Sportpalast speech

The Sportpalast speech (German: Sportpalastrede) or total war speech was a speech delivered by German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels at the Berlin Sportpalast to a large but carefully selected audience on 18 February 1943 calling for a total war, as the tide of World War II had turned against Nazi Germany and its Axis allies.

It is considered the most famous of Joseph Goebbels's speeches. The speech was the first public admission by the Nazi leadership that Germany faced serious dangers. Goebbels exhorted the German people to continue the war even though it would be long and difficult because—as he asserted—both Germany's survival and the survival of a non-Bolshevist Europe were at stake.

Background

Compared to the previous year, 1943 started inauspiciously for Germany, with major military problems on all fronts. On 2 February the Battle of Stalingrad ended with the surrender of Field Marshal Paulus and the German 6th Army to the Soviets. At the Casablanca Conference, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill demanded Germany's unconditional surrender, and the Soviets, spurred by their victory, were beginning to retake territory, including Kursk (8 February), Rostov (14 February), and Kharkiv (16 February). In North Africa, the Afrika Korps under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was being brought close to defeat, when German supply ships sailing to Tripoli were sunk by the Allies during January. The Western Desert Campaign had ended with British victory at El Alamein and the Axis were in Tunisia between two Allied forces—one advancing from Algeria and one from Libya. The fortunes of Germany's Axis allies were turning as well. Italy's military collapse had made the war in Africa a largely German operation, and in the Pacific, the Americans had just completed their months-long reconquest of Guadalcanal after their victories against Japanese forces at Midway and the Coral Sea.

Total war

Total war is warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, and typically involves the use of weapons and tactics that result in significant civilian or other non-combatant casualties, whether collateral damage or not. American-English Dictionary defines "total war" as "war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded." The term can also be applied when the war effort requires significant sacrifices by most of the friendly civilian population.

In the mid-19th century, scholars identified "total war" as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, to an extent inapplicable to less total conflicts, the differentiation between combatants and non-combatants diminishes and even sometimes vanishes entirely as opposing sides can consider nearly every human resource, even that of non-combatants, as nevertheless part of the war effort.

Total war (disambiguation)

Total war is a military conflict of unlimited scope.

Total war may also refer to:

Total War: 2006

Total War 2006 is a 1999 novel by Simon Pearson.

Plot

The future history the book lays out begins in 2001 with many minor conflicts taking place around the world, such as the end of the Algerian civil war, victory belonging to the Islamic Fundamentalists; Morocco following suit; and a military coup in Turkey to prevent such a development.

Meanwhile the United Kingdom and the USA invade Iraq as the final action of a failing US president whose nation is attempting to draw ever more into isolationism. Next North Korea announces that possesses nuclear weapons; a second Korean War follows closely followed by an attempted Chinese invasion of Taiwan which is easily stopped by American air power. In 2003 Russia has a military coup which (officially) restores the communists to power, closely followed by an invasion of the Baltic States resulting in a conventional war with NATO. Whilst the attention of the west is drawn here however Saudi Arabia also has a take over by Islamic fundamentalists. The Islamic Alliance is united behind a Saladin-like figure and forms an alliance of convenience with Russia launching its attack on the West, the principle acts of terrorism being a midget submarine attack on San Francisco harbour and an attack on RAF Brize Norton by home-grown Islamic terrorists.