Europe in the Year 2000:: And Other Essays, including “The Art of Propaganda”

by Joseph Goebbels

  Each must start with himself, banishing all weakness and lethargy. He must stand firm and give an example to others, he must be on guard when he hears defeatism. He must be a man and act, work, and fight until we have overcome the gravest crisis of this war. We do not know how long that will take, only that it is necessary if we wish to live. That is true for every German, whether at the front or at home. No one can leave it to everyone else. We are all in the same boat that is plowing through the storm. No one can sit in a corner grumbling and complaining, making only critical remarks to the helmsman and the other passengers. Who can hold it against the rest when he who apparently shows no regard for the rest is tossed overboard to ease the strain on the rest, both physically and because they have wearied of a professional complainer who is endangering their efforts to save themselves? That is how things are.

  We can no longer pay any heed to weariness, weakness, and delicacy. What we want, and what the intentions of our devilish enemy are, has been said often and clearly enough during the war. It does not need to be repeated. Everyone knows it. Developments have confirmed it, not contradicted it. There is no hope that the weaklings are right correct in their cowardly excuse that things will be only half as bad as we fear. If the enemy’s agitation deceives us into surrender, things will be much worse than we predicted. We must draw the proper conclusions, coolly, calmly, without complaining, but also with determination. Raising the white flag means giving up the war and shamefully losing one’s life. There is no reason for doing that. To the contrary, that would only help our enemy to win a cheap victory, and for at least a while cover up the growing crisis in his coalition.

  The results are easy to see. They would affect us only, and sooner or later would result in the complete destruction of our nation. No one is willing to accept that fate. We must therefore fight on, resisting at all costs, even under the toughest and bleakest conditions. We fought for years almost without risk. That was not particularly commendable. The risk was entirely on the enemy’s side. They overcame the danger. Who thinks that we cannot do the same? He should buy a noose and do to himself what he thinks is going to happen to our whole nation.

  We still live and breathe, and have mountains of resistance left in us that we only need draw upon. Never have we believed so passionately in Germany as today, when the Reich has before it a crisis of unparalleled seriousness. One may not judge a sick person’s chances of recovery by his fevered delusions. Rather, every possible means must be used to reduce the fever and waken the body’s natural defenses, to give the patient courage so that he does not lose the will to live. One must strengthen his defenses so that they can bring him through the critical moments. Any other behavior is foolish and dangerous. A fourteen-year-old lad crouching with his bazooka behind a ruined wall on a burned out street is worth more to the nation than ten intellectuals who attempt to prove that our chances now are nil. The fighting lad acts instinctively in the right way, the intellectuals act in a false and illogical way because they give up since things do not seem in balance.

  Whether things balance or not depends on us alone. The final account of the war will depend on the whole efforts of the involved nations. The German people can yet make an unprecedented contribution. It will thereby earn the victory. In 1918, we gave up at the last minute. That will not happen in 1945. We all have to see to that. This is the foundation of our ultimate victory. It may sound improbable today, but it is nonetheless so: Final victory will be ours. It will come through tears and blood, but it will justify all the sacrifices we have made.

  * * *

  [1] The treatment of disease by conventional means, i.e. with drugs having effects opposite to the symptoms.

  [2]The Berlinner Taggeblatt was one of a number of newspapers published by the Jewish media magnate Rudolf Mosse (May 8, 1843 – September 8, 1920). He also owned the Deutsches Montagsblatt, the Deutsches Reichsblatt, the Berliner Morgenzeitung, and the openly Jewish newspapers the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, and the C.V.-Zeitung (Organ des Central-Vereins deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens).

  [3] A beer hall located in the working-class neighborhood of Wedding in Berlin, traditionally a meeting place for the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Often used as a venue by Goebbels to attract KDP members over to the NSDAP.

  [4] Goebbels’ personal newspaper in Berlin whose title described his political approach: “Attack!”

  [5] Bernhard Weiss (1880–1951), Vice President of the Berlin police during the Weimar Republic. A personal enemy of the NSDAP’s Gauleiter for Berlin prior to 1933, Goebbels (who nicknamed Weiss “Isidore” in articles in his newspaper), Weiss sued Goebbels over 40 times and on several occasions, banned their newspapers and forbid them from holding meetings in the capital city, particularly before elections. Weiss fled Germany in 1933, and settled in England.

  [6] Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903), a classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist whose most famous work regarding Roman history is still of fundamental importance for contemporary research.

  [7] The “November Years” was a phrase which derisively referred to the Weimar Republic, established in November 1918 and which came to an end in 1933.

  [8] Emil Julius Gumbel (1891–1966), A Jewish Communist and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Heidelberg. Fled Germany in 1933, and settled in New York City.

  [9] Theodor Lessing (1872–1933), best known outside of Germany for his 1930 work Der jüdische Selbsthaß (Jewish Self-Hatred) which attempted to explain the phenomenon of Jewish self-hatred—Jewish intellectuals who incited anti-Semitism against the Jewish people and who regarded Judaism as the source of evil in the world.

  [10] Friedrich Haarmann (1879–1925), a serial killer who is believed to have been responsible for the murder of 27 boys and young men between 1918 and 1924.

  [11] Ernst Toller (1893–1939), a Jewish Communist playwright who served as President of the short-lived “Bavarian Soviet Republic” in 1919 and who was imprisoned for five years for his actions. Despite this overtly Communist record, his Expressionist plays were presented as high culture around the world, and are still published and performed to the present-day. He fled Germany in 1933, and committed suicide in New York in May 1939.

  [12] Arnold Zweig (1887–1968), a Socialist Zionist and editor of the official newspaper of the Zionist movement in Germany, the Jüdische Rundschau. He later became a leading member of the government of Communist East Germany after 1945.

  [13] International Communist organizations set up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

  [14] Maxim Maximovich Litvinov (1876–1951), real name Meir Henoch Mojszewicz Wallach-Finkelstein. An early Communist Jewish revolutionary who worked as an editor on the Communist Party newspaper in Switzerland, Iskra (the “Spark”), and after the 1905 Revolution became editor of the Novaya Zhizn (New Life) newspaper in in St. Petersburg. In 1908 he was arrested under the name Meer Wallach by French police, while carrying twelve 500-ruble banknotes that were taken from a bank robbery in Tiflis the previous year, and deported to England. After the October Revolution of 1917, Litvinov was appointed by Lenin as the Soviet government's representative in Britain and then took up full time employment with the Soviet Union’s diplomatic corps. In 1930, Stalin appointed Litvinov as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. In 1933 he successfully persuaded the United States to officially recognize the Soviet government. Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the Jewish comedian Harpo Marx to the Soviet Union as a good-will ambassador, and Litvinov and Marx became friends and even performed a routine on stage together. Litvinov also actively facilitated the acceptance of the USSR into the League of Nations where he represented his country in 1934—1938. In 1941, Stalin appointed Litvinov as Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs. Litvinov also served as Ambassador to the United States from 1941 to 1943 and significantly contributed to the lend lease agreement signed in 1941.

  [15] Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (1893–1991),
the longest-surviving original Jewish Communist from the October Revolution era. A Communist Party member from 1911 onwards, he led the revolution in Belarus. In 1918, he was appointed Commissar of the propaganda department of the Red Army, and thereafter was governor in various areas of the Soviet Union. In 1922, Stalin appointed Kaganovich to party secretariat as his personal assistant, and in 1924, Kaganovich became a member of the Central Committee. From 1925 to 1928, Kaganovich was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR, where he was personally responsible for creating the agricultural collectivization policy and social conditions which led to the Holodomor, the Ukrainian holocaust in which millions died of starvation. His devotion to Stalin caused a falling out with Kruschev in 1961, and he lived in retirement in Moscow until his death, six months after the fall of the Soviet Union. In 2010, he was posthumously found guilty of Genocide by the Kiev Appellate Court for the Holodomor.

  [16] During the Lwów/Lemberg massacre of June 1941, the retreating Soviets killed about 7,000 Polish and Ukrainian prisoners who were being held in three prisons (Brygidki, Zamarstynów, Łąckiego) in Lwów.

  [17] “Who eats the Jew, will die from it.” An old French saying.

  [18] The German campaign in France was drawing to a close as this was written. Within the next month, France would have surrendered and the British would have been driven off the continent.

  [19] Walther von der Vogelweide (c.1170–c.1230) is the most celebrated of the Middle High German lyric poets.

  [20] The Weimar Republic.

  [21] March 21, 1933 was the official opening of the new Reichstag session, marked by a traditional ceremony at the Potsdam Garrison Church, where Frederick the Great is buried. Former crown prince William was present as a guest of honor and representative of the Hohenzollern dynasty, along with leaders from a variety of political organizations. The celebrations ended with torchlight processions in the evening and a performance of Richard Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden. The population followed the main events in Potsdam on the radio in groundbreaking live coverage.

  [22] May 1 was declared the "Day of National Work" and an official state holiday for the first time, and celebrated with a massive rally in the Reich capital. Once again, the proceedings were broadcast live on radio to all Germany.

  [23] Theodore Newman Kaufman (1910–1986), American Jewish author of the infamous book Germany Must Perish which called for the sterilization of the German people and the distribution of the German lands. See Germany Must Perish!: and The War Goal of World Plutocracy, by Theodore Kaufman and Wolfgang Diewerge, Ostara Publications, ISBN 978-1493784004.

  [24] Bernard Mannes Baruch (1870–1965), an American Jewish stock market financier who was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a “special adviser” to the director of the Office of War Mobilization. During World War II Baruch remained a trusted adviser and confidant of President Roosevelt, who in 1944 spent a month as a guest at Baruch's South Carolina estate. In 1946 President Harry S. Truman appointed Baruch as the United States representative to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC).

  [25] Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (1891–1967), the Jewish U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He played a major role in designing and financing the New Deal. After 1937, while still in charge of the Treasury, he played the central role in financing US participation in World War II. He also played an increasingly major role in shaping foreign policy, especially with respect to Lend Lease, support for China, helping Jewish refugees, and (in the "Morgenthau Plan") for planning the postwar destruction of Germany.

  [26] Samuel Untermayer (1858–1940), a Jewish millionaire and lawyer, strong support of Roosevelt and perhaps most famous for a radio speech in 1993 in which he declared a “holy war” on Germany on behalf of the World Jewish Congress, and his efforts to arrange a boycott of German-made imports and all merchants who had German-made items in their establishments. His speech was published in the New York Times on the morning following the broadcast (August 7th, 1933).

  [27] The famous Jewish Morgenthau-Lehman family of New York which included judges, senators, state governors and other senior American government officials.

  [28] Alfred Mond (1868–1930), a British Jew knighted as Lord Melchett, chairman of the Council of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. The richest man in England through his chairmanship of a number of major international companies, including Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., the International Nickel Company of Canada, the Finance Company of Great Britain and America, and Amalgamated Anthracite Collieries, Ltd.

  [29] The Sassoon family, of whom the best known is hair stylist Vidal Sassoon, is of Iraqi Jewish descent. From the 18th century, the Sassoons were one of the wealthiest families in the world. Sir Edward Albert Sassoon (1856–1912) married Aline Caroline de Rothschild, and was a Conservative member of Parliament from 1899 until his death. The seat was then inherited by his son Sir Philip Sassoon (1888–1939) from 1912 until his death. Sir Philip served in the First World War as military secretary to Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig and, during the 1920s and 1930s, as Britain's undersecretary of state for air. Another famous British banker and government minister was James, Lord Sassoon. In the 19th century, one daughter of the family, Rachel Sassoon Beer bought a number of newspapers in England, including The Sunday Times (1893–1904) and The Observer, which she also edited.

  [30] Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg (1891–1967), a leading Communist Russian Jew famous for his novels and propaganda on behalf of the Soviet Union. Most infamous for his article "Kill" published in 1942 which contained an exhortation to kill Germans: “We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day... Do not count days; do not count miles. Count only the number of Germans you have killed.” He was a prominent member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, the official liaison body set up by the Soviet Union to interact with the Jews in America during World War II.

  [31] The Yalta Conference, held February 4–11, 1945, held between the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin, respectively, took place in the Livadia Palace near Yalta in Crimea. It was here that these powers agreed that after obtaining Germany’s unconditional surrender, Germany and Berlin would be split into occupied zones and that reparations were partly to be in the form of forced labor from Germany—something which would last up to ten years in the Soviet Union. Roosevelt’s partition plan for Germany was eerily close to the plan proposed by Kaufmann (see above in his book Germany Must Perish! Ultimately, the partition which was finally decided upon was even more drastic, and led to post-1945 Germany losing more than a third of its original 1871 borders.