Goebbels and ’Total War’: The Sports Palace Speech of 1943

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, Former Professor of Modern German History, Royal Holloway, University of London

Peter Longerich was Professor of Modern German History at Royal Holloway University of London until 2015, and was a founder of the College’s Holocaust Research Centre. An internationally renowned authority on the Nazis, his previous publications include Holocaust: The Nazi Murder and Persecution of the Jews (2010), Himmler (2012), Hitler: A Life (2019), and Wannsee: The Road to the Final Solution (2021).