Sportpalast speech

The Sportpalast speech (German: Sportpalastrede) or Total War speech was a speech delivered by German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels at the Berlin Sportpalast to a large, carefully selected audience on 18 February 1943, as the tide of World War II was turning against Nazi Germany and its Axis allies.

It is considered the most famous of Goebbels's speeches. The speech was the first public admission by the Nazi leadership that Germany faced serious dangers. Goebbels called for a total war (German: totaler Krieg) to secure victory over the Allies, and urged the German people to continue the war even though it would be long and difficult because, as he asserted, both Germany's and Europe's survival were "at stake" from Bolshevism.

Background

After the Axis defeat in late 1942 at the Second Battle of El Alamein in Egypt, a turning point of World War II in Europe occurred on 2 February 1943 as the Battle of Stalingrad ended with the surrender of Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus and the German 6th Army to the Soviets. At the Casablanca Conference in January, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had demanded Germany's unconditional surrender, and the Soviets, encouraged by their victory, were beginning to retake territory, including Kursk (8 February), Rostov-on-Don (14 February), and Kharkov (16 February). After the Axis defeats in Egypt and the subsequent loss of Tripoli (23 January 1943), military setbacks shook Axis morale. In the Pacific, the Americans had just completed their months-long reconquest of Guadalcanal.

Hitler responded with the first measures that would lead to the all-out mobilisation of Germany. Prior to the speech, the government closed restaurants, clubs, bars, theatres, and luxury stores throughout the country so that the civilian population could contribute more to the war.