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Julius Streicher
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Julius Streicher in a formal portrait, wearing a Nazi uniform with a swastika armband, looking to the side. Julius Streicher sitting at a small table covered with papers in his prison cell at Nuremberg, looking to the side.
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Germany invades Poland, September 1, 1939, using 45 German divisions and aerial attack. By September 20, only Warsaw held out, but final surrender came on September 29.
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U.S. marines raising the American flag over Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, in February 1945
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Born:
February 12, 1885, Fleinhausen, Germany
Died:
October 16, 1946, Nuremberg, Germany (aged 61)
Political Affiliation:
Nazi Party
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Julius Streicher in a formal portrait, wearing a Nazi uniform with a swastika armband, looking to the side.
Julius Streicher Julius Streicher, Nazi propagandist and publisher.

Julius Streicher

German politician
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Julius Streicher (born February 12, 1885, Fleinhausen, Germany—died October 16, 1946, Nuremberg, Germany) was a Nazi demagogue and politician who gained infamy as one of the most virulent advocates of the persecution of Jews during the 1930s.

Streicher served in the German army during World War I and afterward taught elementary school in Nuremberg. He joined the Nazi Party in 1921, becoming one of the earliest Nazis in southern Germany and a close friend of Adolf Hitler. In 1925 Streicher was appointed Gauleiter (district leader) of Franconia, which, after the Nazis came to power in 1933, he administered from his chief bailiwick, Nuremberg. As the founder (1923) and editor of the anti-Semitic weekly newspaper Der Stürmer, Streicher achieved a position of great wealth and influence in Nazi Germany. Der Stürmer’s crude anti-Jewish invective provided a focus for Hitler’s persecutory racial policies; the newspaper initiated the general campaign that led to the passage of the Nuremberg laws in 1935.

Streicher’s irresponsible behavior and sexual and sadistic excesses eventually alienated many of his fellow party officials, and he was stripped of his party posts in 1940 after a commission investigated the scandalous irregularities of his business transactions and personal life. He continued to serve as editor of Der Stürmer throughout the war years, however, owing to Hitler’s protection of him.

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Germany invades Poland, September 1, 1939, using 45 German divisions and aerial attack. By September 20, only Warsaw held out, but final surrender came on September 29.
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Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About World War II
Julius Streicher sitting at a small table covered with papers in his prison cell at Nuremberg, looking to the side.
Streicher at NurembergJulius Streicher, in his cell in Nuremberg, Germany.

After the collapse of Germany, Streicher, disguised as a painter, was captured on May 23, 1945, by U.S. troops near Waidring, Austria. Indicted along with other top Nazi leaders to stand trial on charges of war crimes before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Streicher was found guilty on October 1, 1946, of crimes against humanity and was sentenced to death by hanging.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Scott Spires.