Sportpalast speech

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The Sportpalast or total war speech (German: Sportpalastrede) was a speech delivered by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels at the Berlin Sportpalast to a large but carefully-selected audience on 18 February 1943, as the tide of World War II was turning against Nazi Germany.

1 Background
2 Points
3 Quotes
4 External links

[edit] Background

The Vichy French leader François Darlan had been assassinated two months earlier, and on 2 February the Battle of Stalingrad ended with the surrender of Field Marshal Paulus to the Soviet Red Army. At the Casablanca Conference, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill demanded Germany's unconditional surrender, and the Soviets, spurred by their victory, were beginning to retake territory, including Kursk (8 February), Rostov (14 February), and Kharkiv (16 February). In North Africa, the Afrika Korps under Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was beginning to face setbacks, when German supply ships sailing to Tripoli were sunk by the Allies on 19 January.

Adolf Hitler responded with the first measures that would lead to the all-out mobilization of Germany. On 2 February, 100,000 restaurants and clubs were closed throughout the country so that the civilian population could contribute more to the war. Millions of Germans listened to Goebbels on the radio as he delivered this speech about the "misfortune of the past weeks" and an "unvarnished picture of the situation." The audience reacted in a fanatical way, causing an even bigger impact; they were selected by Goebbels to perform befittingly, showing one of his many skills as propaganda minister. Goebbels also wanted, by building such huge popular enthusiasm, to convince Hitler to give him greater powers in running the war economy.

[edit] Points

The speech was key in that it was an early admission that Germany faced serious dangers, and one in which Goebbels attempted to motivate the German people to continue the struggle. He cited three theses as the basis of this argument:

If the Wehrmacht was not in a position to break the danger from the Eastern front, then the German Reich would fall to Bolshevism, and all of Europe shortly afterwards;
The Wehrmacht, the German people, and the Axis Powers alone had the strength to save Europe from this threat;
Danger was a motivating force. Germany had to act quickly and decisively, or it would be too late;

Goebbels concluded that "Two thousand years of Western history are in danger," and blamed Germany's failures, in typical Nazi fashion, on the Jews. While Goebbels referred to Soviet mobilization nationwide as "devilish," he explained that "We cannot overcome the Bolshevist danger unless we use equivalent, though not identical, methods [in a] total war." He then justified the austerity measures enacted, explaining them as temporary measures.

Historically, the speech is important in that it marks the first admission by the Party leadership that they were facing problems, and launched the mobilization campaign that, arguably, prolonged the war, under the slogan: "And storm, break loose!" (Und Sturm, brich los!).

[edit] Quotes

Original German	English Translation
Ich frage euch: Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg? Wollt ihr ihn, wenn nötig, totaler und radikaler, als wir ihn uns heute überhaupt erst vorstellen können?	"I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even yet imagine?"
[...]	[...]
Nun, Volk, steh auf und Sturm brich los!	"Now, nation arise, and storm break loose!"
The last line originated in the poem Männer und Buben (Men and Boys) by Carl Theodor Körner during the Napoleonic Wars. Körner's words had been quoted by Adolf Hitler in his 1920 speech "What We Want" delivered at Munich's Hofbräuhaus.