Goebbels Suggests Killing Allied Airmen

In 1943 as German air defense capacities declined, Goebbels began suggesting that German civilians kill captured Allied airmen.  He didn’t directly ask them to do so, but suggested that it was understandable if they took such actions.

Today’s addition to the German Propaganda Article is an article titled “A Word about Enemy Air Terror,” dated 27 May 1944.  Unlike most articles on the site, it was published in the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party’s daily newspaper, rather than in Das Reich.  It was also sent to the party’s speaker corps.  It surely encouraged them to make similar suggestions to the audiences they addressed. In the end, about 350 Allied airmen were killed by German civilians.