by Joseph Goebbels
The English press has called the series of terror attacks on the Reich capital, which has been continuing for three months with only occasional pauses, the “Battle of Berlin.” They have left no doubt that the intention of the British war leadership is to destroy the Reich capital with these brutal and horrible attacks, or as they themselves say, to depopulate it, to crush the war morale of its population, and thus win on the German home front the decisive victory that our fighting soldiers have denied the Anglo-Americans thus far in this war on the front, and that our soldiers will continue to deny them in the future. There is no one in Berlin who would not know that, also no one who would not be firmly determined to resist these terrorist intentions of the enemy with the whole force of his soul and his unbroken heart, thus bringing the enemy’s plan to naught by a great common effort of heroism. When we discuss this subject today outside the circles of the Berlin population, it is because it involves much more than the direct interests of the population of the Berlin. Since the middle of November of the past year, Berlin has been fighting a defensive battle for the entire German people. The Reich capital is representing the cause of the Reich at a decisive point and at a decisive moment.
It is not yet clear today what that means for the city and its future. It is generally known that metropolises usually have an unenviable place in people’s thinking. They are the seats of government and thus of bureaucracy. They are the source of rules, regulations, and tax laws, things that as a rule cause more grief than joy for citizens. The situation of the Reich capital is made more difficult by the fact that it is still young, achieving its historical task late in its development. And the temperament of its population can only be understood and appreciated by someone who has learned them by being there for many years, one who alongside its undeniable weaknesses has also learned its higher values and virtues. Berlin is more a melting pot than a city that grew in an organized manner. Beside the original Berliners, whom the Berliners themselves say are spread so thinly as to almost be rare creatures, it recruited its population from all occupations, classes and tribes of the Reich. But Berlin has an enormous attractive force that always binds to it the human masses that stream to it from every Gau in the land, absorbing them into the huge structure of this city of millions. It has therefore no local patriotism, but rather much more city pride.
One really does not know why the legend developed, and not only with the enemy but also among certain parts of our own people, that Berlin is especially sensitive to outside threats because of its colorful, thrown-together population. Those parts of the Reich that had already suffered enemy terror bombing were therefore somewhat concerned that the day would come when the Reich capital would have to endure the great test. We Berliners ourselves, sure of our own strength and hardness, were convinced that the proof could only be provided by facts. The Reich capital has had more opportunity to do that in the past three months than it likes. Not many cities in the Reich have undergone the same tests in this war, and Berlin does not need to be embarrassed before any of them. Its population has faced enemy air terror with a bravery that deserves the greatest admiration. No one anywhere in the Reich disputes that, and those abroad as well, as long as they have maintained an accurate and objective outlook, are full of praise and admiration. The Reich capital has passed its great war test.
It would naturally be pointless to deny that the enemy has given heavy wounds through his brutal and horrible terror. Until now we have refrained from replying to his boasting accounts of the air war, the cynicism of which can scarcely be surpassed. There will be time enough for that when we once again stand equal. The jubilation in London will be more modest after a relentless German answer, which will once again permit a factual discussion. Even today the German Luftwaffe is responding with gradually growing massive counterattacks, but these are only a foretaste of what is still to come. We can in any event be satisfied that the German capital has remained unbroken under the burden of enemy attacks. The British capital will have opportunity to provide the same proof.
In Berlin as in all the other German cities affected by enemy air terror we have learned to simplify our lives, returning to a primitive war style that has taken from us many of the pleasures of everyday life. We are now marching with a lighter pack. Along with the other populations of other German districts affected by heavy enemy air terror, we have learned to do without some things that are still taken for granted in those parts of the Reich that have been spared. It would be an exaggeration to say that has been easy for us. It deeply hurts a city to see significant parts of its housing, its artistic and cultural monuments, its churches, theaters and museums, reduced to soot and ashes. Still, that is bearable when the freedom of the nation and the maintenance of the life substance of a people require it. We have no wish to make that a matter of patriotic pathos. We bear the hard demands that the nation’s fate place on us not with glowing enthusiasm, but with bitter resistance that always gives the strength to overcome the heavy and heaviest blows, opposing them with a spiritual strength that towers over all doubt.
That is decisive. A great city earns its face not only through its dwellings, buildings and monuments, but above all through its people. Despite the former widespread view, Berlin is more than an asphalt desert or a collection of big apartment buildings. Over four million industrious and decent people live in its densely populated area. They may be known throughout the Reich for their cool and even skeptical outlook on the problems of life, but a great and brave heart beats behind it all, one able to overcome any danger. The Berliners have given more than sufficient proof of that over the past difficult weeks, showing the German people without saying so that their city is not unworthy to house the leadership of the Reich within its walls, providing thereby the great driving force of our national policy and war leadership.
The entire German people has been raptly and intensely following the so-called Battle of Berlin over these past weeks. We can assure it that the battle will end well. The Reich capital will probably endure new blows. There will be even more wounds, scars and tears in its face. Its citizens will pull together even more and learn to deal with even more primitive conditions. But Berlin will not perish. The heart of this city has never beaten so strongly as it does during the nights of heavy bombing, when so to speak the Berliners wipe the blood from their eyes and go to work with bitter defiance. There are miracles of work, splendid organization and an amazing ability to improvise. The city is a true socialist community and the solidarity of all helps to overcome some difficulties that could otherwise easily become impossible. Even at the most critical moments, I have never given this city, its population, its party or its government offices a task that was not resolved with lightning speed. The Berliners do not give up in the face of the misfortunes sent by their hate-filled enemy, but rather they gather their whole strength against them and always overcome them.
The intent of the Anglo-American war leadership is doubtless to proletarianize large parts of the German people through air terror, making them ripe for lying and hypocritical divisive propaganda. It is almost a bloody irony that at the same time he drops unimaginable quantities of explosive and incendiary bombs on densely populated residential sections of our large cities, he also rains down thick stacks of hypocritical leaflets. He apparently believes that our men and women who have lost everything through this cowardly and wholly unmilitary method of warfare will sit down in the glow of their burning homes and perhaps by the corpses of their innocent children to read these worthless leaflets, letting themselves be told what they should think about the war by of all people the corrupt British plutocracy. This is how the criminal English leadership imagines the German people. They used such methods to subordinate colonial peoples and plunder them for their capitalist purposes. Now they want to avoid the great battle they fear more than anything else. When our civilian population does all it can to resist, it is playing an active and direct role in the larger war. They are attacked in an unmilitary way, but defend themselves militarily. Their high morale in this pitiless battle is a decisive, perhaps the decisive, factor of the war. From it come all the other forces and virtues needed to master the disaster. If they succeed, their strength and determination grow. Iron is hardened only through hammer blows
Our people has a great task to fulfill in this generation. It must repair many sins and failings of the past to create an indestructible future foundation for our national life. Never before in our history has the historic mission of the German Reich been so concentrated as in the years from 1914 to today. It is the great age that calls us all. There is no holding back, no excuse. What we do or do not do can never be undone, either for good or evil. We are responsible for the most decisive historical epoch of our people. How we resolve it will determine whether we earn the future blessings or curses of our children and grandchildren.
As the sky over Berlin begins to turn bloody in the nights of heavy enemy terror attacks, we all think with pain and bitterness of the huge amount of pain and sorrow again descending on thousands of our fellow citizens. Nothing remains undone to help them bear the burden of misfortune. Even during the attack, a huge organization begins to move, and within a few hours its results are everywhere visible. Hard and conscientious work join with passionate fanaticism and bitter rage to achieve ever new major accomplishments.
But what could the city’s leadership accomplish were not the entire population behind it, supporting its measures through soldier-like behavior, giving drive and force to the work of restoring our wounded life! Thus it always and everywhere was when the enemy fell on our cities with fire and conflagration and the population had to help themselves to defend their existence. Berlin now stands in the midst of those cities that are marked with sorrow and proud defiance. It wants to be no more than the rest of them. It wants only to show that behind the big words that in the past did not always make it beloved, there are also great deeds when required. What contempt cities such as Hamburg, Essen or Cologne would have for the capital of the Reich if we were weighed in the balance and were found or would be found wanting!
It gives occasion to think to everyone else, not only to those cities. The coat of arms of the Reich capital today bears the laurel wreath of military glory that will never fade. Where in these weeks walls fall and buildings collapse, a new Berlin will spring from the ruins, and every brick will bear witness to the heroic courage of a city that remained unbroken, never wavering, despite the severest blows.
Why Are Things So Difficult for Us?
by Joseph Goebbels
Many of us will have asked ourselves more frequently over the five years that this war has gone on why it is so especially difficult for the German people to build its national life and its future, why it must make such sacrifices and take on such burdens, things that other, happier peoples are spared, or even know absolutely nothing about. These questions are more than justified. Not only must we fight for our existence with all we have in this war, our whole history is nothing but a path of enormous sorrow. Other peoples reached great or world power status much more easily than we did, and today they have such substantial resources that the length of the war hardly seems to have a material effect on them. We to the contrary must work and slave by the sweat of our brow, and our enemies object to the little that we can call our own.
Is not fate treating us unjustly, and do we not have cause to complain? In no way! Our people is the product of its racial characteristics, its geopolitical situation, and its historical development. The question is only whether it has made and makes all that is possible to make from the material and ideals it has, and whether this will continue to be true in the future. This is a question we must answer ourselves.
Not only our difficult situation, but also our hard and unbendable national character is the result of these conditions. Just as the life struggle of the individual forms his personality, so it is in the lives of peoples. That the German people possesses more character strengths than any other cannot be denied. Ask friend or foe as you wish. For centuries the Reich has been the yeast not only of Europe, but also of the whole world. It is possible to imagine the absence of this or that people from human history with no great change or impact. That is impossible with the German people. Until the Thirty Years War and after, even during centuries of impotence and fragmentation, German history was European history. We gave humanity its pioneers. Even in the circles of our enemies, we were called the nation of poets, philosophers, and inventors. But how can that be reconciled with the fact that we have had so few successes on the field of power politics?
The answer to this question is all too clear: It is because we are of greater value than other peoples, not lesser. Our general fate and the geopolitical location of the Reich simply force us to work harder to develop our national life than our few friends and many enemies. The resulting natural superiority makes us hated and unloved. We must work harder than other peoples if we are even to survive. For this reason they try to keep us from achieving equality or resist us, since they know that if we had the same opportunities as they, we would soon have the advantage over them. They fear the unstoppable rhythm of our national growth, the intensity of our productive force, the genius of our inventive spirit, the high level of our national morale and national discipline, all of which are the result not only of our racial characteristics and our political education, but also of our cramped living conditions. No matter how far back in history we look, our people has always been surrounded by danger. But where the danger is not deadly, it increases strength. That is the case with the German people. It has grown through danger, reaching heights of national ability that no other people can even approach.
This conclusion in no way springs from a sense of national arrogance. It is constantly strengthened and affirmed by the facts of this war. We are holding on to our continent in this fifth year against the assault of four world powers, not to mention many open and hidden lesser enemies, essentially alone, dependent only on ourselves. What other people on earth could do that? Our enemies have repeatedly underestimated our powers of resistance because they are simply incapable of imagining it given the standards that prevail by them. We may be forced to surrender territory in the east to keep our defensive lines intact, but should not forget amid these setbacks that no other people would be able to resist at all. The English and Americans admire Soviet military successes. How much more must they admire us, who are conducting the war in the east against a people double our size, supplied with rich assistance, and with only half of our national strength. In Italy the human and material superiority of two world powers cannot reach their goal against a small fraction of our army. Imagine how the battle would be if we had such superiority and our enemies were surrounded on every side as we are today! The question answers itself.
One can understand why the historically unique heights of war morale and war capacity of the German people always make our enemies nervous. They fear giving us the initiative, which would present them with unforeseeable consequences. That also explains their howls of hatred against the Reich, which are only the result of their inferiority complex. If we are to have a chance of success, we must be more steadfast than they, we must fight more bravely, work harder, and live with greater discipline. The pitiless demand of these virtues is also our advantage and our strength over the enemy. In every war there comes the point when victory depends on these virtues. At the decisive hour the people will better use them than ever before. In other words, our present sorrows and difficulties are not only a burden to us, but also training. It is certainly true that the well-to-do generally enjoy a more comfortable life than hard-working laborers, who earn their daily bread through the sweat of their brow. Yet when the critical hour comes when life itself must be defended, the workers have the advantage for they have had the most experience in fighting for life. The Spartan attitude that our exposed and limited situation has forced on us for centuries is the real cause of our national virtues, and also the reason for the hatred and persecution of our enemies. One is the result of the other; they are bound together.
This war is a battle between higher quality and higher numbers. Its course and above all its length depend primarily on strengthening and preserving that which separates us from our enemies. Therein lies our hope of victory. If ever a people had no reason to feel inferior, it is our people in its present situation. Even setbacks, if they are properly accepted and borne, can only strengthen our conviction of superiority. We were not the cause of this war; our enemies forced it upon us. From the beginning, they have made it plain that their goal was to destroy our life substance and destroy us as a people. The fact that they have attacked us with such numerical superiority is more proof than none of them dares to take us on alone. That our people has held its own so far, and will do so in the future, must give us all reason for pride, for unshakeable national self-confidence. We may never forget that no other people in the world is capable or in the situation to be able to withstand such a test of its life strength as we Germans today. We need only imagine what would happen if we faced one of our enemies alone, although they are with the exception of England each superior to us in population and resources, to know how little ground for triumph our enemies have and how much cause we have for faith in ourselves.
No people can choose the conditions under which it lives and maintains itself, not even we Germans. They develop from many conditions from which the present generation at least cannot escape. As far as the material aspects of the war go, our conditions are anything but favorable when compared to our opponents. But the resulting superiority of character, morality, and ideals balance out the material superiority of our enemies, if only we use them fully. We hold our fate in our hands. The German people today, in the truest sense of the words, is the blacksmith of its own happiness, and not only of those living today, but of generations yet to come. It is understandable that we sometimes lose sight of the high obligation we owe the future in the midst of the pressure of everyday life and the steadily growing sorrows and burdens of the war. That obligation is there nonetheless. This person or that may ask here or there what he still has to lose. His house and possessions have gone up in flames. His own life seems of little value in view of the gnawing pain of the loss of his loved ones. That question, however bitter it may be to those affected, is egotistical. Even he who has suffered the hardest, most terrible blows in this war still has something to lose: the future of his people.
This has absolutely nothing to do with national pathos. We have not the least desire, nor any ability, to engage in arrogant nationalistic preaching. We only see things clearly and realistically. Whether justly or unjustly, whether from its own guilt or that of preceding generations, our generation has a German mission to fulfill, a mission that seems almost beyond human capacity. It must master an age that commands life to be formed but not enjoyed. Such an age will be better endured by those whose whole nature and temperament are better suited to forming life rather than enjoying it. But neither the one nor the other can escape the age. It is our absolute lord and master. For some the absence of the spiritual and intellectual matters that ennoble life, and which are made almost impossible by this war, may be as hard or even harder than the loss by others of a pound of butter or a side of ham. Neither might find the loss of the other particularly difficult. But each must face the categorical imperative that the duties and tasks that the war and his people place on him.
This has nothing to do with the fact that we may mourn the loss of our possessions or of a loved one. That we can scarcely forget. We all respect the sorrow that affects the individual, and the higher one is, the more one feels the pain of millions. If there were a way to spare our people its sorrow, we would be the first to reach for it with both hands. There is no such way. We must pass through this valley of pain, for only at its end does the great prize glimmer. We cannot and will not give it up. It will crown and justify our sacrifice. All that we have so far willingly and patiently endured will receive its meaning. If we do not succeed, all will have been meaningless. Our own lives and that of our people would fall into a darkness from which no bright and beautiful day would ever dawn.
Against that, what are the enemy’s hysterical screams of hate and revenge! They will fade at the hour the war ends and the goddess of history gives us the laurels. From the sounds of this war will rise the heroic fame of our fighting people, which trusting only in its own strength and loyal through all the twists of war’s fortunes stayed at the post history had given it. Then we will understand why it so hard for us: To prove that we could use our full strength, holding back nothing, that we could grow even beyond our imaginings, giving an example to all other peoples. And above all, so that in the face of this century’s growing skepticism we could prove that the West was not ready for decline, but rather that it stands at a new beginning. The great cultural crisis that fell on civilized humanity with the First World War must be overcome. That is possible only through an abundance of life will and life determination that is shown only by fate’s hardest tests. Perhaps Europe will one day realize how close it stood to the abyss. This will bring the admiration for our actions that is today withheld. That is how it will be, not otherwise.
If amidst the worst burdens of this war one gave us the choice, we would never change places with any people under happier circumstances. We choose our own. How could the fact that our people must fight for its existence confuse our thinking? Now more than ever we give it our whole love and all our power and strength. In the storms that rage around us, we are prouder than ever before to be German.