World War II Propaganda by David Welch

Author:David Welch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Published: 2017-09-14T04:00:00+00:00

The audience of reliable party functionaries had been meticulously rehearsed beforehand and knew exactly what was expected of them. Goebbels started his speech by saying that the situation reminded him of the Kampfzeit, the period of struggle before l933. He said he now demanded even more effort and sacrifices from the German people for the sake of final victory. Above the speaker’s platform there hung an immense draped banner with the words Totaler Krieg—Kürzester Krieg (“Total War—Shortest War”). It was claimed that the audience represented all sections of the community. The frenzied reactions of this “representative” audience to Goebbels’s speech were broadcast to the rest of the nation. A special newsreel also recorded the event. At the climax of the speech, the propaganda minister posed 10 questions touted as a “plebiscite for Total War,” all of which elicited the appropriate chorus of “spontaneous” assent. The following extract is how it was presented to German cinema audiences in the Deutsche Wochenschau (German newsreel), which was released on February 27, 1943:

Commentator:

The mighty demonstration in the Berlin Sportspalast, Reichminister Goebbels speaks. He declares: “In this winter, the storm over our ancient continent has broken out with the full force which surpasses all human and historical imagination. The Wehrmacht with its allies form the only possible protective wall. (Applause.) Not a single person in Germany today thinks of hollow compromise. The whole nation thinks only of a hard war. The danger before which we stand is gigantic. Gigantic, therefore, must be the efforts with which we meet it. (Shouts of ‘Sieg Heil’.) When my audience spontaneously declared its support for the demands I made on 30 January, the English press claimed that this was a piece of theatrical propaganda. I have therefore invited to this meeting a cross-section of the German people …”

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