, right. It just it works really well.
It's this kind of like when we talk about like
the negative things about social media and how it can
like direct harassment campaigns against people who go viral for
whatever reason. You know, this is an early gasp of that.
You know, it's obviously it's more directed. It's less of

(40:28):
kind of a consequence. It's not a consequence of an
algorithm or anything, but it is this this understanding of like,
well you could just like lie to piss off a
bunch of people at a specific random person, and that
will change their behavior in a way that might benefit
me politically.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
It's yeah, I mean it's a kind of algorithm, right,
I mean, it's a programmed one that's programmed by not
on computers, but it's it's like a human algorithm. If
we can upset this one, then these lot will be
scared to come here, and as a result, it will
it will exclude one group from something else. It's very
much like that now, but just obviously like you said,

(41:04):
via social media.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
Where yeah, he basically I mean, he's built a kind
of gun here and he's gonna leave it on the
table when he gets hung at Nuremberg. But everybody can
pick that gun up today, right like it's easy to find.
So the Sturmer becomes a potent weapon. You get these
lurid stories of violence and sex that draws in readers,
especially young readers. Who young people, you know, you don't

(41:27):
have as much sort of impulse control. So when these
letters come out saying this family or this business is
doing business with the Jews, there may be more likely
to go funck shit up, go break stuff. You know.
It works well and circulation increases during the period this
like late twenties period, from the tens of thousands to
the hundreds of thousands, and this makes Julius a very

(41:48):
wealthy man. As the years go on, the Nazis draw
ever closer to power, and Striker who is he's generally
recognized is that he's not a particularly bright guy in
most things. You know, he's not like a very academic person.
He's not a guy as a teacher. He wasn't very successful.
But he's not just. This is not just. He has

(42:09):
like a degree of kind of like gut instinct as
a propagandist. But he also pays attention to what works
and doesn't, and over time he starts to lay out
a basis, the basis for a theory on how to
properly deploy propaganda and a Nazi historian who worked with
him in the thirties described Striker's style this way. Since
he wanted to capture the masses, he had to write

(42:31):
it in a way that the masses could understand, and
a style that was simple and easy to comprehend. He
had recognized that the way to achieve the greatest effect
on an audience was through simple sentences. Writing had to
adopt the style of speaking if it were to have
a similar effect. Striker wrote in The Sturmer the way
that he talked. The worker who came home at night
from the factory was neither willing nor able to read

(42:51):
intellectual treatises. He was, however, willing to read what interested
him and what he could understand. Striker therefore took the
content from daily life and the style from speech. He
thus gave the Sturmer Its style, a style which many
intellectuals could not understand, but which fundamentally was nothing but
the product of his own experience, gained over the years.
And it's one of the things that's compelling to me

(43:13):
about this is that obviously, like you know, liberal and
leftist intellectuals hate Striker and attack him and often kind
of don't understand why what he does works. But also
Nazi intellectuals hate him because they don't. They think he's gross,
he's boorish, his kind of anti Semitism is really low class,
whereas theirs, they feel is very intellectual. Hitler a big

(43:34):
part of what Hitler does is he defends Striker from
the intellectuals and the Nazi Party who hate him by
being like, you guys don't get it. This dude has
a fucking like hotline to the like angrying up the
blood of sort of like working class Germans. He gets it.
He gets how to talk to them, and you people

(43:54):
don't with your like fancy as weird books about Nazi
race magic, you know, like that's exactly it.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Yeah, that's exactly it, And I mean I hate saying it.
Like Hitler was clever in that regard. Like he. But
the irony is that Striker's version of anti Semitism is
way more honest. It's awful, but it's way more honest
because the intellectuals are as disgusting as Striker. He's just
saying it without the without the window dressing, you know.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
Yeah, I'm not making I'm not making like a moral
difference between these guys, for sure, but.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
I'm just saying, like, it's it's ironic that they would
look down on Striker when they're the exact same people.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Yeah, obviously, like he'll lie about, you know, crimes and
stuff that he claims people committed, but when it comes
to the meaning of his hate, he's very honest. Yeah.
So Striker's sentences when he writes them in the Discernment
are short. He keeps you know, he's very focused into
the point. He uses simple words when he makes a
report and a big thing thing from his When he

(44:55):
makes a point, he repeats it over and over again
for months or even years each issue. There's never any
new arguments, right, Every argument you're gonna get from Striker
is laid out in the first, you know, issue of
Dear Stirmer. But every issue brings more pieces of evidence
to support these arguments, right, and the central argument is
that the Jews are a threat to German life. The

(45:17):
line that he uses over and over again is the
Jews are our misfortune, right, which becomes one of the
most iconic pieces of anti Semitic Nazi propaganda. Right. Yeah.
In the mid nineteen twenties, Striker adds cartoons to dear
Stirmer he had become. This is another area in which
he's a trailblazer because he's become a fan over the

(45:40):
period of making this of a racist cartoonist named Philippe
Rupricht who wrote racist cartoons under the pseudonym Phipps, and
Striker is like the first Nazi dude to realize, like, hey,
you know what, you know what everyone loves is a cartoon.
This is a great way to dispread our propaganda. Phipps

(46:00):
is interesting because he was initially just like a cartoonist
who happened to be a racist. And so he gets
hired by a social Democratic paper to show up at
a Striker speech and draw a caricature of Striker, right
for this newspaper that doesn't like him. But Phipps kind
of falls in love with Striker. And instead draws caricatures

(46:21):
of that mayor I talked about Lupa and a prominent
Jewish citizen who's got like beef with Striker, and he
instead of like doing the thing he'd been paid to,
he goes to Striker and he's like, hey, man, I
got paid to draw you, but instead I did these
caricatures of these guys you hate. Will you publish them
in Dear Sturmer? Striker does, and over the next eight years,
Phipps's anti Semitic caricatures became the standard German visual shorthand

(46:45):
for like identifying a public figure as Jewish. Michael D. Bulmosch,
whose family collection of Holocaust related propaganda is hosted by
Kenyan University, describes the impact of Phipps's drawings this way.
These grotesque, often pornographic cartoons of Jewish stereotypes accompanied the
propaganda Striker disseminated, saturating the consciousness of Germans during the

(47:07):
Third Reich and contributing to the capacity of many Germans
to accept the Nazi program. These drawings often ended with
the statement the Jewish our misfortune, and without a solution
to the Jewish question, there was no salvation for mankind. Now,
I'm going to have Sophie show you one of these cartoons,
and we're not going to post any of this shit
on the internet, because, by god, there's enough of it.
But like, what's going on in this cartoon you're looking at.

(47:29):
It shows like a Jewish butcher with his wife behind him.
They are both drawn uncharitably, and he is putting rats
in an organ grinder in order to make meat to
sell to Christians. Right, specifically, sort of conspiracy theories against
Jewish butchers are a big part of the thing that
Striker is pushing because it makes people feel like they're

(47:50):
personally threatened. You know, it's a way to kind of
force them out of society. So you know, yeah, you
can see sort of like the visual shorthand that he's
developing here.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
It's really like the archetypal like anti Summit, yes, yes,
style if you like.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
Yeah, all of the modern sort of racist caricatures in
this vein are descendants of Phipps's drum. Yeah, yeah, pretty common.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Everybody wants to hidden knowledge, right.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Right, yeah, exactly, But you know the only way to
get hidden knowledge Jake buying something that's right, that's right,
that's right. Yeah, exactly. When you purchase something that you
don't want, it creates a gnostic info path in which,
you know, the demi urge will beam a secret truth

(48:38):
into your head. Because you've subscribed to Blue Apron's meal
box plane.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
Everyone's saying it.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
Everyone's saying it. Ah, we're back here, so good stuff here.
So yeah. By nineteen thirty three, dere Sturmer is a
the most popular newspapers in Germany. There's more than half
a million sales each month. You know, they're doing great.

(49:05):
Hitler's in power, and he holds a big celebration rally
in Nuremberg, which is against Striker's city. Right, That's where
the base of his power has always been, the early
years of political legitimacy, you know, because the thirties before
Hitler kind of has made chancellor, the early thirties is
when they're starting to get in to the Reichstag and whatnot.

(49:27):
This has been good for not just Striker but other
Nazi big wigs, and they'd started to get both rich
and like literally physically overweight, right because they're not fighting
in the streets so much. They've all gotten older and
now they have money for like nice food, and alcohol.
And I bring this up because so you look at
like iconic footage of Nazi rallies, have you noticed that

(49:49):
a lot of them are at night, right, these big
torchlit rallies. I had always assumed that like that was
just because oh, torches are like impressive visually, like it
makes it look kind of like more serious and whatnot.
But the reason why this first big Nuremberg rally is
done like in torchlit style is because Hitler's like angry

(50:11):
at the fact that all of his old fighters have
gotten fat and he doesn't want their bellies to show.
So he's like, we got it, we gotta do this
at night so nobody sees. We don't want him to
look at harm and garritt. Yeah, it's really it's kind
of funny if you can, you know, not think about
what comes later a little bit. But yeah, So while

(50:33):
most of the old fighters straight away took offices in
Germany and set to work dismantling Weimar, Striker remains at
his paper right, he doesn't a lot. Basically, all of
the other guys who had been that tight with Hitler
for that long get jobs in the government. Even if
that job they're not really doing anything. It's just sort
of like, well, now you can get money and like
take bribes and stuff. They get gigs in the state.

(50:56):
Striker doesn't do that, and I think it's probably because
Hitler and everyone knows, like, I know, you like this
guy will take care of him, but like he can't
work in the government. Likes he's just not that kind
of person. He's not able to function within a bureaucracy.
You know, he's a useful propagandist, but he's just too
thorny to like function in a system like that. So

(51:17):
they give him kind of this sort of like the
prize that they give him that allows him to exist
outside of the state apparatus. He's made Gaulighter for Franconia,
which is the region that Nuremberg is in, and Galllighter
is a party position, so it's not part of the government.
It's part of the Nazi party and it's effectively like
the head of a state party. Right, Like you think
about Gaulight, I know it's nonsense, nonsense language, and hey,

(51:44):
I don't feel any better about France coming for you
next when we do the Napoleon episodes. So Galllighter is like, yeah,
it's it's you think about, like in the United States,
you've got like the Republican Party of Texas or the
the Democratic Party of Wyoming or whatever, they're going to
have like a person who is running the party for

(52:04):
that state. That's what the Gawlighter is. But because the
Nazis have taken control of the state and are sort
of in the process thirty three thirty four to thirty
five of like eating the state apparatus, being the head
of the party for Franconia puts him in functional control
over the government of the region, but he's not actually
responsible for anything, so he can step in anywhere. He

(52:26):
could tell the mayor what to do, you can tell
the governor what to do. He can like, you know,
force his will anywhere in Franconia he wants. But he
also doesn't have to do anything, so he's not like
managing the sewers. But if there's a way for him
to like get money out of like the sewers, he
could do that. You know. It's kind of a perfect
position for a gangster type dude to be in, right
because you don't actually have to accomplish anything for people,

(52:48):
but you can take advantage whenever it sort of occurs
to you, how you can do that? It's a sweet gig.
But as Biteworking explains, yeah, yeah, exactly. But as his
biographer bite Work explains, even this sweetheart gig is not
something that Julie is as well suited to handle. Just
as he had been a poor soldier off the battlefield

(53:10):
and a good one on it, he was better at
fighting for political power than he wasn't using it. Indeed,
the almost absolute power of a gau Lighter of the
Third Reich exacerbated the flaws in his personality. He could
not tolerate the orders of others, nor would he tolerate
disobedience on the path of his subordinates. And Randall goes
on to cite the analysis of a historian named Edward Preston,

(53:31):
which I find interesting, if slightly questionable in phrasing. Probably
more so than any of his peers, Striker combined the
elements of a dictator who would brook no opposition with
those of the anarchist, the lover of chaos, who would
accept no orders from superiors. This inability to fit into
an organization, even his own, was his greatest weakness as Gaulighter.
His lack of control made him enemies above, such as

(53:53):
Gerring and Himmler, who and drove honorable men out of
his organization below, leaving miserable toadies who had to crawl
at his feet. There was constant turmoil in Franconia because
there was constant turmoil in Striker. So he's he's given
this gig, which is like his reward for being loyal,
but he's like bad and he's fucking up. He's not
just bad at it, but he's like fucking up the
ability of the government to function in this This is

(54:18):
a pretty crucial period for the Nazis, really, especially thirty
three to thirty sixths or so. They're not it's not
guaranteed that they're going to hold onto absolute power. The
military doesn't really like them. They're in the process of
replacing the police, right, there's still a chance that they
could get like pushed out at this stage. So they
don't want a guy like Striker just like fucking around

(54:39):
in the local government and being incompetent. It's like bad
for them, you know.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Yeah, they don't want a live wire, yeahime of everyone
needing to play.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
Booll exactly exactly. This is like a really critical period
and it's recognized that he was. He's a very reliable propagandist.
He's not reliable here. So you know, the big reason
why he gets into trouble then is not that like
he's you know, a gangster, because they all are. It's
that he's bad at being a gangster. You know. He

(55:10):
after he chases his nemesis, the mayor out of job,
the out of the job, he replaces him with a toady,
like a guy who's supposed to you know, suck up
to him, but like that guy isn't very good at
his job and also doesn't work with Striker well because
basically no one does. And the police chiefs that Himmler
appoints in Franconia they also hate Striker because he's like

(55:32):
super corrupt and is constantly breaking even like the minimal
laws they're trying to enforce. So over and over again,
Striker will get, you know, in trouble with somebody for
like fucking up something critical in the state, and Nazi
functionaries will write complaints to Hitler, and Hitler will intervene
again and again. This happens a bunch in the mid thirties,

(55:53):
like Nazis trying to force Striker out as gal lighter
and Hitler being like, nah, man, he's my boy. Nah,
he's my boy. Like I know he's bad at this,
but like fuck you, he's my guy. And again, while
this is going on, Nuremberg is a big city for Hitler.
He visits there regularly. He doesn't like to see Striker.
There's like a bunch of cases where he'll show up

(56:14):
in Nuremberg for an event and he'll kind of like
have like an advanced team go just to like warn
him where Striker is so he doesn't have to like
hang out with him, Like he really doesn't like it.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
They could see me.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Yeah, don't let that dick can see me. But also
it's known this is not just something that like was propaganda.
People who knew and spend time around Hitler said that,
like Dare Sturmer is the only thing Hitler reads cover
to cover, like every issue, this guy's reading it. You know.
So when we look at Striker living under Nazi control, again,
he's not this guy of kind of like broad ranging talent.

(56:50):
His talent is extremely focused on being a propagandist. But
you know, outside of that, he's kind of a failure
in every other aspect of life. The early years of
the Reich are then largely about score settling for Julius.
In nineteen thirty four, after the Night of Long Knives,
a Nuremberg school teacher was heard in a cafe saying

(57:10):
that strikers should have been among the victims. When word
got back to Julius, someone reports this teacher. He has
the man arrested, and then he shows up in this
teacher's cell with two other Nazis armed with whips and
they beat this guy half to death with them. As
they leave the cell, Julius has heard to say, I
needed that. Now I feel released, like you know, And

(57:30):
I think this is like he's a street fighter, he's
an old soldier, Like I'm going to use my part
of what he is using his power on now that
he is in political powers to like go beat the
shit out of people whenever he wants to deal with
his stress. Yeah, because he's you know, he's a big
bully too. Maybe we have like glossed over that, but yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Think that's like at the center of a lot of
these ideologies is yeah, just suppressed bullies or bullies in
a position where you know they can't do it for
a bit or whatever.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
Yeah, it's it's just like that's I mean, obviously you
think about like who wants to be a Nazi? Well, assholes, right.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
Like, yeah, that's the way you'll live in So I
want to crush you.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
Like exactly. Yeah, Like we shouldn't be surprised that Julia
Stryker uses his power to like beat whoever he wants
with a fucking whip. That's not a obviously like Heinrich
Himler or whatever isn't going to like go after him
for whipping some random teacher. But where Striker causes problems
is so one of the first things he does when
the Nazis take power is he helps to organize an

(58:31):
anti Jewish boycott through his paper, which like is really successful,
you know, And while it's actually kind of a mixed bag,
but it's successful in making Nuremberg seen as the center
of Nazi racial jurisprudence. Because Striker is the guy who's
writing all of these theories out, now that they're sort
of in power, he doesn't need to like like spread

(58:53):
conspiracies about the Jews as much as he needs to
make specific suggestions for how German law should deal with them.
And this feeds into the fact that in September of
nineteen thirty five, at a Nuremberg rally, Hitler announces a
new set of laws restricting the behavior of Jewish Germans
known as the Nuremberg Laws. Among other things, these legally

(59:14):
banned sexual relations between German Jews and German non Jews. Now,
Striker was not a part of writing these laws. Any reading,
anything you ever read about the Holocaust, any documentary about
the Holocaust will talk about the Nuremberg Laws. They are
extremely important in the advancing sort of assembly of the
apparatus that becomes the Holocaust. Striker gets credit for these laws.

(59:38):
He has no role in them actually, cause again, you're
not going to bring in this dude to help you
write laws. But because he was kind of the most
known anti Semite in the Nazi Party, and because Nuremberg
is his city, he gets credit for this thing that
he doesn't actually really make. I mean, obviously he does
support them, but he also like part of why he's

(59:58):
not going to get to write these laws that he
gets credit for is that these laws are written by
the Nazi intellectuals that we talked about, who don't believe
the exact same things that he does, like among other things,
Striker believes that, like Stryker has these like weird mishmash
of different sort of conspiratorial or in different stort of
like historical almost some kind of like magical beliefs about

(01:00:20):
the Jews and like where they came from, and like
all of this weird stuff that kind of reaches back
to like ariosophy and stuff like that Helena Blovotsky kind
of shit. We talk about all this stuff, and some
of that is common among the Nazi intelligensia, but like
Striker's version of it is considered kind of gutter, and

(01:00:40):
so it's interesting he gets kind of the last laugh
here because these guys who hate him because they consider
him low class are the ones who write the Nuremberg Laws.
But Striker kind of gets credit for it. And in fact,
after Hitler announces the Nuremberg Laws, like during his speech,
there are chants of hail Striker that break out in
the crowd because so many people give him credit for

(01:01:01):
this stuff. Interesting side note under the individual.

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
Kind of planting this seed without actually.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
Yeah, doing the thing such a good job that he
gets credit for it over these people who are pretty
pissed that, like, he's the one who gets credit for
their racism. Yeah, no, he's not being racist, right Yeah.
Under the new third reich, DERs Schermer expanded its ouvra

(01:01:30):
into publishing children's books like the nineteen thirty six text
Trust No Fox on the Green Meadow and No Jew
on His Oath. Not as good a title is like
I don't know, hop on pop, but yeah, that's a that's.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Not not as good as anti Semitism.

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
Daily, No anti anti Semitic letters. Yeah. This book is
written by Elvira Bauer, who is an eighteen year old
art student in kindergarten teacher, and is illustrated by Phipps
Kenyon University. Right, children as young as six would be
propagandais to recognize the Jew as distinct from the Aryan German,
as crafty and exploitative, untrustworthy, greedy money hoarding, physically repulsive,

(01:02:09):
and sexually predatory. The school child would be indoctrinated with
old antisemitic tropes and canards from an early age. German
youth would learn not only to recognize these repulsive descriptions
of Jews, but as well the importance of standing together
as a nation to remove the jew as a threat.
Der Sturmer constantly reminded Germans that the Jews are our
misfortune and jewry and its malignant influence had to be destroyed.

(01:02:32):
So again, through all the issues, the first five years
of Nazi power are broadly speaking a good time for him.
But in nineteen thirty eight he steps out of line again.
And the cause here is Christallnacht happens, right, so you
get this big night of rioting across Germany. Bunch of
synagogues are burnt down, munch of Jewish businesses are like
robbed the windows, yeah, break in the wind. That's the

(01:02:54):
night of broken glass, right, And Striker uses this as
an excuse kind of in the wake of this to
buy up millions of dollars of a Jewish property at
forced sale prices, where it's basically like, hey, seeing what's
happening to all these other Jewish owned businesses. Your shop
can either get burnt down, you can sell it to
me at like five percent of its actual value. Right now.

(01:03:17):
The Nazi don't have an issue with this as a thing.
In fact, this is what they are all doing. But
the problem is that Striker is not going within the
party apparatus. He's just doing this at wherever he thinks
there's a profit, and Harriman Gering is the guy who's
supposed to be doing all this like making like buying
all these businesses for nothing. So when Striker does this,

(01:03:38):
he kind of steps on Gering's toes, and so the
two men are wind up in conflict over this, and
that conflict gets stoked by some of Striker's other enemies
within the Nazi Party apparatus. One of these guys is
the local police president who like goes to Gering and
is like, hey man, look, you and I are buds.
I just want to let you know Striker's telling people
your dick doesn't work. Like he's saying that, like your

(01:04:00):
wife got artificially inseminated, because like you can't come anymore.
I just want you to know, bro, like I'm not
saying that. Jules is saying that. You know, it is
so petty, right, He's like, yeah, got him. So this
pisses off Herman Gearing, who launches a yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:04:23):
of course, who launches a commission to investigate Striker and
of course finds a lot of examples of outrageous corruption
and obviously Herman Gehing is Herman Gearing. I don't trust
that this was a good investigation. But Striker is outrageously corrupt,
so it's probably not art and like it's so fucked up.
Like one of the things they're doing, there's like a
fucking paparazzi element to this, where like Striker is constantly

(01:04:46):
cheating on his wife, right, He's got all these mistresses,
he's visiting prostitutes. So a big part of what they're
doing is they're just like having photographers ambush him while
he's like naked, fucking people and like take photos and
stuff of him. Yeah, that's like a bunch this.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
Paparazzi.

Speaker 1 (01:05:03):
But like right there, so Gerring's investigation comes up with
both a bunch of photos of Striker morally sort of
being and one of most of the Nazis are like this, right,
Herman Ghering is like this, right, like he is a
he is a decadent motherfucker. But Hitler's actually not. Hitler's
like weird and repressed and kind of grossed out by

(01:05:25):
this sort of behavior. So even though they're all doing it,
if you can make the case to Hitler that like
this guy's a degenerate Hitler will get kind of pissed
off as Rizaldebta. So that's like the hope, that's why
they're going after him this way. So this force is
a wider investigation, you know, Gerring's investigation. And so it
now becomes a matter for the Nazi courts, and the

(01:05:46):
Nazi courts call up Striker's assistant, a guy nams Hans Kanig,
to testify against him, and it does say as much
of an asshole as Striker as to most people who
works with Kanig is as loyal as you can be
because when he gets subpoenaed, basically he goes to Striker
and he's like, they're gonna make me, They're gonna question
me on the stand about you. And Striker's like, you

(01:06:08):
should kill yourself, bro, the only way to get out
of this, and Kanig does it. Kanag kills himself to
protect Striker. What Yes, It's like, yes, sir, taking the order. Yeah,
I guess, I guess this is how I'm doing it. Yeah, wha?

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
What the fuck was going on in Germany?

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
Man? People? Are you got a note with all of
this happening that like you can buy heroin over the
counter there's like methamphetamine everywhere. Maybe that maybe that also
everyone's drinking all I don't know, maybe that plays a
role all the head injuries from the war. Who knows,
you know.

Speaker 5 (01:06:43):
It's it's a really wild time though, it's fucking nuts. Yeah,
Like obviously everything else happen off that was wild and
fucked up and crazy, but it really didn't spring from nothing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
No, no, it's a it's quite a quite a period.
And yeah, so fucking Kanig offs himself, which winds up
protecting Striker. Now, the Commission still finishes its report. Its
investigation on him, and what they uncovered provides us with
a pretty interesting lens into the early ground reality of
Nazi corruption. And I'm going to quote from the book

(01:07:14):
Julius Striker here. The Commission even investigated Striker's sexual life,
greatly aided by the cooperation of a nervous mistress announcing
that no proper man would wear a wedding ring. Striker
had collected those of his underlings to melt down into
a jewelry box for his mistress and he Sits, who
also received a regular salary for very limited duties from
Striker's one of his newspapers. Other mistresses too, received paychecks

(01:07:38):
from surprising sources. A country house with a well equipped
bedroom had been built for Striker's affairs. Further cases of
the beatings of political opponents were uncovered, as were Striker's
detailed examinations of the sex lives of arrested juvenile delinquents
and his boasts in the presence of young people of
sexual prowess. So he's doing shit like he's having all
the people who work with him given his wedding rings

(01:08:00):
so he can like melt them down to give a
present to his mistress. He's like whenever juvenile delinquents are arrested,
he's like showing up to like sexually harass and sometimes
assault them, like he'te real weird piece of shit. So again,
a lot of Nazis are doing stuff like this. Striker's
just really bad at covering it up. But still Hitler

(01:08:24):
fights back against these attempts from the other Nazis to
use this as a justification to remove him from power,
and he continues to back Striker for another year until
the German invasion of Poland. And what finally gets Julius
in trouble with Hitler is really dumb. Basically the invasion
of Poland. Again, we forget this because of everything is
kind of unpopular even in Germany at the time, right, Like,

(01:08:46):
it's kind of a dicey move. It's a gamble. Hitler's
a gambler. It's a gamble to invade Poland because people
aren't fully on board with doing another World war at
this stage. While he's trying to build support for Hitler's
invasion of Poland, Striker kind of goes off a little
bit on a limb and he makes some comments critiquing
the leadership of the Wehrmacht, which Hitler absolutely needs the

(01:09:10):
army's support, and so when Striker fucks up and makes
the army angry, Hitler has to ban Striker from giving
public speeches in order to keep the army on his side.
This sort of forces another investigation against Striker, which reveals
a bunch more corruption, and in nineteen forty, Hitler finally
agrees to remove Julius from his official position as Gaulighter.

(01:09:31):
Sort of he doesn't. Hitler can't have him in control anymore,
but he doesn't want to like publicly insult him, so
in public Striker is still named the Gawlighter, but he
is privately another person is picked to do the job,
and Striker is banned from leaving his home. Right, He's
not allowed to go to Nuremberg anymore. He's basically on

(01:09:51):
like house arrest, but he's still allowed to publish Dare Stirmer.
It's this weird back and forth Hitler has with him,
where he's like, you are under house arrest, kit you
if you go to Nuremberg. But also while the war
is going on, I'm going to send you like precious
supplies of fuel and paper in order to keep making
their stirmer.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Right, he just needs that, but he doesn't a lunatic
behind it. I'm certainly not just in here and what
I'm gonna say that Trump is like Hitler or anything
like that, But it's it's in a way it reminds
me slightly of like Bannon and Trump, like yeah, we
eat this Rabel Rouser and then it was like, oh,
for fuck's sake, he's he's going too far. What the

(01:10:31):
fuck can we do with him? You know?

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
Yeah, I mean it's one of those things like they're
both authoritarian guys. Like obviously Trump hasn't killed tens of
millions of people real big difference there, but there's similar
personality things, right, and there's including as you I think
pretty astutely noted, Bannon is super talented propagandist, was terrible
at being involved in politics directly right, and immediately got in. Yeah,

(01:10:57):
these kind of guys come up and down in history,
you know, like, yeah, it's that's just the way it goes.
So Yeah, Oddly enough, firing Striker in this way is
one of the few things Adolf Hitler ever felt guilty about.
Like this kind of gnaws at his heart. There's like

(01:11:17):
a very yeah a quote from him during a private
dinner in nineteen forty two where he's like lamenting this
Striker affair is a tragedy. Striker is irreplaceable. There's no
question of his coming back. But I must do him justice.
If one day I write my memoirs, I shall have
to recognize this man fought like a buffalo in our cause.
I can't help thinking that in comparison with so many services,

(01:11:39):
the reasons for Striker's dismissal are really very slender, Like
it's so as a guy, he's a real piece of
I mean, he's literally Hitler, but he's got this like
he's like morally harmed by the fact that he's he
feels like he's not doing right by Striker. Like, it's
so strange.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
About evil that someone and feel bad about, like fireing
this fucking lunatic that he didn't even like, and then
not feel bad about literally massacreing six million people.

Speaker 1 (01:12:10):
Yeah, anything else weird thing? It is so because I
think it is that for all of his numerous flaws,
you know, as as other Nazis saw them, Striker was
right or die for Hitler. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and someone with.

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):
An ego like Hitler's that means so much.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
That means everything to him. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
I mean, obviously it's important in anyone's life, but for
someone like that, when they're doing these evil shit, you
need that person.

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
Yeah, you need you need that fucking dude who liked Like,
you know, Striker had this guy who was willing to
kill himself for him. I think Stryker would have done
that for Hitler, Like he was able to be kind
of selfless when it came to backing Hitler. This is
the only place he was able to do that in
his life because he's otherwise real piece of shit, but
he had that to him. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
Interesting it's it's so things like that just so fun,
the psyche of just you know, like pure evil like
and yeah, it's compartmentalized within these people's heads, like it's
it's fascinating.

Speaker 1 (01:13:10):
There's a lot there just about the human the humanity
and I don't mean this and like we need to
be sympathetic toward Adolf Hitler, but the humanity of him
in that he is a man who is capable of
having something gnaw at his conscience, but also like the
thing the nauset is conscience is that he wasn't nice
enough to a giant piece of shit.

Speaker 2 (01:13:30):
Right right, Yeah, it's I don't know how you work
it out, Like.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
There's nothing to it's just like a thing. Like I
think it's if you actually, if you actually want to
understand these people not just as like historical figures, but
as like people. This is a thing. It's an interesting
aspect of absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
Yeah, and if you don't understand where this is coming from,
it will happen.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
Again, yeah, exactly. And it also like these people someone
we often say like oh, this person's a mom, right,
and you use it to kind of treat them like
a force of almost like magic, like an ill wind,
and it's like, no, Hitler was a person. Striker was
a person they had.

Speaker 3 (01:14:10):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
Part of what you have to understand here that I'm
sure is like an aspect of how they both feel
the way they do. Is this like feeling of like
trench loyalty to a fellow soldier, you know, yes and yeah. Anyway,
So World War two not great for the Dear Sturmer
as a as a as a profitable organization. For one thing,

(01:14:31):
paper fuel all gets harder to find, it's more difficult
to publish newsletters. Most people in this period are actually
going to be reading Dear Sturmer, not by like buying
a copy, but because in every town in Germany they'll
put up these big kind of like ground level billboard
type things where every new issue will be like put
under glass or something so you can see each page

(01:14:52):
and like presented that way, so people in town can
just like walk up to it to read that week's
issue of Dear Stirmer. Like that's how a lot of
it gets handed out because like like for free, yeah,
for free, because.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
There's shortage of yeah, because you.

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
Can't you can't make as much as many paper copies
for one thing, right, it's just not possible with the
reality of the war. So obviously dear Sturmer becomes less
profitable it also people are less interested in it. During
World War Two, Striker was had built his base of
readers through sexual titillation and blood and guts and fear

(01:15:27):
mongering about the Jews, that's the core of it, right,
And by the time World War Two starts, there are
not Jews publicly in German society, right, that's like the Holocaust,
you know, And so there's nothing for him to fear
monger about, Right, what are you going to do? Like,
how are you going to do the thing that you
were doing?

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
They've they've a new enemy.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):
Yeah, they've been removed, right, And he he's not ever
able to really figure that out. So dear Sturmer stays
working during the World War Two. But it kind of
it's it's it's public interest in it sort of falls
through the floor. And in early nineteen forty five, Julius
requests permission from Hitler to basically I want to you know,
everything's falling apart, Please let me go to the front

(01:16:08):
and like fight, and Hitler gives him permission, but Striker
doesn't wind up doing that instead, he's just married his
secretary after his wife died, who he'd been cheating with
on his wife for a long time. And right before
the war ends, they flee to Burkedisgotten, which is where
Hitler had, Like it's this nice little mountain town where
Hitler had his like summer home, and they kind of

(01:16:31):
just like move there with the plan of like writing
it out as long as they can and then killing themselves.
So while they're in hiding, American gis you know, capture
Nuremberg and whatnot. And they find Striker's house and as
they're going this is a thing. All of these Nazis, right,
you know, Hermann Gering's big palace gets like gone through

(01:16:53):
by soldiers, so does like Hitler's place in Burkedisgotten. They
find all of the different like art these guys had collected,
and when it Striker, you know, these other big Nazis
they had stolen like very valuable works of art. Inside
Striker's home they find what might have been the largest
stockpile of pornography in the world at the time.

Speaker 4 (01:17:13):
Are you surprised, No, no, not, like just rooms of
porn and what he'd done is for years, as gall lighter.

Speaker 1 (01:17:20):
Striker had collected, using the police, every piece of pornography
produced in the city that he could get his hands on.
He claimed, I'm building a library to like study the
Jewish plot to destroy area and masculinity. That's why I
need more porn than any man has ever had.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
Yeah, right, one minute there, I'm just in the office studying.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
I'm studying.

Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
I'm gonna study so Hot to Night.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:48):
Well, I mean it's it's funny to think of, but
at the same time, it's not a tool surprising from this.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
Yey right now, not at all. So on May twenty third,
nineteen forty, the Americans are in Burke dis Godden. There's
the you know, they're looking for all of these Nazi
big wigs, right, and Striker is on the list. He's
gone missing. So like officers are getting handed these lists
being like be on the lookout for this dude. We
we want to talk to this Nazi. And there's this

(01:18:16):
American Jewish major, right, he's a he's a Jewish American
who's an army major. His last name is Plitt, and
he's walking around town one day in burked this godden
and he sees Striker in his mistress, and Plitt doesn't
think that he's Striker is instead is just like, hey, man,
you look a lot like this escape Nazi. Has anyone
ever told you that? Right? Like, he's just being kind
of casual about it. Yeah, but he does it in

(01:18:39):
like German, and he's not great at speaking German, right,
because he's an American, And so Striker, because the dude's
German is broken, thinks this guy is saying you are
the escaped Nazi Julius Striker and hands himself in Right,
He's like, you got me, And then the Major's like, wait,
really for real, why are you actually that guy? Yeah?

(01:19:02):
So you know, the language barrier captured us at least
one Nazi. There you go. Right now, Striker gets arrested.
If you go and read and if you're googling a
lot of stories about Striker, you will wind up on
a bunch of Nazi websites. Because they are livid that
he gets they call it torture, which I guess you could.

(01:19:24):
It's not not torture. Basically, what happens is when he
gets arrested. This is a thing that happens to a
number of arrested Nazis, a couple of like Jewish soldiers
and Black soldiers just beat the shit out of him, right,
just absolutely to fuck it. But right, like, I'm not
worried about this, This is not this doesn't tweak my heart.

(01:19:45):
But Nazis get really angry about the fact that the
Allies tortured this guy. Where it's like, yeah, I don't know, man.
One thing that we know happens is that US troops
starts circulating a picture of him after he got the
hell beaten out of him that has a sign that
says Julius stre or King of Jews. Yeah, yeah, so

(01:20:06):
you kicked in. Yeah, he gets a little he gets
more of his come up ince than like most Nazis. Right,
So he goes on, you know, he's captured. He's there's
like a year or so where he's like, you know,
in custody and everyone's trying to figure out how to
do the Nuremberg trials because that's the whole process. And
like while he's being interrogated while this court trial is

(01:20:28):
going on, Striker he kind of like he has a
couple of weird periods. There's like one period of time
where he starts because this is if you remember, you
know your history, Right after World War Two, a number
of these Jewish militias that had existed in Palestine start
like fighting, you know, more openly, right, And he hears

(01:20:50):
about this, and he starts making speeches about how now
you know, if you'll let me go, I'll go to
Palestine to fight on behalf of these Jewish militias because
unlike the German, they're willing to fight for their homeland
or whatever. Right, it's very weird, Like I think he's
just like fucking with people, right, like yeah, because he
like he's trolling, right, like that is the guy this

(01:21:10):
is like he knows this will get attention. He wants
to troll people. He makes a claim at one point
that like I met this Jewish American soldier who treated
me well and it proved to me that there's good Jews.
But then he also writes like a final like big
anti Semitic rant that's his like political statement about how
everything's the fault. He's just like trolling people, right, like

(01:21:30):
we don't need to get into it that. I mean
the guy that he is in prison, Yeah he's going
to say that shit, yeah exactly. So they have this
big international military tribunal. Striker and Garring are kind of
like two of the bigger Nazis there. There's some like
generals and whatnot. And the indictment of Striker concludes that
he was like not directly involved in the physical commission

(01:21:53):
of the Holocaust, right, not or at least not in
a way that's like similar to you know, the people
who are running aushwit whatever. Right. But they note, and
I think this is a really interesting and valuable thing
that the Nuremberg trial does that while he was not
a part of the state and he was not organizing
death camps, his propaganda was consciously preparing the way for genocide, right,

(01:22:15):
that that had been part of his goal, and that
he was thus partly responsible for Nazi crimes against humanity.
There's a line in here, basically like within sort of
the kind of indictments against him, there's this sort of
a line that quote the effects of this man's crime,

(01:22:36):
of the poison that he has poured into the minds
of millions of young boys and girls, goes on, for
he concentrated upon the youth and childhood of Germany. He
leaves behind him a legacy of almost a whole people
poisoned with hate, sadism, and murder and perverted by him.
That people remain a problem and perhaps a menace to
the rest of civilization for generations to come. So yeah,

(01:22:56):
that is the accurate conclusion of the Nuremberg Commission. He
is sentenced to death.

Speaker 2 (01:23:01):
Well yeah, yeah, very I mean, in many ways, I
think his legacy is a lot more dangerous than someone
dealing out violence at the time. Not to say there
were any absolutely as well, but you know what I mean,
his legacy is definitely lasted.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
Yeah. I mean, you think about, like a couple of
years ago in the US, we had the Tree of
Life synagogue shooting. Right, this guy, Robert Bowers walks and
shoots eleven people he bred there. You can find like
quotes of him basically sharing evolutions of Striker propaganda. There's
a direct line between the two. Right, Striker's still killing people, you.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
Know, Yeah, yeah, exactly. Point Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:23:37):
So it's pretty cool that on October sixteenth, nineteen forty six,
the United States had a mostly illiterate con man who
pretended to be a skilled executioner hang Striker on the
gallows at Nuremberg and really fuck it up. It's a
bad execution. This guy did not know what he was doing.

Speaker 2 (01:23:58):
Yeah, perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:23:59):
Yeah, he gets.

Speaker 3 (01:24:00):
Caught by a guy who's who has broken German and
then gets by a guy who's you bad at people?

Speaker 2 (01:24:09):
Right, it has like this Looney Tunes death.

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
Yeah, the American people helping to punish the Nazis through incompetency. Yeah,
we know we were doing but we got him in
the end. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:24:22):
Yeah, yeah. It's luckily he felt like a lot of
pain before death, just from American incompetence. But it works.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
God willing. All right, that's the story of Julius Striker. Jake,
how you feeling.

Speaker 2 (01:24:35):
Yeah, it's very fascinating, man, I'm really really interested in that.
It's particularly like I've read Oh God, what's anyway? The
book about like the lead up to World War Two,
and I don't remember this guy. I'm sure it was
in it. It was a long time ago, but it's really
interesting this kind of stuff, and it really sadly shows
that it's not really going anywhere and hasn't really gone

(01:24:58):
anywhere in some ways, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:25:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's that's pretty pretty cool
if you're interested in Julius Strek. I really do recommend
people the book Julius strike Or by Randall Bitwork. Really
good book, really good historiography of this guy, talks in
much more detail about his propaganda. Jake, Where can people
find you?

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
Yeah, so just hit me up any social media at
Jake underscore Hanrahan that's h A n A h A n.
Or check check out my platform, popular Front. Just go
well search, Yeah, your best bet. We were shadow band
off of a load of stuff. We're censored heavily on
everything but Twitter, ironically. But yeah, so just search at

(01:25:46):
popular dot front and you'll find us.

Speaker 1 (01:25:48):
Mm hmmm. Yes, so check out popular Front, check out
sad Oligarch, and join Cooler Zone Media so you can
get all of these wonderful shows. Well, not popular Front
ad free, but popular Front is ad free normally, so
all of your podcasts will be add free if you
add that to your.

Speaker 2 (01:26:10):
I'll be honest. Times are very hot, and I don't
think it's going to stay out free for much younger.
We've done five years, but yeah it's going bad. But yeah,
not bad in terms of the business, in terms of
cost of living crisis, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:26:24):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's hard out there.

Speaker 2 (01:26:27):
So yeah, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:26:33):
And that brings me back to blue aprons.

Speaker 2 (01:26:35):
Goddamn.

Speaker 1 (01:26:38):
Anyway, everybody fresh you know, have a have a happy holiday.
This isn't going to come out during a holiday, but
the next time you have a holiday, remember me wishing
you a happy one. Now on Christmas, Yeah, and Christmas,
you know, for a few months from now.

Speaker 2 (01:26:54):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:26:55):
Bye.

Speaker 3 (01:26:58):
Behind the Bastards is a product fuction of cool Zone Media.
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