No. 3 Josef Goebbels 1943
Adolf Hitler was hardly the only one in the Nazi regime who possessed rhetorical brilliance and a penchant for using it to achieve desired results. The cynical understanding of propaganda in part ushered the Nazis to power and at the end, prolonged their grip on Germany until the regime's final destruction. Dr. Josef Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda until his death in the same bunker where Hitler committed suicide, delivered a resounding speech at Berlin's Sportpalast on Feb. 18, 1943. The heretofore invincible Wehrmacht had just suffered its first massive defeat after Field Marshal Paulus surrendered his Sixth Army at Stalingrad on Feb. 2. It was the turning point on the Eastern Front. And the Nazi leadership realized that the war might be irretrievably lost. To gird the nation for the inevitable onslaught of the Red Army from the East and Anglo-American forces in the West, Goebbels implored the Germans to fight to the death. A "Total War" in which the Germans must make supreme sacrifices and subjugate themselves to the needs of survival. Ever clever and calculating, Goebbels pre-selected the audience in the arena who rewarded his faith with fanatical zeal and enthusiasm whenever a rhetorical question was posed. "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 imagine today?" "... Now, people, rise up, and let the storm break loose!" The Nazi regime would last another two-plus years, during which it carried out mass murder under the threat of advancing Soviet troops. Germany fought on, enduring daily bombings of population centers and enemy assualts from all corners of the Reich. Total War indeed came home to Nazi Germany, in which civilians paid the greatest price.
