"The Sports Palace speech was the climax of a campaign for 'total war'; the prime example of Nazi 'mass suggestion', a barrage of propaganda, seduction, and manipulation.
On the 18th of February 1943 Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels made a speech in the Berlin Sports Palace that is regarded as one of the most chilling, and at the same time most effective, rhetorical performances of the twentieth century.
In this definitive English translation, renowned historian Peter Longerich delves into the historical buildup to Goebbels's most notorious speech, the speech itself, and its lasting effect. Goebbels and 'Total War' singles out the Sports Palace speech to demystify the legend of Nazi propaganda by exposing the reality of the rally as a highly staged and prerecorded event, with a preselected audience and rehearsed reactions made to look spontaneous. For Goebbels, this spectacle was not only his chance to raise support for 'total war' in the German public but also the ultimate test to prove himself to his 'Führer'. Longerich traces Goebbels's path to 'total war' from his questionable demagogue skills and his tenuous relationship with Hitler, to the nation's losing battle at the front, and finally to total defeat.
'Peter Longerich is a superb historian who provides sharp insights in fluid accessible prose … This is a book with a dramatic focus and profound implications.'—Peter Fritzsche, Author of 1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe"
"The complete story of the Wannsee Conference, the meeting that paved the way for the Holocaust
On January 20, 1942, fifteen men arrived for a meeting in a luxurious villa on the shores of the Wannsee in the far-western outskirts of Berlin. They came at the invitation of Reinhard Heydrich and were almost all high-ranking Nazi Party, government, and SS officials.
The exquisite position by the lake, the imposing driveway up to the villa, culminating in a generously sized roundabout in front of the house, the expansive, carefully landscaped park, the generous suite of rooms that opened on to the park and the lake, the three-level terrace that stretched the entire garden side of the house, and the winter garden with its marble fountain, all give today’s visitor to the villa a good idea of its owner’s aspiration to build a sophisticated, almost palatial structure as a testament to his cultivation and worldly success.
But the beauty of the situation stood in stark contrast to the purpose of the meeting to which the fifteen had come in January 1942: the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” According to the surviving records of the meeting, items on the agenda included the precise definition of exactly which group of people were to be affected, followed by a discussion of how upwards of eleven million people were to be deported and subjected to the toughest form of forced labor and, following on from this a discussion, of how the survivors of this forced labor as well as those not capable of it were ultimately to be killed.
The next item on the agenda was breakfast."
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