by Joseph Goebbels
German news policy has not had an easy time of it in the past weeks. Vast military operations were being planned about which the enemy had no idea, and of which, of course, he could be given no inkling, so the OKW report [the daily military communique] for a while had to depend on stereotypic phrases such as military actions in the east were following their expected course. Nothing more could be said without running the risk of giving the Soviet military leadership valuable information, thereby endangering the planned operations.
In the interests of the war, German news policy was forced into silence, which naturally led to a certain nervousness on the part of the German people. English and Bolshevist propaganda thought that their hour had come. They could speak, we could not. All the nonsense from London and Moscow over the past weeks would take a long time to discuss. It is also unnecessary to repeat any of it. It is already trash, tossed aside by the fiery storm of earth-shaking military operations whose long-term effects we still cannot entirely foresee. Silence was worth it.
In all their chattering and boasting, the Bolshevists and the English entirely forgot to pay attention. They thought our reluctance to answer their simple and ridiculous lies was the result of weakness, so one day Budjenny and his five armies found themselves in our trap. We won a battle that will go down in history as a classic battle of annihilation. Now all the uproar is on the other side.
We have often seen similar things during the war. They always follow the same plan, and one would assume that our opponents have learned something. There is no evidence that they have. They run into the mousetrap as soon as they smell the cheese, with the result that their premature shouts of victory lead to a moral defeat as well. If only they could shut up and wait! But no, they take their illusionary successes seriously and keep talking big. If we had made even a small percentage of the mistakes they have made, not even a dog would take a piece of food from us. It began with Poland and continues in the Soviet Union. They have always made false predictions. They still have the gall to present themselves to the world as pure and incorruptible fanatics for truth who present things as they are, while we, they claim, abolish freedom of the press, send lie after lie into the world, and lie so much that even we do not know the truth any longer.
It is true that we have made some mistakes during the war. We do not hesitate to admit it. By and large, however, we have told the truth. In contrast to England, we have correctly estimated the military, economic, and psychological strengths of the warring powers. We do not need to be embarrassed when one reminds us of our speeches and articles from 1939 or 1940. Can Mr. Churchill say the same? He missed the bus just before the Norwegian campaign. Then there was the unbreakable Maginot Line, the Ruppel Pass that could be held forever, the island of Crete that England would defend as dearly as its own life, or the Stalin Line, which was to be defended to the last man, but then suddenly never even existed. All swindles and lies!
One ought to be able to assume that English news policy has lost all credibility with neutral nations. To the contrary! Swedish and Swiss newspapers cite its lies every day with general satisfaction, printing our facts only when they can no longer be denied. There are even some unteachable people among us who cannot resist turning secretly and quietly, behind closed doors, to Radio London in order to enrich their political and military knowledge with English swindles. Two recent death sentences and a series of prison terms prove that. What are they doing wrong? Their behavior is not only criminal, it is tremendously stupid. They can hardly seriously maintain that the plutocrats in London are producing expensive German-language programming to keep Herr Bramsig and Frau Knöterich informed about the political and military situation. They openly admit that they are doing it to throw our people into uncertainty and sow dissension between the leadership and the nation. Their news is directed entirely toward this goal, and serves only this purpose. Herr Bramsig and Frau Knöterich volunteer, with no compulsion, to hear such nonsense. Do they gain anything? Hardly! First, they run the risk of ending up in jail as traitors, and secondly, even if that does not happen, they wind up with new worries and sleepless nights, since they have no way to separate right from wrong and truth from falsehood.
The English, for example, estimated our casualties at three million during the weeks we were silent. That naturally was utter nonsense. First, the English are in no position to estimate our losses, and second they do not care to, since they want to cause unrest in the German population through their enormously exaggerated figures. We cannot reply to their lies, since we want to provide only accurate figures, which simply are not available at the moment. We therefore have to restrict ourselves to saying that our losses are at the expected levels, which we can say in good conscience given the facts available to us. The prison-deserving listeners to Radio London run around for three or four weeks with a casualty total of three million, whispering it to others, only to learn one day that although our losses are certainly painful to those directly involved, they are not even 10% of the English figures.
Aside from the criminal nature of such behavior, does it really pay to listen to the English? We have to listen to them for professional reasons. Cross our hearts, we would be delighted if we were free from this unpleasant duty. It is so boring and stupid that it gradually revolts us. Remember, too, that we know how things really stand, and thus can separate truth from swindle, something Herr Bramsig and Frau Knöterich cannot do. No one gives them speeches about the real state of things. If our radio and press are silent, it usually means operations of truly gigantic scope are being prepared. It is the duty of each German to wait with confidence — a confidence, by the way, that is justified by countless historic successes. When Herr Bramsig and Frau Knöterich secretly listen to Radio London, they are being played for fools by our most bitter enemies.
That is not only criminal, it is absolutely unfair. The Führer and his military and political staff are working day and night, and not for themselves, but for the people that means everything to them. Just before the great successes, they often hold their breaths, wondering if everything will work, if things will really turn out as planned, if perhaps somewhere unforeseen problems will surface. Then they are delighted to once again announce a great victory to the people, compensating it for the long period of silence. Our soldiers march day and night through dust and rain, destroying bunkers and fortifications, wading through streams and swimming across raging rivers, having only one thought: to close the pocket at the right time and to seal the enemy within an unbreakable wall.
Meanwhile, Herr Bramsig and Frau Knöterich sit at the radio listening to Mr. Churchill. That is thankless, contemptible, and vile. It lacks even the most basic respect for the work and responsibility of the leadership. I know that when Radio London hears this, they will jump to the defense of Herr Bramsig and Frau Knöterich. They deserve nothing less. The London Jews and plutocrats would like nothing better than such a conversation. They are too dumb and foolish to be worth the trouble. And besides that, we lack both the time and the inclination. We have better things to do. We have no obligation to do them a favor. Our goal is to serve the German people, to help them to win this war, since we know that it is our last, but also our greatest chance. We know well enough the terrible consequences British propaganda had for us in the World War. We do not want to risk that danger a second time. If we had had someone then able to stand up to London’s lies, this war probably would not have been necessary. This time, we have learned our lesson thoroughly and forever more.
Take the following example. The German army does not attack Kiev for weeks, both to save German lives and because the leadership knows that the city will fall into our hands as the result of the great battle of encirclement that finished last Sunday. One naturally can say nothing about such a plan, since the enemy will hear of it and take precautions. While we are making feverish preparations, Britain’s propaganda can spread all the lies it wants without any fear of us contradicting them. They claim our attack has stopped because the plague has broken out in Kiev. Herr Bramsig and Frau Knöterich hear that over English radio and pass the rumor on. A woman or mother whose husband or son is near Kiev worries unnecessarily, and we cannot tell the truth, since we must conceal it in the interests of our soldiers.
Does not such rumor mongering deserve not only prison, but also the contempt of the entire people? We cannot excuse it on grounds of stupidity. We are fighting for our lives. Let us be not only as strong as lions, but as clever as serpents. We must defeat the enemy both through strength and intelligence. If Frau Bramsig and Frau Knöterich do not have enough brains in their heads to see that during a war one may not listen to the enemy, then they must receive exemplary punishment.
That, too, is a requirement of victory.
When or How?
by Joseph Goebbels
Only during the course of this war has it become clear how sick postwar Europe was, and what comprehensive measures it needed, needs, and will need, to return it to health. Just as a harmless cold sometimes allows a series of other illnesses to take hold, an event not of particular significance in itself can plunge a whole region of the world into confusion. Those who do not understand politics, which is the process of history, sometimes believe that the occasion is the cause of great human catastrophes and national transformations. The shot fired in Sarajevo, for example, occasioned the World War, but did not cause it. Europe was ready for such a war, and had been for some years. Only Germany’s leadership did not want to see the danger, and thus found itself in a war that it could have fought more effectively at an earlier time, but instead faced it at the worst possible time. When one knows that a pitiless enemy is seeking the best position from which to shoot, one is well advised to shoot first. An irresponsible national leadership lets things gradually intensify without wanting to see the danger. It gives the call to arms when it is too late.
It is thus understandable that during the course of a great struggle for the existence or death of whole nations, the actual occasion that led to the struggle fades from human thought. In the midst of the gigantic dimensions of the war today, the occasion of its beginning in August 1939 seems almost trivial. The city of Danzig was to return to the Reich, and Germany was to receive a corridor through a corridor. These more than modest requests on Germany’s party were ignored by our enemies. Indeed, they were used as a pretext for war, with the consequences spreading like an earthquake across the continent. All the old or partially solved problems of Europe broke loose once again. Consider the questions facing Europe at the time. The Treaty of Versailles held our region in its chains, a socialist Germany with a growing population compressed into too small a space was being strangled by dying plutocracies, the young Axis powers were denied access to the riches and raw materials of the world and condemned to a slow decline ending in national death, England with the help of its obedient servants, was using any available opportunity to throw the continent into uproar and confusion, 170 million people in the Soviet Union were condemned to a wretched existence while Bolshevism was building an army that could fall upon the continent in a time of crisis, with the firm intention of bringing about barbaric national revolutions that would destroy economic, social, cultural, and community life.
These problems must all be resolved by this war, whether we like it or not. We must follow the laws in effect from its beginning. None of us has a way out any longer. We cannot postpone or delay anything. Each individual campaign of the war is necessary on its own. Were we not to fight them today, we would have to do so tomorrow, probably under much less favorable conditions. No one should imagine that Europe’s problems would have been solved had Poland given up Danzig and allowed a corridor, or if England and France had accepted the Führer’s offer of peace at the end of the Polish campaign. Does anyone believe that England would have gone to sleep or that the Soviet Union would have concluded that it had built its revolutionary army only as a toy? No, war would have returned in a few years, with the difference that the enemy would have learned the military lessons of the Polish campaign and improved its weapons to a degree that might have been beyond our capacities to handle.
Fate treats us in a hard and pitiless way, but it intends our good. It forces us to make decisions that we might not make if our enemies seemed agreeable, which doubtless would mean a deadly threat later on. The basic problems of our region have become clear, and their solution can no longer be delayed. It is more than a solution to various territorial difficulties; it is a matter of everything. That explains the war’s dimensions. There are connections between the various theaters of this war which sooner or later would have led to war, whatever the circumstances. In the midst of all the spiritual and physical burdens of this war, indeed of any war, we cannot forget that. The important question is not when the war will end, but rather how it will end. If we win, all is resolved: raw materials, food supplies, living space, the foundations of the social transformation of our state, and the national independence of the Axis powers. If we lose it, all that and much more will be lost: our whole national life itself.
That national life is exactly what our opponents question. They may differ in their ideas of how the Reich and its allies might be most efficiently and permanently destroyed. One calls for the dissolution of our military and economic unity, another for dividing us into smaller states, a third for birth control and the reduction of our population to 10 million, a fourth for the sterilization of every one of us under the age of sixty. But they all agree on one thing: in the firm resolve that if they once again defeat Germany, we must this time be crushed, destroyed, exterminated and wiped out. This time we cannot expect another Treaty of Versailles that would leave even the slightest chance of national recovery. The more hopeless the military situation looks for the other side, the more bloodthirsty their Old Testament fantasies of revenge become. Their slogans may sound seductive to the ears of the ignorant, but behind their humanitarian hypocritical phrases is a naked desire for destruction. The Axis powers are fighting for their very existence. The troubles and difficulties the war brings us all pale before the inferno that awaits us if we lose.
There is no point in concealing the truth. Clarity is never a cause of weakness, always a cause of strength. If a great national prophet had told the German people in 1917 everything that would happen to them after the capitulation of November 1918, we probably would have won the war instead of losing our breath in the last quarter of an hour. A political genius of the magnitude of Adolf Hitler was necessary to repair the damage done in November 1918 through a 20-year battle. Even then, his efforts often hung by a thread. There will be no second chance. The chance we have today is our greatest. It is also our last. We must every day be clear about that. The solder must realize that as he goes into battle, the worker as he goes to work, the farmer, when he harvests the nation’s daily bread, the engineer, the scientist, the civil servant, the doctor, the artist, wherever they may serve the nation. It must be our prayer every morning and every evening. It must be the motivating force of all we are and do.
We can win, and we will win. It will require a gigantic national effort by the whole people. No one can stand aside, it involves us all. Just as winning the war will benefit us all, losing it will destroy us all. As always at the decisive moments in our history, our people holds its fate in its own hand. We are the blacksmiths of our future, more today than ever before. We must show the other nations the way to end the general European confusion. Can we blame fate for giving us a last hard challenge before the last great triumph? Did anyone believe that our historic mission of reordering the continent would fall into our laps, without much exertion on our part? History gives no gifts, only opportunities. He who does not reach for and hold them loses everything.
That is how things are, and we must accept them as they are. We know all too well the great sacrifices the war demands from nearly everyone. But are not the sacrifices of the defeated nations much greater than ours, even if they are no longer in the war? Although we are bearing the heaviest burdens of the war, we still have the highest living standard of any European nation. We must accept limitations in every area of life, but nowhere are they unbearable. We must work as never before. The battle for the destiny of our people demands the whole of our devotion, energy and readiness. However difficult it may be, however, one needs only to look around to find someone for whom things are even more difficult. The war is hardly just a matter for soldiers, it is a hard, bitter, and bloody necessity for the entire nation. We did not want this war, despite our constricted and almost hopeless situation back then; it was forced upon us. But now we are at war. The worst is behind us. Now it is the duty of every last man and woman in the country to be filled with a firm and resolute conviction that this war must be fought to a conclusion such that it need not be repeated. We owe that to ourselves and to our posterity.
Let us then work and fight until victory is ours! Do everything that will lead to victory and avoid everything that stands in its way. Do not ask when it will come, but rather do everything to be sure that it will come. The day will come when fate gives our nation and those who fought for it the laurel wreath of victory. Then the deep lines on the face of our people will shine with the blessing of the century.
The Jews are Guilty!
by Joseph Goebbels
The historic responsibility of world Jewry for the outbreak and widening of this war has been proven so clearly that it does not need to be talked about any further. The Jews wanted war, and now they have it. But the Führer’s prophecy of 30 January 1939 to the German Reichstag is also being fulfilled: If international finance Jewry should succeed in plunging the world into war once again, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the world and thereby the victory of the Jews, but rather the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe.
We are seeing the fulfillment of the prophecy. The Jews are receiving a penalty that is certainly hard, but more than deserved. World Jewry erred in adding up the forces available to it for this war, and now is gradually experiencing the destructon that it planned for us, and would have carried out without a second thought if it had possessed the ability. It is perishing according its own law: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
Every Jew is our enemy in this historic struggle, regardless of whether he vegetates in a Polish ghetto or carries on his parasitic existence in Berlin or Hamburg or blows the trumpets of war in New York or Washington. All Jews by virtue of their birth and their race are part of an international conspiracy against National Socialist Germany. They want its defeat and annihilation, and do all in their power to bring it about. That they can do nothing inside the Reich is hardly a sign of their loyalty, but rather of the appropriate measures we took against them.
One of these measures is the institution of the yellow star that each Jew must wear. We wanted to make them visible as Jews, particularly if they made even the least attempt to harm the German community. It is a remarkably humane measure on our part, a hygienic and prophylactic measure to be sure that the Jew cannot infiltrate our ranks unseen to sow discord.
As the Jews first appeared several weeks ago on the streets of Berlin graced with their Jewish star, the initial reaction of the citizens of the Reich capital was surprise. Only a few knew that there were still so many Jews in Berlin. Everyone suddenly found someone in the neighborhood who seemed like a harmless fellow citizen, who perhaps complained or criticized a bit more than normal, and whom no one had thought to be a Jew. He had concealed himself, mimicked his surroundings, adopting the color of the background, adjusted to the environment, in order to wait for the proper moment. Who among us had any idea that the enemy was beside him, that a silent or clever auditor was attending to conversations on the street, in the subway, or in the lines outside cigarette shops? There are Jews one cannot recognize by external signs. These are the most dangerous. It always happens that when we take some measure against the Jews, English or American newspapers report it the next day. Even today the Jews still have secret connections to our enemies abroad and use these not only in their own cause, but in all military matters of the Reich as well. The enemy is in our midst. What makes more sense than to at least make this plainly visible to our citizens?
In the first days after the introduction of the Jewish star, newspaper sales in Berlin went through the roof. Each Jew on the street bought a newspaper to conceal his mark of Cain. As this was banned, one began to see Jews on the streets of the west side of Berlin in the company of non-Jewish foreigners. These Jewish lackeys actually should wear the Jewish star themselves. The excuse they give for their provocative conduct is always the same: the Jews are after all human beings too. We never denied that, just as we never denied the humanity of murders, child rapists, thieves and pimps, though we never felt the need to parade down the Kurfürstendamm with them! Every Jew is a decent Jew who has found a dumb and ignorant goy who thinks him decent! As if that were a reason to give Jews a kind of honorable escort. What nonsense.
The Jews gradually are having to depend more and more on themselves, and have recently found a new trick. They knew the good-natured German Michael in us, always ready to shed sentimental tears for the injustice done to them. One suddenly has the impression that the Berlin Jewish population consists only of little babies whose childish helplessness might move us, or else fragile old ladies. The Jews send out the pitiable. They may confuse some harmless souls for a while, but not us. We know exactly what the situation is.
For their sake alone we must win the war. If we lose it, these harmless-looking Jewish chaps would suddenly become raging wolves. They would attack our women and children to carry out revenge. There are enough examples in history. That is what they did in Bessarabia and the Baltic states when Bolshevism marched in, even though neither the people nor their governments had done anything to them. There is no turning back in our battle against the Jews — even if we wanted to, which we do not. The Jews must be removed from the German community, for they endanger our national unity.
That is an elementary principle of racial, national, and social hygiene. They will never give us rest. If they could, they would drive one nation after another into war against us. Who cares about their difficulties, they who only want to force the world to accept their bloody financial domination? The Jews are a parasitic race that feeds like a foul fungus on the cultures of healthy but ignorant peoples. There is only one effective measure: cut them out.
How stupid and thoughtless are the arguments of the backward friends of the Jews in the face of a problem that has occupied mankind for millennia! How they would gape if they could ever see their dear Jews in power! But that would be too late.That is why it is the duty of a national leadership to take all necessary measures to keep such a thing from happening. There are differences between people just as there are differences between animals. Some people are good, others bad. The same is true of animals. The fact that the Jew still lives among us is no proof that he belongs among us, just as a flea is not a household pet simply because it lives in a house. When Mr. Bramsig or Mrs. Knöterich feel pity for an old woman wearing the Jewish star, they should also remember that a distant nephew of this old woman by the name of Nathan Kaufmann sits in New York and has prepared a plan by which all Germans under the age of 60 will be sterilized. They should recall that a son of her distant uncle is a warmonger named Baruch or Morgenthau or Untermayer who stands behind Mr. Roosevelt, driving him to war, and that if they succeed, a fine but ignorant U.S. soldier may one day shoot dead the only son of Mr. Bramsig or Mrs. Knöterich. It will all be for the benefit of Jewry, to which this old woman also belongs, no matter how fragile and pitiable she may seem.
If we Germans have a fateful flaw in our national character, it is forgetfulness. This failing speaks well of our human decency and generosity, but not always for our political wisdom or intelligence. We think everyone else as is good natured as we are. The French threatened to dismember the Reich during the winter of 1939/40, saying that we and our families would have to stand in lines before their field kitchens to get something warm to eat. Our army defeated France in six weeks, after which we saw German soldiers giving bread and sausages to hungry French women and children, and gasoline to refugees from Paris to enable them to return home as soon as possible, there to spread at least some of their hatred against the Reich.
That’s how we Germans are. Our national virtue is our national weakness. We do not want to change all that much, and as long as our world-famed good nature does no great harm, why should we? Klopstock gave us some good advice, however: don’t be too good natured, since our enemies are not noble enough to overlook our mistakes.
If this advice applies anywhere, it apples to our relations with the Jews. Carelessness here is not only a weakness, it is disregard of duty and a crime against the security of the state. The Jews long for one thing: to reward our foolishness with bloodshed and terror. It must never come to that. One of the most effective defenses is an unforgiving, cold hardness against the destroyers of our people, against the instigators of the war, against those who would benefit if we lose, and therefore also against the victims, if we win.
Therefore, we must say again and yet again:
1. The Jews are our destruction. They started this war and direct it. They want to destroy the German Reich and our people. This plan must be blocked.
2. There are no distinctions between Jews. Each Jew is a sworn enemy of the German people. If he does not make his hostility plain, it is only from cowardice and slyness, not because he loves us.
3. The Jews are to blame for each German soldier who falls in this war. They have him on their conscience, and must also pay for it.
4. If someone wears the Jewish star, he is an enemy of the people. Anyone who deals with him is the same as a Jew and must be treated accordingly. He earns the contempt of the entire people, for he is a craven coward who leaves them in the lurch to stand by the enemy.
5. The Jews enjoy the protection of our enemies. That is all the proof we need to show how harmful they are for our people.
6. The Jews are the enemy’s agents among us. He who stands by them aids the enemy.
7. The Jews have no right to claim equality with us. If they wish to speak on the streets, in lines outside shops or in public transportation, they should be ignored, not only because their are simply wrong, but because they are Jews who have no right to a voice in the community.
8. If the Jews appeal to your sentimentality, realize that they are hoping for your forgetfulness, and let them know that you see through them and hold them in contempt.
9. A decent enemy will deserve our generosity after we have won. The Jew however is not a decent enemy, though he tries to seem so.
10. The Jews are responsible for the war. The treatment they receive from us is hardly unjust. They have deserved it all.
It is the job of the government to deal with them. No one has the right to act on his own, but each has the duty to support the state’s measures against the Jews, to defend them with others, and to avoid being misled by any Jewish tricks.
The security of the state requires that of us all.