New York Times Book of World War II 1939-1945: The Coverage from the Battlefield to the Home Front by Richard Overy

Author:Richard Overy
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Non-Fiction, World War II, Reference, Military History, War, History
ISBN: 9781603763776
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2013-11-04T13:00:00+00:00

JANUARY 31, 1943

Hitler and Goering Warn Europe Faces ‘Red Peril’

LONDON, Jan. 30—Adolf Hitler failed to appear today at a gloomy party celebrating the tenth anniversary of his accession to power, and British bombs twice upset the broadcast explanations of Reich Marshal Hermann Goering and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels as to why the German Armies were meeting reverses in Russia.

Herr Hitler was reported off somewhere “with his soldiers.” His proclamation, read by Dr. Goebbels, warned the German people that they faced enslavement to bolshevism unless they fought on to the end.

Marshal Goering, whose speech suffered an hour of confused delay, talked for ninety minutes on the perfidy of the Russians, of their long war preparations, “camouflaged” by their inept 1939–40 Winter war against Finland, and of Stalingrad, which he distorted into a token of ultimate German victory.

[A British broadcast heard in New York by the Columbia Broadcasting System said Marshal Goering was interrupted several times by a ghost voice heckling him on the same wavelength, saying: “You surely don’t believe that.”]

Dr. Goebbels read the Hitler proclamation several hours after the Goering speech, and introduced it with a talk of his own in which he said, “capitulation has never existed in our vocabulary and it never will. If they think we have no reserves left, they will soon see them.”

Marshal Goering sought to explain why Germany attacked Russia, and in the opinion of observers his speech was contradictory in this respect.

“It required all the hardships of last Winter to realize that Russia’s war against Finland [1939–40] was perhaps the cleverest, greatest camouflage in world history,” he said. “We had seen a small but gallant nation fight heroically for many months against this vast empire and we thought, ‘What danger can possibly come from that empire in the East?’”

Later, after making this reference to the “camouflaged” Russian war against Finland before Germany attacked Russia the following year, he said:

“While the Russians had few armies fighting Finland with obsolete arms, they spent the last decade and a half building up the most powerful armaments which ever had been made by any nation.”

Still later he said, “The strength of the Russians was known, but the Fuehrer’s intuition warned him we must attack all the same.”

He recounted the hardships encountered in the Russian campaign a year ago—when “the Fuehrer, with his display of toughness, held the whole German front himself.”

He kept emphasizing Russia’s strength and the need of German unity to combat it.

“Russia hardly had pencils for the people in general,” he said. “The whole industry worked with a single aim and Russia placed emphasis only on the four branches of her arms—namely, tanks, antitank guns, airplanes and anti-aircraft defense.

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