Julius Streicher - Early Politics

Early Politics

In February 1919 Streicher became active in the anti-Semitic Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund (German Nationalist Protection and Defense Federation), one of the various radical-nationalist organizations that sprang up in the wake of the failed German Communist revolution of 1918. Such groups fostered the view that Jews had conspired with “Bolshevik” traitors in trying to subject Germany to Communist rule. In 1920 he turned to the Deutschsozialistische Partei (German-Socialist Party), a group whose platform was close to that of the young NSDAP, or National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (National Socialist German Worker's Party). The German Socialist Party (Deutsch-Sozialistische Partei, DSP) was created in May 1919 as an initiative of Rudolf von Sebottendorf as a child of the Thule society, and its program was based on the ideas of the mechanical engineer Alfred Brunner (1881-1936) - including socialist ideas like the takeover of the financial sector by the state and cutting back the "interest-based economy". Leading members of the DSP were Hans Georg Müller, Max Sesselmann and Dr. Friedrich Wiesel, the first two being editors of the Münchner Beobachter. Julius Streicher founded his local branch in 1919 in Nuremberg. Streicher's arguments were primitive, vulgar, and crude, but he believed in what he said and was an uninhibited, wild agitator, to whom masses would listen, which was what mattered to the party. The DSP was officially inaugurated in April 1920 in Hanover. Streicher sought to move the German-Socialists in a more virulently anti-Semitic direction – an effort which aroused enough opposition that he left the group and brought his now-substantial following to yet another organization in 1921, the Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft (German Working Community), which hoped to unite the various anti-Semitic Völkisch movements.