“PEOPLE, RISE UP, AND STORM, BREAK LOOSE” JOSEPH GOEBBELS “I ask you: do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than we can possibly imagine today?” yelled Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, flecks of saliva flying from his mouth. All 14,000 party officials, veterans and workers present, carefully selected by his subordinates, screamed in reply: “Yes!” Goebbels’ Sportpalast speech on 18 February 1943 had reached a frenzied crescendo to rival even the Führer’s most explosive Nuremberg performances. Meanwhile, thousands of miles to the east, tens of thousands of Wehrmacht troops made their way, starving and hypothermic, to Siberian prisoner of war camps. Of Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus’ 91,000 men captured at Stalingrad, just 6,000 survived the war.
Elsewhere, the Wehrmacht was…
