Sports Palace speech

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Mass rally with swastika flags and the banner "TOTAL WAR - SHORTEST WAR" on February 18, 1943 in the Berlin Sports Palace
Joseph Goebbels' speech in the Berlin Sports Palace in 1943

As Sports Palace speech , the speech is known that the National Socialist German Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels on 18 February 1943 at the Berlin Sports Palace held and in which he aimed at reinforcing the " total war called". The speech, lasting around 109 minutes, is considered a prime example of rhetoric and Nazi propaganda .

prehistory

The warfare of the Third Reich relied on a blitzkrieg strategy , that is, the rapid overthrow of the Soviet Union. Economically, the Third Reich was not prepared for a longer war. Stalin's strategy, on the other hand, was a “battle of the machines”, a war of attrition, in which the greater production of war weapons should bring victory. In the end, the Soviet Union actually won the war by producing significantly more weapons than the German Reich.

At the beginning of 1943 the military situation was increasingly bad, in North Africa the Axis Powers had fallen on the defensive, and on the Eastern Front the 6th Army had capitulated in Stalingrad on February 2nd. Goebbels urged an intensification of the war economy (the so-called total war) and suggested to Hitler in a memorandum to force "idlers and parasites" like the "daughters of the plutocrats " to work in the war economy and civil economy by decommissioning orders primarily for luxury restaurants and fashion salons and downsizing shops in favor of the war economy. Influenced by the stab in the back legend , however, Hitler was of the opinion that the German people could stab the Wehrmacht in the back if civil society were too limited in their consumption.

Goebbels also speculated on becoming the second man in the Nazi state as manager of the total war. He planned the Sportpalast speech with the purpose of putting pressure on Hitler. By preparing the people for radical measures, he believed he could commit Hitler to his line. The speech itself was staged in detail, Goebbels had handpicked the audience for the most loyal party supporters, choirs studied slogans, a hundred were instructed when and how long to applaud. Applause from record was later played over the loudspeaker system of the sports palace.

Structure of the speech

Evoking Bolshevik Danger

The speech began with praise to the German people, who are strong and can take the truth, so that they know the difficult situation and are ready to improve this situation. Goebbels then postponed the discussion about the reasons for this crisis into the future. He only stated that the Bolshevik enemy was larger than could be assumed because of his large-scale camouflage and deception maneuvers. Goebbels raised the war to a fight against the threat that was against the nation and also all of Europe , to "our [r] historical mission", which was gigantic, however. To this end, he appealed to the emotions of his listeners:

"Here the German people have to defend their most sacred goods, their families, their women and their children, the beauty and unspoilt nature of its landscape, its cities and villages, the two thousand year old heritage of its culture and everything that makes life worth living for us."

He then put forward three hypotheses that were addressed to the world public and suggested a danger emanating from the Soviet Union :

  1. "If the German Wehrmacht were not in a position to break the threat from the East, the Reich and, in a short time, the whole of Europe would have succumbed to Bolshevism."
  2. "The German armed forces and the German people alone, with their allies, have the strength to carry out a fundamental rescue of Europe from this threat."
  3. There is imminent danger . Action must be taken quickly and thoroughly, otherwise it will be too late. [...] "

Addressing those present

Then Goebbels turned to the guests at the Sportpalast, whom he addressed as representing the entire nation. Goebbels named invalids from the Eastern Front , armaments workers from the Berlin tank works, members of the party, Wehrmacht soldiers, doctors, scientists, artists, engineers, architects, teachers, civil servants and employees, as well as women, young and old people.

After Goebbels had named all of them, he asked the rhetorical question: “What is sitting here in front of me is an excerpt from the entire German people at the front and at home. Is that right? ”Thereupon came a stormy approval from the hall. After the hall had calmed down again, Goebbels said the sentence: "However, Jews are not represented here." This sentence is missing in some of the text recordings of the Sportpalast speech, while it is present on the audio recordings.

In addition, he asked those present - almost as representatives of the people - ten rhetorical questions about the willingness to fight, which the audience answered, as expected, with a loud "Yes". Some of the questions began with alleged claims by the English or the formula "I ask you", in short they were called:

  1. “Do you believe with the Führer and with us in the final, total victory of the German arms? [...] taking on even the heaviest personal burdens [...] "
  2. “The English claim that the German people are tired of fighting. [...] Are you ready [...] to continue this fight [...] until victory is in our hands? "
  3. “The English claim that the German people no longer feel like submitting to the increasingly rampant war work […]. [...] Are you [...] determined [...] to give up the last thing for victory? "
  4. “The English claim that the German people are resisting the government's total war measures. It doesn't want total war, say the English, but surrender. I ask you: do you want total war ? If necessary, do you want it to be more total and radical than we can even imagine today? "
  5. “The English claim that the German people have lost their trust in the Führer. [...] Do you trust the Führer? [...] "
  6. "Are you ready from now on to use all your strength [...] to provide the people and weapons [...] to defeat Bolshevism?"
  7. "Do you vow with a holy oath to the front that the homeland stands behind the front with strong, unshakable morals and will give it everything it needs to win?"
  8. "Do you want [...] that women [...] step in wherever it is possible to free men for the front?"
  9. “Do you […] approve the most radical measures against a small group of slackers and pushers […]? Do you agree that whoever commits a war loses his head? "
  10. "Do you want [...] that equal rights and the same duties prevail [...] especially in war?"

Especially the frenetic shouting of approval in response to the question about total war has gone down in history as a defining image.

End of the speech

The sports palace speech ended:

“The Führer has ordered that we will follow him. If we have ever faithfully and inviolably believed in victory, then it is at this hour of national reflection and inner erection. We see him within reach of us; we just have to take hold. We just have to find the resolve to subordinate everything to his service. That is the order of the day. And that's why from now on the slogan is: Well, people, get up, and storm, break loose! "

The last sentence of the speech ( "Now, people, rise up, and storm break loose!") Presented a slightly different quote from the published 1813 patriotic poem men and boys of Theodor Körner , focused on the wars of liberation against Napoleon refers, is Goebbels had already used it before during a campaign speech in 1932, at that time to mark the beginning of the “ Third Reich ”. Before that, however, the republican writer Kurt Tucholsky had it in his satirical gloss Where do the holes in cheese come from ...? used.

On the day of the Sportpalast speech, Hans and Sophie Scholl laid out the sixth leaflet of the White Rose in the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , which also ended with a Körner quote from a patriotic song of the wars of liberation: "Fresh to my people, the flames smoke" .

Following Goebbels' speech, the first verse of the Deutschlandlied was sung.

rhetoric

The speech was interspersed with rhetorical figures that tried to convince the listener, to address him emotionally or to manipulate him .

Goebbels used a lot of high-value words or negative high-value words, such as “Führer”, “Sieg”, “Volk”, “Heimat” or “Feind” or “Weltpest”. He also used a lot of religious terms, as was not unusual in a Nazi propaganda speech. Terms from the field of religion were interwoven when, for example, "You vow with a holy oath of the front" or "Believe in victory" is used, on the one hand to establish National Socialism as a substitute for religion and on the other hand to portray the Führer as God or him to compare with God. It was also about the " belief in the leader" and the believing "trust in the leader".

It was particularly clever to present the cheering masses in the sports palace as a representation of the entire people, so that the radio listeners were suggested that it was really a representative part of the nation and that they could work together. In reality, most of the people present were invited guests - as described above - because the speech was given at a party meeting.

Goebbels' speech corresponds entirely to Hitler's ideas about the nature of propaganda, which he describes in his book Mein Kampf . The Propaganda Minister adjusts the intellectual level of his speech according to the receptivity of the most limited, which in this case is rather low, since he is aimed at the whole people. In addition, he repeats the most important points over and over again, so that what is conveyed remains in everyone's mind. Goebbels structured his speech carefully and structured it well. From the beginning, the description of the current situation, to the end, the appeal for action to the people, rhetorically represents an increase.

To start with, he praises the German people and enhances them. He describes, for example, the "educated, trained and disciplined people [...] [who] know how difficult the situation in the empire is". Through the climax and personification used, he tries to represent the people as a unit and to create trust in the leader and the government. In the following he goes into the threat posed by the Soviet Union, attempting by means of inclusion to oppose a unified Europe on the one hand and threatening Russia on the other, as the Allies followed the speech on the radio .

Goebbels enumerates the invited guests who are present, without leaving out a profession, class or age group, and presents them as “a section of the German people”. So he tries to create a sense of community. The Germans should identify with these people and see themselves take part in the meeting.

Counter-propaganda, leaflet, US Air Force, dropped on Germany during World War II

After this statement he asked ten questions to those present in order to prove to the British and also to the entire population that the German people are ready to give everything to win the war. These are rhetorical questions as it is already clear that the answer will be “yes”. Here, these 10 questions are a sham parallelistisch up: The first and the last five questions are structurally parallel , these two parts are compared to each other but of chiastic nature. During the first five questions he accuses the English of claiming that the German people want surrender. All questions are repeated in terms of content and contain a number of rhetorical means. Goebbels uses superlatives like “heaviest” or “more total and radical” to emotionalise and support his point of view. He also uses a climax (“ten, twelve and […] fourteen and sixteen hours”) to underpin the willingness to serve the Führer . He also strengthens trust in the leader, whom he describes as "greater, more faithful and more unwavering than ever". He always begins the sixth to tenth questions with the words "I ask you as ..." in order to focus from the claims of the English on his own opinion and thus to increase the importance of the questions. These ten questions, the repetitions, the climax and the affirmation by the invited guests are his strongest means of influencing and manipulating his audience emotionally.

With his concluding words he awakens courage in the people and the hope that the war can still be won through a personification of victory, among other things, and finally calls on them to act with the appeal “Well, people, stand up and the storm breaks!” .

effect

Herbert Marxen: “ Do you want total war? “, Caricature around 1945

Goebbels then described his speech among confidants as an “hour of idiocy. If I had told people, jump out of the third floor of the Columbushaus , they would have done it too. ”The speech, which was broadcast on the radio and cinema newsreel , suggests a cohesive“ national community ” ready for extreme war . The speech did not have the desired effect on Hitler. He neither fulfilled Goebbels' wish to be involved in the war economic planning, nor was it pursued with significantly more determination in the months that followed. The effect of the speech on the normal Germans, who are rather war-weary anyway, is likely to have been small.

An editor critical of National Socialism who was present at the speech later confessed that despite his inner distance he was so carried away that he jumped up and almost shouted along.

The Viennese Baptist pastor Arnold Köster , who often commented on current political events in his sermons , said in a sermon on February 7, 1943 that the political leader and other “men of our people” could give “propaganda speeches”, but were not able to to stand up for the people in prayer before God. After the Sportpalast speech, he even went so far as to describe the National Socialists as blinded. Jews felt themselves threatened by the text of this sports palace speech, which was circulated in newspapers - this is how Victor Klemperer expressed himself in his diaries. Herbert Marxen , a Flensburg caricaturist from the last years of the Weimar Republic and contemporary witness, made a caricature on the topic of the exclamation of “total war”.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mark Harrison: The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison . Cambridge University Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-521-78503-7 , p. 13.
  2. ^ William J. Duiker, Jackson Spielvogel: The Essential World History . Cengage Learning, 2006, ISBN 978-0-495-09729-7 , p. 551.
  3. a b Well people . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1967 ( online ).
  4. ^ William J. Duiker, Jackson Spielvogel: The Essential World History . Cengage Learning, 2006, ISBN 978-0-495-09729-7 , p. 551.
  5. ^ Royal Library: Sports Palace Speech
  6. War needs memories: Second World War ( Memento of the original from April 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zukunft-blassung-erinnerung.de
  7. ^ Goebbels speech
  8. ingeb.org
  9. jobstvogt.de
  10. bpb.de
  11. zeno.org from: Th. Körner, call
  12. Helge Hesse: Here I stand, I can't help it. Through world history in 80 sentences . 4th edition. Munich 2011, p. 283. Now Volk . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1967 ( online ).
  13. ^ Goebbels' Sports Palace speech. someday
  14. Goebbels was not a good speaker . NTV, Jens Kegel in conversation with Hubertus Volmer.
  15. Sun reported Ursula von Kardorff a colleague at DAZ in their Berlin records 1942-1945 , ed. by Peter Hartl . 1992, p. 67 f. Quoted from Christoph Studt: The Third Reich. A reader on German history 1933–1945. Munich 1995, p. 262.
  16. ^ So in a lecture on March 4, 1943; after Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer : Public criticism of National Socialism in the Greater German Reich. Life and worldview of the Viennese Baptist pastor Arnold Köster (1896–1960) (= historical-theological studies of the 19th and 20th centuries; 9). Neukirchen-Vluyn 2001, p. 8 f.
  17. ^ Victor Klemperer: Diaries 1943. Berlin 1995, entry for February 20, 1943. Klemperer had read the text in the Dresdener Anzeiger on February 19.