Hanging the Sin Eater: International Criminal
Law’s Failure to Engage with the Role of Media in a Criminal State.
Mark
Bourrie
CML
4108
January
20, 2017
When a political system lapses into
despotism and a government embarks on criminality, who is to blame? When a
nation’s energies are directed at waging aggressive warfare, who should be
called to account for manipulating the minds of the people to engage in such
aberrant behaviour? It might be argued that cruelty and theft are hard-wired
into the human psyche. What we would call aggressive warfare and genocide are
simply normal human violence that has been amplified through the organization
of individuals into large groups equipped with a level of technology that makes
mass killing and vast destruction relatively easy. Most people, however, will
never hold powerful political office, command an army or tally up the foreign
currency taken from the bodies of death camp victims. They will never kill
other people except under unusual circumstances. They live their lives as
farmers, tradespeople, teachers, miners, truck drivers and others whose names
will not show up in the indexes of history books. They have just one real
currency in the political sphere: the chance to give their vote or, in places
with no vote, their physical support, to a regime, whether it be honest or
criminal.
They are swayed to do this by
communicating with other people. Word of mouth is effective, although the facts
communicated from person to person must come from somewhere. In a large society
like Nazi Germany or America, the chances of one’s neighbours and friends
knowing many people in the top tier of the political class are quite slim. More
likely, the ideas and supposed facts spread by word of mouth comes from some
sort of mass media or propaganda system. Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman and Edward
Said called this process “manufacturing consent,” a smart allusion to the
industrialization of mass communication.
The mass media is part of the power
structure. The top political journalists work very hard to be members of the
political class. The respect, admiration and legitimacy that they give
political actors is reflected in the attitudes of their readers. When a society
engages in genocide and its leadership is called to account in international
criminal law, it is not these influential consensus-makers who end up in the
prisoner’s box. In the very few cases of prosecution of media for incitement of
genocide and war crimes, it has been the disreputable fringe, rather than the
respectable mainstream, that has been tried. Quite often, the journalists who
normalized criminal regimes and their cruel policies have been able to walk
away, or even continue working in media.
Journalists who facilitate and normalize
state crimes are not victims. No one forces a person to become a journalist.
Even in the most vicious wars and soul-sucking police states, goons and thugs
don’t come around to a village or apartment block to round up half-bright people
and force them to work as headline writers or copy editors. Young people are rarely
pressured by family to take up reporting rather than banking, civil service
work, law or some other white-collar job. And, when a journalist is pressured
to do things that are evil or immoral, the journalist – unlike a soldier or a
civil servant, or even a railway engineer running the locomotive on the train
to the death camp – can quite easily beg
off and find more palatable work without much repercussion, since they’re
easily replaced due to their rather common skill set. The journalist who
engages in genocidal propaganda or beats the drum for aggressive war thus has a
very high level of mens rea and likely
cannot argue coercion.
When shilling for regimes that engage in
war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, the mainstream journalist
performs a very important role without serious personal risk from the outside
world (though they may face serious consequences if they fall out of favour or
the regime is overthrown by internal political actors). Instead, the journalist
most likely to end up in the prisoner’s dock in an international tribunal will
be the fringe player kept at arms-length by the real planners and perpetrators.
These fringe journalists, deliberately kept from the mainstream media elite,
are used by political actors to get out the ugliest part of their message.
Later, the “respectable” journalists bring sanitized versions of those messages
gently into the mainstream, where they become part of the political consensus
of the power elite and those they govern.
Surprisingly
little has been written about the mass print media of the Third Reich. It is
difficult to track the fate of journalists during and after the Hitler regime.
There appears to be a lack of academic interest in print media history, as opposed to
studies of Nazi radio and film propaganda. Those undertaking a study tracking
individual journalists and executives of Nazi-era newsrooms must also contend
with the industry practice in Western countries of publishing most stories
without bylines.[1]
We are, however, able to piece together a rough outline of the consequences for
being part of the Nazi mass media.
The
Nazis placed a very high value on cooperative and co-opted journalists. Many of
the major Nazi leaders had, like their Soviet counterparts, some media
experience. They had written articles for newspapers, or had edited, owned or
published a paper. Hitler was well-aware of the importance of media, always
travelling with a personal photographer and often with a film crew. Unlike the
alt-right in today’s America, the Nazis did not vilify journalism as a craft. Deputy
Reich Press Chief Helmut Sundermann issued a brochure in 1938 titled “The Path
to Journalism in Germany,” in which he equated the role of journalists to that
of politicians. “After all, there are professions that introduce youth to politics
because they are inherently a political profession. Journalism stands at the
summit of such professions. A born journalist is a born politician."[2]
On
October 4, 1933, about nine months after taking office, the Nazi regime
promulgated a Reich Press Law that effectively shut down the opposition
newspapers. The rest came under direct government supervision. The Nazis were
careful to maintain the illusion of freedom for the top tier of the respectable
print media. Frankfurter Zeitung was
allowed to continue publishing but the Nazi regime forced its Jewish owners to
sell the newspaper to corporate conglomerate I.G. Farben. With nearly a
200-year tradition of moderate political writing and respected business news
reporting, the paper had value to the Nazi leadership both as a solid news
source and a political prop. Hitler’s regime, knowing that Frankfurter Zeitung had a large foreign readership, used the paper
as evidence that the regime allowed “respectable” publications to survive with
a minimal amount of interference. (The paper was shut down in 1943 and revived
in 1949 with most of its wartime staff.) Obviously Frankfurter Zeitung’s staff knew about at least some of the abuses
of the regime and understood the vile propaganda spewing from the Nazi press,
but Frankfurter Zeitung’s journalists
continued to press on under the somewhat gentle guidance of Josef Goebbel’s
propaganda ministry. Although they had given an air of legitimacy to the Nazi
regime and had collaborated to ensure the Third Reich looked somewhat like a
respectable Western state, the journalists who worked on this newspaper had
little trouble transitioning into elite journalists in post-war Germany. Yet
they provided a curtain behind which Hitler’s regime committed its crimes. The
existence of the veneer of professional journalism in a sense allows the
continued denial by some Germans that they were duped by the illusion of
normality and therefore had no idea what was going on in the death camps and on
the assembly lines manned by slaves.
Hans
Fritzche straddled the line between professional journalism and Nazi
apparatchik. Fritzsche was forty-five years old when he was put on trial at
Nuremberg. He had some university education and, before the Nazis took power,
had worked for mainstream newspapers, most notably the Hugenberg Press, a chain
of papers that supported right-wing parties. During the Weimar regime,
Fritzsche was appointed head of the state-run Wireless[3] News Department, a
position that he held when the Nazis took power. On January 30, 1933, the day
Hitler was appointed chancellor, Fritzsche was visited by Nazi officials, and
soon afterwards, Fritszche was confirmed in his job, on the condition that he fire
any Jews who worked for the news service. Two months later, Goebbels, who was
now Minister of Propaganda, visited Fritzsche to tell him the radio news
service was going to be laced under the jurisdiction of Goebbels’ ministry.
Again, after assuring Goebbels that all the Jews working at the Wireless News
Department had been fired, Fritzsche was confirmed in his job. On May 1, 1933,
the Wireless News Department, now purged of Jews and liberals, was folded into
the Ministry of Propaganda. That day, Fritzsche took an oath of allegiance to
Hitler and joined the Nazi party. Later, Fritzsche was given control of the
German Press Division, which, according to Fritzsche’s own affidavit submitted
at Nuremberg, provided efficient state control of more than 2,300 German daily
newspapers. He was the lead communicator for the Nazi regime, holding daily
press conferences for journalists from major papers and handing out censorship
and propaganda instructions. These Daily
Paroles of the Reich Press Chief instructed newspapers on the slant they were
to take on the news, and told them the stories that should be highlighted and
those that should be suppressed. These story lines included propaganda against
Jews and others targeted by the Nazi regime, as well as propaganda articles
that agitated for aggressive warfare.[4]
Fritzsche was able to convince his judges that he
did not create policy, but he was sometimes in the room where it happened. For
example, in his testimony at Nuremberg, Fritzsche admitted to being part of
discussions in late in the war to decide whether the political risks outweighed
the potential gains if German abandoned the Geneva Convention on the treatment
of prisoners of war.[5]
The indictment
against Fritzsche placed in front of his judges at the International Military
Tribunal at Nuremberg in October, 1945 said:
By virtue of its functions, the German Press Division became an important and unique instrument of the Nazi conspirators, not only in dominating the minds and psychology of Germans, but also as an instrument of foreign policy and psychological warfare against other nations.[6]
Despite Fritzsche’s conscious decision to drive out Jews and liberals from his organization and to continue to disseminate propaganda to all the country’s daily newspapers, the International Military Tribunal found “Fritzsche had no control of the formulation of these propaganda policies. He was merely a conduit to the press…” Fritzsche still had personal control over the Reich’s radio news network and issued daily “paroles” to all of the Reich’s propaganda offices, and was present at Goebbels' daily staff conferences. The court found he was simply a conduit for the Nazi leadership. Spreading its message, written in somewhat polite language and distributed in a seemingly professional, bureaucratic way, was not an act of criminality. The guilt of the offence of incitement lay with the makers of policy, not the people who worked to make it seem like normal government action. It also lay with the most extreme journalists, not those who normalized hate and made it mainstream.
Even Fritzsche’s inflammatory anti-Semitic radio speeches were somehow less criminal than the material published by his co-accused, Julius Streicher, according to the Tribunal:
By virtue of its functions, the German Press Division became an important and unique instrument of the Nazi conspirators, not only in dominating the minds and psychology of Germans, but also as an instrument of foreign policy and psychological warfare against other nations.[6]
Despite Fritzsche’s conscious decision to drive out Jews and liberals from his organization and to continue to disseminate propaganda to all the country’s daily newspapers, the International Military Tribunal found “Fritzsche had no control of the formulation of these propaganda policies. He was merely a conduit to the press…” Fritzsche still had personal control over the Reich’s radio news network and issued daily “paroles” to all of the Reich’s propaganda offices, and was present at Goebbels' daily staff conferences. The court found he was simply a conduit for the Nazi leadership. Spreading its message, written in somewhat polite language and distributed in a seemingly professional, bureaucratic way, was not an act of criminality. The guilt of the offence of incitement lay with the makers of policy, not the people who worked to make it seem like normal government action. It also lay with the most extreme journalists, not those who normalized hate and made it mainstream.
Even Fritzsche’s inflammatory anti-Semitic radio speeches were somehow less criminal than the material published by his co-accused, Julius Streicher, according to the Tribunal:
Excerpts in evidence from his speeches show
definite anti-Semitism on his part. He broadcast, for example, that the war had
been caused by Jews and said their fate had turned out " as unpleasant as
the Fuehrer predicted." But these speeches did not urge persecution or extermination
of Jews. There is no evidence that he was aware of their extermination in the
East. The evidence moreover shows that he twice attempted to have publication
of the anti-Semitic " Der Sturmer " suppressed, though
unsuccessfully… It appears that Fritzsche sometimes made strong statements of a
propagandistic nature in his broadcasts. But the Tribunal is not prepared to
hold that they were intended to incite the German people to commit atrocities
on conquered peoples, and he cannot be held to have been a participant in the
crimes charged. His aim was rather to arouse popular sentiment in support of
Hitler and the German war effort.[7]
Fritzsche was acquitted by the International Military Tribunal, although he was later convicted by a domestic de-Nazification court and spent four years in jail. Max Amann, treasurer of the Nazi Party and publisher of the Volkischer Beobachter, by far the leading circulation Nazi Party propaganda paper, with a circulation of about two million at its peak, was not tried at all by a Nuremberg tribunal, although he was sentenced to four years in prison by a de-Nazification court.[8] Amann’s newspaper carried a constant stream of articles advocating warfare and the oppression of Jews and other non “Aryans”. At least once during the war, the paper advocated the murder by German civilians of downed Allied airmen in violation of the Geneva Convention. On March 29, 1944, the Volkischer Beobachter published an article by Josef Goebbels encouraging the paper’s civilian readers to kill "terror fliers" on the principle of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."[9]
Fritzsche was acquitted by the International Military Tribunal, although he was later convicted by a domestic de-Nazification court and spent four years in jail. Max Amann, treasurer of the Nazi Party and publisher of the Volkischer Beobachter, by far the leading circulation Nazi Party propaganda paper, with a circulation of about two million at its peak, was not tried at all by a Nuremberg tribunal, although he was sentenced to four years in prison by a de-Nazification court.[8] Amann’s newspaper carried a constant stream of articles advocating warfare and the oppression of Jews and other non “Aryans”. At least once during the war, the paper advocated the murder by German civilians of downed Allied airmen in violation of the Geneva Convention. On March 29, 1944, the Volkischer Beobachter published an article by Josef Goebbels encouraging the paper’s civilian readers to kill "terror fliers" on the principle of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."[9]
Along
with publishing its newspaper, Amann performed other useful services for the
Nazis. When Hitler took power, the Depression had already made the German
newspaper industry financially untenable. There were about 4,700 daily and
weekly newspapers in the country. While many of the leading Nazis wanted a
complete take-over of the press, Amann, who was delegated by Hitler and
Goebbels to run the Reich Press Office, instead decided to rationalize the
industry. The financially weaker papers were closed and the stronger ones
allowed to dominate local and regional markets. Ideological conformity was
ensured through the Nazi race laws, which forbade Jews and those married to
Jews to work as journalists, and by the purging of centrist and left-leaning
journalists from newsrooms, On the surface, the Nazi regime had fairly mild
censorship laws, but because of its complete control of the economy, including
allotment of paper, the regime could easily decide which publishers survived.
At the same time, the Gestapo’s powers to arrest and imprison political
prisoners, many of them in “protective custody” were deterrents for journalists
who might try to criticize the regime.
Women print journalists in Nazi Germany got a complete pass from international and domestic courts. About 250 women were licensed to work on German newspapers and magazines during the Hitler regime after they had finished a year of study at a journalism school.[10] The Nazi leadership did not allow them to write about political events, but women journalists’ work on what we would think of today as “lifestyle” coverage was valued by the regime. In the public mind today, National Socialism was a militaristic movement with the sole motivation of waging aggressive war and genocide. In fact, the situation was much more complex. Hitler’s regime wanted to remake German society and culture, along with its military and economy, and to politicize the private sphere. The regime sought to create larger families by giving public recognition and financial incentives to women who bore many children. Nazi labour organizations were set up to maintain productive workplaces without strikes or agitation from leftists. The Nazis engineered mass production of previously unavailable luxury items like cars, built a high-speed highway system, created the first entertainment television broadcasts [11]and even set up inexpensive resorts for families. All children were required to enroll in Nazi youth groups. Positive press coverage in sections of the newspapers geared toward women helped normalize the regime. This kind of writing, seen by its readers as light-hearted, upbeat and apolitical, appeared to be an escape from the steady drumbeat of often-frightening news and Nazi opinion pieces. Women might have their political rights restricted and be limited in their choice of careers,[12] but they still had influence over their husbands and sons and their support of the Nazi social system was a strong incentive for them to pressure their families to conform. In writing this kind of soft news and features, the women journalists of the Third Reich performed an important service to the regime, one that took on even greater value as the war began going badly for Germany.
Women print journalists in Nazi Germany got a complete pass from international and domestic courts. About 250 women were licensed to work on German newspapers and magazines during the Hitler regime after they had finished a year of study at a journalism school.[10] The Nazi leadership did not allow them to write about political events, but women journalists’ work on what we would think of today as “lifestyle” coverage was valued by the regime. In the public mind today, National Socialism was a militaristic movement with the sole motivation of waging aggressive war and genocide. In fact, the situation was much more complex. Hitler’s regime wanted to remake German society and culture, along with its military and economy, and to politicize the private sphere. The regime sought to create larger families by giving public recognition and financial incentives to women who bore many children. Nazi labour organizations were set up to maintain productive workplaces without strikes or agitation from leftists. The Nazis engineered mass production of previously unavailable luxury items like cars, built a high-speed highway system, created the first entertainment television broadcasts [11]and even set up inexpensive resorts for families. All children were required to enroll in Nazi youth groups. Positive press coverage in sections of the newspapers geared toward women helped normalize the regime. This kind of writing, seen by its readers as light-hearted, upbeat and apolitical, appeared to be an escape from the steady drumbeat of often-frightening news and Nazi opinion pieces. Women might have their political rights restricted and be limited in their choice of careers,[12] but they still had influence over their husbands and sons and their support of the Nazi social system was a strong incentive for them to pressure their families to conform. In writing this kind of soft news and features, the women journalists of the Third Reich performed an important service to the regime, one that took on even greater value as the war began going badly for Germany.
In 1934, the women journalists were
organized by the Propaganda Ministry into the Committee of German Women
Journalists (Reichsausschuss der Schriftleiterinnen). This was a sub-department
of the German Press Association, chaired by Annie Juliane Richert. Committee members met frequently to discuss
workplace issues affecting women journalists. They also discussed the regime’s
expectations regarding their articles and held professional development
sessions to improve the quality of the women journalists’ writing.[13]
While
male reporters were sometimes put through “de-Nazification” processes, women
were not. Allied occupation officers did not see the work done by women
journalists as important or political, and thus women kept working without a
break during the quick transition from Nazi-dominated press to Allied-run
media.[14]
The occupying powers, especially in what became West Germany, were eager to
communicate with civilians and prisoners of war through German-language
newspapers and lacked the personnel to write and publish these papers
themselves.
One man
did assume the sins of the Nazi regime Germany media and took them with him to
the gallows. Julius
Streicher, a pariah in his lifetime, was the odd man out among the Nuremburg
defendants. Unlike Fritzsche, Streicher was short, ugly, bald and
foul-smelling. He wore shabby clothes and had no manners or social skills. Most
of the other Nazi defendants believed Streicher was psychotic.[15] At “Ashcan,” the special
jail a that held the major German war criminals at Nuremberg, the other
prisoners would not eat with Streicher, so he took his meals alone at a small
table. One German field marshal told the Americans Streicher washed his face
and brushed his teeth in a toilet. Streicher firmly believed that the trial was
a Jewish plot, and that the lawyers and judges were all Jews.[16]
Streicher
had been trained as an elementary school teacher. He had fought in the First
World War and returned to Germany as a decorated, embittered war hero. He
sought companionship in the veterans’ groups of Franconia, which were blazing
with anti-Semitism grounded on the myth that Jewish politicians had stabbed the
army in the back in November, 1918, and signed a humiliating peace. By the
mid-1920s, Streicher was an eager, vocal Nazi, publishing the tabloid Der Sturmer and using it as a platform
to viciously attack Jewish politicians in his home city of Nuremberg. Weimar
Republic authorities often investigated him because of complaints about the
racist and pornographic nature of Der
Sturmer and Streicher’s own violent and threatening behavior. Despite
Streicher’s protests that he was engaging in free speech, his writings and
speeches cost him his teaching job. In the hearing held to determine whether
Streicher would be fired, Streicher argued he had come to his anti-Semitism
honestly, after years of study, and had a free expression right to comment on
an opinion that he believed to be true. He claimed that he had no hatred for
individual Jews unless they had somehow crossed him and wished none of them
harm. Streicher claimed he wanted Jews to be driven out of society and the
economy by legal means. As for creating an environment of persecution, he said:
“If I must wade in mud, I do not create the mud. Rather, I pursue positive
moral ends.”[17]
While
Streicher advocated the destruction of the Jews, he claimed to have meant that
in a metaphorical way. At Nuremberg, he said that he was as surprised as anyone
when he found out the Germans had built an entire industry of murder. The
Holocaust would certainly have happened without Julius Streicher and his shabby
newspaper. With a relatively small circulation, the utter lack of respect of
most people, including the most vehement Nazis, and no real credibility, Der Sturmer was racist pornography,
entertainment that titillates by pushing boundaries rather than by
enlightening. If it resembles anything available on newsstands in the West
today, the closest comparisons would be Hustler
magazine and perhaps Charlie Hebdo. Still,
only Streicher would die for the things he wrote and said during the Nazi
regime. He did have one positive grace: loyalty. Of all the major war criminals
hanged at Nuremberg on October 16, 1946, Streicher was the only one who called
out Adolf Hitler’s name at the end.[18]
Streicher
was charged with crimes against peace and crimes against humanity.
Streicher was tagged by prosecutors at Nuremburg as the No.
1 Jew-baiter in the Third Reich. His entire publishing career was a relentless
attack on the Jewish people, not by rational argument or by gently bending
facts. Streicher’s tabloid carried vile, crude, sexually-explicit cartoons and
hate-filled rants. Despite his loyalty and his services as a low-road
propagandist, Streicher had no role in policy-making by the time war broke out
in 1939. He had been sidelined by Hermann Goering after Streicher suggested
Goering’s daughter Emma had been conceived by artificial insemination because
of Goering’s supposed heroin-induced impotence. He had been fired from his local
political job in Franconia in 1938 was drummed out of the party in 1940 after
being accused of embezzling Jewish assets after the state-sponsored
Kristalnacht riots. The regime let him publish Der Sturmer, which he aggressively pushed on the public through a
network of street peddlers. Despite being suspended from the Nazi party,
Streicher still had many loyal readers among its most die-hard followers, and
the paper was displayed in prominent places in newsstands. As Nazi influence
had grown through the 1920s, so had Der
Sturmer’s circulation, reaching a peak in the mid-1930s, although it
appears to have never exceeded 500,000. It’s not known how many of those were
unread give-aways.
In his defence,
Streicher argued it was ridiculous to blame him for anti-Semitism in Germany.
It had always been a part of the culture of the country. He did not need to put
into evidence the racial theories written by scholars and published in the
scientific press in the 19th and 20th centuries. He could
reach back to the writings of Martin Luther in the 16th century.
Streicher argued: “Anti-Semitic publications have existed in Germany for
centuries. A book I had, written by Dr. Martin Luther, was, for instance, confiscated.
Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants’ dock
today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the Prosecution. In
the book The Jews and Their Lies, Dr.
Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent’s brood and one should burn
down their synagogues and destroy them.”
Streicher did not
get to finish that argument. Robert Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court justice
acting as prosecutor at the tribunal, cut Streicher off and said Luther’s
writings were irrelevant to the case. “It seems to me very improper that a
witness should do anything but make a responsive answer to a question, so that
we may keep these proceedings from getting into issues that have nothing to do
with them.”[19]
Nor could the
court reasonably conclude Streicher lay the ideological foundations of Nazi
anti-Semitism within the clique that created policy, including the
extermination of Jews. He had not infected Hitler with it. Hitler and the other
Nazi leaders were railing against Jews long before they met Streicher. While
Hitler and Streicher met before the Nazi leader wrote Mein Kampf, Hitler makes clear in that memoir that his
anti-Semitism took shape during his years as a homeless man in pre-war Vienna.
Because
Streicher was not one of Hitler’s inner circle and held no military rank he was
acquitted of the charge of crimes against peace, the International Military
Tribunal finding:
There is no evidence to show that he was
ever within Hitler's inner circle advisers; nor during his career was he closely
connected with the formulation of the policies which led to war. He was never
present, for example, at any of the important conferences when Hitler explained
his decisions to his leaders. Although he was a Gauleiter there is no evidence
to prove that he had knowledge of those policies. In the opinion of the
Tribunal, the evidence fails to establish his connection with the conspiracy or
common plan to wage aggressive war as that conspiracy has been elsewhere
defined in this judgement.
The International Military
Tribunal convicted him of crimes against humanity by helping create the social and political
environment that generated the Holocaust. Noting Streicher’s reputation as “Jew
baiter number one,” the tribunal ruled Streicher’s speeches and writings
“infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism and incited the
German people to active persecution.” Talk of the physical destruction of the
Jews had started appearing in Der StĂĽrmer in 1938, at a
time when Jews were brutally persecuted in Nazi Germany but were not yet being
murdered in large numbers. His propaganda was “poison [that] Streicher injected
into the minds of thousands of Germans which caused them to follow the National
Socialists’ policy of Jewish persecution and extermination.”
In its judgement,
the International Military Tribunal explained how Streicher had used propaganda
to de-humanize Jews and create a cultural environment in which they could be
destroyed. The judges noted how prosecutors had entered twenty-three articles
published in Der Sturmer between 1938
and 1941 into evidence in which Streicher called for the “root and branch”
extermination of Jews. Streicher’s targets were portrayed as something other
than human, “germs” and “pests”, “a parasite, an enemy, an evil-doer, a disseminator
of diseases who must be destroyed in the interest of mankind," and “swarms
of locusts.” Streicher did not just advocate the extermination of Jews in
Germany. He also urged the regime to launch a “punitive expedition” into Russia
to kill that country’s Jews.
“Such was
the poison Streicher injected into the minds of thousands of Germans which
caused them to follow the National Socialists policy of Jewish persecution and
extermination,” the Tribunal judges ruled.[20]
Other
defendants of the 1945 major war crimes trial argued they had little or no
intent to commit crimes against humanity and genocide. Invariably, they -- and
the people tried in less famous war crimes trials – argued they were simply
doing their jobs and following orders, or had no idea of the magnitude of the
Nazi industrial killing system. Streicher was a prosecutor’s dream, an
unpleasant, unsympathetic, unrepentant ideologue who was quite willing to admit
to his actions without trying to explain them away or deflect guilt to others.
Streicher
was tried as a symbol. The spread of anti-Semitic ideas generated the German
societal mens rea for the genocide
conducted by the Nazis. But was hanging Streicher a mistake? Did he, in effect,
have the sins of German journalism piled onto his shoulders? Was his hanging a
grotesque absolution or the thousands of nameless German journalists who were
willing, sometimes eager, to go along with the Nazis from the very beginning? Subsequent
International Military Tribunals tried the cases of Nazi military officers,
lawyers, industrialists, and doctors, but there was no International Military
Tribunal session for the Nazi-era media. (William Joyce, who was dubbed Lord
Haw Haw for his English propaganda broadcasts directed at the United Kingdom,
was prosecuted for treason by the British and executed.)
So in this way
Streicher was symbolic, but his execution was made easier for the International
Military Tribunal because he was so obviously antisocial, both in his creepy,
sleazy character but also the fact that he had no respectability and worked
outside of a bureaucracy or military, and far from the middle-class mainstream
media. In a sense, he was a freelancer, unprotected by solidarity from members
of his profession and from mannered society. In fact, much of what was written
about Streicher at the time of the Nuremberg trials and in the years since then
dehumanizes him in ways that would have been familiar to a Nazi propagandist. Once
he was made less than human, he was no longer of the same species as the
respected, pliable journalists of Frankfurter
Zeitung.
Why
were Amann not indicted as a war criminal, Fritzsche acquitted, and women
journalists and the staff of Frankfurter
Zeitung allowed to step easily into the newsrooms of Germany in the
Post-Nazi era, and yet Julius Streicher was hanged? Was it because Streicher
was a true believer in Hitler and refused to recant? Was it because Streicher
published a kind of pornographic propaganda that was repulsive even to some of the
Nazi leadership? Was his fanaticism translatable into a higher level of mens rea for the crime of inciting
genocide than that of mainstream Nazi editors and publishers like Amann and his
editorial team at the Volkischer
Beobachter, who, just like Streicher, were intent on destroying the Jews of
the Third Reich, at the very least in the cultural and financial sense, and,
arguably, physically?
International
law has never grasped the difference between a fringe character like Streicher,
an important apparatchik like Fritzsche, a major mass-circulation publisher
like Amann, and mainstream women and men journalists willing to accommodate a
criminal regime and normalize its message and its actions. Journalists have not
been prosecuted at all by the International Criminal Court, and have not been
called to account at the special tribunals for Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone.
When a tribunal finally embarked on an examination of the role of media in a
criminal regime and in atrocity crimes, it again heard evidence against fringe
media. The Rwandan newspaper Kangura
very much resembled Der Sturmer. Its
owner and editor, Hassan Ngeze, is the only print journalist convicted under
international criminal law since Streicher. Even this case is not a clear-cut
case of holding media to account, despite the obvious incitement, since Ngeze
was far more embedded in the governing clique than Streicher, and evidence was
presented to the Rwanda tribunal that Ngeze took an active part in the actual
genocide against the Tutsis, including the killing of people with his own
hands.
Ngeze
was charged with seven counts: conspiracy to commit genocide,
genocide, direct and public incitement to
commit genocide;[21] complicity in genocide;
and crimes against humanity (persecution, extermination and murder). The court
made it clear that his actions as publisher of Kangura were at the core of the case.[22]
The ICTR found Ngeze guilty. His culpability
lay in his abuse of his rights to freedom of expression:
Hassan Ngeze,
as owner and editor of a well-known newspaper in Rwanda, was in a position to
inform the public and shape public opinion towards achieving democracy and
peace for all Rwandans. Instead of using the media to promote human rights, he
used it to attack and destroy human rights. He has had significant media
networking skills and attracted support earlier in his career from
international human rights organizations who perceived his commitment to
freedom of expression. However, Ngeze did not respect the responsibility that
comes with that freedom. He abused the trust of the public by using his newspaper
to instigate genocide… He poisoned the minds of his readers, and by words and
deeds caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians.[23]
\
Although the court had the power to impose the death penalty, Ngeze was sentenced to life without parole, which was later reduced to thirty-five years. His co-accused were convicted for their involvement with the radio station Radio Television Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM). Ferdinand Hahimana, who had fled Rwanda at the outbreak of the genocide, and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza were found guilty of creating a radio station that incited the Hutus to engage in genocide against the Tutsis. One of its broadcasters was imprisoned by a domestic Rwandan court, and several are still at large.
But if an element of Ngeze’s offence involved failing to use his medium for shaping public opinion to prevent genocide, why were the main Rwandan media not held to account for the same crime? Kingura was printed sporadically before the genocide and did publish at all during the killing, yet it took the blame for the media of a society that was steeped in genocidal discourse. The writings on the Rwandan genocide are strangely silent about the rest of the media in that country, including Radio Rwanda, which often spread false smears against the Tutsis, and extremist publications issued by the Tutsis themselves.[24]
At traditional Irish funerals, a “sin eater” is employed to take on the sins of the deceased. Piling the sins of media onto the shoulders of people lie Streicher and Ngere ends up being a deflection. By doing so, courts do not have to carefully parse out expression rights because the published material is so obviously false and crude. More importantly, they don’t have to dissect the power structure of a society and question how good and bad ideas become part of mainstream discourse. Doing so would challenge ideas of normalcy and respectability in ways that are beyond the abilities of a court of law.
\
Although the court had the power to impose the death penalty, Ngeze was sentenced to life without parole, which was later reduced to thirty-five years. His co-accused were convicted for their involvement with the radio station Radio Television Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM). Ferdinand Hahimana, who had fled Rwanda at the outbreak of the genocide, and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza were found guilty of creating a radio station that incited the Hutus to engage in genocide against the Tutsis. One of its broadcasters was imprisoned by a domestic Rwandan court, and several are still at large.
But if an element of Ngeze’s offence involved failing to use his medium for shaping public opinion to prevent genocide, why were the main Rwandan media not held to account for the same crime? Kingura was printed sporadically before the genocide and did publish at all during the killing, yet it took the blame for the media of a society that was steeped in genocidal discourse. The writings on the Rwandan genocide are strangely silent about the rest of the media in that country, including Radio Rwanda, which often spread false smears against the Tutsis, and extremist publications issued by the Tutsis themselves.[24]
At traditional Irish funerals, a “sin eater” is employed to take on the sins of the deceased. Piling the sins of media onto the shoulders of people lie Streicher and Ngere ends up being a deflection. By doing so, courts do not have to carefully parse out expression rights because the published material is so obviously false and crude. More importantly, they don’t have to dissect the power structure of a society and question how good and bad ideas become part of mainstream discourse. Doing so would challenge ideas of normalcy and respectability in ways that are beyond the abilities of a court of law.
[1]
This problem has dogged and frustrated many researchers. For example, few of
Ernest Hemingway’s estimated 200 articles in the Toronto Star, where he worked from 1920 t0 1924, were bylined. None
of his work in the Kansas City Star,
where Hemingway worked for seven months before moving to Toronto, was bylined.
See an interesting web page on Hemingway at the Star at http://ehto.thestar.com/marks/how-hemingway-came-of-age-at-the-toronto-star
[2]Helmut
SĂĽndermann, Der Weg zum deutschen Journalismus: Hinweise fĂĽr die Berufswahl
junger Nationalsozialisten (Munich; Berlin: Franz Eher, 1938), quoted in
Deborah Barton, Writing for Dictatorship, Refashioning for Democracy: German
Women Journalists in the Nazi Post-War Press. Unpublished PhD thesis,
University of Toronto, 2015, at p. 93, available at https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/69217/3/Barton_Deborah_201506_PhD_thesis.pdf
[3]
“Wireless” being synonymous with “radio” in the first half of the 20th
century.
[4]
Fritzsche’s career history can be found at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Fritzsche.html
and in testimony at the IMT on January 23, 1946, available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/01-23-46.asp
[5]
The idea, floated in the early months of 1945, was one of Hitler’s
brainchildren, although it had originally been floated by Goebbels. Hitler
asked the Nazi leadership to decide whether the German people would fight more
tenaciously if they felt they were utterly alienated from the civilized world.
The idea was dropped when the consensus was reached that abandoning the Geneva
Convention was more likely to demoralise the population than stimulating more
ferocity. “The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II” Author(s): S. P.
MacKenzie Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Sep., 1994),
pp. 487-520 AT 496ws
[7]
The verdict can be found at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judfritz.asp
[8]
Including time served before his conviction, Amann spent just over seven years
in jail. He was, however, stripped of his substantial fortune and died in
poverty in 1957.
[9]S.P.
MacKenzie, “The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II”, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 66,
No. 3 (Sep., 1994), pp. 487-520 at 496.
[10]
Barton 96. There were also several women working as full-time and part-time
freelancers for magazines, since many magazines in Nazi Germany, as they do now
in the West, relied on freelancers for most of their content,
[11]
Selections from Nazi television broadcasts can be seen in a documentary film “TV
Station Paul Nipkow 1935-1944” created by Der
Speigal, which cane be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMecO38MZCc
[12]
These limitations were fairly common throughout the West for women who were not
engaged in domestic labour, such as maids, cleaners and child-care workers. For
example, Canadian women working for the federal government in white-collar
jobs, even during wartime, were expected to resign from their jobs when they
married.
[13]
Barton op cit 94
[14]
Barton op cit 282
[15]
Three psychiatrists examined Streicher and said he was sane, and his sanity was
not an issue at trial. The psychiatrists – one American, a Soviet and a French
clinician – administered Rorschach tests to all the defendants, all of whom
were willing participants in the testing. The psychiatrists found Streicher to
be paranoid but able to understand the nature and qualities of his actions. See
Douglas M. Kelley M.D., Med. Sc. D. (1946) Preliminary Studies of the Rorschach
Records of the Nazi War Criminals, Rorschach Research Exchange, 10:2,
45-48,.Two years after Streicher was hanged, a team of graduate students in
psychology examined the trial transcript and came up with the following
diagnoses: Paranoid schizophrenia (6); Chronic Paranoid Schizophrenia (2);
Paranoid State (1); Neurotic Depression with Paranoid Trends (1); Neurotic
Depression (3}; Mild Depression (1); Anxiety and Depression (1); Normal but
with some signs of paranoid schizophrenia or obsessive-compulsive disorder (1)
Walter Kass and Rudolf Ekstein , “Thematic Apperception Test Diagnosis of a
Nazi War Criminal (Anonymous Post-Mortem Evaluation by a Group of Graduate
Clinical Psychology Students: Problems of Inter-Judge Consistency)” Transactions of the Kansas Academy of
Science (1903-), Vol. 51, No. 3 (Sep., 1948), pp. 344-350 at 347.
[16]
Overy, Richard, Interrogations: The Nazi
Elite in Allied Hands 1945. (New York: Viking, 2002) at 223.
[17]
Dennis E. Showalter, “The Politics of Bureaucracy in the Weimar Republic: The
Case of Julius Streicher,” German Studies
Review, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Feb., 1983), pp. 101-118
[18] [18]
Smith and Kingsbury, It Happened in 1946, 1947, ed. Clark
Kinnaird. Quoted in John Carey, Eyewitness to History (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 645–647.
[19]
Michael Lackey, “Conceptualizing Christianity
and Christian Nazis After the Nuremberg Trials,” Cultural Critique, Vol. 84 (Spring 2013), pp. 101-133 at 106
[20]http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judstrei.asp
[21]
Author’s italics
[22] The
Prosecutor v Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza Hassan Ngeze Case, Case
I%. ICTR-99-52- T
Judgement and Sentence, December 3, 2003, at para 10
[23]
Ibid para 1101
[24]
Human Rights Watch, Leave None to Tell the Story; Genocide in Rwanda, Human Rights Watch, March 1999https://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/Geno1-3-10.htm#P419_175363