Total War

Paul Josef Goebbels' heart stood still.

For a moment, after he heard of the bomb attempt on Adolf Hitler, the firm earth had seemed to shake. He "saw visions of the Apocalypse."

One week after the bomb exploded in the Berghof, the Nazis' master psychologist had got hold of himself again, went on the air to tell the German people what they must now do, what was about to be done to them. Alone in an empty, echoless studio, the little Doktor made one of his most remarkable speeches.

Few men have ever so publicly embodied desperation. He talked & talked as if he would talk away the hovering spectre of failure. He promised victory, threatened dire punishments to Germans who failed to respond to the crisis. He proclaimed total war as if it had never before been proclaimed on earth--not even after Stalingrad. The desperate measures he announced might stave off defeat for months. But to many, his threats must have seemed less like total war than total mobilization of the last broken cracker on the bottom of the barrel.

Big Words. He cried: "July 20 [the day of the attempt on Hitler] represents the opposite of an indication of deteriorating morale. . . . We must pass through this hell of resistance, difficulties and dangers before we can come out into the open again at the end of the war and breathe the fresh air. There can be no doubt that we shall succeed. We must succeed, or else all of us are lost.

"At the suggestion of Reich Marshal Goring, the Fuehrer has entrusted to me the task of Reich Plenipotentiary for the Total War Effort: . . . I promise the German people to leave nothing untried in order to make Germany in a few weeks fit for war in every way. . . . The Party will be the motor of the entire process of reorganization. It will serve with its usual energy in the task of freeing soldiers for the front and workers for the production of armaments. . . The whole State machinery, including the railroads, post office, institutions and enterprises, will be scrutinized . . . for the Wehrmacht. . . . Public life [and] public performances are to be adapted to the aim of total war. . . . Our enemies believe that we are at our end; they will soon have to admit, to their own horror, that we are now no more than starting in many fields. . . . The small clique of traitors . . . [who] tried desperately to play government . . . miscalculated. They can't play Badoglio with us. ... The Almighty desires that we should continue to earn our victory, so that one day He will be able to hand us the laurels."

Big Rifts. On & on it went, ringing skillful changes on the moods of fear, hope and desperate energy. But Goebbels' rhetoric could not quite obscure the fact that the Four Horsemen of the Nazi

Apocalypse--Hitler, Himmler, Goring and Goebbels--now openly ruling as a Quadrumvirate, had launched the Reich on a careening toboggan that could only end in crackup.

On one question Dr. Goebbels had little to say.

How deep was the rift between the Nazis and the Officers' Corps? Most Germans did not know. The Nazis still withheld the names of all but four of the Wehrmacht officers who may have had a hand in the attempt on Hitler. But Dr. Goebbels did not hide the fact that Berlin's Guard Battalion had had to seize the Ministry of War in the Bendler-Strasse, where the Army High Command makes its headquarters, carry out impromptu executions in its courtyard.

New Scapegoats. What war-worn Germans knew with terrible reality from Goebbels' speech and subsequent decrees was one crushing fact: the last vestiges of normal life were about to disappear. Theaters, cinemas, cabarets and concert halls, where men & women could forget a while, would be closed. The twelve-hour workday would become standard. The age limit for women required in industry would be raised from 45 to 50. Sixteen-year-old boys would be sent to the front after 60 days of training. Doctors were advised to be chary in issuing certificates of labor exemption for health reasons.

Favored Germans who were sitting out the war in spas and mountain resorts trembled as the Party's hunt for manpower spread. They knew that Dr. Ley's speech about "blue-blooded swine" (TIME, July. 31) was no accident, that in the frenzied Nazi search for a new scapegoat to bear the blame for losing the war, the Junker was fast taking the place of the Jew.

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