Goebbels on a Lost Election (1932)

After great success in the July 1932 Reichstag election, Nazi vote totals sank four months later during  the 6 November election.  The party’s momentum seemed at an end and there was considerable depression among the Nazis.

The day after the election Goebbels wrote an article titled “The Chancellor without a People.” He minimized Nazi losses while claiming (with some justice) that the election had been a disaster for Reich Chancellor von Papen.  With no hope of a parliamentary majority, he dissolved the Reichstag before it was able to do anything.

The Battle of Midway

Germany coverage of the war in the Pacific was never very good.  It depended on Japanese information — which was often unreasonably optimistic.

Today’s addition is an article on the Battle of Midway, which reports that the Japanese had lost one carrier and had a second damaged (the actual number was four), and that the Americans had also lost two (one in reality). The significant news in German eyes was that Japan had occupied several insignificant islands in the Aleutian chain.

My Research Files Available

I am making my research notes available on Zotero.  There is a wide range of material regarding both Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic. The notes are from both printed sources and archives I have visited.

Feel free to use my notes in your research. I would appreciate appropriate credit.

Comparative Living Costs: GDR vs. FRG

I tend to translate whatever is interesting to me at the moment, but a while back I asked for suggestions on things to add to the site.  I got a number of requests for more material from East Germany. It is true that I’ve rather neglected the GDR over recent years.  I’ll see what I can do over time.

Today I’m adding a piece from WAS und WIE, the GDR monthly for agitators.  In this 1978 article, agitators how told how to deal with the disparity in living standards between East and West Germany.  Agitators are told that although things like cars and televisions are less expensive in West Germany, costs for food, child care, and transit fares are much higher.

Nazi Analysis of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came as a pleasant surprise to the Nazis, who had not been told in advance of Japan’s plans.  Today I’m adding the first reactions in the Nazi Party’s daily newspaper to the war’s extension.

The argument is that Roosevelt has gotten the war he wanted, but not when it wanted it.  As a tool of the Jews, he was planning to deal with Japan, but Japan acted first.

By the way, I got a number of requests to a recent post looking for suggestions of things to add, and I will get to some of them as time permits.

Völkischer Beobachter 1938-1945 On-line

 That amazingly valuable Austrian effort to digitize the nation’s newspapers has added the    Völkischer Beobachter for the years 1938-1945.

Hans Frank at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally

A week ago I asked if there were things people would like me to add to the site.  This is my first response: Hans Frank’s 1934 speech on the Nazi legal system, delivered at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally.  He shows up briefly in Leni Riefehstahl’s Triumph of the Will.

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I’ve noted requests so far and will over time see what I can do.  My pace is not particularly fast — at this point I am traveling a lot — but things will appear as time permits.

Anything You Would Like Me to Add?

The German Propaganda Archive at this point has a wide range of material.  I tend to add things that strike my interest at the moment.

However, I am open to suggestions.  Is there anything you wish were available on the site, but isn’t?

Premature Nazi Claims of Victory over the Soviet Union (1941)

Goebbels preferred to avoid claiming victory until there actually was one to claim, realizing that building up hopes only to dash them made for poor propaganda. One of his competitors in the Nazi system, Press Chief Otto Dietrich, was less cautious. In early October Dietrich ordered the press to claim the Soviet Union had been so badly mauled by the ongoing German offensive as to assure its defeat. The result was this front page of the Völkischer Beobachter, the official party daily newspaper. Today I am adding a translation of the article claiming victory.

Other German newspapers followed suit.  Before  long, it became evident that however badly the Soviets had been defeated, they were not yet out of the war.   It was still more than a year away from the German defeat at Stalingrad, perhaps the major turning point of the war.

Gauleiter Eigruber’s Final Speech

Today I am added what is probably the last speech by Gauleiter Eigruber of Gau Oberdonau, the Linz district (Hitler’s birthplace).

It was delivered on 30 April 1945, about a week before American forces marched into Linz.  He provides an update on the military situation, instructs the civilian population on what they are to do, and suggests  between the lines  that the Russians are a greater danger than the Americans.

Goebbels Speaks on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve 1944

Sometimes an e-mail from a visitor to the site sets my curiosity in motion.  Recently I received a question from a Russian scholar about Goebbels’s 1944 Christmas Eve speech, mentioned in one of  Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s poems.  I’d not looked at it before, so using that astonishing Austrian site that provides long runs of Austrian newspapers I found the speech, then wondered what he had to say a week later on New Years Eve.

Today I am adding translations of his 1944 Christmas Eve speech and the New Years Eve speech a week later.   Goebbels had little to say based on facts, but he did his best to argue that since Germany had survived until then, it somehow had to win the war.