Julius Streicher
Streicher, Julius, Streicher (1885-1946), Nazi politician, ardent anti-Semite. Born February 12, 1885 in the village of Fleinhausen, Upper Bavaria; the ninth child of a Roman Catholic elementary school teacher. The only thing known about his early years is that in 1909 he was a teacher in the suburbs of Nuremberg. Before the beginning World War I Streicher served as a volunteer for a year, but was expelled from the army for extreme indiscipline, and a ban on ever serving in the German army appeared in his service certificate. But the 1st World War that began soon wrote off Streicher's previous sins, especially since he showed himself to be a brave soldier, for which he received the Iron Cross II and I degrees and the rank of lieutenant. After the war, he again became a teacher in Nuremberg, but unexpectedly became involved in political life on the side of the ultra-right nationalist forces.
In 1919, Streicher created a political organization based solely on anti-Semitism. In 1921 he joined the NSDAP. In 1923, Streicher founded his own organ, Der Stürmer, which soon gained a reputation as the most ardent anti-Semitic publication in Germany. In 1925, Streicher was appointed Gauleiter of Franconia with headquarters in Nuremberg, while continuing to teach at the school. His students were required to greet their teacher every day by shouting "Heil Hitler!". In 1928 he was fired from school for promoting anti-Semitism. In 1929, Streicher was elected to the Bavarian Landtag from the Nazi Party.
In the party, Streicher was reputed to be a specialist in "rousing the crowd." From year to year, in his speeches and articles, he called for the fight against Jews . The pages of his newspaper were full of notes and caricatures of Jews, stories of ritual murders, pornography and letters to the editor accusing the Jews of all sins. Young people reported the names of the girls who danced with the Jews; dentists complained about Jewish colleagues who allegedly put in plates that instantly collapsed; a psychiatric patient claimed to have been the victim of a Jewish conspiracy. Even the death of the Hindenburg airship in May 1937 was attributed by the newspaper to a Jewish conspiracy. Hitler read every issue of the newspaper from cover to cover with great pleasure.
In January 1933, Streicher was elected to the Reichstag from the Nazi Party from Thuringia. At the same time, he was appointed head of the Central Commission for Combating Jewish Intrigues and Boycotts. In 1934 he was promoted to the rank of SS Gruppenführer (lieutenant general). Carrying a whip everywhere with him, pacing around his district like a disgruntled master, enjoying beating people in the presence of witnesses, he quickly gained a reputation as an uncontrollable eccentric tyrant. Once he visited the Nuremberg prison, where, in the company of friends, he severely beat a young prisoner. Appropriating confiscated Jewish property, he quickly amassed a fortune. Streicher gave his friends the opportunity to buy up Jewish-owned houses and companies at a low price. He was repeatedly accused of rape and repeatedly brought against him a criminal case for libel.
His anti-Semitism took on pathological forms. Back in 1925, Streicher declared: "For thousands of years the Jews have been a destructive people. Let today be the beginning of the extermination of the Jews." April 1, 1933, he declared the national day of the boycott of the Jews. In 1935, Streicher enthusiastically welcomed the adoption of the Nuremberg laws on citizenship and race. In 1937, he said: "The Jew always feeds on the blood of other peoples, he always needs murder and sacrifice. Victory will come only when the whole world is free from Jews." On November 10, 1938, he openly spoke out in support of a nationwide pogrom against the Jews. After the outbreak of World War II, Streicher became the most ardent supporter of the extermination of Jews in the occupied eastern territories. On January 6, 1944, he wrote in his newspaper: "The rise of National Socialism provides us with the opportunity to free the continent from Jewish enslavers and exploiters forever." A cruel, ferocious sadist, he recognized only force as the solution to any problems. Streicher did not tire of showering contempt not only on enemies, but also on his party comrades. His presence in the highest echelons of the Nazi Party undoubtedly discredited the Nazi movement in the eyes of public opinion.
By 1939, Hitler, who had long sympathized with Streicher's ardent anti-Semitism, began to get annoyed with the behavior of his colleague and gave him cool reprimands several times. Finally, Redeverbot (a ban on public speaking) was officially imposed on Streicher. In 1940 Goering appointed a commission to investigate Streicher's personal and public life. As a result, Streicher was removed from all party posts, which, however, did not stop him.
At the Nuremberg trials, Streicher was charged with "publicly inciting the murder and extermination of Jews." The restless Streicher called this process "the triumph of world Jewry." He was not found guilty of involvement in the aggression, since he did not take part in the development of plans for the invasion, was not a military, political or diplomatic adviser to Hitler. However, he was found guilty on 4 counts and sentenced to death. October 16, 1946 he was led to the gallows in the Nuremberg prison. Rising to the scaffold, he sharply shouted: "Purimfest" (a Jewish holiday that marked the defeat of Ham, the oppressor of the Jews, in biblical times). Streicher's last words were "Heil Hitler!"
Used material Encyclopedia of the Third Reich - www.fact400.ru/mif/reich/titul.htm
Streicher Julius (February 12, 1885, Fleinhausen, Augsburg - October 16, 1946, Nuremberg), party leader, SA Obergruppenführer (1934). In 1908 he entered the military service. In 1911 he joined the Democratic Party. Member of the 1st World War, lieutenant. For military distinction he was awarded the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class. In November 1918 he joined the units of the Volunteer Corps. After demobilization he worked as a teacher in Nuremberg. Founder (April 1919) and leader of the "Socialist Party of Germany" (SPD). One of the most virulent anti-Semites. In 1921, negotiations were underway to unite the SPG with the NSDAP, which caused another crisis in the party. On October 8, 1922, he joined the NSDAP. On April 16, 1923, he founded the anti-Semitic newspaper "Sturmer" ("Der Sturmer") and until the end of its existence (1945) was the main publicist and author of the main articles. This newspaper, even by the standards of the Third Reich, took up militant anti-Semitic positions, incl. a lot of attention was paid to Jewish sexual harassment of Aryan women, sexual perversions among Jews, etc. During the "Beer Putsch" he spoke with rallies in Munich; after finishing his speech, Streicher joined the Nazi column. In a collision with the police, according to a number of testimonies, it was Streicher who fired the first shot. From 6/4/1924 member of the Bavarian Landtag. From 07/09/1924 1st President of the Great German People's Society. After the re-establishment of the NSDAP, the organizations headed by Streicher became part of the NSDAP, and he himself received the NSDAP party card No. 18. “New is the day when he lay with me on the pavement of Feldhernhalle, I swore that I would not leave him until he left me,” - said Hitler . On April 2, 1925, the Gauleiter of Nuremberg-Furth (in 1929 his Gau and Gau Central Franconia were merged into one - Franconia, headed by Streicher). In 1928, he was fired from school for promoting anti-Semitism. Since 1929 member of the Landtag of Bavaria. In his articles, he sharply attacked the Jews, accusing them of corrupting the German people, of all kinds of sabotage, etc., his newspaper - "Sturmer" - was full of cartoons and materials of a semi-pornographic nature. From 12.1.1933 Member of the Reichstag from Franconia. In 1933 he headed the Central Commission for Counteracting Jewish Intrigues and Boycotts. At the same time, there were constant rumors about Streicher's involvement in the rapes, but nothing was proven; against repeatedly initiated criminal cases on charges of libel. Streicher declared 1/4/1933 the Day of the National Boycott of the Jews. One of the main initiators of the all-German Jewish pogrom - "Kristallnacht" on 11/10/1938. After the outbreak of the war, he made calls for the complete annihilation of the Jewish population in the occupied territories. 2/16/1940 removed from all posts after intervention
Meanwhile, the ill-fated Dr. Marx, appointed - against his will! - Streicher's defender, turned out to be the object of vicious attacks by newspapermen. His law office was regularly searched, and he himself was constantly under the "Sword of Damocles" of sudden arrest without charge and imprisonment for an indefinite period. For reasons of his own safety, Dr. Marx even had to - as much as a lawyer could do without violating the rules of decency! - in every possible way to dissociate himself from his client, who gave him nothing but trouble. The lawyer's fears were not at all unfounded - one of the defenders of another defendant, the former imperial minister and protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Konstantin Baron von Neurath, was similarly arrested in broad daylight and imprisoned for six weeks without any charge. In addition, defense lawyers were not allowed to question the jurisdiction of the tribunal or the impartiality of the judges.
Julius Streicher (Julius Streicher), in five parts
Streicher commented on this with the following diary entry: “The right of the accused to challenge the judge due to the latter’s lack of impartiality corresponds to generally accepted judicial practice. defeated winners are both accusers and judges, so they simply cannot be impartial, which is both obvious and inevitable. Being perfectly aware of this, they established in advance the corresponding rule, which initially deprives the accused of the opportunity to challenge the fairness of the "justice" being delivered. what is the point of all this farce!" - the former Gauleiter continued to express his thoughts more clearly on paper - "This process does not bode well for the accused, since justice in this case is blind and biased; the task was set before the court to give the appearance of legality to injustice, to hide the arbitrariness he did under the guise of the administration of justice" .
So, for example, Streicher petitioned the court to summon the former chief of the Nuremberg police, Obergruppenführer SA Obernitz, as a witness. He asked the court to allow Obernitz to testify about the conflict that occurred between them in November 1938, when Streicher tried to dissociate himself from the destruction of the Nuremberg synagogue during the events that followed the "Imperial Crystal Night" (later he managed to justify this by the requirements of the architectural plan for the restructuring of the city ). But the court denied the request to call this witness.
It is characteristic that the bloody prosecutor of Stalin's "show trials" Andrey "Yaguarevich" Vyshinsky, who arrived in Nuremberg on November 26, 1945 from Moscow (the same Vyshinsky who, in his tenure as a judicial official of the Provisional Government, signed in July 1917 the order to arrest V.I. Ulyanov-Lenin and G.E. Apfelbaum-Radomyslsky-Zinoviev, as a result of which they had to hide in Razliv!) At a gala dinner at the Grand Hotel, given in his honor by the Western allies, raising a glass, publicly declared: " For the accused! So that their path from the court leads straight to the grave!"
To top it all off, the tribunal sought to nip in the bud any attempts by prisoners to raise the issue of their conditions in prison. When Streicher once tried to oppose such “measures” as being practiced during interrogations, such as beating interrogated people, which often led to physical injuries (Streicher himself had, for example, a seriously injured knee) and sent an official protest to Judge Jackson about this, the judge ordered that this paper be destroyed and not even entered into the register of passing documents.
According to the recollections of the defendants who survived the trial and were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, the prevailing mood in those days could be described in one single word - downright Old Testament thirst for revenge. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a death for a death! The atmosphere of those days was vividly characterized by a letter received by Judge Jackson from a wealthy New York businessman Ernest Schoenfeld and containing, in particular, the following lines: not only to be present at his execution, but also to take a personal direct part in the execution of the sentence. The author of the letter expressed his readiness to take on all the transportation costs and even - beyond that! - offered Judge Jackson a large sum of money as a token of "personal gratitude" on his own behalf.
Obsessed with his Judeophobia, Streicher from the very beginning tirelessly repeated that this process personifies the "triumph of world Judaism." He was firmly convinced that he would "die like a martyr" - precisely because he "always waged an uncompromising struggle against the Jews." But the fact remained that he had no need to justify his involvement in the acts of mass extermination of Jews, because, starting in 1939, he simply no longer held any official positions in the Third Reich. Therefore, the psychoanalyst Dr. Gilbert, who examined the "mental-psychological state" of each of the accused, predicted that Streicher's defense would be based on "bizarre" references to certain "spiritual insights", "world Zionism", "the teachings of the Talmud", and that these arguments "It is hardly worth responding with serious counterarguments."
At the same time, Dr. Hilbert seriously suggested bringing against Streicher, for example, the charge of "betrayal of the German youth" - not least because one of the accused, the former head of the NSDAP youth organization - "Hitler Youth" ("Hitler Youth") and the Gauleiter of Vienna, Baldur von Schirach, stated in court that the surge of anti-Semitism in Germany, which was blamed primarily on the weekly Der Stürmer published by Streicher, was in fact much more to blame for the book of the American "automobile king" Henry Ford the Elder "The Eternal Jew "(also known as "Judas through the epochs", and in Russian translation as "International Jewry"), published in millions of copies around the world (except for the only "politically correct" countries at the time described - the USSR and the Mongolian People's Republic). Meanwhile, Henry Ford the Elder was still alive at the time of the Nuremberg trials, quite healthy, and the scandalous trial over his anti-Semite book was still ahead. Judge Parker emphasized that "Streicher has nothing to do with the conspiracy at all" (with the aim of seizing Europe and the world, as one of the main points of the accusation - V.A.) said, "nor with any kind of planning at all."
Nevertheless, all the judges were united in their desire to hang Julius Streicher at all costs - and it doesn’t matter for what. Just to hang. But, since for this it was still necessary to pass a specific sentence point by point, indicating the guilt for which the former Gauleiter of Franconia would be sent to the gallows, serious disagreements constantly arose between the representatives of the prosecution. It was proposed, for example, that the defendants be found guilty and that the gravity of their guilt and the severity of the sentence be determined in accordance with the position and positions held by them in the past. So, the Soviet prosecutor Volchkov stated that "Streicher was closely associated with Hitler personally" - this seemed to him a good enough reason to send the ex-Gauleiter to the gallows. To this, Judge Biddle objected that it seemed absurd to him to consider some "petty Jew-hater a conspirator" on the basis of the mere fact that he was a personal friend of Hitler, or a Gauleiter, or a Nazi. However, in the end, Streicher was found guilty on counts 1 and 4 and sentenced to hang along with Göring, von Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Bormann (sentenced to death in absentia), Rosenberg, Jodl, Frank, Frick, Sauckel and Seyss-Inquart.
Having listened quite calmly to the sentence pronounced on him, Julius Streicher firmly and flatly refused to petition the court for clemency. Apparently, as punishment for yet another manifestation of "obstinacy", expressed this time in a categorical refusal to file an appeal, the jailers treated him the least condescendingly, in comparison with all the other sentenced. His eldest son, a former officer of the Luftwaffe (Third Reich Air Force), and Streicher's wife Adele were admitted to the last meeting with the sentenced before execution for only forty-five minutes. In one of his last conversations, Streicher, by the way, mentioned his sworn enemy, Nuremberg police chief Benno Martin, who tried to evade responsibility, claiming that in reality he was a deeply conspiratorial member of the anti-Hitler Resistance. “Yes, if I only opened my mouth about Martin,” Streicher hinted meaningfully, “he, too, would have to make a“ high jump ”.
"Frankenführer" stressed that he had initially considered the possibility of suicide, but then abandoned this idea, deciding that it was much more important to state in court why he fought so hard against the Jews. Until the very end, he never changed his opinion of them for the better, and least of all - here, during the Nuremberg Trials, which he considered from beginning to end to be the final confirmation of everything that he had always thought and said about the Jews.
At parting with his son, Streicher assured him that even at the foot of the gallows he would once again publicly swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler, and finally said with conviction: "Goering, Keitel and Jodl - they will all die with dignity, as befits men!".
As you know, Imperial Marshal Hermann Goering managed to avoid a shameful death in a noose by taking poison secretly transferred to his cell by an unknown person. Alarmed by the suicide of the main accused, the general members of the Quadripartite Commission for the Execution of the Execution ordered the jailers to wrap all the convicts who were still alive, hands behind their backs and shackle them in this position with steel handcuffs. The handcuffs were ordered to be unfastened and removed from the convicts only after arriving at the place of execution, after which they were immediately replaced with strong silk laces, which were supposed to be untied only in a matter of seconds before the support leaves from under the feet of the convict standing under the gallows and the rope loop tightens on his neck.
Ten convicts were taken from death row to the execution room one at a time, carried from four sides by the arms and legs, face down. At the same time, according to eyewitnesses, the American executioners showed much more nervousness than those whom they were going to execute. Field Marshal Milch (half-Jew), who escaped the gallows, wrote in his diary "in fresh pursuit", a few hours after the execution: "Each of them accepted his death very bravely. One" ami "said about them:" They have ice in their veins instead of blood ".
The last words of the condemned Joachim von Ribbentrop were: "May the Lord protect Germany, and may He be merciful to my soul. My last wish is a united Germany, mutual understanding between East and West and world peace."
Field Marshal Keitel said before his death: "More than two million German soldiers died for their Fatherland. Now I am going after them and my sons, who gave everything for Germany!"
Sauckel said: "I die innocent. May the Lord protect Germany and may He restore her former greatness!".
Jodl was brief: "Greetings, my Germany!".
The condemned Frick and Rosenberg ascended the gallows meekly and met death in complete silence.
Hans Frank found the courage for a subtle mockery, limiting himself to an expression of gratitude for the kindness with which he was treated by prison guards.
Seyss-Inquart, as a former lawyer, was more verbose: “I hope this execution will be the final act in the tragedy called World War II, and people will learn the proper lesson from this example in order to restore true understanding between all peoples. I I believe in Germany!
Frick shouted loudly and distinctly: "Long live eternal Germany!"
(In a strange way, the same words were spoken before the execution by the head of the conspiracy of the top military leadership of the German Wehrmacht against Hitler, Colonel Klaus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg, who was executed after the suppression of the general putsch in Berlin on the evening of July 20, 1944).
Streicher, who had a badly injured knee, was very worried about whether he could climb the steps of the stairs to the gallows with the same firm step and without outside help, as he promised when he said goodbye to his wife and son. In that last meeting, he even told them that he was specially training for this occasion to walk without a cane. The last time the "Frankenfuehrer" performed these daily exercises was on the eve of his execution. The execution took place (as the well-known British historian David Irving writes, "by a bizarre twist of fate") on October 16 (on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month of Adar), 1946, on the day of the "merry holiday of Purim" - one of the main sacred days according to the Jewish calendar, reminiscent of the massacre of the Jews with their main ill-wisher Aman, and at the same time with his ten sons and with 75,000 "evil-wishers", "thinking evil of the Jews", "in the days" of the reign of the ancient Persian king Artaxerxes. As is known from the Book of Esther, Haman and his ten sons were precisely hanged (according to the Old Testament word: "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree"). With great difficulty, hiding the pain in his knee, Julius Streicher climbed the steps of the gallows, accompanied by a priest.
"Heil Hitler!" shouted Streicher, standing under the gallows. - "Today we have a merry Jewish holiday here! But still this is my Purim, not yours! The day will come when the Bolsheviks will hang many of you, very many! And I'm leaving - to God!"
The executioners hurried to put a black bag on Streicher's head, but before the hatch could escape from under his feet, the Gauleiter managed to shout out: "Adele, my beloved wife!"
All the condemned were hung on long ropes, so that their neck vertebrae broke under the weight of the bodies, and death came quickly enough. But Julius Streicher was destined to die of suffocation, and therefore he was hung on a very short rope, which made the death of the condemned especially painful.
This final episode of the life and career of the "Frankenfuehrer" was told to the author, then still a young graduate student, by Tatyana Grigorievna Stupnikova, who participated in the Nuremberg Trials as an interpreter, who, by the will of fate, witnessed the last minutes of the convicts' earthly existence, and described her impressions of the process in the book of memoirs "Nothing but the Truth", which was published for the first time only at the beginning of this, XXI, century.
After the execution, the corpses of the convicts were photographed, first in their clothes, and then stripped naked. Then the bodies were placed in coffins and taken from Nuremberg to the former German concentration camp Dachau, which, after the surrender of the Third Reich, was turned into an American camp. There, the corpses were cremated, and the ashes of the executed were poured into the Isar River.
By the way, one of the enterprising American officers hastened to make his own small business at this "event of the century". He arranged with a local printing house to produce a series of souvenir postal envelopes printed on them with the emblem of the International Military Tribunal, pasted with a quick postage stamp with a view of Nuremberg and a list of the names of all the hanged men, and Göring's name was printed on these envelopes (either by mistake or deliberately - in order to give the envelopes additional value, as a philatelic rarity) not marked "executed", but marked "committed suicide" (which, of course, corresponded to reality).
This is what sad (albeit natural) quite respectable, at first glance, German burgher was led to by the anti-Semitism he learned from his youth, under the influence of an incorrect upbringing in the spirit of intolerance and hatred for foreigners and heterodox, which (somewhat paraphrasing the statement of the great humanist Thomas Mann about anti-communism), can rightly be called "the main stupidity of the twentieth century."
This is the end and glory to our God!
REQUIRED NOTICE
This publication is in no way an apology for the criminal Hitler regime, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and (or) propaganda of the National Socialist, fascist or other totalitarian, tyrannical regimes, misanthropic symbols, movements, parties, justly condemned by all progressive mankind , views and ideas, anti-Semitism or anti-Semite phobia, bearing an exclusively popular and exploratory character.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Reading about the brutal execution of General P.N. Krasnov by executioners from the NKVD, one involuntarily thinks about why he was hanged (in recent fairy tales that the elderly Don Ataman was allegedly shot, "taking into account his advanced age," somehow you can’t believe it!), And not, say, they sent nine grams of lead to the back of the head from a KGB revolver, as was customary during the liquidation of "enemies of the people" and "traitors to the Motherland" in Stalin's dungeons. And then the following words from the Holy Scriptures come to mind:
Behold, I gave the house of Haman to Esther, and they hung him on a tree because he laid his hand on the Jews.
Esph., 8, 7.
And one involuntarily recalls the fate of one of the contemporaries of Peter Nikolayevich, in many respects similar to the fate of the Don Ataman. This contemporary could in no way be called a "figure of default." Everyone has ever heard of him. Any person interested in the history of the Third Reich in general and the history of National Socialism - in particular, knows that there was such a person among the associates of the "possessed Fuhrer" Adolf Hitler - Julius Streicher - a "pathological anti-Semite", "tabloid journalist", "sadist" and at the same time "monstrous lecher", "lover of the dirtiest pornography" and "pornographer" himself, executed in 1946 in Nuremberg by the verdict of the International Military Tribunal for "conspiracy to seize Europe and the world" and for "crimes against humanity". But this knowledge on the topic "Julius Streicher" for the majority, as a rule, is limited. And this is while about the other "pillars" of the Third Reich - Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Martin Bormann, Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Müller, Rudolf Hesse and others - "their name is legion"! - written a lot of books! Let's try, with God's help, without anger and predilection to fill this unfortunate gap, since the fate of Julius Streicher not only repeats in many ways, but also largely explains the fate of the Don Ataman. In the fates of both contemporaries, a truly fatal role was played by anti-Semite phobia - this spiritual plague of the New Age - that they learned from childhood, under the influence of improper upbringing, imbued with the spirit of religious fanaticism, and a reactionary environment, infinitely far from the current religious tolerance, multiculturalism and tolerance.
Julius Streicher was born on February 12, 1885 in the family of a rural school teacher in the Franconian village of Flinghausen, near the ancient German city of Augsburg. Since the beginning great war in 1914, he volunteered for the front, was awarded for bravery the Iron Crosses II and I degrees, all three degrees of the Bavarian medal "For Courage" and a number of other military awards of the German Empire and the Bavarian Kingdom, which was part of this empire as a "subject of the Federation".
Returning from the Great War, Streicher, in accordance with the upbringing received in the family, which, presumably, was superimposed by the experience of the war years, became in 1919 one of the founders of the anti-Semitic populist German Social Party, which merged under his leadership in 1921 into the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). Joining Adolf Hitler and General Erich Ludendorff, he took part in the Munich "beer putsch" on November 8-9, 1923, directed both against the right-wing conservative Bavarian separatists and against the left-wing Berlin government of the "November criminals".
The German Empire (which, according to Article 1 of the "Weimar" constitution, was called the "Republic"), stood on the verge of collapse. In the Rhineland, nationally minded Germans had to contend with the constant attempts of the separatists to carry out their subversive plans and separate the Rhineland from Germany. In January 1923, French and Belgian troops, in order to punish Germany for the suspension of reparations under the Dictate of Versailles, announced by the all-German (imperial) government of Wilhelm Cuno, in violation of all norms of international law, occupied the Ruhr region and began to export German coal to France. At the same time, one of the newly minted Baltic states - Lithuania -, with the approval of the League of Nations (and primarily France), sent its troops into the Memel region and separated it from the German Empire, putting the world community before a fait accompli (by the way, three years earlier, another newly minted state - Poland - acted with Lithuania no better than Lithuania - with Germany, taking the capital city of Vilna from Lithuania by force of arms). Deprived of an army, powerless, immeasurably humiliated, Germany was forced to put up with an undisguised act of Lithuanian aggression.
Everywhere in the defeated country there was a dull ferment, armed uprisings and rebellions, military putschs broke out every now and then. In Bavaria, more and more supporters found the slogan of secession from the German Empire ("Los vom Reich!"). At the same time, many Bavarian politicians planned (under French influence) to unite Bavaria with the German part of the collapsed Dual Monarchy of the Habsburgs - the so-called "German Austria" ("Deutsch-Esterreich") into a separate South German Catholic state. The Bavarian Reichswehr (the so-called small armed forces that the Germans were allowed to have, instead of an army, under the Treaty of Versailles) left the Berlin Ministry of the Reichswehr and refused to obey its orders.
Meanwhile, the NSDAP had become a force to be reckoned with - at least within Bavaria. During the celebration of the "Day of Germany" ("Deutscher Tag") in Nuremberg in early September 1923, the "German Fighting Union" ("Deutscher Kampfbund") was formed, which included the NSDAP, the Oberland Union and the Imperial Flag organization ( "Reichsflagge"). The political leadership of the "German Fighting Union" was taken over by the leader of the NSDAP - the former corporal Adolf Hitler, a man with a Bolshevik past (in 1919, Hitler served in the Red Army of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, was captured by white Freikor volunteers after the fall of red Munich, but managed to justify himself before the court-martial and "changed the front", becoming an ardent anti-communist).
The Bavarian government appointed Dr. Gustav Ritter von Kahr as the General State Commissioner, giving him full executive power (that is, effectively giving him unlimited dictatorial powers).
Hitler made contact with von Kahr, with the command of the Bavarian Reichswehr and the Bavarian paramilitary "Green Police" (so named for the green color of their uniforms, in contrast to the blue uniforms of ordinary policemen), as well as with the leaders of patriotic associations.
Since General Erich Ludendorff, who was extremely popular in the country, sought, like Hitler, to remove the Berlin central government from power, the movement, which was to start in Bavaria and spread from there to all of Germany, had a chance of success.
However, the Bavarian authorities were strangely hesitant. Hitler then took over. November 9th was approaching. It was on this day in 1918 that the November Revolution took place in Germany, which led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the surrender of the German army to the victorious Entente. There was no better date for liquidating the consequences of this revolution.
On the evening of November 8, 1923, a meeting of the Munich patriotic associations was held in the Burgerbräukeller beer hall, before which the State Commissioner General Gustav Ritter von Kahr delivered a speech. Suddenly, there was a commotion at the entrance to the hall. The speaker is silent. Adolf Hitler burst into the hall, accompanied by several of his closest supporters - the Russian-Baltic Germans Alfred Rosenberg and Max-Erwin von Scheibner-Richter, Ulrich Graf and Julius Streicher - and steel-helmeted stormtroopers armed with light machine guns. Hitler took the stage. Something incredible was going on in the hall and a deafening noise reigned. To silence the crowd, the Führer of the NSDAP fired his pistol at the ceiling. The noise in the hall was silent. Hitler announced the beginning national revolution, announced the removal of the government of Bavaria and the imperial government of Germany and the formation of a provisional imperial government. Gustav Ritter von Kahr, the commander of the Bavarian Reichswehr, General Otto von Lossow, and the colonel of the Bavarian "Green Police" Colonel Hans Ritter von Zeisser, in the blink of an eye, were "out of work" and were arrested without showing the slightest resistance and without receiving any help from their numerous supporters. But the meeting in the beer "Bürgerbräukeller" was convened only to express complete obedience to Karu, in which many Bavarians saw the future great leader, strong man, sovereign dictator ...
Whether von Kahr, von Lossow and von Seisser could be won over to his side - this question was of decisive importance for Hitler. Ordering his men to bring all three of them to a separate room, Hitler initiated them into his plan, after which he addressed the Munich people gathered in the hall, still completely stunned by what was happening, with a fiery speech, met with a storm of applause.
Meanwhile, General Ludendorff also arrived at the Burgerbräukeller. Von Kar, von Lossow and von Seisser announced their agreement to join the putschists, confirming their intention by shaking hands with the leaders of the putsch in front of everyone in the hall. But they had something else in mind.
As soon as Ludendorff released them on parole, they broke the oath they had just sworn.
A few hours after the handshake at the Bürgerbräukeller, all of Germany heard a radiogram:
"The General State Commissioner von Kahr, General von Lossow, Colonel von Zeisser condemn Hitler's coup (Ludendorff - just in case - was not mentioned - V.A.). The statement made at the meeting in the Burgerbräu beer house under the threat of arms is invalid" .
The Bavarian authorities alerted the Reichswehr and the Green Police. On the morning of November 9, 1923, the dissolution of the NSDAP was officially announced, as well as the military alliances "Oberland" and "Reichsflagge" (the latter, as often happens with revolutionary, in particular - national revolutionary, and in particular - organizations operating under illegal conditions already in the underground, it split into two wings - the "Old Imperial Flag" and the "New Imperial Flag; but this is so, by the way) ...
The assault detachments of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Sturmabteilungen, abbreviated: SA) were also banned. The SA were banned from 1923 to 1925. In 1924, instead of them, the Frontbann organization was formed by the prominent National Socialist Captain Ernst Röhm, which included most of the former attack aircraft from the banned SA, as well as militants of patriotic associations banned along with the NSDAP and the SA that took part in the Munich putsch - the Oberland unions and "Werwolf", Rossbach volunteer corps, organizations "Old Imperial Flag" ("Altreichsflagge"), "Imperial Eagle" ("Reichsadler"), "German People's Union of Officers" ("Deutschfölkischer Offitsirsbund"), "Nuremberg People's Defensive Colo" ("Völkischer Werring Nuremberg"), "East Prussian Union of Front-line Soldiers" ("Frontkämpferbund Ostpreissen"), "Luitpoldheim Educational Association" ("Bildungsverein Luitpoldheim") and others. ) was a German soldier's helmet (steel helmet) superimposed on an upright lunar hook-shaped cross ("Hackenkreutz", that is, a gammadion swastika) with an inscription in Gothic letters "We want to be free" (German: "Wir wollen frei sein"). However, all this happened later. But we, as the medieval chroniclers put it in such cases, "we will return to the former"...
Adolf Hitler hoped to win over the population of Munich with the help of a propaganda march and snatch a stay from Kahr, Lossow and Seisser, despite treason.
At noon on November 9, 1923, a column of SA (NSDAP stormtroopers) and the Oberland Union moved from the Bürgerbräukeller beer hall in the direction of Odeonplatz.
At the head of the column were the leaders of the coup - Adolf Hitler, Erich Ludendorff, Hermann Goering, Ulrich Graf, Alfred Rosenberg, Gottfried Feder and Hermann Kriebel.
All party leaders of the NSDAP and their closest associates (almost none of them had weapons) were in the forefront. At some distance they were followed by several detachments of the SA with rifles on their shoulders. They did not at all plan to enter into a street fight, and they could not enter into it - if only because a group of leaders walked in front of them. The whole march, as already mentioned, was purely propaganda in nature.
In order to bring to mind the shooters of the Bavarian government that General Ludendorff himself was walking at the head of the column, Julius Streicher, with the Iron Cross on his chest, walked at a distance of 30 meters in front of the putschists marching in Munich and shouted to the "green police":
"Ludendorf is coming with us, don't shoot!"
Perhaps this warning, which sounded from the lips of Streicher, paralyzed the Bavarian shooters for some time. In any case, General Ludendorff, marching with all the regalia and orders, in full dress uniform of the Kaiser army and a pointed pickelhaub helmet, managed to quickly pass through the chain of "green policemen" that parted before him. However, after that, the Bavarian police and the Reichswehr opened fire on the column almost point-blank. The "Green Police" conducted not only frontal fire on the putschists. Police submachine guns scribbled along the column also from the high end side of the Generals' Gallery (Feldgerrngalle). Bullets clicked on the asphalt or dug into the bodies of the putschists. Incredible confusion began in the marching crowd, people began to scatter, many fell on the asphalt. Adolf Hitler also fell and dislocated his shoulder in the fall. Hermann Goering was badly wounded in the groin. Sixteen putschists, including the "Ostsee" German Max-Erwin von Scheibner-Richter, whom Hitler himself called an irreplaceable person, were killed on the spot.
The defeat of the column was completed by mounted policemen and mounted pikemen ("lanzenreiters" - something like lancers armed with pikes) of the Bavarian Reichswehr.
From noon until the evening of November 9, 1923, Munich was in a state in which this ancient city, perhaps, had never been before. If you believe the direct participant in the events, one of the leaders of the putschists - Alfred Rosenberg, thousands of Munich walked the streets, chanting anti-government slogans and singing patriotic songs in unison. At impromptu rallies, dozens of speakers expressed their protest against the actions of the Bavarian government. From the steps of the National Theatre, angry speeches sounded one after another. Not even the mounted police could do anything about it. Completely unarmed crowds marched literally chest to rifles, shouting to the soldiers to shoot, for it is better to die than to live after such a shame. Of course, Rosenberg was not an impartial eyewitness to the events and probably exaggerated something, and exaggerated in some places. But, nevertheless, the inhabitants of the Bavarian capital really could not calm down for a long time ...
The fact of the great sympathy of the population of Munich for the putschists was even reflected in the Soviet newspaper "Buryat-Mongolskaya Pravda" of November 15, 1923, which closely followed, like the entire Bolshevik press, the events in Germany (suddenly, it will finally be possible to realize the Comintern's plan - "to connect the Russian sickle with a German hammer"?), which described in the column "Beyond the Red Border" the clashes between "Karovtsy and the Nazis" and emphasized Kara's words that he was aware of the danger of his government losing public support, but could not do otherwise than he did.
Julius Streicher was convicted along with Hitler and other National Socialists who participated in the putsch and sentenced to imprisonment in Landsberg prison. After his release, Streicher was forbidden to teach in educational institutions (in Germany, this severe punishment for political crimes still applies, purposefully depriving the offender of the opportunity to earn a living, called in German "berufsferbot", that is, "a ban on occupational work").
During the period of the NSDAP ban, Julius Streicher led the organization "Great German People's Community" ("Grossdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft"), which replaced this party, as the successor. As a delegate from this organization, Streicher was elected to the Bavarian Landtag (land parliament) in 1924, of which he was invariably elected until 1932, which indicates his great popularity among voters. In parallel with this, Streicher, after leaving the prison of Adolf Hitler, successfully made a party career in the last recreated NSDAP.
In 1928, a veteran of the war and the Munich Putsch became a Gauleiter (National Socialist "Secretary of the Regional Committee") of Franconia (the historical region of Germany, inhabited by the Frank tribe in the 5th century AD), partially moving to the Roman province of Gaul and mixing with it Gallo-Roman population, laid the foundation for the French nation and the French state), having received his famous nickname "Leader of the Franks" ("Frankenfuehrer") precisely in this party post. This nickname was regarded by Streicher himself as very flattering for him and, as it were, put the former modest front-line teacher on a par with the legendary Frankish kings of the heroic period of late Antiquity and the Middle Ages - Arbogast, Merovius, Clovis, Charles Martell and Charlemagne.
In 1933, Julius Streicher was elected to the all-German parliament - the Reichstag (retaining his deputy mandate until 1945) and in the same 1933 he was appointed head of the "Central Committee for Combating Jewish Persecution and Boycott" of Germany, which organized, in particular, a boycott of Jewish shops in Germany April 1, 1933. In addition, he took part in the development of the famous Nuremberg Race Laws, adopted in 1935.
In 1937, Julius Streicher became an honorary member of the Russian Fascist Union (RFS) Konstantin Rodzaevsky. On page 3 No. 268 (1376) of the main printed organ of the RFU - the newspaper "Nash Put" - on October 10, 1937, a note was published about this with the following content:
"THE LEADER OF THE FIGHT AGAINST JUDAISM JU. STREIKHER IS THE HONORARY MEMBER OF THE RFU.
Reception of a special delegation of the Russian Fascist Union
In Nuremberg (so in the text - V.A.)
On September 7 (1937 - V.A.), the Governor (Gauleiter - V.A.) of Franconia, Julius Streicher, received in Nuremberg (as in the text - V.A.) in a special audience a delegation of the Russian Fascist Union, headed by the Resident of the Head (head RFU K. V. Rodzaevsky, officially called the "Head" - as, by the way, the head of another then Russian white émigré organization - "Union of Young Russians" A. L. Kazem-Bek, later accused of having links with Soviet secret services and completed his extremely tortuous life path - however, after serving for decency the prescribed term in the Gulag, in the USSR as an employee of the Moscow Patriarchate - V.A.) sor. (comrade - V.A.) B.P. Tedley and head (head - V.A.) of the Franco-Belgian department (RFS - V.A.) N.D. Dubensky, who, by order of the Head and the Supreme Council (the highest collective governing body of the RFU - V.A.), presented Yu. Streicher with a diploma of an honorary member of the RFU.
The delegation was greeted by the venerable leader of the world movement against the dark forces very cordially.
Sor. Tedley addressed J. Streicher with a word of welcome, emphasizing that the RFU and all Russian national-patriotic organizations are following with interest the work of J. Streicher and his "Sturmovik" (published by Streicher since 1923, the newspaper "Der Stürmer", which will be discussed in more detail described further - V.A.), highly appreciating this work.
"We know." - said sor. Tedley, that you are especially friendly towards national Russia. We are aware of this and sincerely thank you. The time that emigration is going through in Europe is very difficult and Germany's sympathy for us will not be forgotten by us. The time will come when we, the German National Socialists and the Russian fascists, on one broad front, hand in hand, will lead the fight against world evil and bring the enemy to his knees.
In response to the word litter. Tedley, J. Streicher said that, for his part, he welcomed the Head, the Supreme Soviet, and all the fascist comrades-in-arms. He is aware of the activities of the Russian Fascist Union and he has a special disposition towards the struggle waged by the Russian fascists, believing that it was the RFU that took the right course towards victory. He thanks the Head and the Supreme Council for the honor done to him and gladly accepts the title of an honorary member of the RFU.
He understands us, Russian nationalists, and treats Russia with great sympathy, sincerely believing in her imminent liberation from the Judeo-international yoke.
In conclusion, J. Streicher emphasizes that only by resolving the Jewish problem can one count on world peace. He advises us to carefully study the Jewish question and firmly remembers that the struggle against the dark forces must be carried out decisively and directly. This is the guarantee of victory. Those who do not understand this are making a mistake.
In conclusion, J. Streicher proclaims "Glory to Russia" (the official cry of the RFU - V.A.), "Glory to Germany" and puts on the badge of honor of the RFU (which was an equilateral rhombus of the colors of the flag of the Romanov dynasty - yellow, with a white border and a rotating black swastika in center, crowned with a gold double-headed crowned eagle - the State Emblem of Tsarist Russia - V.A.).
After a cordial exchange of views, the delegates were invited for a cup of tea and talked in more detail about the work of the RFU.
At parting, J. Streicher hands over rubbish. Tedley his portrait (the style of the era, nothing can be done! - V.A.) with a request to transfer it to K.V. Rodzaevsky.
On the same day litter. Tedley visited one of the closest collaborators of J. Streicher, Dr. (Doctor - V.A.) Pavel Wurm, and gave him a diploma and a sign of an honorary member (RFS - V.A.).
Like J. Streicher, Dr. Wurm is one of the most active workers in the field of exposing the destructive work of Judeo-Masonry, leading the foreign department of "Sturmovik".
His work cannot but arouse admiration, although Dr. Wurm, in his personal modesty, tries to work in silence and away from noise.
What explains such enthusiastic panegyrics of anti-Semitic Russian emigrants from the ranks of the RFU (and not only the RFU) addressed to the "Frankenfuehrer" as "the leader of the struggle against Judaism"? The fact was that Julius Streicher from the beginning of the twenties devoted himself to a serious study of the Holy Scriptures (primarily the Old Testament), as well as the Talmud. As a result of his research, he came (as it is now quite clear to all of us) to the absolutely and fundamentally incorrect, deeply erroneous conclusion that "as long as the Jews declare and consider themselves "the chosen people", they will always have problems in relationships with the peoples of the countries in which they live. The impressionable and brought up in the strict rules of the Christian faith (and this upbringing at the time described, unfortunately, did not at all contribute to the tolerant attitude of Christians towards the Jews), Streicher, was especially remembered by the Talmud (a huge collection of comments on the Jewish Old Testament - Torah), to put it mildly, impartial mentions of Jesus Christ ("Yeshu Ha-Notsri") and of all who believe in Christ ("notsrim", "minim" or "akumah"). He even memorized many of these hard-hitting references and often quoted, and not always in suitable settings and surroundings. All this, of course, could not but leave a certain imprint on the worldview of Julius Streicher.
So, for example, he, under the influence of his anti-Semitic prejudices against the Jews perceived in his youth, came to a firm (although, as is known, completely false) conviction that in 1917 the power in Russia was seized by the "Jewish-Bolsheviks", that it was they who killed the Russian Tsar and the Royal family and began to rule Russia through the most severe terror. It was necessary to think of such absurdity! It was Streicher's deep conviction, drugged by preachers of Judeophobia while still at the gymnasium, that he managed to recognize and correctly identify the methods of subversive work of the "Jewish Soviet government" (German: "Judische Räteregirung"), as he called it, of Bavaria, headed by Kurt Eisner (Solomon Kosmanovsky), and then - Gustav Landauer, Max Levin, Edgar Jaffe, Tovia Axelrod and Eugene (Eugen) Levine (Nissen), sent to Bavaria as agents of the Comintern from Red Moscow - the government that seized power at the end of 1918, plunged the entire south Germany in the bloody chaos of the civil war and overthrown by the bayonets of the fighters of the German white volunteer corps - "Freikors" on May 1, 1919.
As a result of observing what is happening in other European countries, Streicher also developed a very far from reality, but, unfortunately, deeply perceived by him conviction that the "Jewish Bolsheviks" establish authoritarian regimes by force (for example, the Bela Kun regime in Hungary, etc.). .P.). In the end, Streicher came to a completely unlawful, from the point of view of any reasonable and sane person, but who seemed to him correct general (and turned out, in the end, deeply tragic for himself) conclusion that the Jews everywhere strive for one common goal - the establishment complete, undivided and final domination of the "chosen Jewish people" over all other peoples, gradually and steadily imposing their will on the latter through a gradual apparent "assimilation" of the Jews, preaching "multi-racial" and "multiculturalism". Having come to this false conclusion, which had nothing to do with reality, Streicher was not slow to take an active part in the anti-Jewish campaign from the pages of his newspapers, dubbed "pogromist sheets" by the political opponents of National Socialism. The most absurd ideas swarmed in his inflamed brain, with which he tirelessly poisoned the minds of his readers.
The two periodicals founded by him enjoyed, perhaps not too significant, but still popular. They were small format newspapers with a very concise text. After a thorough analysis of the experience gained as a result of the publication of these small-circulation publications, Julius Streicher, from the beginning of 1923, began to publish the unofficial, also small-format, but already large-circulation weekly "Der Stürmer" ("Stormtrooper"), which Streicher's political opponents began to brand not just "pogromist", but in addition, and "pornographic" sheet.
His weekly was often a source of considerable grief not only for the propaganda chief of the Nazi party, the rickety doctor Joseph Goebbels, but also for Hitler himself, since the "Sturmer", published not by the NSDAP, as the official party press organ, but personally by Streicher, was literally words are not controlled by the National Socialist Party. However, in the period from 8 to 18 August 1934, "Der Stürmer" was banned for publishing an article about the head of the government of the Czechoslovak Republic, regarded as "openly slanderous libel" (but at the same time, another edition of Streicher - a daily, although limited to the regional framework of Franconia, the newspaper "Fränkische Tageszeitung" continued to be published without hindrance). In general, according to the deepest conviction of Streicher's opponents, the publications in Stürmer were based on "shameless and pathological anti-Semitism", and the general collective portrait of the "Jew", who appeared from the pages of the weekly before the audience, "was generously seasoned with such bloody slanders as accusing the Jews of ritual murders of Christian babies", completely unfounded allegations about the subordination of world Freemasonry to some "invisible higher leadership", consisting also of Jews, and other absurd, sucked-out, ridiculous accusations. So, for example, in "Sturmer" Jews were depicted collecting blood from cut infant throats into a bowl, and under this terrible drawing a rhymed signature was placed as follows:
Durch die Jahrhunderte vergoss der Jud',
Geheimem Ritus folgend, Menschenblut.
Der Teufel sitzt uns heute noch im Nacken -
Es liegt an euch, die Satansbrut zu packen!
(which, translated from German language into Russian, meant: "For centuries, a Jew, following a secret ritual, shed human blood. The devil still sits firmly on our necks. Whether this satanic offspring will be captured depends on you!").
It was for this misanthropic, deeply reactionary and obscurantist agitational activity aimed at creating an atmosphere of general hatred around the Jews - more in words than in deeds - that Streicher was after the end of the "European civil war"In 1939-1945, he was imprisoned by the Western" allies "first in prison, and then in the Mondorf camp. However, Streicher suffered under Hitler, long before his imprisonment in the camp.
Even Streicher's sworn enemy - Benno Martin, the highest leader of the SS and police in Nuremberg - was forced to admit during the inquiry conducted by the Allied investigating authorities that Streicher opposed the "Imperial Kristallnacht" on November 9 / 1 / 1938, when throughout the Third Reich, in a response to the murder of the German diplomat Ernst fom (namely “fom”, and not “background”, as they often mistakenly write!) Rat, a wave of pogroms, arrests and confiscations of Jewish property swept through. Julius Streicher justified his negative attitude towards Kristallnacht with his deep conviction that in the long run the lawlessness and arbitrariness committed in Germany against the Jews would benefit the same Jews.
Nevertheless, the investigators found a "hook" in his case - Streicher did not express any objections to the demolition of the main Nuremberg synagogue that followed the events of Kristallnacht, justifying its demolition from a purely urban point of view, namely, pointing out that the eastern the style of the synagogue's architecture does not harmonize with the general Gothic-medieval architectural appearance of the ancient imperial city of Nuremberg; Streicher always stubbornly denied the religious significance of synagogues as places of worship and visits by believers for prayer, considering them, on the basis of the knowledge he gleaned, as he himself claimed, from the Talmud, exclusively as places for concluding commercial transactions between Jewish "swindlers, swindlers and intriguers" .
As a result, Julius Streicher very soon turned into "enemy No. 1" of the entire organized "international Jewish community" (in his own words). One of the employees of Streicher's publishing house even collected a whole collection of clippings from magazines and newspapers with attacks on the "Frankenführer", published in the international press, and was even going to publish these thousands of angry "philippics" in the form of a separate anthology under the ironic title "Streicher, the bloody despot from Franconia However, the outbreak of the Second World War prevented the implementation of this plan.
Meanwhile, the cherished dream of the "Frankenfuehrer", in his own words, was not the total extermination of the entire Jewish population of Germany. Streicher (who, according to the "Memoirs" of Hitler's Minister of Armaments Albert Speer, in his last speech at the Nuremberg trials denounced the "mass killings of Jews" committed by Hitler) wanted only to live to see the day when all Jews will, in the end, be expelled from the dear him the Fatherland. He claimed that even many of the foreign diplomats accredited in Germany mentally applauded his active anti-Semitic activities.
Among these representatives of the diplomatic corps sympathizing with him, Julius Streicher included, in particular, the Ambassador of the French Republic to the Third Reich, Andre François-Ponce, whom he personally met at the NSDAP party congresses in Nuremberg and has since met more than once both in official and in an informal setting. When his other good friend, the sworn enemy of Zionism and the re-establishment of the Jewish state in the Holy Land - the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Ali Amin al-Husseini - "with all Mohammedan frankness" told Streicher in a frank conversation that the question of the resettlement of Jews from Germany to Palestine, from his point of view, not even subject to discussion, Streicher (like Hitler himself) leaned in favor of the so-called "Madagascar project" (according to which the Jews were to be resettled on the island of Madagascar) as the only really real and final solution to the "Jewish question" that haunted Judeophobes and anti-Semites of all countries and peoples.
However, by the time being described, the opinion of the "Frankenfuehrer" had ceased to have any weight in the Third Reich, since Streicher, as mentioned above, fell out of favor with the top leadership of National Socialist Germany due to the fact that he allowed himself in "unacceptable expressions" to speak out against "arization" (that is, the expropriation of Jewish property in favor of Aryan capital) in the form in which it was carried out in Germany after Kristallnacht in 1938.
But the main supporter of just this form of "arization" was none other than Streicher's ally in the Munich Putsch Hermann Goering. It was this, and not at all the "pornographic nature" of the Judeophobic publications in "Sturmer" that served as the true reason for his disgrace. On February 13, 1940, the Supreme Party Court of the NSDAP, headed by the Supreme Party Judge SA Obergruppenführer Walter Buch, declared Julius Streicher no longer "unsuitable for leading people" and relieved him of all his party posts. Nevertheless, Hitler allowed Streicher to continue to publish the journal Der Stürmer and retained the title of Gauleiter for him (but only as an honorary title).
Having fallen out of favor with the "powers that be" (which he owed, first of all, to Hermann Goering), Streicher retired to his farm, Pleikershof, located in his native Franconia. On a piece of land bought with his own money, Streicher built a farm there with a barn (in German "baerngof", that is, in fact, "peasant's yard" - an analogue of the ancient German "guard" or "proud" - cf. Slav.: " city", "city", "garden"), where he lived throughout the war, without maintaining any contacts with any power structures of the National Socialist regime.
Meanwhile, Julius Streicher, from the time before the Munich "beer putsch", for many years was the only close friend of the Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, whom he allowed to address himself as "you" (after being shot by the SS men, he also enjoyed this privilege of the head " Frontbann" and the chief of staff of the NSDAP assault detachments, Captain Ernst Röhm, on the "Night of the Long Knives" in 1934). But the behavior of the Fuhrer of the Third Reich in this story horrified and repelled Streicher.
Hitler stated that "if in the course of the proceedings someone (that is, perhaps, Streicher - V.A.) is found to be lying, he will be shot." This time it didn’t come to executions, but from everything that happened, Streicher made another disappointing conclusion for himself - in critical circumstances, the Fuhrer is quite capable of showing not only the necessary firmness, but also "blind and inhuman cruelty."
And then the day came when the former Gauleiter of Franconia, the owner and publisher of the weekly "Der Stürmer" Julius Streicher was arrested by an officer of the American occupation forces, Major Henry Blitt, who arrived for him "on a tip" on May 22, 1945 in a peasant house in Weidbruck (Tyrol ), where the "Frankenfuehrer" lived in seclusion under a false name, quite like a peasant letting go of his beard. When the major ordered him to give his real name, the former Gauleiter had no choice but to confess: "I am Julius Streicher." The version according to which the "Frankenfuehrer" was allegedly accidentally identified by a Jewish sergeant of the American army, who told him: "You look just like Julius Streicher!", and did not want to dissuade the American, is nothing more than a legend. Having arrested Streicher, Major Blitt escorted the "Frankenführer" to the Salzburg prison, where the brave warriors of Uncle Sam immediately handcuffed the arrested man, who never removed him for the next five days.
On May 23, Streicher, still handcuffed and dressed only in an undershirt and underpants, was transported to a prison in the Bavarian city of Freising, where he was imprisoned in a punishment cell. In the punishment cell there were not only windows, but also a bed and even a chair, so the prisoner had to sleep on a cold stone floor. A few days later, after being transferred to the prison of the city of Wiesbaden, where the conditions of detention were somewhat more decent, the prisoner Streicher wrote in his prison diary that in the Freising prison "ami" (Americans) two or three times a day put him "against the wall" with raised above his head with handcuffed hands, after which a black private, and more often a white officer of the US military police, whipped the prisoner with a leather whip on the genitals. As soon as Streicher tried to lower his arms to cover his genitals from lashes, he was immediately stabbed right in the groin with his foot, shod in a heavy army boot. As a result, not only the genitals, but the entire crotch of the prisoner Streicher was constantly in a terribly swollen state.
After another beating, the white military police officer retired, and it was the turn of the rank and file of the valiant US Army. The privates (for some reason, usually blacks) during the day repeatedly forced the prisoner Streicher to open his mouth in order to spit in it. If the prisoner refused to open his mouth, the Americans forcibly opened his jaws with a wooden stick, and still spat in Streicher's mouth. In addition, the jailers forced the imprisoned Gauleiter to drink from the bucket. If he refused to drink from the bucket, he was beaten with a leather whip.
Entering Streicher's cell, a white US military police officer would certainly pull out a few hairs from his chest or eyebrows (Streicher was completely bald, and therefore there was simply nothing to pull out of his head - to the greatest annoyance of the overseas "soldier of freedom"). The prisoner was forced to eat exclusively rotten scraps and potato husks. When Streicher once dared to refuse to eat some completely rotten slop brought to him "for lunch", black jailers threw the prisoner to the floor and forced him to lick his army boots.
Finally, on May 26, he was ordered to prepare for a trip to Wiesbaden. A couple of hours before departure, a black private, grinning smugly, said to the prisoner on the mixture in English with German: "Well, now they will kill you!" and at the same time made an unambiguous gesture, running the edge of his hand over the throat, so that the prisoner would not have the slightest doubt about what awaited him.
Following that, a black soldier took Streicher to the restroom, threw the dirty rags torn from him into the cesspool and ordered him to change into a somewhat more decent "clothes". However, it was easier to order Julius Streicher to change clothes for the jailer than for the prisoner to follow the order - after all, the handcuffs from the former Gauleiter were never removed. He had to dress in handcuffs, which turned out to be very difficult. The handcuffs were removed from him only after they were taken to Wiesbaden. In the Wiesbaden prison, Streicher began to receive medical assistance for the first time since his arrest.
Meanwhile, the son of Robert G. Jackson, the chief American judge at the upcoming Nuremberg trials and, by the way, a prominent freemason / 2 /, Bill Jackson, having received information that Adolf Hitler was allegedly hiding in a cave near the farm of Julius Streicher, went to the Pleikershof area to capture the Fuhrer, but returned (according to his father's memoirs) "without Hitler, but with some trophies (italics hereinafter ours - V.A.) from Streicher's house." Julius Streicher, who by that time was already behind bars, naturally had no way to prevent the theft of his property "for souvenirs."
Meanwhile, the military judicial authorities of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition decided to include the name of Streicher in the list of the main war criminals, whose fate was to be decided by the International Tribunal of the victorious powers in Nuremberg. Future defendants were brought from all over Germany to the Mondorf "prisoner of war camp" (in reality, this "camp" was the Grand Hotel in the Luxembourg town of Bad Mondorf, hastily converted into a prison). Once in Mondorf, Streicher was pleasantly surprised that in the "camp" he and other prisoners, as it seemed to him, were treated better than in the Wiesbaden prison. However, other prisoners hastened to dissuade him of this, clearly explaining to the former Gauleiter of Franconia that he should not flatter himself - in fact, Mondorf "camp" personnel hid the same hatred behind a mask of external correctness.
In Mondorf, Streicher met again with the former Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, his longtime party comrade, colleague in the Munich putsch and, at the same time, the culprit of his disgrace (subsequently, the jailers, separating Goering and Streicher from the mass of other prisoners, put them at the time of eating for a separate table, because of which both "main conspirators" could not talk with others). In the face of a common misfortune, the "Frankenführer", apparently, in a Christian way, forgot and forgave the Reichsmarschall all past insults (which, by the way, characterizes him as a person who is not vindictive and generous).
According to entries in the diary of Julius Streicher, with whom he did not part until his death, Hermann Goering expressed confidence that the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition would not be able to blame him for participating in the war, which he never wanted, but in which he was obliged to fulfill his duty, like any soldier. To this, the incorrigible Streicher, true to his Judeophobic obsession, answered him: "There is no doubt that the Jews will do everything in their power to see us hanged."
Despite this prospect, the prisoner Streicher, relying on God in everything, painted watercolors in the "camp" Mondorf and made his political testament. For this purpose, he specifically re-read the Holy Scriptures, making appropriate extracts from it. Some of the comrades of the "Frankenfuehrer" unfortunately noted in the "camp" diaries their genuine admiration for the behavior of Streicher, who stubbornly did not want to bend under the burden of circumstances so dramatic for the prisoners. When they were transported by trucks from the "camp" Mondorf through all of southern Germany to the Nuremberg prison, last ruler The Third Reich, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, said to Streicher: "I am calm for your fate. I am worried about something else - how can everyone else go through all this !?"
The former Gauleiter of Franconia, who was still obsessed with the "Jewish theme," was especially depressing, in his opinion, a disproportionately large percentage of Jews among those who interrogated the prisoners. However, the "Frankenfuehrer" approached this issue quite differently, trying to avoid sweeping suspicions, and therefore the following entries were preserved in his diary:
"Among the British, there is not a single Jew. The Americans have only Jews ... and only one among the Russians." For the former Gauleiter, the presence of Jews among interrogators was perceived as a real disaster. The ubiquitous Jews seemed to him literally everywhere. It seemed to Streicher, like any fanatic, a slave to his idea, that the Jews literally filled both the court building and the prison building, as evidenced by his diary entries:
"Twice a day, a woman in a lieutenant's uniform (a Jew) walks along the corridor and looks into the peephole of my cell with a satisfied smirk, as if saying: "Here he is, here ... Now he's not going anywhere from us!" "The pince-nez interpreter is a Jew, a professor at Columbia University. He is often in my cell and thinks I didn't realize he was a Jew." The Russians, on the contrary, made a very strong impression on Streicher: "Some kind of monstrous energy emanates from them. The capture of all of Europe by them for the Russians is only a matter of time."
When the Soviet investigative commission began interrogating Streicher, one of the first questions of the Soviet investigators was whether Streicher was really banned from teaching at schools because he was caught sexually harassing his students (and according to some rumors - even in "seduction of minors").
- "Who told you that?" Streicher asked, offended to the core.
"They wrote about it in the papers."
- "Ah, that's it ... - stretched Streicher, as it seemed to the investigators, even with some disappointment in his voice. - Well, if you believe everything that they write in these garbage Jewish rags ...".
After thinking for a while, he recommended to the Soviet commission of inquiry - in case, of course, they were interested in something more thorough! - get acquainted with the official conclusion of the Munich Supreme Disciplinary Court, according to which Julius Streicher was once deprived of the right to teach not at all for sexual harassment, but for participating in the "beer" Munich putsch of Hitler-Ludendorff on November 8-9, 1923. There was a pause, after which the Soviet investigators, the first to break the silence, announced: "That's all for today."
On that day, Streicher wrote in his prison diary: "They wanted to declare me a sex offender. In the eyes of the public, this should have looked like a definite point in their favor in the game against me as one of the Master War Criminals."
It did not escape Streicher's trained eye that the "Russian" interrogator who was conducting the interrogation this time looked "damn Jewish" ("Ferdammt Yudish").
For the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, it mattered, first of all, that Streicher was in their eyes a "professional anti-Semite", but they tried in their angry philippics to give no less importance to his reputation as a "pornography lover". So, the English writer Rebecca West, who was present at the Nuremberg Trials, did not find any other words for the former Gauleiter of Franconia, except for "a dirty, depraved old man, one of those who should be feared in sparsely populated park alleys" (one can only guess what kind of experience she had with defendant or the like).
However, the label of "dirty lecher" was hung on Streicher long before the Nuremberg trials, and it would seem that it was not difficult to bring him to the gallows, but ... it remained still unclear of which specific crimes it was required to find him guilty for a death sentence? It was with the development of a specific formulation of the charges against the defendant Streicher that the prosecutors had great difficulties. After all, although he published in his publications absurd accusations of all mortal sins against the Jews, he himself did not kill anyone with his own hands (at least after the end of the First World War in 1918), did not sign a single death sentence, did not participated neither in the notorious conference in Wannsee on the "final solution of the Jewish question", nor in the deportation of the Jews to the East ...
On October 24, 1945, one of the main accused committed suicide in a prison cell - the former head of the Deutsche Arbatesfront, that is, the German Labor Front (Central Council of Trade Unions of the Third Reich), Dr. Robert Ley. According to the official version, the leader of the German trade unions managed to strangle himself by filling his mouth with shreds of cloth torn from prison clothes, and tightly tying a towel soaked in water and wrung out around his neck, which, as it dried, squeezed his throat more and more tightly until Lei died. as a result of asphyxia. According to some reports, Julius Streicher allegedly also nurtured the idea of hanging himself, who, however, after sober reflection, decided not to "desert from the battlefield", but still watch this "last battle with the enemies of the Reich" to the very end, no matter what it cost him .
In any case, he noted in his diary: “I guess Ley strangled himself because we don’t get anything from the will, not even shirts. Even now I am writing these lines on a“ table ”, which is a simple cardboard box (in German: "pappkarton" - V.A.) with a couple of pieces of wood placed under it. In addition, Streicher had to brush his teeth and wash himself using water from the toilet. It was, of course, somewhat more pleasant than drinking from a bucket, but, nevertheless, it was also aimed at breaking his will. Needless to say, the Americans clearly did not like Streicher.
Despite the difficult physical and psychological conditions of imprisonment, the former Gauleiter of Franconia still reacted vividly to everything that happened, entering the corresponding entries in his diary. This is evidenced by the next episode.
The seventy-five-year-old German industrialist Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was to appear before the court as one of the main war criminals. When the expert medical commission of the victorious powers became convinced of the impossibility of fulfilling this intention due to the state of health of Krupp Sr., it was proposed to replace him as a defendant with his own son, Alfred.
By the way, this proposal, if implemented in practice, fell under one of the articles of accusation brought forward by the justice of the victorious countries against the National Socialist regime they defeated, and condemning the Hitlerite practice of "sippengaft", that is, bringing to justice, in in the event of the impossibility of the offender himself to appear before the court, his relatives. But, as the "great humanist" Comrade Stalin used to say, "the son is not responsible for the father", and therefore, at the insistence, first of all, of the English prosecutors Shawcross and Lawrence, the proposal to replace Alfred Krupp in the dock of his own father was rejected.
It is interesting that Julius Streicher, paying tribute to justice, reacted to this with the following entry in his diary: "The British have achieved recognition of their position regarding the fact that, despite the possibility of replacing one defendant non-commissioned officer at the military tribunals with another, do this all the same it is impossible in the event that instead of one accused, who is either not able to answer the charge for health reasons, or is already dead, it is proposed to put his son in the dock as a successor responsible for him.This episode shows that English judges are inherent at the very least, a commendable desire not to sacrifice all your morals for the sake of hastening events that begin to unfold.
And so the Nuremberg trials began. On his first day in court, Julius Streicher saw and perceived everything that was happening in a completely different way from his fellow prisoners. For him, this was the last opportunity to "cross swords with the Jews." He concentrated and, according to observers, even "obsessively" peered into the faces of all the members of the tribunal, in order to later write in his diary: "One of the two Frenchmen is one hundred percent Jewish. Whenever I look at him, he immediately feels like - sometimes uneasy, he begins to vigorously turn his black-haired head in different directions and deliberately preoccupiedly twist his face, covered with skin of an unhealthy, yellow color.
Like Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Streicher did not have the slightest illusion about the outcome of the trial for himself, considering his death sentence a foregone conclusion. This is evidenced, in particular, by the following diary entry by Streicher, made on the opening day of the trial: “For those who are not yet completely blind, there can be no doubt that there are many more Jews and half-Jews in the courtroom than Three-fourths of all journalists, almost all translators, stenographers - both men and women - and all other assistants - are undoubtedly of Jewish origin. How contemptuously and smugly they grin when they look at us, because we are the accused and sit on the bench the defendants ... On their faces one can read a mocking phrase: Well, now their whole gang, and even Streicher, is in our hands! God Almighty! Praise to Jehovah and praise to Abraham, the father of our kind! ". No wonder it is said that "the humpbacked grave will correct" ...
It is interesting that during the process Streicher was again strongly impressed by the "Russians" (Soviet representatives who sat in the judicial chairs). As the "Frankenfuehrer" did not fail to note in his diary, "these two Russians were in full dress uniform, finding it most appropriate for a military tribunal"; they had an impeccable officer's bearing, which was especially pleasing to the eye in combination with their smart uniforms, sewn in the likeness of the military uniform adopted in the pre-revolutionary Tsarist army. After a few days, Streicher noticed that both English judges were also making an increasingly favorable impression on him - people of high stature, large build, Nordic type, with aristocratic manners. One of them (Lawrence), as Streicher immediately absolutely accurately determined, was a lord, while the other - Sir Norman Birkett - "possessed a large massive skull and a look that seemed to come from the very depths of his soul and penetrate everything through and through." According to Streicher, "he would have looked much better not at the judicial, but at the church pulpit as a preacher."
Trying to take advantage of the widespread notion among Streicher's opponents of him as a "psychopath" and "pathological type", "obsessed with Judeophobia", the lawyer of the former publisher of "Sturmer" (appointed as his defender against his own will and who bore - ironically! - the surname Marx), petitioned the tribunal to check the mental sanity of his client. However, the medical experts of the accusing party recognized the former Gauleiter as "sufficiently normal to answer before the court for his crimes."
Day after day, and Streicher amused himself by trying to identify the next Jew in the sea of faces that appeared to his eyes in the courtroom, trying to determine "which of them is a bastard with Jewish blood in their veins or which of them is married to a Jewess." The former Gauleiter was especially struck by the "monstrous disgrace" of the American women who appeared in the courtroom - from his place in the dock, he could perfectly see all the stenographers and secretary typists who were sitting right in front of the judges and with an absent expression on their faces tirelessly moving their jaws, chewing gum, at that time how their pencils fluttered over their notepads with incomprehensible speed, and their fingers scribbled over the keys of tiny typewriters with a special shorthand type. "Frankenführer" did not fail to caustically note in his diary that "in the females of the American variety, the ability for high labor productivity is inextricably combined with terrifying physical deformity."
“The accused looked tired and nervous,” Streicher mimicked in one of his subsequent diary entries a phrase from a newspaper article that caused him particular irritation. let him piss in the evening with a dimly flickering lamp for those couple of hours for which the only thing he will be given a pen or pencil by the guards, who take him for a walk in the prison yard for fifteen, at most - for twenty minutes a day, and do not allow him to sleep after that , now and then looking into his cell at night - then the ion, probably, will also look somewhat "tired and nervous" at court sessions!
According to the rules of common law in force at the time described, Julius Streicher fell into the category of defendants who, based on the totality of their crimes, were at best threatened with a small prison sentence. Such strict adherence to these norms was prescribed by the new London Statute, designed to demonstrate its strength and effectiveness. Nevertheless, Judge Jackson was firmly convinced that none of the accused would escape a harsh sentence. However, he did not fail to emphasize in his opening speech that "even if any of the accused is acquitted by this tribunal, he will need to be transferred for additional trials" to our continental allies ".
Meanwhile, the ill-fated Dr. Marx, appointed - against his will! - Streicher's defender, turned out to be the object of vicious attacks by newspapermen. His law office was regularly searched, and he himself was constantly under the "Sword of Damocles" of sudden arrest without charge and imprisonment for an indefinite period. For reasons of his own safety, Dr. Marx even had to - as much as a lawyer could do without violating the rules of decency! - in every possible way to dissociate himself from his client, who gave him nothing but trouble. The lawyer's fears were not at all unfounded - one of the defenders of another defendant, the former imperial minister and protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Konstantin Baron von Neurath, was similarly arrested in broad daylight and imprisoned for six weeks without any charge. In addition, defense lawyers were not allowed to question the jurisdiction of the tribunal or the impartiality of the judges.
Streicher commented on this with the following diary entry: “The right of the accused to challenge the judge due to the latter’s lack of impartiality corresponds to generally accepted judicial practice. defeated winners are both accusers and judges, so they simply cannot be impartial, which is both obvious and inevitable. Being perfectly aware of this, they established in advance the corresponding rule, which initially deprives the accused of the opportunity to challenge the fairness of the "justice" being delivered. what is the point of all this farce!" - the former Gauleiter continued to express his thoughts more clearly on paper - "This process does not bode well for the accused, since justice in this case is blind and biased; the task was set before the court to give the appearance of legality to injustice, to hide the arbitrariness he did under the guise of the administration of justice" .
So, for example, Streicher petitioned the court to summon the former chief of the Nuremberg police, Obergruppenführer SA Obernitz, as a witness. He asked the court to allow Obernitz to testify about the conflict that occurred between them in November 1938, when Streicher tried to dissociate himself from the destruction of the Nuremberg synagogue during the events that followed the "Imperial Crystal Night" (later he managed to justify this by the requirements of the architectural plan for the restructuring of the city ). But the court denied the request to call this witness.
It is characteristic that the bloody prosecutor of Stalin's "show trials" A.I. (Andrey "Yaguarievich") Vyshinsky (the same Vyshinsky who, when he was a judicial official of the Provisional Government, signed in July 1917 an order to arrest V.I. Ulyanov-Lenin and G.E. Apfelbaum-Radomyslsky-Zinoviev, as a result of which both "leaders of the world proletariat" had to hide in Razliv!) at a gala dinner at the "Grand Hotel", given in his honor by the Western allies, raising a glass, publicly declared: "For the accused! So that their path from the court leads straight to the grave !".
To top it all off, the tribunal sought to nip in the bud any attempts by prisoners to raise the issue of their conditions in prison. When Streicher once tried to oppose such “measures” as being practiced during interrogations, such as beating interrogated people, which often led to physical injuries (Streicher himself had, for example, a seriously injured knee) and sent an official protest to Judge Jackson about this, the judge ordered that this paper be destroyed and not even entered into the register of passing documents.
According to the recollections of the defendants who survived the trial and were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, the prevailing mood in those days could be described in one single word - downright Old Testament thirst for revenge. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a death for a death! The atmosphere of those days was vividly characterized by a letter received by Judge Jackson from a wealthy New York Jewish businessman Ernest Schoenfeld, which contained, in particular, the following lines: Streicher, not only to be present at his execution, but also to take a personal direct part in the execution of the sentence. The author of the letter expressed his readiness to take on all the transportation costs and even - beyond that! - offered Judge Jackson a large sum of money as a token of "personal gratitude" on his own behalf.
Obsessed with his pathological Judeophobia, Streicher from the very beginning tirelessly repeated that this process personifies the "triumph of world Judaism." He was firmly convinced that he would "die like a martyr" - precisely because he "always waged an uncompromising struggle against the Jews." But the fact remained that he had no need to justify his involvement in the acts of mass extermination of the Jews, because, starting in 1939, he simply no longer held any official positions in the Third Reich. Therefore, the psychoanalyst Dr. Gilbert, who examined the "mental-psychological state" of each of the accused, predicted that Streicher's defense would be based on "bizarre" references to certain "spiritual insights", "world Zionism", "the teachings of the Talmud", and that these arguments "It is hardly worth responding with serious counterarguments."
At the same time, Dr. Hilbert seriously suggested bringing against Streicher, for example, the charge of "betrayal of the German youth" - not least because one of the accused, the former head of the NSDAP youth organization - "Hitler Youth" ("Hitler Youth") and the Gauleiter of Vienna, Baldur von Schirach, stated in court that the surge of anti-Semitism in Germany, which was blamed primarily on the weekly Der Stürmer published by Streicher, was in fact much more to blame for the book of the American "automobile king" Henry Ford the Elder "The Eternal Jew "(also known as "Judas through the epochs", and in Russian translation as "International Jewry"), published in millions of copies around the world (except for the only "politically correct" countries at the time described - the USSR and the Mongolian People's Republic). Meanwhile, Henry Ford the Elder was still alive at the time of the Nuremberg trials, quite healthy, and the scandalous trial over his anti-Semite book was still ahead. Judge Parker emphasized that "Streicher has nothing to do with the conspiracy at all" (with the aim of seizing Europe and the world, as one of the main points of the accusation - V.A.) said, "nor with any kind of planning at all."
Nevertheless, all the judges were united in their desire to hang Julius Streicher at all costs - and it doesn’t matter for what. Just to hang. But, since for this it was still necessary to pass a specific sentence point by point, indicating the guilt for which the former Gauleiter of Franconia would be sent to the gallows, serious disagreements constantly arose between the representatives of the prosecution. It was proposed, for example, that the defendants be found guilty and that the gravity of their guilt and the severity of the sentence be determined in accordance with the position and positions held by them in the past. So, the Soviet prosecutor Colonel of Justice A.F. Volchkov said that "Streicher was closely associated with Hitler personally" - this seemed to him a good enough reason to send the ex-Gauleiter to the gallows. To this, Judge Biddle objected that it seemed absurd to him to consider some "petty Jew-hater a conspirator" on the basis of the mere fact that he was a personal friend of Hitler, or a Gauleiter, or a Nazi. However, in the end, Streicher was found guilty on counts 1 and 4 and sentenced to death by hanging along with the other main defendants Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Martin Bormann (sentenced to death in absentia) , Alfred Rosenberg, Alfred Jodl, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Fritz Sauckel and Arthur Seyss-Inquart.
Having listened quite calmly to the sentence pronounced on him, Julius Streicher firmly and flatly refused to petition the court for clemency. Apparently, as punishment for yet another manifestation of "obstinacy", expressed this time in a categorical refusal to file an appeal, the jailers treated him the least condescendingly, in comparison with all the other sentenced. His eldest son, a former officer of the Luftwaffe (Third Reich Air Force), and Streicher's wife Adele were admitted to the last meeting with the sentenced before execution for only forty-five minutes. In one of his last conversations, Streicher, by the way, mentioned his sworn enemy, Nuremberg police chief Benno Martin, who tried to evade responsibility, claiming that in reality he was a deeply conspiratorial member of the anti-Hitler Resistance. “Yes, if I only opened my mouth about Martin,” Streicher hinted meaningfully, “he, too, would have to make a“ high jump ”.
"Frankenführer" stressed that he had initially considered the possibility of suicide, but then abandoned this idea, deciding that it was much more important to state in court why he fought so hard against the Jews. Until the very end, he never changed his opinion of them for the better, and least of all - here, during the Nuremberg Trials, which he considered from beginning to end to be the final confirmation of everything that he had always thought and said about the Jews.
At parting with his son, Streicher assured him that even at the foot of the gallows he would once again publicly swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler, and finally said with conviction: "Goering, Keitel and Jodl - they will all die with dignity, as befits men!".
As you know, Imperial Marshal Hermann Goering managed to avoid a shameful death in a noose by taking poison secretly transferred to his cell by an unknown person.
Alarmed by the suicide of the main accused, the general members of the Quadripartite Commission for the Execution of the Execution ordered the jailers to wrap all the convicts who were still alive, hands behind their backs and shackle them in this position with steel handcuffs. The handcuffs were ordered to be unfastened and removed from the convicts only after arriving at the place of execution, after which they were immediately replaced with strong silk laces, which were supposed to be untied only in a matter of seconds before the support leaves from under the feet of the convict standing under the gallows and the rope loop tightens on his neck.
Ten convicts were taken from death row to the execution room one at a time, carried from four sides by the arms and legs, face down. At the same time, according to eyewitnesses, the American executioners showed much more nervousness than those whom they were going to execute. Field Marshal Erhard Milch (half-Jew), who escaped the gallows, wrote in his diary "in fresh pursuit", a few hours after the execution: "Each of them accepted his death very bravely. One "ami" said about them: "In their veins ice instead of blood."
The last words of the condemned Joachim von Ribbentrop were: "May the Lord protect Germany, and may He be merciful to my soul. My last wish is a united Germany, mutual understanding between East and West and world peace."
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel said before his death: "More than two million German soldiers died for their Fatherland. Now I am going after them and my sons, who gave everything for Germany!"
Fritz Sauckel said: "I am dying innocent. May the Lord protect Germany and may He restore her former greatness!"
Alfred Jodl was brief: "Greetings, my Germany!".
Convicted Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Alfred Rosenberg ascended the gallows meekly and met death in complete silence.
Hans Frank found the courage for a subtle mockery, limiting himself to an expression of gratitude for the kindness with which he was treated by prison guards.
Seyss-Inquart, as a former lawyer, was more verbose: “I hope this execution will be the final act in the tragedy called World War II, and people will learn the proper lesson from this example in order to restore true understanding between all peoples. I I believe in Germany!
Wilhelm Frick loudly and distinctly shouted: "Long live eternal Germany!"
(In a strange way, the same words were spoken before the execution by the head of the conspiracy of the top military leadership of the German Wehrmacht against Hitler, Colonel Klaus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg, who was executed after the suppression of the general putsch in Berlin on the evening of July 20, 1944).
Julius Streicher, who had a badly injured knee, was very worried whether he could climb the steps of the stairs to the gallows with the same firm step and without outside help, as he promised when he said goodbye to his wife and son. In that last meeting, he even told them that he was specially training for this occasion to walk without a cane. The last time the "Frankenfuehrer" performed these daily exercises was on the eve of his execution. The execution took place (as the well-known British historian David Irving writes, "by a bizarre twist of fate") on October 16 (on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month of Adar), 1946, on the day of the "merry holiday of Purim" - one of the main sacred days according to the Jewish calendar, reminiscent of the massacre of the Jews with their main ill-wisher Aman, and at the same time with his ten sons and with 75,000 "evil-wishers", "thinking evil of the Jews", "in the days" of the reign of the ancient Persian king Artaxerxes. As is known from the Book of Esther, Haman and his ten sons were precisely hanged (according to the Old Testament word: "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree"). With great difficulty, hiding the pain in his knee, Julius Streicher climbed the steps of the gallows, accompanied by a priest.
"Heil Hitler!" shouted Streicher, standing under the gallows. - "Today we have a merry Jewish holiday here! But still this is my Purim, not yours! The day will come when the Bolsheviks will hang many of you, very many! And I'm leaving - to God!"
The executioners hurried to put a black bag on Streicher's head, but before the hatch could escape from under his feet, the Gauleiter managed to shout out: "Adele, my beloved wife!"
All the condemned were hung on long ropes, so that their neck vertebrae broke under the weight of the bodies, and death came quickly enough. But Julius Streicher was destined to die of suffocation, and therefore he was hung on a very short rope, which made the death of the condemned especially painful.
This final episode of the life and career of the "Frankenfuehrer" was told to the author of this historical miniature, then still a young graduate student, by Tatyana Grigorievna Stupnikova, who participated in the Nuremberg Trials as a translator, who, by the will of fate, witnessed the last minutes of the convicts' earthly existence, and described her impressions of the process in the book of memoirs "Nothing but the Truth", which was published for the first time only at the beginning of this, XXI, century.
After the execution, the corpses of the convicts were photographed, first in their clothes, and then stripped naked. Then the bodies were placed in coffins and taken from Nuremberg to the former German concentration camp Dachau, which, after the surrender of the Third Reich, was turned into an American camp. There, the corpses were cremated, and the ashes of the executed were poured into the Isar River.
By the way, one of the enterprising American officers hastened to make his own small business at this "event of the century". He arranged with a local printing house to produce a series of souvenir postal envelopes printed on them with the emblem of the International Military Tribunal, pasted with a quick postage stamp with a view of Nuremberg and a list of the names of all the hanged men, and Göring's name was printed on these envelopes (either by mistake or deliberately - in order to give the envelopes additional value, as a philatelic rarity) not marked "executed", but marked "committed suicide" (which, of course, was true).
This is the sad (albeit natural) end of a completely respectable, at first glance, German burgher, which he learned from his youth, under the influence of an incorrect upbringing in the spirit of intolerance and hatred of foreigners and heterodox, led to anti-Semitism, which (to paraphrase somewhat the statement of the great humanist Thomas Mann about anti-communism), can rightfully be called "the main stupidity of the twentieth century."
This is the end and glory to our God!
NOTES
/1/ The date of November 9 plays a truly symbolic role in German history. So, for example, it was on November 9, 1918 that the November Revolution took place in Germany, as a result of which, in the forty-eighth year of its existence, the Second Reich collapsed - the German Empire of the Hohenzollerns, created by Otto von Bismarck "with iron and blood." On November 9, 1923, the Munich "beer" putsch of Hitler and Ludendorff took place - the first, unsuccessful, attempt to create the Third Reich. On November 9, 1938, the events of the "Imperial Kristallnacht" were sad and justly condemned by all progressive mankind. On November 9, 1980, another reunification of Germany took place, etc.
/2/ The entry of Jackson Jr. in his diary dated July 16, 1945, conveys a conversation that took place between him and US President Harry Truman (concurrently the Grand Master of the Missouri Masons), during which Truman showed Jackson his symbolic "freemason's" hammer. At least one of the members of the Nuremberg Tribunal, the English judge Sir Norman Birkett, was also a Freemason. In this regard, the following circumstance does not seem to be without interest. the only Freemason among the main accused - the former President of the Reichsbank Hjalmar Schacht - was sentenced to only eight years in prison (counting from the day he was arrested, of which he served only 18 days! (See Irving D. Nuremberg. The Last Battle. m, 2005).
Julius Streicher was born on February 12, 1885. He was the ninth child of Friedrich Streicher, a Roman Catholic elementary school teacher. Before the war, he volunteered for the German army, after working for some time as a teacher in an elementary school. However, after a year of service, he was dismissed from the army for indiscipline with a ban on further service in the armed forces.
During the First World War, Streicher showed himself to be a brave soldier and earned the Iron Cross I and II degrees, and also received the rank of lieutenant.
After the war
After the war, Streicher continued to teach at school, but soon began to participate in the political life of the country on the side of the far right.
In 1919, Streicher created his own anti-Semitic organization, the Socialist Party of Germany (SPD) (German: Deutschsozialistische Partei). In 1921, when Hitler left Munich for Berlin to make contacts with the leaders of the Nazi organizations in northern Germany, a number of members of the NSDAP, including its founder Anton Drexler, accused Hitler of dictatorship and tried to establish contacts with the LNG. Hitler urgently returned to Bavaria and demanded an end to flirting with the Streicher group. This caused a serious crisis in the party, but Hitler was able to establish himself as leader. Soon, Streicher was able to find a common language with the leader of the National Socialists (Hitler decided that he didn’t care what kind of people surround him, as long as they helped his cause) and on October 8, 1922 joined the ranks of the NSDAP along with members of the SPD.
When he heard about the Beer Putsch, he, not wanting to stand aside, joined Hitler and walked next to him in the forefront. Some witnesses claim that when the crowd of marchers was blocked by the police, it was Streicher who fired the first shot. He himself later said that it was thanks to his participation in the putsch that the Fuhrer always supported him in the future. “Perhaps there are one or two people who do not like the shape of Streicher's nose. But on that day, when he was lying next to me on the Feldherrnhalle pavement, I swore that I would not leave him until he left me, ”Hitler later said about him.
On April 16, 1923, he began to publish his own newspaper, Der Stürmer, which soon gained a reputation as the most radical anti-Semitic publication in Germany. He published stories about ritual murders of Aryan children by Jews, and also blamed Jews for such things as the explosion of the Hindenburg airship in 1937. There were a lot of cartoons in the newspaper, sometimes frankly pornographic, as well as complaints about Jews interfering with the lives of the Aryans: a patient in a psychiatric hospital complained that Jews had undeservedly taken him there, a buyer wrote that they did not bring him a shirt from a store owned by a Jew, and so on. every room. In his articles, Streicher used the most explicit images. He gave anti-Semitism a scientific connotation, arguing that an Aryan whose blood was corrupted by a Jew would never again be able to give birth to full-fledged Aryan children. Julius was a talented orator and was active throughout Germany with anti-Semitic speeches.
When Streicher was appointed Gauleiter of Nuremberg in 1925, he was still teaching at the school, and his students were obliged to greet him with the exclamation of "Heil Hitler!" In 1928, he was fired from school for promoting anti-Semitic ideas, but this did not interfere with his further career: in 1929 he became Gauleiter of the united Franconia and was elected to the Bavarian parliament from the Nazis, and in 1933 to the Reichstag. In 1934 he was promoted to the rank of SS Gruppenfuehrer.
Best of the day
In the Third Reich
As a Gauleiter, Streicher had a bad reputation, according to W. Shirer, he liked to walk around Nuremberg with a whip, he could do almost everything he wanted within his Gau. Once he personally beat the prisoners of the Nuremberg prison, after which he said to the employees of his apparatus: “It was simply necessary for me, now I feel much better.” Streicher had a huge number of mistresses and constantly blackmailed their husbands, loved to proudly talk about his love affairs and was known for his passion for pornography.
The attitude towards Streicher in the party was ambiguous: Goering, Hess, Ley and Schacht openly stated that with his obscene articles and moral character (Streicher was actively engaged in buying up confiscated Jewish property) he was doing the movement much more harm than good. There were legends about his greed in the party. In 1938, Rudolf Hess even temporarily banned the release of Der Stürmer after Streicher demanded that a Jew who married an Aryan be guillotined, and Goebbels repeatedly banned his public appearances. On the other hand, Hitler almost always supported him and said: "I do not think that the task of a political leader is to try to improve the human material that lies ready in his hands."
In 1937, Streicher entered into a serious confrontation with Goering, calling his only daughter "the fruit of artificial insemination" in one of the issues of Der Stürmer. This attack on Goering was due to the fact that he wanted to see Milch, whom Streicher considered a Jew, as his deputy and corrected his biography. In response, Göring obtained from Hitler a financial audit of Streicher's activities, which resulted in his removal from all party posts in 1940. After that, he did not directly engage in politics, concentrating on editing Der Stürmer. The newspaper continued to be published until 1945. On May 23, 1945, he was arrested by the Americans.
In Nuremberg
At the Nuremberg trials (held in the main city of Franconia, of which Streicher was Gauleiter), he was charged with inciting the murder of Jews, which fell under Charge 4 of the trial - crimes against humanity. In response, Streicher called the process a "triumph of world Jewry". According to the test results, his IQ was the lowest of all the defendants. During the examination, Streicher was found to be sane and capable of being responsible for his actions, although obsessed with an obsession. He said that the accusers and judges were Jews and did not repent. According to the psychiatrists who conducted the examination, his fanatical anti-Semitism is a product of a sick psyche, but on the whole he gave the impression of an adequate person.
His authority among the other defendants was low, many of them shunned such an odious and fanatical figure as he was. When the dining room for the accused was divided into compartments for eating, Streicher fell into the company of the most convinced Nazis, to Hess, Raeder and Ribbentrop. According to the psychologist Gustav Hilbert, who worked with the prisoners, "the last two sat with an offended look - they obviously did not like to eat in the company of such an odious figure as he."
His lawyer, Dr. Hans Marx, tried to build his client's defense on the fact that no one took his "Der Stürmer" seriously. However, Streicher strongly opposed this. He argued that he ordered the destruction of synagogues "for purely architectural reasons." According to him, he read about the extermination of Jews in foreign newspapers, but did not believe in it. He claimed that he called for the extermination of the Jewish people, but not in a literal sense. These explanations provoked a negative reaction from Frank.
When he was sentenced to death, he said: “Of course, the death penalty! What else could you expect! And they knew it from the very beginning.” During the execution, standing under the noose, he loudly shouted: "Purimfest!" (Jewish holiday Purim - triumph over the enemies of the Jews). “I am going to God. One day the Bolsheviks will hang you!" He then shouted "Heil Hitler!" several times. About the Nuremberg Tribunal, Julius Streicher said: "This trial is the triumph of world Jewry." According to executioner John Wood, the last "Heil Hitler!" came out of the bag. After the execution of the sentence, Streicher's body, along with the bodies of other executed people, was cremated, and the ashes were secretly removed and scattered.
Julius Streicher was:
the only one of the accused who had already been in the Nuremberg Hall of Justice before the trial as an accused. He was accused of molesting a minor, but he managed to justify himself.
the only one of the defendants at Nuremberg who was found guilty solely of printed propaganda, and not of actual participation in the decision-making on war and genocide.
the only one of those executed at Nuremberg who mentioned Hitler in his deathbed speech.
Streicher family
In 1913, in Nuremberg, he married the daughter of a baker, Kunigunde Roth (German: Kunigunde Roth). They had two sons: Lothar (1915) and Elmar (1918). His wife died after 30 years of marriage, in 1943. Soon, in May 1945, he married his former secretary, Adele Tappe. At the Nuremberg trials, she spoke in his defense, arguing that he was a decent family man and generally a good person. According to Jodl, "she is too sweet for such a complete bastard as her husband is."
Quotes
We know our enemy, we openly call him by his name for the last twenty years: this is world Jewry. And we know that it must perish. (1939)
Catholicism is only an obstacle to the final solution of the Jewish question.
I devoted 25 years of my life to the study of the Jewish question, and there is no other specialist who understands it better than me. (1946)
Hitler on Streicher
If we want to tell the truth, we must admit that without Julius Streicher, National Socialism would never have won at Nuremberg.
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Julius Streicher(Streicher; German. Julius Streicher; February 12, Fleinhausen near Augsburg, Bavaria - October 16, Nuremberg), Gauleiter of Franconia, editor-in-chief of the anti-Semitic and anti-communist newspaper Sturmovik (German. Der Sturmer - Der Stürmer), an ideologue of racism. Executed by the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal for anti-Semitic propaganda and calls for genocide.
Before starting a political career
Julius Streicher was born on February 12, 1885. He was the ninth child of Friedrich Streicher, a Roman Catholic elementary school teacher. Before the war, he volunteered for the German army, after working for some time as a teacher in an elementary school. However, after a year of service, he was dismissed from the army for indiscipline with a ban on further service in the armed forces.
After World War I
After the war, Streicher continued to teach at school, but soon began to participate in the political life of the country on the side of the far right.
In the Third Reich
As a Gauleiter, Streicher had a bad reputation, according to W. Shirer, he liked to walk around Nuremberg with a whip, he could do almost everything he wanted within his Gau. Once he personally beat the prisoners of the Nuremberg prison, after which he said to the employees of his apparatus:Streicher had a huge number of mistresses and constantly blackmailed their husbands, loved to proudly talk about his love affairs and was known for his passion for pornography.I just needed it, now I feel much better.
- Elena Syanova. Ten from Hitler's deck. - M .: Time, . - S. 53.
The attitude towards Streicher in the party was ambiguous: G. Goering, R. Hess, R. Ley and J. Schacht openly stated that with his obscene articles and moral character (Streicher was actively engaged in buying up confiscated Jewish property) he was causing much more harm to the movement than benefit. There were legends about his greed in the party. In 1938, Goebbels repeatedly banned his public appearances. On the other hand, Hitler almost always supported him, saying: "I do not believe that the task of a political leader is to try to improve the human material that lies ready in his hands."
Julius Streicher was:
Streicher family
In 1913, in Nuremberg, he married the daughter of a baker, Kunigunde Roth. Kunigunde Roth). They had two sons: Lothar (1915) and Elmar (1918). His wife died after 30 years of marriage, in 1943. Soon, in May 1945, he married his former secretary, Adele Tappe. At the Nuremberg trials, she spoke in his defense, arguing that he was a decent family man and generally a good person. According to Jodl, "she is too sweet for such a complete bastard as her husband is."
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Notes
Literature
- Syanova E. Ten from the Hitler deck. - M.: Time, . - ISBN 5-9691-0010-2
- Gilbert G. Nuremberg diary / trans. with him. A. L. Utkina - Smolensk: Rusich, . - ISBN 5-8138-0567-2
- Efimov B. Age of the century. Memories. - M.: Soviet artist, .
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| 30px | [((localurl:Commons:Category: Lua error: callParserFunction: function "#property" was not found. ))?uselang=ru Julius Streicher] at Wikimedia Commons |
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An excerpt characterizing Streicher, Julius
Not because I was afraid of someone or embarrassed, I just didn’t have the habit of disturbing people without a particularly important reason, and I wasn’t sure that right now this reason was serious ... But Stella was apparently in this I am absolutely sure, because literally in a fraction of a second a person appeared next to us.He was a very sad knight... Yes, yes, exactly a knight!.. And I was very surprised that even in this "other" world, where he could "put on" any energy parted with his severe knightly appearance, in which he apparently still remembered himself very well ... And for some reason I thought that he must have had some very serious reasons for this, even if after so many years he did not want to part with this appearance.
Usually, when people die, for the first time after their death, their essences always look exactly as they looked at the moment of their physical death. Apparently, the huge shock and wild fear of the unknown is great enough not to add any more additional stress to this. When time passes (usually after a year), the essences of old and old people gradually begin to look young and become exactly the same as they were in the best years of their youth. Well, the untimely dead babies “grow up” sharply, as if “catching up” with their unlived years, and become something similar to their essence, as they were when they entered the bodies of these unfortunate ones who died too early, or from some kind of illness. untimely dead children, with the only difference being that some of them “add” a little in development, if they were lucky enough during their short years in the physical body ... And much later, each essence changes, depending on how She lives on in the "new" world.
And the high beings living on the mental level of the earth, unlike all the others, are even able to themselves, according to own will, to create a “face” and “clothes”, because, having lived for a very long time (the higher the development of the essence, the less often it is reincarnated into a physical body) and having sufficiently mastered in that “other”, at first unfamiliar world, they themselves are able to do and create a lot.
Why little Stella chose this adult and something deeply wounded person as her friend remains an unsolved mystery for me to this day. But since the girl looked absolutely satisfied and happy with such an "acquisition", I could only fully trust the unmistakable intuition of this little, crafty sorceress...
As it turned out, his name was Harold. The last time he lived in his physical earthly body more than a thousand years ago and apparently had a very high essence, but I felt in my heart that the memories of the period of his life in this last incarnation were something very painful for him, since it was from there Harold endured this deep and mournful sadness that had accompanied him for so many years...
- Here! He is very nice and you will make friends with him too! - Stella said happily, not paying attention to the fact that her new friend is also here and hears us perfectly.
It certainly didn’t seem to her that talking about him in his presence might not be very right ... She was simply very happy that she finally had a friend, and this happiness with me openly and with shared pleasure.
She was generally an incredibly happy child! As we said - "happy by nature." Neither before Stella, nor after her, I never had to meet anyone, at least a little like this "sunny", sweet girl. It seemed that no misfortune, no misfortune could knock her out of this extraordinary “happy rut” of hers ... And not because she did not understand or did not feel human pain or misfortune - on the contrary, I was even sure that she felt it much deeper than all the others. It’s just that she was, as it were, created from cells of joy and light, and protected by some strange, very “positive” protection, which did not allow grief or sadness to penetrate into the depths of her small and very kind heart in order to destroy it so familiar to all of us. an everyday avalanche of negative emotions and feelings wounded by pain.... Stella herself WAS HAPPINESS and generously, like the sun, gave it to everyone around.
“I found him so sad!.. And he's much better now, isn't he, Harold? - Addressing both of us at the same time, Stella continued happily.
“I am very pleased to meet you,” I said, still feeling a little uneasy. – It must be very difficult to be between the worlds for so long? ..
“This is the same world as everyone else,” the knight calmly replied with a shrug. - Almost empty...
How is it empty? I was surprised.
Stella immediately intervened... It was clear that she was eager to tell me "everything, everything" as soon as possible, and she was already just jumping up and down from the impatience that burned her.
“He just couldn’t find his loved ones here, but I helped him!” - the little girl burst out happily.
Harold smiled affectionately at this marvelous, "sparkling" little man with happiness and nodded his head, as if confirming her words:
- This is true. I was looking for them for ages, but it turned out that all I had to do was open the right “door”. This is where she helped me.
I stared at Stella, waiting for an explanation. This girl, without realizing it, continued to amaze me more and more.
- Well, yes, - Stella said a little embarrassed. “He told me his story, and I saw that they were simply not here. So I looked for them...
Naturally, I did not really understand anything from such an explanation, but I was ashamed to ask again, and I decided to wait what she would say next. But, unfortunately or fortunately, it was not so easy to hide something from this smart little girl... Having slyly looking at me with her huge eyes, she immediately suggested:
- Do you want me to show you?
I just nodded in the affirmative, afraid to frighten me away, because again I was expecting something from her, another “amazingly incredible” ... Her “colorful reality” disappeared somewhere again, and an unusual landscape appeared ...
Apparently, it was some very hot, possibly eastern, country, since everything around was literally blinded by a bright, white-orange light, which usually appeared only when the air was very hot, dry. The earth, as far as the eye could see, was scorched and colorless, and, except for distant mountains visible in a blue haze, nothing diversified this sparingly monotonous, flat and “naked” landscape ... circle was surrounded by a dilapidated stone wall. Surely, no one attacked this city for a long time, and the locals were not very worried about the “renovation” of the defense, or at least the “aging” of the surrounding city wall.
Inside, narrow snake-like streets ran through the city, connecting into a single wider one, with unusual small “castles” standing out on it, which rather looked like miniature white fortresses surrounded by the same miniature gardens, each of which was shamefully hidden from prying eyes behind a high stone wall. There was practically no greenery in the city, from which the white stones bathed in the sun literally “melted” from the sizzling heat. The evil midday sun furiously brought down all the power of its scorching rays on the unprotected, dusty streets, which, already panting, plaintively listened to the slightest breath of a fresh breeze that never appeared. The hot air “waved” with hot waves, turning this unusual town into a real stuffy oven. It seemed to be the hottest day of the hottest summer on earth.....
This whole picture was very real, as real as my favorite fairy tales used to be, into which, just like here, I “fell headlong”, not hearing or seeing anything around ...
Suddenly, a small but very “homely” fortress stood out from the “general picture”, which, if not for two funny square turrets, would have looked more like a large and rather cozy house.
On the steps, under a large olive tree, a little blond boy of four or five years old was playing. And behind him, under an old apple tree, a plump, pleasant woman, who looked like a sweet, caring, good-natured nurse, was gathering fallen apples.
A very beautiful, fair-haired young lady appeared in the yard and ... my new acquaintance - the knight Harold.
The woman was dressed in an unusual, but apparently very expensive, long silk dress, the folds of which gently swayed, repeating every movement of her light, graceful body. A funny, beaded, blue silk hat rested peacefully on the blond hair of a beautiful lady, perfectly emphasizing the color of her large light blue eyes.
Harold, despite such a sizzling, hellish heat, almost suffocating, “honestly suffered” in his red-hot knightly armor, mentally cursing the crazy heat (and immediately asking for forgiveness from the “merciful” Lord, to whom he had been so faithful and sincere for so many years served) ... Hot sweat, very annoying, poured from him in hail, and, covering his eyes, heartlessly spoiled the quickly fleeing minutes of their next “last” farewell ... Apparently, the knight was going somewhere very far away, because his lovely lady's face was very sad despite the fact that she honestly tried her best to hide it...
“This is the last time, my kindness… I promise you, this is true for the last time,” the knight said with difficulty, affectionately touching her tender cheek.
I heard the conversation mentally, but there was a strange sensation of someone else's speech. I understood the words perfectly, and yet I knew that they were speaking in some other language.
“I will never see you again…” the woman whispered through her tears. - Never again...
For some reason, the little boy did not react in any way either to the imminent departure of his father, or to his farewell to his mother. He calmly continued to play, not paying any attention to the adults, as if it had nothing to do with him. This surprised me a little, but I did not dare to ask anything, but simply watched what would happen next.
"Won't you say goodbye to me?" – turning to him, asked knight.
The boy shook his head without looking up.
“Leave him, he’s just mad at you…” the woman asked sadly. “He also believed you that you would never leave him alone again.
The knight nodded and, climbing onto his huge horse, galloped along the narrow street without turning around, very soon disappearing behind the first turn. And the beautiful lady sadly looked after him, and her soul was ready to run ... crawl ... fly after him no matter where, if only to see him at least for a moment, to hear at least for a short moment! .. But she knew that this will not happen, that she will remain where she is, and that, by a capricious whim of fate, she will never see or hug her Harold again ... Large, heavy tears rolled down her pale, haggard cheeks in an instant, and vanished like sparkling drops into the dusty earth...
“God save him…” the woman whispered bitterly. – I will never see him... never again... help him, Lord...
She stood motionless, like a mournful Madonna, not seeing or hearing anything around her, and a blond baby was clinging to her feet, now exposing all his sadness and looking longingly to where instead of his beloved dad, only an empty dusty road was white white alone .. ...
