On this day in 1943, the first indications that all was not tickety-boo with Hitler’s Holocaust came to light when Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels delivered a speech at the Berlin Sportpalast to a large but carefully selected audience calling for “total war”. That the German people four years into World War Two were only now being asked to endure those same rations and privations as their British and French counterparts had long suffered is remarkable evidence of Hitler’s determination to mollycoddle his Chosen People. So this total war speech of Goebbels was the first public admission by the Nazi leadership that there were serious cracks in the veneer of the Nazi’s monolithic war machine.
Meanwhile, in the Bavarian Heartland of Hitler’s earliest triumphs, three Munich University students were captured and arrested for their clandestine campaign against the Third Reich. Here at last was evidence that not every German citizen had been quite so Nazified as the outside world had been led to believe.
The tale of their tragic story will be told much sooner than even cynics can imagine. Watch this space…
With all due respect to Paul I don’t believe the Waffen’s convenient retrospective “excuses”. The majority of Germans were mass brainwashed. That’s the only excuse. And to be frank it’s a better excuse than if they DID know what was going on.
(I look forward to the “Coming Soon” because I am sure I know what it will be.)
Even Waffen SS members say retrospectively that they weren’t all taken in by the National Socialist ethos, but rather that they were fighting to secure their country – and other European countries – from Communism. When you look at the position of some of the Axis member states, you see one of the reasons why countries like Romania and Hungary joined the Axis.
Crazy though that the NS leaders hadn’t motivated the whole country a lot sooner. They were damn good at motivating the people through their very powerful rallies.
It also shows that you should never ever ever ever underestimate your enemy! Silly little Nazis! lol
The story of the White Rose movement (the Munich university students) is one of the most remarkable of the German home front during the war. I point you towards the 2005 film Sophie Scholl: the Final Days, starring Julia Jentsch. It’s heartening and very sad that Sophie and her co-conspirators mounted their campaign of defiance knowing that beheading was the most likely outcome.