Sportpalast speech
The speech is particularly notable as Goebbels almost mentions the Holocaust, when he begins saying "Ausrotten" (using the German word for extermination), but quickly changes it to "Ausschaltung" (i.e. exclusion).
This was the same word Heinrich Himmler used on 18 December 1941, when he recorded the outcome of his discussion with Adolf Hitler on the Final Solution, wherein he wrote "als Partisanen auszurotten" ("exterminate them as partisans").
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.
They want to bring chaos to the Reich and Europe, using the resulting hopelessness and desperation to establish their international, Bolshevist-concealed, capitalist tyranny."
Rejecting the protests of enemy nations against the Reich's Jewish policies, he stated, to deafening chants from the audience, that Germany "intends to take the most radical measures, if necessary, in good time.
"[1] While Goebbels referred to Soviet mobilisation nationwide as "devilish", he explained that "we cannot overcome the Bolshevist danger unless we use equivalent, though not identical, methods [in a] total war".
[1] Historically, the speech is important in that it marks the first admission by the Nazi Party leadership that they were facing problems, and launched the mobilisation campaign that, arguably, prolonged the war, under the slogan: "And storm, break loose!"
Especially significant is that in the recording, Goebbels actually begins to mention the "extermination" of the Jews, rather than the less harsh terms used in the written version to describe the Final Solution, but catches himself in the middle of the word.
"Germany, in any case, has no intention of bowing to this Jewish threat, but rather one of confronting it in due time, if need be in terms of complete and most radical exterm... exclusion [lit.
The last line originated in the poem Männer und Buben (Men and Boys) by Carl Theodor Körner during the Napoleonic Wars.
[8] Millions of Germans listened to Goebbels on the radio as he delivered this speech about the "misfortune of the past weeks" and an "unvarnished picture of the situation."
By amassing such popular enthusiasm, Goebbels wanted to convince Hitler to give him greater powers in running the war economy.
