Thursday, March 22, 2012

a clockwork orange (1971)

The Hamburg account was the last cover story on racial defilement. Several 1943 issues praised the Nuremberg Laws for having maintained the purity of German blood, but there were to be no further vivid cover stories of rape and defilement. There were few Jews left in Germany, and German womanhood was now 'safe'. But the Stürmer was duller... Formerly it had been packed with every manner of lively scandal, sex, bribery, corruption, and dirty dealings, all of which seemed likely to befall any German who failed to keep assiduous watch on every Jew he encountered. But during the war Allied bombs were a more immediate threat than the high prices or decayed meat of the long-departed Jewish shopkeeper. The conspiracy was no longer visible; no longer could a reader act. The Stürmer had become a journal of international affairs... The vivid crudity that was Streicher's hallmark vanished with the Jews who went to Auschwitz.

Randall L. Bytwerk,
'Julius Streicher: Nazi Editor of the Notorious Anti-semitic Newspaper Der Sturmer'

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