Hitler biographer Peter Longerich wrote a handy book about the speech with which Goebbels put himself on the map

The speech given by Joseph Goebbels, the master of Nazi propaganda, on February 18, 1943 in Berlin’s Sportpalast lasted approximately two hours. One fragment of this has eternal value: the rhetorical question he posed to the excited audience – as if it were a plebiscite: ‘Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg?’ The press present had been instructed in advance to generously document the ‘stormy acclaim’.

In the handy book The Sportpalastrede 1943 – Goebbels and the ‘total war’ Hitler biographer Peter Longerich analyzes the infamous speech and its influence on the further course of the war. In his speech, Goebbels not only wanted to sketch a ‘realistic and down-to-earth picture’ of the situation at the fronts – which had deteriorated drastically from the German perspective since the lost battles in North Africa and Stalingrad – but also wanted to unleash a social revolution. All Germans, regardless of their social position, had to contribute to the final victory, simply because they would have no other choice to survive as a people.

Implicitly, Goebbels reminded his compatriots of their complicity in the Holocaust, for which Germany would certainly have to pay after a defeat. He also hoped to strengthen his own position within the Nazi leadership with his speech, because he had never belonged to Adolf Hitler’s intimates. That would also change after February 18, 1943.