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→Minister of Propaganda
==Minister of Propaganda==
==Minister of Propaganda==
In the late 1930s, Goebbels was an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler's aggressive foreign policy of expansion. He orchestrated propaganda campaigns against Czechoslovakia and Poland from 1938, onward. Once the war in Europe started in September 1939, Goebbels controlled the news and information reported to the public in Germany and the occupied regions through his Propaganda Ministry. Thereafter as the war progressed, Hitler made fewer and fewer public appearances and speeches. Goebbels in turn increasingly became both the face and the voice of the Nazi regime. By 1943, Goebbels used his position as propaganda minister to exhort the German people to greater effort and efficiency through the concept of total war which he endorsed. During the latter stages of the war he was able to use the intrigues of the Nazi Party to bring himself closer to Hitler.<ref>Snyder, Louis. ''Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'' (1994) [1976].</ref>
In the late 1930s, Goebbels was an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler's aggressive foreign policy of expansion. He orchestrated propaganda campaigns against Czechoslovakia and Poland from 1938, onward. Once the war in Europe started in September 1939, Goebbels controlled the news and information reported to the public in Germany and the occupied regions through his Propaganda Ministry. Thereafter as the war progressed, Hitler made fewer and fewer public appearances and speeches. Goebbels in turn increasingly became both the face and the voice of the Nazi regime. By 1943, Goebbels used his position as propaganda minister to exhort the German people to greater effort and efficiency through the concept of total war which he endorsed. During the latter stages of the war he was able to use the intrigues of the Nazi Party to bring himself closer to Hitler.<ref>Snyder, Louis. ''Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'' (1994) [1976].</ref>
===Sportpalast speech, February 8, 1943===
Goebbels delivered possibly his most famous speech on February 9, 1943 at the Berlin Sportpalast, six days after the [[Battle of Stanlingrad|surrender at Stalingrad]] in which he asked the German people to prepare for total war.
{{quotebox-float|...We face a serious military challenge in the East. The crisis is at the moment a broad one, similar but not identical in many ways to that of the previous winter. Later we will discuss the causes. Now, we must accept things as they are and discover and apply the ways and means to turn things again in our favor. There is no point in disputing the seriousness of the situation. I do not want to give you a false impression of the situation that could lead to false conclusions, perhaps giving the German people a false sense of security that is altogether inappropriate in the present situation.
The storm raging against our venerable continent from the steppes this winter overshadows all previous human and historical experience. The German army and its allies are the only possible defense. In his proclamation on 30 January, the [[Führer]] asked in a grave and compelling way what would have become of Germany and Europe if, on 30 January 1933, a [[bourgeois]] or [[democratic]] government had taken power instead of the National Socialists! What dangers would have followed, faster than we could then have suspected, and what powers of defense would we have had to meet them? Ten years of [[National Socialism]] have been enough to make plain to the German people the seriousness of the danger from the East....
It is understandable that, as a result of broad concealment and misleading actions by the Bolshevist government, we did not properly evaluate the [[Soviet Union]]’s war potential. Only now do we see its true scale. That is why the battle our soldiers face in the East exceeds in its hardness, dangers and difficulties all human imagining. It demands our full national strength. This is a threat to the Reich and to the European continent that casts all previous dangers into the shadows. If we fail, we will have failed our historic mission. Everything we have built and done in the past pales in the face of this gigantic task that the German army directly and the German people less directly face.
I speak first to the world, and proclaim three theses regarding our fight against the Bolshevist danger in the East.
This first thesis: Were the German army not in a position to break the danger from the East, the Reich would fall to Bolshevism, and all Europe shortly afterwards.
Second: The German army, the German people and their allies alone have the strength to save [[Europe]] from this threat.
Third: Danger faces us. We must act quickly and decisively, or it will be too late.
The revolt of the steppes is readying itself at the front, and the storm from the East that breaks against our lines daily in increasing strength is nothing other than a repetition of the historical devastation that has so often in the past endangered our part of the world.
That is a direct threat to the existence of every European power. No one should believe that Bolshevism would stop at the borders of the Reich, were it to be victorious. The goal of its aggressive policies and wars is the Bolshevization of every land and people in the world. In the face of such undeniable intentions, we are not impressed by paper declarations from the [[Kremlin]] or guarantees from [[London]] or [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]]. We know that we are dealing in the East with an infernal political devilishness that does not recognize the norms governing relations between people and nations. When for example the English [[Lord Beaverbrook]] says that Europe must be given over to the Soviets or when the leading American Jewish journalist Brown cynically adds that a Bolshevization of Europe might solve all of the continent’s problems, we know what they have in mind. The European powers are facing the most critical question. [[The West]] is in danger. It makes no difference whether or not their governments and intellectuals realize it or not.}}
==Chancellor and Death==
==Chancellor and Death==